Lately, the MicroLaw team has been very busy helping law practices of all shapes and sizes with projects like:

• Helping many firms achieve their own iteration of our Paper LESS Office process
• Helping select and deploy the Worldox document/email management system
• Helping select and deploy practice and financial management systems including Tabs 3 and Tabs PracticeMaster, among others
• Providing better usage-focused legal-specific training on Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint
• Training on Adobe Acrobat and PDFing in their practices as part of our “PDF First” approach
• Helping firms with security and protection of confidential client information via security audits and deployment of Metadata Assistant
• Helping firms portabilize and remotely access their practice info via iPads, Android tablets, iPhones and Android phones – securely, and yes, with Macs as well
• Evaluating their overall use of technology and finding ways to be more profitable and more productive
• Making sure your practice is protected by multiple layer backup systems that actually work
• Helping firms find their way into the “cloud,” often by building their private, secure cloud
• Providing internal CLE for practices on tech and practice management topics
• Teaching law school courses around the country on legal technology for 2Ls and 3Ls
• And as always, traveling the country educating legal professionals in live CLE programs on tech and practice management topics
• Building virtual practices that extend your client reach across state and even international borders without the cost of office space

We’re happy to help your practice as well – just email me and I’ll be happy to chat about it to see if we’re the right folks to assist. MicroLaw has been caring for the tech and practice management needs of law practices and legal organizations for more than 28 years – we’re the originals and we’re ready to help you best help your own practice. It starts with a call to 414-540-9433 or an email to rkodner@microlaw.com – it’s that simple. And it’s far more cost effective than you might imagine.

In case you don’t get the ABA LPM e-zine, “Law Practice Today,” here’s my article from the February 2013 issue (also online here):

Title: Buying Smart: The Right Technology Makes More Than it Costs

Are you “buying smart” when it comes to tech in your practice, or just “saving a buck?”

There’s nothing more expensive than buying the wrong technology for your practice. Except, perhaps, buying the “right stuff” and implementing it poorly. Sometimes, the lowest-cost technology over the long haul isn’t necessarily the least expensive to purchase. Unfortunately, the old proverb “penny wise and pound foolish” traps even tech-savvy lawyers and dooms them to ineffective technology, or worse, more chaos with new tools than they experienced previously with the “obsolete” stuff.

Buying smart and buying right can turn even a single technology addition, such as a desktop scanner or new document management system, into a profit center – generating more profit in many situations than a new leveraged billable person.

Here’s an example, based on feedback from one of my clients. A 65-year-old small-firm lawyer was concerned that he was forgetting to enter many small time entries; he said he remembered the half-day blocks for contract drafting or a client meeting, but that he routinely forgot to enter the myriad 1/10 or 2/10 of an hour timeslips for things like responding to emails or taking a phone call. He estimated that on an average day he forgot two or three 1/10 hour time entries.

I asked him, “so how much do you think forgetting those little time entries every single day costs you?” He said, “I don’t even want to think about it.” I suggested we do some basic legal business math and asked for a legal pad. We took his average net hourly rate of $200 and for the sake of math simplicity, we presumed he failed to record 15 minutes per day (he shook his head at this point and said “And a lot more on some days . . . “). Here’s the calculation:

• .25 hours X $200/hour = $50 X 5 days per week = $250 X 50 working weeks per year = $12,500

$12,500.

That’s real money, and it shocked him to see that the little 1/10 or 2/10 timeslips he was losing daily, which seemed like a “cost of doing business” as he described it, added up over time. He reminded me that it was actually probably double that because he was underestimating the lost time.

So keep that number in your mind – $12,500 (he was thinking “more like $20,000 in reality”).

My advice was to implement his firm’s first fully integrated financial and practice management system. In his case, it was Tabs 3 and Tabs PracticeMaster Premier, the venerable and widely-used system from Software Technology, Inc. (www.tabs3.com). We also recommended he integrate these systems with the Worldox legal document/email management system and Microsoft Outlook. Together, the four systems tightly connect to form a unified law practice management system.

One of the key characteristics of the Tabs PracticeMaster practice management system, as some others do as well, is to allow many entries in the system that would normally be made in the course of a normal workday, to be turned into time entries without having to remember to separately create a time-entry. Examples include electronically jotting down the notes from a phone call with co-counsel, or posting a time for a call with the court in the calendaring system, or saving a document to a client’s electronic matter file.

So the idea is simple – you get off the phone with co-counsel on a case (or during the call if you’re using a microphone or headset) and you jot down your notes and save them to the matter’s file in the practice management system. Now in the old world my client once lived in, he had to then remember to find his PAPER multi-part timesheet (I’m serious – and this was in 2011) and write down the timeslip, hopefully remembering the right codes. More often than not, he told himself “I’ll remember to enter that at the end of the day because I have to take this call that’s waiting for me.” As 5 PM rolled around and he struggled to recall all his “little” time entries (while trying to dash out the door to pick up his wife for dinner), his mind inevitably went blank and the entries disappeared forever into the “financial ether.”

