At last, it's a nice long summer holiday break! With triple-digit temperatures the norm, there's no better time to pour a nice tall cool one, put your feet up in a shady spot and take a bite out of your summer reading list. Don't have a list? That's what we're here for. Today we reprise our big list of summer reading lists with a few new twists for Summer 2012. ...

When I think about the stereotypical successful lawyer, I think of someone who wears designer suits and expensive jewelry, lives in a big house, drives a luxury car, has season tickets and always plays with the latest techno-toys. A lot of us are fed that ideal in law school, along with the notion that we should aspire to be partners at large law firms. This may be someone’s measure of success, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But it's not mine. ...

No, I’m not going to talk about "raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens," although I do feel the raindrops on roses thing has a lot going for it. But I am going to talk about are a few of my favorite computer things—things that make my computer work for me. Computers excite geeky girls like me but, honestly, they are really just tools that should make work life easier. Problem is, too often I watch people go to work for their computers, rather than the other way around. I’m on a mission to upend that scenario, starting with the simple things ...

You can (and do) work anywhere—seat 32F, the B train, hotel bars, little league bleachers and wherever your feet (and your luggage) may land. With just a smartphone and a change of underwear, you’re off in a trice to tend to business in parts unknown. You are an "attorney at large." How do you do it? Through the maze of airport security, elusive Wi-Fi, overheated hotel rooms and telescoping time zones? "There be dragons" out there at the edges of your world! But you? You do battle. You carry on. And, frankly, from here it looks like you're doing a pretty good job. But today we're giving you something that will help you do it even better : A bonus e-guide for mobile lawyers ...

No one really likes conducting performance reviews. For some reason, lawyers seem particularly averse to providing feedback. Perhaps this is because much of the work lawyers do is based on individual performance, or because few lawyers are trained in the art of staff or attorney supervision. Giving reviews is also a formal way of delivering feedback and, despite their alleged penchant for dealing well with conflict, I found that lawyers do not like delivering any kind of bad news.

When I began consulting, it was my plan to focus on working with corporations. But one of the first calls I received was from the managing partner of one of the international accounting firms. When I said I wasn’t an accountant, he replied, “You don’t need to know accounting. You just need to understand a partnership.” That firm became a client and I began to learn how partnerships should work. Over time, I came across a short piece that beautifully and succinctly defined a successful partnership. It was exactly the message I had been trying to deliver to law firms and accounting firms. Since then, I have used this piece as the opening section in all my reports and I have seen it change the attitude and culture of many. It's pretty simple. Here it is ...

I learned everything I ever need to know about client service the first time I closed a deal on my own. I was a young client, anxiously micro-managing a negotiation that my outside counsel (whom I’ll call Steve) could have mastered in his sleep. One night, after we had reviewed the negotiation strategy with the team (yet again!), Steve called me directly and said ...

One of the fastest ways to improve your typing on the iPad's on-screen keyboard is to take advantage of the shortcuts feature introduced in iOS 5. The shortcuts feature works like Autocorrect’s non-evil twin, turning your abbreviations into perfectly-typed chunks of frequently-used text anywhere you use iPad's on-screen keyboard. With a little planning and practice, you can use shortcuts to help save time, frustration and embarrassment when you type on your iPad's keyboard. ...

I confess that writing a post about ways to measure social media performance took some thinking, mainly because I don’t put much stock in the typical metrics, like follower count. Getting people to follow you is easy. Getting people to engage requires effort. And with the proliferation of social networks, keeping track of who you are engaging, and where, is quite the challenge. Factor in blog comments and we’re off to the races. So how to keep track of it all? Simple answer: Tools. Duh. But what tools? Here are some Friday Five options ...

In their best-selling book Time Management for Attorneys: A Lawyer’s Guide to Decreasing Stress, Eliminating Interruptions & Getting Home on Time, Shawn McNalis and Mark Powers offer strategies to manage your most scarce resource. Here, Shawn explains how to use one of the "Key Time Template Blocks" described in the book. Using it helps you beat back constant interruptions and get more out of your day. ...