How lawyers handle their billing has long been a topic of discussion in our field. Traditionally, it was a simple process. Record your time. Prepare invoices by listing all these billing entries multiplied by the lawyers’ hourly billing rates and adding expenses clients should pay. Send out the billing on the same day every month. Get paid. But it was
Continue Reading A Brief History of Legal Billing
Discussing technology competence among lawyers is always an interesting conversation. When we were discussing adopting the technology competence amendment to the Oklahoma Rules of Professional Conduct, one lawyer indicated that he didn’t want to learn how to use Twitter and shouldn’t be forced to by a rule or comment. My unspoken reaction was “You don’t have to learn about Twitter,
Continue Reading Technology Competence for Every Lawyer
Some of the greatest decisions of your career may be ones that you don’t even remember. They involve clients who you decided not to represent that went on to make another lawyer’s life miserable for a while. Client selection is an important aspect of law firm management. For many lawyers, this involves a one-to-one consultation with prospective clients.
My column
Continue Reading Client Selection: How to Red Flag High-Risk Clients (Including Relatives)
We recently did a Digital Edge podcast Overcoming Trust Account Management Challenges.
Our guest was Paul Garibian, a fintech expert, entrepreneur, and current CEO of Nota. Nota provides financial services to lawyers including trust accounts with no services charges. We discussed common mistakes lawyers make with their trust accounts, the serious consequences of mismanaging these accounts, and the best
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Lawyers often deal with the challenges that occur when people die without making a last will and testament. One result is sometimes intestacy laws distribute property differently than the deceased might have wanted. Additional expenses and legal fees are almost always a result.
Similar challenges and expenses can occur when a lawyer dies or becomes disabled without leaving instructions as
Continue Reading Protecting Your Clients When You Aren’t Able to Help
Email is a part of our lives, like it or not. It is great when you need to deliver documents to another state without paying for a courier. But between all the spam, the phishing attempts to attack your computers and an appreciation that most emails contain a request for you to do something when you are already busy, email
Continue Reading Consider These 40 One-Sentence Email Tips
Way back when I practiced law, few one- and two- lawyer offices prepared a budget in advance for the year. Their budget, and in many cases their “partnership” distribution formula, was the tried-and-true formula “you eat what you kill.” Had we questioned the lawyers about that omission, many would have responded that budgets weren’t important because that wasn’t real money.
Continue Reading Why should a solo or small firm prepare a budget?
Our smart phones are so powerful and there are so many apps available for them, it is hard to keep up with everything that is possible.
For iPhone users in the legal profession, Jeff Richardson’s iPhoneJD site has been a resource for many years. If you are interested in a new app, you can go to iPhone JD’s “Index to
Continue Reading Check out the “In The News” Podcast
Years ago, there was a lot of discussion in the legal community about metadata, the hidden data contained in documents that had the potential to reveal more about the document than most lawyers would like. It was a potential problem when using forms from a past client’s matter as a form for a new document in a new client’s matter.
Continue Reading How to Clean Up Your Docs with Microsoft’s Document Inspector
This is a blast from the past, well, from 2015. Who is your Document Czar? If you work in a business where creating and managing documents is a major operational function, you do have in-house expertise. You must. So who is your top document expert? Who advises the shareholders on document creation and retention policies? Who assists with designing the
Continue Reading So who is your Document Czar?
Do you practice People Law? There has long been a perceived difference between large law firm practice and small law firm practice. But, in my view, the major difference is not the size of the law firm, but the type of clients primarily served.
Those who study the data of law practice have noted that the practice of People Law,
Continue Reading The Changing Dynamics of a “People Law” Practice
Known nationwide for her technology and legal management expertise, Natalie Kelly has recently brought her skills to the Southern Poverty Law Center to help them modernize their legal department operations. Sharon Nelson and Jim Calloway talk with Natalie about her new role and the work done by the center to advance civil rights and racial justice. Natalie discusses the technology
Continue Reading Digital Edge podcast- The Southern Poverty Law Center: A View From the Inside
Sometimes adding a signature to a document before you print it is a big timesaver. Many lawyers have scanned their signature and added it to their email signature as an image so they can “sign” their emails with their own handwriting.
But you can also do that with a Microsoft Word document. Even if you do not use it frequently,
Continue Reading Adding a Signature in a Word Document on PC or Mac
Ransomware and other online attacks have been in the news recently, from shutting down the Colonial Penn pipeline to schools, hospitals, and a meat processing company. FBI Director Christopher Wray has asked victims not to pay ransoms. But the cybercriminals now have a new threat. If the ransom is not paid, in addition to not decrypting the victim’s files, the
Continue Reading ABA’s Law Firm Guide to Cybersecurity
Recently Attorney at Work published my feature Client Portals: A Must-Have Service for Today’s Law Firms. After I covered this subject at virtual ABA TECHSHOW 2021, they reached out to me to write this feature. If you have not yet read it, I strongly encourage you to do so today. The benefits of providing client portals are numerous and
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During the previous year, many people got more Amazon deliveries than ever before. But on June 8 Amazon stealthily delivered something to you that you should reject.
If you use Alexa, Echo or other Amazon devices, Amazon just enrolled you in a bandwidth-sharing service called Amazon Sidewalk. While it theoretically could have some benefits to a few, the potential risk
Continue Reading Amazon Sidewalk- Why it is important for lawyers to opt out now!