But now, Tabs PracticeMaster pops up and pre-fills a timeslip for him for a pre-determined amount of time (decided during the pre-implementation setup process for the program) – 2/10 of an hour in his case. All he has to do is click to “OK” it, and he has a time entry recorded, where one would have otherwise been lost.

Tabs 3 (the billing module) and Tabs PracticeMaster Premier (the practice management module) cost his firm around $2000 fully implemented for four people, including software costs, training and professional services. After the first 12 months of use I asked him how it was going and he said, “This program you put in front of me made me an extra $21,000 this year!” I reminded him that it wasn’t, in fact, “extra,” but had been his money all along; it just wasn’t being captured.

So about $2000 of initial expense, plus a couple of hundred dollars per year for ongoing software maintenance works out as follows:

• Cost per year – first year = $2000 startup cost including first year of software maintenance. Subsequent years = approximately $300 in software maintenance. Five-year cost = $2000 + $1200 = $3200
• Return on $3200 = $21,000 per year in “extra” captured time X 5 years = $105,000
• Net return after costs = $105,000 – $3200 = $101,800 more top-line revenue

That was a clear example of buying smart – the right software, implemented properly, measured well and generating a proportionately enormous return on the dollars spent.

So the essence of buying smart really has little to do with “getting the best deal,” whatever that might actually mean. A lawyer who proudly and perhaps smugly suggests that the DIY Excel spreadsheet she created 15 years earlier to track all her time and boasts that it “cost me nothing and works great” is deluding herself. If she’s not capturing the three of four 1/10 of an hour entries she admitted to forgetting, and her technology tools don’t help her to remember or act as a financial safety net to help her capture that time somehow, the cost is enormous. Here’s what I explained to her, again, asking for a yellow pad to do the legal business math neither she (nor I) had learned in law school:

• Cost of not entering three 1/10 hour time entries at her net realized hourly rate of $175/hour = $52.50 per day X 5 days per week = $262.50 X 50 working weeks per year = $13,125
• $13,125 per year is the cost of not spending about $1500 for a fully implemented financial/practice management system to help automate the capture of that time.

The “bargain” Excel spreadsheet was put out to pasture the following week and she wondered why she hadn’t done this years ago.

So what are some ways you can “buy smart” in your practice? The following tips will help ensure that you spend just the right amount – not too much, not too little – and generate a provable, measurable profit on the money you spend on your technology:

• Look for areas where you waste otherwise billable time. Examples include time spent looking for information you can only find in a paper file, or being honest with yourself about how many “little” time entries you forget to enter on a typical day, or how often you “reinvent the wheel” and redraft language in a flat-fee matter (like estate planning) that you know you wrote before and could’ve leveraged, if only you had been able to find it.
• Assign amounts of time you spend subsidizing those activities.
• Take out a legal pad and do the “legal business math” – multiply the amount of otherwise billable time wasted by your approximate average hourly or realized hourly rate.
• That figure is your RRT (Revenue Recapture Target) – in other words, what you can expect to additionally bill if you can find a way to recapture that time,
• Then whether you decided to represent yourself pro se on your tech matters, seek out the advice of your state bar’s practice management advisor, or retain a professional legal technology consultant, find the technology tools that will specifically address each area of waste. Perhaps a financial/practice management system that automates timeslip entry or a tool like Chrometa (www.chrometa.com) that captures all your time spent on your computer systems to be imported into your billing system, or a desktop scanner such as the popular Fujitsu ScanSnap in its latest ix500 iteration (www.scansnap.com), and document manager like Worldox GX3 (www.worldox.com) or NetDocuments (www.netdocuments.com) that turns physical paper into electronic paper – in real-time as soon as it hits your desk, and then makes it all instantly searchable so the wheel never has to be reinvented again. In other words, plug the gaps and recapture YOUR otherwise wasted time and get it billed out and collected. Or use an iPad or Android tablet (or iPhone or Android smartphone) with Chrometa to capture time when it’s not convenient to fire up your Windows or Mac laptop, and then review the time captured, import it and bill it (http://www.chrometa.com/mobile.html).
• Of course, spending as little as possible is still smart business. For commodity tech items like printers, scanners, mainstream software like Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Office, use internet pricing engines like Pricegrabber.com or Google Product Search (www.google.com/products) to get the very best pricing.

Then, mostly importantly, always work to “spot the issues” – something we lawyers all were taught to do by every law school. Work to root out the areas where otherwise billable or productive time is wasted, and then assume the answer to the question “is there technology that can put an end to that and turn most or all of it into billable time” is going to be some version of “yes.”

