By Julie Bays Practice Management Advisor In 2019, I wrote in an OBA article that: “Frequently, lawyers go into private practice thinking more about their representation of clients rather than the business side of the practice. As a matter of fact, it’s quite common to hear lawyers joke that they went to law school because…

By Julie Bays Practice Management Advisor Recently I was working on a short presentation where I wanted to record some actions on my screen. The problem was I didn’t have a way to do it other than in Zoom, which seemed awkward to me. So, while searching for a better way to do this, I…

By Jim Calloway After two years of dealing with the pandemic, we all have experienced a lot of stress. Christy Cassisa, Founder & Director of the Institute for Mindful Works, shares her thoughts this week on 10 Strategies for Bringing More Love into Your Law Practice. “Too many law offices have emotional cultures of fear,…

By Jim Calloway Director, OBA Management Assistance Program Bill Henderson, is Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law where he holds the Stephen F. Burns Chair on the Legal Profession. He blogs at Legal Evolution, and his academic focus involves analyzing data about law practice and the legal profession. This blog is…

By Jim Calloway It’s been a tough time to maintain a positive attitude with so many changes and challenges. Sally Schmidt, President of Schmidt Marketing, Inc., notes that Your Professional Attitude May Need an Adjustment . She has some interesting observations and tips about the way to improve your attitude by understanding the challenges of…

By Jim Calloway Most lawyers receive a lot of emails. Every few months I find myself unsubscribing from some email update service I subscribed to previously that sounded like a good idea at the time. OBA provides Lexology as a member benefit. But sometimes less is more and limiting the subjects for which you receive…

By Jim Calloway Trial lawyers tend to spend more time dealing with e-Discovery issues than some other types of practices. But when you consider any business could be on the receiving end of an e-Discovery preservation letter at any time, e-Discovery is a good subject for all lawyers to know something about. Craig Ball has…

By Jim Calloway When we use software, we accept a lot of default settings. So many lawyers are just using whatever default font for email that came with Outlook or was selected by their IT department. Considering how much lawyers use email for important communications today, you should examine your options. For example, if you…

By Jim Calloway As the world mourns the passing of Betty White, we share this great short video of her praising the merits of multi-factor authentication. Even in 2016 when she participated in World Password Day, she imparted a timeless call to action in her special style that will always make us smile. Take Betty’s…

By Julie Bays Each year the American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center surveys ABA members to discover how lawyers are using technology in the practice nationwide. I recently reviewed the ABA Legal Technology Survey 2021 so that I could write a report on the 2021 Technology Budgeting and Planning for solo and small firms. The good news is…

By Jim Calloway My friend Dennis Kennedy, who serves as Interim Director, Center for Law, Technology & Innovation at Michigan State University, recently did a LinkedIn post entitled Fast Fish And New Technologies– Are Small Law Firms Outcompeting Large Firms? Perhaps the easiest way to explain his piece is to quote the first two paragraphs….

By Jim Calloway It’s the time of year to think about planning for next year. Attorney Megan Zavieh shares some ideas in A Pre-Year-End Checklist for Solos and Small Firms posted on Attorney at Work. Although the author focuses on limiting ethical risks, her sample list of key business areas and suggestions for reviewing are…

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…