Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) from OBA MAP
By Jim Calloway, Director, OBA Management Assistance Program

For our last offering of 2004, we have decided to share with you some of our most frequently asked questions. It is interesting that many of our recent queries concern OBA Internet services. (In case you haven’t visited our primary Web site in a while, we have just published a new version of www.okbar.org last month.) But other questions deal with software, law office technology and other law office issues.

Q: I searched for my own name on Oklahoma FindaLawyer.com and cannot find it. Why am I not listed?

ANSWER:
OklahomaFindaLawyer.com is not a complete listing of our membership. We only list Oklahoma lawyers who sign up for this free service online via myokbar. You can list as many substantive law practice areas as you wish and up to three counties in addition to the county of your official address for your geographical practice areas. There is an online article with more detailed information about OBA online member services.

Q: So is there a complete database of Oklahoma lawyers anywhere online?

ANSWER:
YES. All OBA members can log into myokbar and search our complete membership database. This includes names, addresses, phones numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses. This information is not currently available to the general public online due to concerns about the information being harvested for junk mail, fax and spam e-mail. If you have never used myokbar, the online article noted above should assist you.

Q: Should I install Windows XP Service Pack 2? I keep getting these reminders to update, but I also hear horror stories.

ANSWER:
Dear readers, this is a trick question. What the caller really wants is for me to bless them installing this update so they can call me to demand to fix things when they go awry. Sorry, but you install any software at your own risk.

Despite the innocent name, everyone should understand that Windows XP Service Pack 2 is a major upgrade. It tightens up many security holes in Windows XP. Those of us fairly familiar with Windows will react negatively to some of the more paternalistic changes (such as not letting us receive certain types of e-mail attachments without tweaking.) Odds are that if you have some older software on your computer, it will break something or refuse to recognize it. For example, one poster on OBA-NET had to use Internet Explorer to upgrade Netscape 7.1 to Netscape 7.2 to get it to work. Others have reported troubles with their legal research providers that they had to resolve by going to the Web site of the provider to obtain a fix.

There are some tweaks and fixes that even the least technologically-minded attorney can do after installing SP2. Your attention is directed to a C|Net review of SP2 Tech Nightmares which can be reached by typing http://tinyurl.com/3mdeq into your browser.

However, we should strongly note that SP2 greatly improves computer security and that is an issue that concerns lawyers to a great extent. Therefore it is hard to ignore this security update unless you do not use the Internet.

If you are really concerned about loading the upgrade, we note that computers are quite inexpensive now. Just buy a new one with XP SP2 pre-loaded before the end of the year, and everything should work fine.

Q: Where can I get more information about improving the management of my law practice?

ANSWER:
We have numerous books and other resources available in the OBA-MAP Resource Center. Room 214 in the Bar Center has been established as the OBA-MAP Resource Center where attorneys can drop in for management resources and product information. There is a computer with printer, scanner and Internet access for our members to use free of charge. There are TV-VCR units with headphones so lawyers can view selections from our library of law office management videotapes. Many books are available in the Lending Library. Several updated treatises that are not commonly available (e.g. Hillman on Lawyer Mobility) are available there for reference.

See Sharon Dotson to check out books from the Lending Library.

We are a distributor of American Bar Association Law Practice Management Section books and offer these books for sale to our members at a discounted price.

Q: Are there any particular books you would recommend a lawyer purchase from your office?

ANSWER:
There are lots of great practice management books offered by ABA LPM. You can see the catalog here. http://tinyurl.com/4brfl. We can give you discounts on the books.

The book on law practice management is Jay Foonberg’s How to Start and Build a Law Practice. The 5th edition was published in 2004. Every new lawyer who is opening their own practice should buy, not borrow, this book and the same is true for lawyers leaving a firm to hang out their own shingle. It makes a great Christmas gift for the young lawyer or 3L in your family. The OBA Management Assistance Program has this book for $52 if you pick it up or $57 if you want it mailed to you.

One of our hottest sellers is The Lawyer’s Guide to Fact Finding on the Internet by Carol Levitt and Mark Rosch. We used this for materials for the OBA CLE Internet classes we taught earlier this fall. The seminars are available online through www.okbar.org, but the book is not included as materials for the online versions. You can purchase the book from OBA MAP for $58 if you want to pick it up here and $63 if you want it mailed to you.