Some cool videos to celebrate America’s 236th birthday:

I was thinking about a tip for today and it hit me with the sparkling commotion of a roman candle – digital ways to celebrate America’s 236th birthday! So here are a collection of apps and links to help you celebrate the 4th of July with high-tech panache:

1. Sousa Marches – not just any Sousa recordings, but original wax cylinder recordings ranging from 1895 to 1916. Fascinating, especially to hear the original tempos. Not surprising some of these recordings are pretty scratchy, but it’s a fascinating glimpse into American musical history by the King of Marches. Click here.
2. UCSB Cylinder Recording Preservation Project - in the same vein, I’m fascinated by the idea of LISTENING to American history. The University of California-Santa Barbara has been engaged in a musical preservation project involving the digitization of the earliest audio recordings – mostly from Edison wax cylinders, with later recordings in 78 rpm format, made available here. The collection is large, growing and impressive – with a deep selection of early recordings not just from the U.S. but from across the globe, organized by nation of origin and type of recording. My favorite section is called “Home Recordings” – you can actually listen to common sounds of the day – parents, children, their pets and farm animals, oh my! Seriously, be careful with this – it’s easy to fritter away an entire otherwise billable day listening.
3. Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks App (iPad) – a far cry from being there, but it was fun to watch last year.
4. The American Revolution: Interactive (iPad) – I spent over an hour digging through this interactive story of the War for Independence. After all, it’s easy to lose site of the basis for the holiday merry-makings tomorrow – brave and resolute people fought to create our nation all those years ago, long before Weber grilled burgers hit the scene.
5. The Declaration of Independence App (iPad) – I think that every parent should read the entire Declaration of Independence to their children every 4th. It’s stirring, dramatic, dangerous, bold, principled, eloquent and ultimately, told off the most powerful man in the Western world at the time – King George III. I get goosebumps every time I read it (and seeing the signatures of all those brave Patriots who risked life and limb for their beliefs)
6. Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops – Stars and Stripes Forever – stirring. A must download. Crank it up!

Happy 236th Birthday America! Have a safe holiday everyone and teach your children about where our nation came from. If it takes an iPad to get their attention, so be it.

Interested proposed federal legislation today related to limiting employer and school access to social media accounts. Here’s the scoop from MSNBC today:

“A New York Congressman has introduced federal legislation nicknamed “SNOPA” that would make it illegal for employers and educational institutions to require a potential or current employee, or a potential or current student, to divulge personal online information as part of the hiring, enrollment or discipline process.

The bill, with a full name of the Social Networking Online Protection Act, was introduced Friday by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.).

. . .

The legislation would ban employers from requiring that employees or job candidates share social networking passwords or “other means of accessing a private account”; it would also ban post-secondary schools from disciplining students for failing to provide such access, or from discriminating against applicants who refuse to provide such access. Local educational agencies would also be banned from requiring login credentials.”

——————–

Not surprising – something like this was expected soon. I’ll be talking about this very topic at the ABA GP|Solo Spring Meeting in Charleston, S.C. on May 18th at 8AM (info is here) along with technopal Alan Klevan.  I’m sure we’ll see a flood of discussion on this – some variation of it seems necessary to avoid some potentially outrageous privacy and personal digital security issues. Here’s ZDNet’s early take on SNOPA.

And this bill with the acronym SNOPA is not to be confused with this organization, SNOPA.org or this term as defined in the Urban Dictionary.

Why “DocuLaw?” Hold that thought until the end of this post . . .

Every so often I feel the need to answer the questions I get from lawyers everywhere who email me asking questions like, “We really enjoy your CLEs and your blog posts, but how do you actually make a living?” That probably tells me that my company has a branding issue, but . . . the answer is really simple and here it is. For the last almost 27 years since I founded the company, MicroLaw has exclusively focused on a mission of guiding legal entities – law firms of all sizes, corporate and governmental legal departments, government agencies and Bar associations / Law Societies – in the most effective use of technology and how it integrates into the flow of their practices and businesses.

We embody the “Five B’s Approach” that I talk about in some recent CLEs: Best Practices, Being More Profitable, Battling Malpractice, Being Ethically Compliant and Better Quality of Life. We see these five goals as being the right reasons for a smarter law practice management and legal technology approach for any type of law practice, public or private.  Technology for technology’s sake can be a lot of fun as a hobby and it’s great to be enthusiastic about legal tech, but we’ve never thought of it as an end in itself – that just isn’t a sound business strategy.

We’ve always been fiercely independent in terms of any products we recommend – this makes us very different in an age where most “consultants” are really “vendors.” We objectively evaluate our clients’ needs and make recommendations. Sometimes we recommend that nothing new be bought, but rather, existing tools be better used. If we do recommend products, we certainly have our favorites and benchmarks, but we often recommend products that, for implementation, we may need to refer out to a qualified expert rathering than being able to handle it ourselves. This is important – we exist to analyze and advise and manage projects, first and foremost.

