While there are some among us who associate March breezes with the crack of the bat, the good leather smell of a new mitt, and the Friendly Confines of their favorite ballpark. A whole other kind of spring training is about to get underway. It's conference season! And, for this week's five, we're spotlighting some of the best of the big shows. Nothing minor league here, that's for sure!

Lawyers attend conferences. Lawyers tweet. Much like chocolate and peanut butter, these are two great trends that, for the most part, have trended great together.The integration of the two phenomena was inevitable from the day Twitter made its 140-character debut, and happily, the live-tweeting of legal events has proceeded remarkably well. Compared to technology events, where faltering speakers are often ripped to shreds by the attending twitterati, tweeting lawyers have been models of decorum and generosity. Still, there's a right way to tweet meetings, and here are five pieces of advice.

Everybody's talking about project management for lawyers these days. And I think it's about damn time! Early in my law career, I had a conversation with a client that convinced me of its merits. He was quite a bit older than me and had originally trained as an engineer. After we discussed his complaint and shifted to focus on the arrangements, he asked for a schedule. I began my usual uncomfortable explanation about the vagaries of the process and the complex nature of litigation. After a long silence, he looked me in the eye and said, “Son, that’s just plain bullshit. Life itself is complex and uncertain, but we live it every day, anyway."

There's no reason a smaller firm's online marketing program can't be just as successful as a megafirm's—even with a much smaller budget. But it does require focus. No more knee-jerk decisions, no more keeping up with the Jones’s—and certainly no more random acts of marketing. Here’s a guide to a purposeful online strategy.

Every lawyer wrestles with getting and keeping clients. It is, after all, hard stuff! And it’s actually quite normal to constantly wonder: “Where do I start?” “Are we spending enough or too much … on the wrong things?” “What are the right things?” and “Where am I supposed to find the time to do it […]

Most people make a New Year’s resolution related to their health. But by the end of February, more than 75 percent of them have given up on it. If one of your resolutions was to get healthy in 2012, don’t despair. You can do it with these five ways to get healthy, starting now. So listen up! This could be a life-saving Friday Five.

If you’ve been out of the job market for a while and you’re thinking about jumping back in, it’s important to map out a strategy—and stick to it. In part one of this series, “Heading Back to Work: Preparing for Re-entry,” we discussed the importance of setting clear goals and sharpening your skills. In this segment, […]

You’ve probably heard of the wildly popular Foursquare and Farmville, where users receive incentives to participate in activities. But the concept of gamification—the use of virtual rewards, levels and status to motivate certain behavior—is increasingly popular among lawyers, too. That may come as a surprise if you associate games with younger or “less professional” groups of people, but you […]

Legal project management has become a bit of a buzz term in recent years, but what exactly does "LPM" entail? Do you really need a stable of Gantt charts to run your law practice efficiently, or is there a simpler way? Sure there's a load of project management software out there promising to double your free time, maximize efficiency and make you smarter, richer and taller. But the dirty little secret in the industry is that project management software usually gets implemented because some business people think they need a killer tool to get their act together.

Clients are always looking for a law firm or lawyers with tremendous experience in xyz. Clients are very rarely looking for a lawyer with zero experience in xyz. Yet, in most law firms today, young lawyers are expected to bring in work—any work—and generate revenue. Do not be fooled. It won't matter where you got your law degree, or what your class rank was, or how well you scrape and bow. You will never get far or be successful as a lawyer if you do not bring in business.