It's true, of course, that very few people come even close to using all of the features in the software they own. We learn only enough to get by, with perhaps a couple of extra nifty tricks so we can feel smug. Then we tell ourselves we'll do some extra training ... next month. Meantime, we Google for answers and troll the online help forums when we get stuck. But what do we do when the software just won't do what we want it to do? Enter the world of add-ons—those nifty little utilities that customize the programs we use every day, like Microsoft Office.

How many emails do you usually delete having read no more than the "from" line? Has your fear of adding to that in-box clutter—and recipiant irritation—kept you from including email in your marketing plans? Well, the truth is that there are lawyers using email as a very powerful marketing tool with absolutely no offense. Done right, email marketing beats almost all possible ways to deliver a targeted message to a receptive audience. . .

ABA TECHSHOW 2012 takes place this week in Chicago, March 29-31, and there's enough legal technology product news to keep the exposition hall buzzing way past closing time. In addition to the launches and upgrades we announced earlier in the year, today we've got highlights from some new product announcements released just in time for this conference. (Pssst. If you're in town, be sure to stop by the Chicago Hilton's exposition hall to run these new products through their paces—expo-only passes are free—and watch for special deals. We hear there's a new iPad or two up for grabs!)

Like most attorneys starting a new firm, I want to know the best way to build my reputation—and my client base—so I asked for some advice from Erika Napoletano and Ari Kaplan. Napoletano is Redhead Writing and author of the book, "The Power of Unpopular: A Guide to Building Your Brand for the Audience Who Will Love You." Kaplan is an attorney and author who speaks frequently on the power of social media and marketing, with Ari Kaplan Advisors. Here’s what I asked and what they had to say.

I live and write in the great, white, cold north, where the winters are long and the snows are deep and frequent. It takes a far hardier person than me to endure the endless winter months without heading south for an extended period of time to, as someone near and dear to me once described it, “tan my tonsils.” This winter, I headed down to enjoy the warmth of Florida, where I linger a bit on into early spring as I recover from the stress of our major law firm merger. Since my time here is "extended," I continue to work—but I do it remotely.

The 2012 winners of the "Oscars of legal marketing"—the Your Honor Awards—were announced last week at the world’s largest gathering of legal marketers. For this week's Friday Five, David King Keller points us to five of the nearly 60 2012 winners recognized at the Legal Marketing Association's Annual Conference at the Gaylord Texan Resort. Why? Because your clients are receiving this great stuff and, frankly, we think you ought to know about it. Maybe it's time you got going?

March 30th approaches! For the uninitiated—or those who've ignored the alerts Facebook has been sending—that's the day all Facebook business pages will switch to the new Timeline format. And, like it or not, if your law practice has a Facebook page, you're going to have to figure out how to handle the changes. (If you don't have a business page, you need to figure out why not.) If you spend any time at all on Facebook, by now you're familiar with Timeline on personal Facebook pages. Actually, it's quite spiffy. You get to dress up your page with a “cover” image, and arrange and display what used to be your “wall” in a variety of ways—with a lot more flexibility. With Timeline on your business page, it's going to be much easier to look like a pro and have some control over your message.

A successful business trip is not only defined by your productivity. It's also about staying healthy, mentally and physically, so you can actually enjoy what you’re doing and return back home ready to go. Easier said than done. So we asked Jason Womack, author of the new book Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More, to give us his best tips for smooth and uneventful travel. He says it's simple ...

The folks in the Mountain View studios of Google have been very busy of late, working out a number of new endeavors, including the launch of Google+, and the application of overarching revisions to the company’s privacy policy. The most significant development of all, though, has been the recent unveiling of a change to Google search protocol that incorporates items shared or posted by your Google connections into returned results. What does Google’s "Search Plus Your World" mean for lawyers, forced to the crossroads of search engine optimization and social networking? In part one of this post, I'll cover the need-to-knows of the new search protocol. In part two, I'll explain how lawyers can make the most of it.

Law practices, like automobiles, require regular maintenance checkups to perform at their best. Think of all the moving parts that determine your practice's profitability, from billing rates to overhead to your collections headaches. If your car has a set maintenance schedule, why should your law firm be any different? As the end of the first quarter of 2012 approaches, now is a good time to check "under the law firm hood" and make sure everything is in optimal working order.