Wow – some of that sounds awfully formal, so here’s the informal version. We help with every technology that involves something that plugs in for power or runs on batteries (in a legal practice environment – stop that snickering :-)). That means everything from:

• Law practice management and technology audits – how are you doing? what can you do better? what’s your next set of steps? This includes a detailed review and audit of your network, hardware, security, remote access, mobility plans and backup infrastructure, including reviewing IT upgrade proposals and even VOIP and IP phone system proposals. Oh, and we also speak Mac in case you were wondering.
• Cloud strategies – we help our clients figure out what elements of cloud technology make sense for them and help them select and implement the services that make sense. From practice management to document management, financial management, secure data storage, online backup and fax technologies and more.
• Document streamlining – this means document, email and paper management – that can mean a version of our Paper LESS Office approach tailored to a practice, document/email management with leading tools like Worldox GX3 or NetDocuments or even the DM functions within some practice managers. It can also mean developing scanning approaches and helping practices figure out what to do with their existing and to-be-accumulated paper.
• Financial systems – helping get your money straight and your billings/collections maximized – we’ve worked with many legal financial systems over the years and particularly like the venerable Tabs 3 system for many of our clients, but also systems like Rippe-Kingston, Omega, and others. We also help practices migrate from one system to another.
• Practice management systems – the core of our existence, focusing on our long-espoused belief that it’s all about “building complete electronic cases files.” PM systems are the beating information heart of a practice and we help either select a system and help with the best way to implement it, to migrating from one system to another. We recommend both “terrestrial” and “cloud” systems based on what makes the most sense for any given client – and then we help make sure that PM, document management and financial management work together as one integrated system, accessible from anywhere, anytime, from any device. So whether it’s Tabs PracticeMaster or CLIO, JustWare or anything else, we can help
• Microsoft Office – we help with legal-focused selection, configuration on all aspects of Microsoft Office – Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint. our custom-created training reference materials have drawn raves from our clients as have our CLEs on these subjects – and of course, how they integrate with document management and practice management systems.
• Adobe Acrobat and PDFing – we help educate our clients about everything legal professionals need to know and understand about living in a PDF-centric world, and how to securely use Acrobat to their best advantage – with tools like Bates Stamping, Secure Redaction, Electronic 3-Ring Binders, Typewriter, Security, Editing, Comment and Markup, PDF File Comparisons, Creating Forms and more.
• Remote Access and Mobility – we help clients figure out the best and most secure “work away” capabilities include Windows RDP, Citrix, Logmein and then extension of practice information to smartphones, iPads and Android tablets.
• Litigation technology and forensics – we have a network of the top professionals to help with every aspect of trial practice automation and with forensic examinations.
• IT – yes, we’ve been hardcore geeks having been in the trenches since before some of our clients were born, starting in the DOS and Novell days through modern cloud structures and the bridging of the Mac and Windows gaps. We can help design hardware and network systems from 1-100 users and help our clients get the best pricing on right components, review local IT proposals to make sure they make sense and are fairly priced, manage projects literally anywhere in the world and even provide actual turnkey systems to our smaller clients – shipping them and ourselves to set them up if there is no competent local IT support available.

Why “DocuLaw” then? Because so much of what we help with is wrapped up in the understanding, streamlining and management of documents for our clients. Whether paper, electronic or both. Whether texts or Facebook postings. Whether blog posts or Tweets. They’re all documents and we help our clients find ways to build complete electronic case files so they can feel confident, when working a case or a project, that they’re seeing everything that a responsible legal professional should see before advising a client or taking a position on their behalf.

So . . . does that help? That’s what MicroLaw has been, continues to be, and will always be about.

Oh, and did I mention we do it incredibly affordably – so much so that many solo practitioners have been, and are our clients. If you have a practice or a business, we’ll find a way we can help you in a way you can afford, big or small, in the U.S. or around the world, in any time-zone. And be sure to look at our Spring into Spring MicroLaw CARES (Computer and Resource Evaluation & Study) discounts here.

Ready to chat about how we can help? Email me here.

An intriguing question came up on the ABA Solosez list today. The question, paraphrased, was “I have a criminal defense practice and wonder why I should have a practice management system. It seems like a lot of work retrofitting what I’m doing now with several separate pieces of software, into what some practice management software would want me to do. Don’t know if it’s worth it – tell me why it would be.”

As I said, an intriguing question – whether asked back in the day or today in 2012 when we have such a rich range of practice management approaches. I’m buried today and hesitate to jump in on this but here’s a quick response from someone who has been living deep  inside the practice management industry since the mid-80′s (the days when WordPerfect Office Notebooks were proto-managers):

Reporting live from ABA TECHSHOW 2012, here’s my broad impressions on the unofficial theme for this year’s conference, based largely on what the marketplace is doing. Based on the buzz and activity in the exhibit hall, there are three things:

1) Cloud everything – whether practice management, document storage, collaboration, discovery, financial and document systems, what gets the crowd excited are any kind of cloud initiative.

2) Mac v. Windows – it doesn’t matter anymore with lawyers able to use both interchangeably when drive by use of cloud apps and services – these serve as the great equalizer rendering one’s hardware platform choice more a matter of preference than anything else.