If you want to increase your technical skills (or want to help your staff to do so), you might buy the new book The Lawyer’s Guide to Adobe Acrobat by David L. Masters. David is a small firm general practitioner from Montrose, Colo. He has spoken in our state on this topic before and maybe some of you will have a chance to hear him at the 2005 Solo and Small Firm Conference this summer. This book, which was published this year, is $49.95 if you pick it up at the Bar Center and $54.95 if you wish it shipped.

Note: please call us before stopping by to purchase a book. We only have limited quantities on hand and do "sell out" from time to time.

Q: I have my PIN number from my OBA dues statement, but I can’t seem to figure out how to use it to get into OBA-NET. What gives?

ANSWER:
You are fortunate to have a bar association that offers you a wide variety of online services. But due to several reasons, they cannot all be accessed the same way.

Your PIN number is for myokbar. My okbar is your personal connection with the OBA online. You can enroll in CLE, check your MCLE records, search the membership database and do many other things. Every Oklahoma lawyer should be able to log on here. You can log onto this service from www.okbar.org or directly at http://my.okbar.org/ by using your bar number and the PIN number, which can be changed online to any combination of numbers and letters that you prefer.

OBA-NET is your private site that allows you to share forms, advice and questions with other OBA members. Even though it is free, you must register online at www.oba-net.org to participate. You must have a current e-mail address on file with the OBA to join this, and it must have been on file in excess of 24 hours during the work week. When you first sign up for OBA-NET, you receive a user name and password via e-mail. You can change the password to any combination of numbers and letters that you prefer.

The most important point is to give the OBA your e-mail address and give us an update when you change. Both of these services have "forgot your password links" that will send a forgotten password, user name or PIN to your current official e-mail address.

Q: I saw you were doing a program on gadgets earlier this fall. Are there any really important gadgets for lawyers to use?

ANSWER:
There are lots of gadgets that can make the lawyer’s life easier. Some are even fun. I’d suggest that every lawyer needs a small flash drive, also called a jump drive or USB drive. These keychain-sized devices can hold lots of information. You can get one with a capacity of 128 megabytes for around $20-$30 and 256 megabytes for $35 or $40. When you consider that a standard floppy disk holds just under one and a half megabytes, you can see these provide a lot of storage that you can hold in the palm of your hand. Buy the faster USB 2.0 instead of USB 1.0 unless you are getting a very good deal.

Another useful item is the stand-alone external hard drive. Many lawyers are still backing up data with tapes or other media. But external hard drives have really dropped in price recently, and it may be a great idea just to hook one up to your machine either for backup or to increase storage. An external hard drive has its own case and just plugs into your computer’s USB port. These come in both desktop and portable versions, with a few larger ones hitting below the $1 per gigabyte on the desktop units.

Finally, the hottest right now (and somewhat expensive) is the combination mobile phone and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA.) A lot of lawyers swear by these devices. They have become so popular that sales for the traditional PDAs have been dropping. Check out the newly released Treo 650 from PalmOne to see the features of a high-end mobile phone PDA combination. This particular model is only available for Sprint customers until sometime after year end.

Q: What’s the most important thing I should be doing to improve my practice?

ANSWER:
That’s hard to answer without visiting your practice. We do have on-site consulting on a fee-for-services basis. Let’s break the general answer down two ways.

Technology — The two most important issues I would want to see lawyers address are 1) back-up and 2) case management software. It is critical that you make absolutely sure you are regularly backing up all of your data, testing the back-ups to see if you can use them and taking a backup off-site. If only one person knows how to restore a backup, please reflect a moment on the fact we are all mortal. As we move to more advanced and convenient ways to access our data, case management software allows us to organize our client and matter data to better use it. One cannot benefit much from one of the mobile phone-PDA combinations mentioned above if there’s no organized data on your computers to be accessed.

Business Operations — The main issue here is taking time every month, or every other month, to review your general business operations. Have a meeting and ask yourself and your staff some questions. Are we managing our time well? Do we do our tasks as we have planned? Do our bills always go out the same day every month? Are our client’s phone messages and voice mails always returned within 24-36 hours? How is our quality control? Do we have to redo and correct things often? For the experienced lawyer, the issue is often not whether the operations plan is good, but whether it is being executed well.

That’s all for this month — and this year. The staff of the OBA Management Assistance Program wishes you and yours a happy holiday season.

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal December 11 , 2004 - Vol. 75; No.35