This story, Steady guidance in changing times: Practice management advisors help lawyers move forward, appeared in the ABA publication Bar Leader. Our community of Practice Management advisors (PMAs) includes so many smart and talented individuals. Marilyn Cavicchia is a great writer and she interviewed several  of us for this feature..

I’m biased of course, but the bar associations who provide…
Continue Reading Steady guidance in changing times: Practice management advisors help lawyers move forward

The Sound of Music is often associated with the holiday season, even though the movie doesn’t contain content we would normally think of as relevant to the holidays. One reason is that in the days before streaming, family-friendly content was often broadcast by networks during this season. Many people have memories of watching the movie during the holidays with family.…
Continue Reading A Few of My Favorite Things

I had no idea how many law firms answered their phones with “Hello L’office” until I went to work for the OBA. But it’s not limited to Oklahoma. I have received the same greeting calling lawyers’ offices in many states. Obviously, the intended greeting is “Hello Law Office,” but when you are busy and do a task hundreds of times,…
Continue Reading Avoiding ‘Hello L’office’ and Other Law Firm Telephone Tips

Sharon Nelson and I usually are acquainted with most of our podcast guests. But Dru Armstrong has been the CEO of LawPay.for just over 90 days and it was a pleasure to meet her while we interviewed her for our podcast: A Conversation with LawPay’s CEO – and Introducing ClientCredit. She was fun, engaging and it clearly wasn’t…
Continue Reading Digital Edge Podcast: A Conversation with LawPay’s CEO – and Introducing ClientCredit

With Halloween just ahead, Attorney at Work shared a post today on Lawyer Tech Tips: Things That Go Bump in Legal Tech. Contributors included Jim Calloway, Anne Haag, Tom Lambotte, Catherine Sanders Reach, Sharon Nelson and John Simek, and Ben Schorr.
You will find some good advice wrapped around a few spooky stories. But there are lots of great…
Continue Reading Lawyer Tech Tips: Things That Go Bump in Legal Tech from Attorney at Work

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,…
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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