3) Push harder – in other words, get more out of the software and services you’ve already been using – time to stop fumbling with Word and trying to use it as a glorified, post-WordPerfect typewriter. Stop glossing over the deep range of capabilities within programs like Microsoft Outlook and Adobe Acrobat. Stop being a digital slob with electronic snippets of info all over the place and unify it with tools like Microsoft OneNote or Evernote. Stop accumulating and start really USING the products and services you’ve bought and paid for. A sound message I’ve been preaching for decades. And a message ideally suited to challenging times for legal economics.

These themes shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone – but thanks to ABA TECHSHOW and Chair Reid Trautz and his planning team,  as always for being smart enough, sharp enough and sensitive enough to current and emerging legal technology trends to provide a CLE curriculum that is focused on absolute practicality – information attendees can take back to their practices and immediately put to use.

Credit should be given when due. Hardware vendors like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. often take heat for what inevitably are normal, isolated poor service incidents. It’s rare that people take the time to write about the most positive service responses, so . . . I will.

At MicroLaw we were recently the victim of a building break-in. Thieves stole a new Dell server that was in its box waiting to be configured and prepared for a client. We were beside ourselves because we needed to deliver the server in the next few days for a client and realized we faced a typical two week build/ship time on new orders. It would have been a nightmare to try and reschedule the entire network upgrade project and adjust the timing for multiple lawyers and staff at our client’s office.

Enter Jeremy Webb, a Dell corporate sales rep who has services our account for years. Jeremy’s always been responsive, getting us great pricing on Dell services, desktops and laptops for our clients. But this time, Jeremy went above and beyond – he rescued us and our clients. We explained the situation we were in and the wall we were up against. Jeremy expedited the order, even lowering our price for the server to help us wash out the effect of the insurance deductible we had to absorb and we got the replacement server literally in a matter of days, rather than the usual two weeks – he even absorbed the overnight shipping charges.

In short, Jeremy made his employer, Dell Computers look very, very good. To Michael Dell – KEEP THIS EMPLOYEE, GIVE HIM A RAISE AND  A BIG PAT ON THE BACK FOR GOING ABOVE AND BEYOND! (Caps emphasis very intentional!). Thank you Jeremy and thank you Dell for rescuing our client project.

SUBTITLE: What ELSE can you use your new decision tree or mind-mapping software for, other than visually laying out your case facts or litigation strategy?

What’s the tech connection? In legal technology and system design in particular, flowcharts help map out complex network infrastructure visually. With baseball season opening next week, if you haven’t yet found your favorite team to root for, check out this flowchart designed to help you logically, rationally and methodically decide on your new favorite team to root for.

My first thought was “WAY too much time on their hands,” but then, after reflecting for a few moments, I reconsidered and decided it was a lovingly hand-crafted work of decision-tree art. What do you think? Who’s your favorite? Nothing like objectivizing the purely subjective :-)

Seriously, I just spent the week teaching legal technology and law practice management classes at the Charleston School of Law – in Charleston, South Carolina. I’ve done this at a number of law schools around the country over the years, but I have to say, this school stands out for me for many reasons – it was the single most positive experience I’ve ever had with any law school anywhere, including all three years at my alma mater, Marquette University Law School way back in the 80′s.

If you’re interested in viewing my course materials for my classes which included:

• Social Media Isn’t Just a Fad: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin and YouTube and How to Use Them Responsibly and Ethically in Your New Practice
• The 2012 New Lawyer’s Low-Budget / No-Budget Technology Survival Guide
• Technology for Tightwads: 10+ Tips for Free and Low-Cost Law Practice Management and Tech Tools, Gadgets, Apps and Websites
• How NOT to Commit Malpractice With Your Computer (or iPad or Smartphone)

You can download the PDFs of the materials, along with all my other recent CLE materials here - feel free to share them with those whom you feel might benefit.

And it’s not just because they invited me to my favorite city in all of North America :-) (although that didn’t hurt). The reasons I was so impressed with the Charleston School of Law, in no particular order are:

