By Jim Calloway “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” is the much-quoted opening to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Sometimes Microsoft’s automatic updates have the same reaction. We love it when something new and useful appears with little fanfare, like the Dictate button that provides great speech…

By Jim Calloway Having another person pay for your clients is good for the lawyer who gets paid. But third party fee payments can turn into sticky situations sometimes. A parent may pay for a child’s attorney fees in a domestic dissolution case. But the parent, having paid for the lawyer, may assume that they…

By Jim Calloway Subscribers to Microsoft 365 are by now used to receiving product updates without warning. So today we will discuss new and undiscovered PowerPoint features that you may have missed. Some lawyers only open Microsoft PowerPoint when they agree to teach a CLE presentation. But there are many more uses for PowerPoint. If…

By Jim Calloway Expanding the Clipboard memory in Word is something all lawyers should know how to utilize. It is so simple. Just open a document in Word and click the arrow angled downward to expand the Clipboard group. Now copy a few sections of the document and watch the expanded Clipboard grow as it…

By Jim Calloway As Microsoft 365 continues solidifying its position in workplaces around the globe, most lawyers involved with litigation or corporate compliance will deal with a discovery request involving data held in Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 and eDiscovery: What Lawyers Need to Know is written from an organization preparing to respond to discovery requests….

By Jim Calloway Dru Armstrong has been CEO of LawPay for just a few months and it was a pleasure to meet her when we interviewed her for our Digital Edge podcast: A Conversation with LawPay’s CEO – and Introducing ClientCredit. She was fun, engaging and it clearly wasn’t her first rodeo as far being…

By Jim Calloway Today our tips on Microsoft Word come from Mark C. Palmer, who is the Chief Counsel of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism. Mark is sharing his 6 Ways Lawyers Should Be Using Microsoft Word. Hopefully you are using some of these ways and also perhaps you can learn something new…

By Jim Calloway You may be glad to return to face-to-face meetings and hearings, but videoconferencing is not going away. There will still be clients who can be spared a long drive to your office for a quick conference, but video is preferred so you can share documents on the screen. You may decide that…

By Jim Calloway You may read the subject line and think you know how to do this, but the advanced features outlined in this short piece are not so commonly known or used. Document creators have often recognized the power of find and replace. It speeds the process of changing a word or phrase throughout…

By Jim Calloway Sometimes Microsoft tends to hide powerful features in favor of simple interfaces better for the average user. Microsoft Word’s Print Preview Edit Mode is something useful that you have probably never used because it is hidden. It shouldn’t be hidden and that is an easy fix. Today’s suggested project is to learn…

By Jim Calloway Legal ethics guru Lucian T. Pera recently suggested in his column in Law Practice Magazine that lawyers have an ethical duty to stay current on the news, at least where things like data breaches and hacking attacks are concerned. Such current interest items are often not covered in standard ethics fare. For…

By Jim Calloway When you need to edit a PDF file, one great tool is Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. It has so many features, including combining several PDFs into one, the ability to redact, electronic signatures and the like. Everyone in your law office who needs to do sophisticated work with PDF files likely needs…

By Jim Calloway 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…

By Jim Calloway 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…

By Jim Calloway Automating law office operations is a step many law firms can benefit from. The Kennedy-Mighell Report podcast recently covered law office automation in their episode I Just Wanna Automate, Automate. Sometimes it is the small steps with tools that you already own like Quick Parts in Microsoft Office. Dennis Kennedy and Tom…

By Jim Calloway What service are you using to back up your computers? Ideally you should have regular backups made both to some hardware device you own and to an online cloud-based backup service. And if you keep family photos and other important information on a home computer, that may need a backup as well….

By Jim Calloway Podcasts have been experiencing a renaissance with many new podcasts being released during the recent years. This new content includes a lot of legal-themed podcasts. If you have a long commute or drive a great deal some days, legal podcasts can be a way to make that time more enjoyable and productive….

By Jim Calloway 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,…

By this point you have likely learned how to use Microsoft OneDrive to share files with clients in a more secure manner than email attachments. In addition to that, now you can send a link to a client to request that the client securely sends files to you. This could be really helpful if a…

By Jim Calloway Years ago, there was a lot of discussion in the legal community about metadata, that hidden data in documents that had the potential to reveal more about the document than most lawyers would like. It was a particular potential problem when using forms from a past client’s matter as a form for…