• The intangibles – the sense of community between faculty, the administration and the students – not three distinct groups as I’ve normally experienced at law schools, but rather a genuine community of people who actually like each other and have a real sense of camaraderie. What better way to instill a future sense of law practice collegiality than to plant the seeds in law school.
• Genuinely, some of the warmest, nicest people I’ve seen in any academic environment – the administration takes very good care of their students. For goodness sake, they feed them pizza and lunch – that didn’t happen when I was in law school. I heard that in a typical year, the school spends into the five figures just feeding their busy students.
• An attitude of open-mindedness and willingness to experiment with new, progressive and practical ways to educate their students – something I’ve seen in short supply in most law schools who lean towards traditionalism. In a traditional city like Charleston, there’s an educational revolution happening here, especially with what appears to be a sorely needed and growing commitment to including practical aspects of law practice life – legal technology and law practice management – into the curriculum.
• The students I met and had the privilege of teaching were engaged, appreciative and seem thrilled to be learning not just about substantive law, but the practical side of what it will be like to actually practice law – and they seemed appreciative of their school’s willingness to make such classroom focus available to them. These students showed an intense passion and interest for absorbing information about the practical elements of law practice – clearly the initiatives taken by Dean Saunders and Judge Kosko – teaching lawyering skills and law practice management courses – are paying off – these students will be more ready than any I’ve seen to jump into firms and even their own practices after graduation and be functional, responsible and contributing members of the legal communities wherever they end up residing – very impressive “kids” (most did seem young enough to be my children, but there were plenty of second-career folks too).
• The administrators I met – Associate Dean Abby Saunders, Assistant Dean Mark Moore, Assistant Dean Jennifer Summers, Brett Barker, Roland Jones, Assistant Dean Jennifer Summers, Betsy Marchant and  especially Judge George Kosko, one of the founders of the school and a member of its board of advisors – were delightfully hospitable, engaging and fascinating conversation partners talking about progressive legal education and showed a touching level of affection and concern for the academic and personal well-being of their students.
• Being smack dab in the heart of Charleston’s famed Historic District certainly doesn’t hurt – with facilities ranging from restored, renovated and reclaimed historic structures like the city’s old railroad depot (transformed into an architecturally impressive law library and student center – a place I would’ve killed to be able to study in in my academic days), a wonderful art deco theater on vibrant King Street, among others. It’s hard to imagine students coming here and ever wanting to leave.

If any of my children wanted to pursue a legal career, it would be a privilege – and my first choice – to send them to the Charleston School of Law. I hope that I have the opportunity to help them in the future with further educational offerings for their students. If it seems like I’m completely enamored with this school, it’s because I am!

Special note of thanks to my dear friend and colleague, Courtney Kennaday, Practice Management Advisor for the South Carolina Bar. Courtney’s syllabus has served as the original base for the school’s efforts in injecting these elements of practicality into the curriculum and was instrumental in making the connections that yielded the invitation for me to be able to contribute. I think that the legal community in South Carolina is truly fortunate to have her as a law practice management resource.

As I reminded all the students I met, if any of you have any questions at all about the courses I taught, please don’t hesitate to contact me here.

Thank you to all my new friends and if it’s not too presumptuous to say, colleagues, at the Charleston School of Law for a rewarding experience. I just hope that your student body benefited as much from my classes as I benefited from the entire experience.

Oh, and if you haven’t been to Charleston, South Carolina, what’s wrong with you?! A magnificently preserved historic district, a city dripping with history from the Spanish colonial era through the Revolutionary War, Civil War, Civil Rights to its present day mix of spectacular and world class dining, wonderful weather (okay, it gets steamy in the summer), a seafood lover’s paradise, with beaches that delight children and the young at heart, it’s a perfect place for a family vacation, a romantic weekend, or a history buff’s adventure trip. Just go – trust me on this – I’ve been to the city more than 20 times and can’t wait to come back. Oh, and if you go, be sure to get reservations well in advance for Husk, voted Bon Appétit Magazine’s best new restaurant in the U.S. in 2011 – trust me on that one too. Or Grill 225 – truly the best I’ve had of a lifetime of steaks (no hyperbole or overstatement intended – it’s just fact – better than Peter Luger’s, better than Manny’s in Minneapolis, better than all the steakhouse chains – better than the classic “5 O’Clock House” in Milwaukee, my hometown) and . . . well, I could go on and on about the great dining, great sites, and all the reasons why a Charleston stay should be on your travel bucket list.

For the life of me, I routinely scratch my head whenever I see an iPad stand someone is peddling for some surrealy (can “surreal” be made into an adverb?) absurd price . . . like $99. Here’s an example.

Here’s what I’m baffled about - look at this. It’s $7.72. Or this. It’s $2.99.

C’mon folks, have we lost our fricking minds when it comes to iPadiana? (the answer is “yes’). Do you need a billet aluminum $100 stand to hold your precious iPad? My precious iPad is held up by a wooden tabletop photo easel I found when unpacking in our new home. I think someone gave it to me, so my cost was zero.

Here’s what a $100 iPad stand does: it holds up an iPad.

Here’s what a $2.99 iPad stand does: it holds up an iPad.

Here’s what my free iPad stand does: it holds up an iPad.

So exercise some common sense and spend money on things that actually matter . . . or even better, take the extra $97 you didn’t spend and put it in your childrens’ §529 plan for college. Or in your IRA for you. Or take your significant other out for a wonderful meal. Or spend it on apps if you really must. But seriously, don’t be stupid about iPad accessory prices. Your iPad is an inanimate chunk of glass, metal and plastic and it absolutely positively doesn’t care how it’s held upright. Really. I know you’re thinking, “No, you’re wrong Ross! My iPad deserves a $100 billet aluminum stand!”

But I’m not wrong.  Just don’t, okay?

I had an idea yesterday morning. I want to see the readership here on our technology/law practice management blog, Ross Ipsa Loquitur, to hit 2000 subscribers. We’re about halfway there at the moment. Aside from trying to write really useful, practical content (and there’s been a flurry of new posts in the last two weeks).

Also, the blog is irritation free – that means you can subscribe on the site to get the feed via the Feedblitz system using any email address with no contact information required. And there are NO ads on the site to distract your attention.

My idea is this – my family has been affected greatly by cancer – perhaps yours has too. My mother was taken by ovarian cancer at 57. My business partner Renee is a long-term breast cancer survivor (9 years this year). I’m a long-term Hodgkins lymphoma survivor (13 years this year). Like you, I’ve lost far too many friends and relatives to various forms of cancer.

For every new Ross Ipsa Loquitur subscriber this year (starting yesterday), I will personally donate $5 to the American Cancer Society.

The blog is at http://rossipsa.com (duh, you’re reading this already, but just in case . . . ) and you can’t miss the “Subscribe Here” column on the right which says: “FeedBlitz: Enter your Email” – enter it,click subscribe, and you’ll get a Feedblitz subscription screen with ”Email” as the preselected distribution option (or all sorts of other options like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to receive the blog posts - choose your poison and then you’ll get a verification email which you can then click on to confirm. I timed it – it takes under 2 minutes.

So if you’re reading the blog and haven’t subscribed, subscribe! And spread the word to others – I want to write a big, fat check to the American Cancer Society next week – so we can all do some good!

Everyone wins – we get more subscribers, the American Cancer Society gets a donation to help wipe out this damned collection of diseases and you getperiodic useful legal tech tips, ideas and content with no compromise of your privacy.

I’ll keep subscribers posted when I send in donations to the ACS.

That’s it. Time to do some good gang.

With clients scatttered across the globe, we like many consultancies, find it efficient and highly cost-effective to conduct legal technology training sessions remotely, via webconference. We use GoToMeeting and Join.me, others use these and also WebEx, to allow our client attendees to sit at their desks or around a projected system in one of their conference rooms to be trained on everything from legal billing systems to Acrobat to legal use of Word and Outlook, new practice and document management systems and more.

Advantages for training remotely include:

• Lower cost – no travel expenses
• Better for the environment – no travel-related pollution
• Immediacy – you could literally be trained five minutes from now if it was convenient for everyone
• Less coordination – since all your people can literally be at their computers / tablets anywhere – no need to corral folks into a conference room

It’s a pretty compelling case for remote training. But are there advantages to  ”old school” live training sessions that may be compelling? I think they are, and I’d summarize them as follows:

• Human interaction – still a very good thing where connections are made that maximize the learning experience for attendees – it’s a live human whose hand you can shake and who can smile at you when you say something brilliant – I think we are craving that more and more in the “Facebook Era” of human disconnection
• Effectiveness – when we train remotely, we can’t see that you look puzzled and need us to reinforce a key point, or that you look like you just had a great idea you could share with the group
• Instant “hand-holding” – after the session when you go back to your desk, maybe you want us to follow you to reinforce a point you just put into practice

So the bottom-line is this – we generally recommend that if it is at all affordable, that the first round of training on key systems such as financial, document management and practice management systems, and even for an upgrade to Microsoft Office 2010, it makes sense to do those first sessions live – human to human – old school. Then think about remote sessions for subsequent follow-up sessions.

Don’t underestimate the value of the human interaction and connections that are made – the goal is to maximize the knowledge your people gain so you can achieve the usage results from new or upgraded systems that drove you to acquire them in the first place. Don’t be penny-wise and pound foolish when it comes to training on how to use those systems. Sometimes “live” is the least expensive approach in the long-run.

MicroLaw has been very busy helping firms continent-wide in cleaning up their practice technology. With Spring just around the corner, more or less at least weatherwise (hey it’s going to be 68 in the “Frozen Tundra” of Wisconsin here early next week . . . we’ll take this kind of “late Winter” weather!), but definitely calendar-wise, it’s the perfect time to clean your practice technology house as we march towards the warmer months. Your practice’s profits can bloom and blossom along with the flora and fauna!

To make this process easier – and less expensive, we’ve got a proposal for you. MicroLaw can conduct its detailed practice technology and practice management review for a flat rate based on the size of your practice. The objective? To critique your present technology use and the state of your systems and processes and then provide a highly detailed, yet plain English short-term and long-term plan on how to squeeze the most out of your current (and future) technology systems.

And just like cleaning your home, office or garage in the springtime, it makes sense to schedule a check-up for your practice every couple of years.

• We’ll spot weaknesses and gaps in your hardware and software mix and recommend how to fix them – this can include transitioning wholly or partly to Macs, but also reviewing local quotes for hardware/network upgrades and/or designing the next generation of your systems and figuring out the best way to get it done cost-effectively
• We’ll explore the best way to integrate iPads and tablets into your practice – for everything from staying connected to litigating cases
• We’ll look for areas where you’re losing otherwise billable time because of inefficient technology tools and procedures that could be better tuned (or where procedures don’t really exist at all!) – including using time-capture tools like Chrometa to capture EVERYTHING
• We’ll help you figure out the best way for your specific practice to build complete electronic case files and get to a single point of entry for client and case information – we can help using a variety of practice management and financial systems, such as the legendary Tabs 3 and Tabs PracticeMaster, as well as the Worldox GX3 document/email manager, among others
• We’ll help you become Paper LESS in a way that works for you
• Better use what you already have – stop under-using Word, Outlook and Acrobat, as well as your practice manager and financial systems
• We’ll check to make sure your practice information is secure and you’re protecting client confidences in an ethically-compliant way
• We can help you determine if you’re taking a “green” approach to your office’s operations and technology use
• We’ll help you sort out your smartphone issues and how to get more out of your phones with the right apps
• We’ll examine your social media efforts to make sure you’re using services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+ and others in an ethically responsible and effective manner
• We’ll help you figure out if web-based and/or cloud hosting of your data and applications makes sense including using services like CLIO, RocketMatter, MyCase, Advologix, DropBox, Exchange Hosting, online backup and more
• We’ll help you chart out a path consistent with our “Five B’s” approach: using technology intelligently to achieve Best Practices, Battle Malpractice Risk, Be Ethically Compliant, Better Profitability and achieve a more Balanced/Blissful Life – seriously, if these aren’t your real objectives, what’s the point of continually buying new technology?

Our MicroLaw CARES review (CARES = Computer and Resources Evaluation and Study – clever, huh?) includes:

• Step One – Learning About You – Ross will conduct either live or conference-call interviews of everyone you feel has something to offer related to your present technology and how you use it / don’t use it
• Step Two – We Recommend – Ross will draft a detailed, yet highly understandable (our clients tell us that!) set of recommendations and plans for both technology and procedural improvement and how to best use your existing and future tech tools. We’ll leave no stone unturned in recommending software, hardware, services, support and how to get from where you are to where you want/need to be – with all costs very specifically projected and including a leasing analysis.
• Step Three – Let’s Do Lunch! We’ll meet remotely (or live – your choice) to talk through our recommendations and help you develop a specific set of phased action plan steps ready to act on.

While it’s always better to take a big picture approach and look at your entire practice to be able to give the best advice (see below), you can also buy blocks of Ross’ time just to talk about your situation and bounce ideas off of him (or have him comment on a locally-acquired proposal) – the MicroLaw CARES rates for this are discounted from Ross’ regular $245/hour to $185/hour (but you have to mention the “MicroLaw CARES “Spring into Spring” promotion – that’s the only catch!). OR, if you already happen to have programs like Tabs 3, Tabs PracticeMaster and Worldox, Renee from MicroLaw can help hourly as well – she’s normally $185/hour but the “Spring into Spring” discounted rate is $165/hour – every little bit helps! Abe’s tech and Microsoft Office wizardry is normally $150/hour – his “Spring into Spring” rate for MicroLaw CARES work is $145/hour.

So that’s what we can do for you this Spring and into the Summer – as we’ve done for so many firms. And as we did this last Fall – which was wildly popular, we’re offering a MicroLaw CARES discounted flat rate plan as follows:

• 1 person in your practice = Flat CARE rate –  Normally $1750, Fall Sale = $1500
• 2-5 people in your practice = Flat CARE rate: Normally $2000, Fall Sale = $1750
• 6-10 people in your practice = Flat CARE rate: Normally $2750, Fall Sale = $2500
• 11-20 people in your practice = Flat CARE rate: Normally $3500, Fall Sale = $3200
• 21-30 people in your practice = Flat CARE rate: Normally $5000, Fall Sale = $4600
• 31-50 people in your practice = Flat CARE rate: Normally $6000, Fall Sale = $5600
• 51-75 people in your practice = Flat CARE rate: Normally $8000, Fall Sale = $7500
• 76-100 people in your practice = Flat CARE rate: Normally $11,000, Fall Sale = $9995
• 101+ people in your practice – ask Ross about it!  We’ve helped firms with hundreds of people chart their technology paths

The bottom-line is this – the most expensive business decision for any law practice is usually sticking with the status quo – and not being as profitable and client-service-centered as you can. So talk to Ross today and get your Spring/Summer MicroLaw CARES process scheduled before there are no slots left!

I’m not even sure how or why I stumbled across this . . . the vagaries and mysteries of the web I guess. But here’s a link to a 2000 article by my old friend Daryl Teshima, famed for being the original editor of the late and much lamented Law Office Computing magazine. I remember reading this article when it came out a dozen years ago and just re-read it tonight while looking for information about the best practices approaches to legal technology training. Thanks Daryl for a timeless piece and perennially useful advice.

Here’s a salient excerpt that parallels the identical advice I’ve given to my clients over the years, eschewing traditionally ineffective technology training that focuses on rote memorization of features and functions, in favor of task-based training. In other words, training people to use their new software systems to do the daily tasks they face – opening new matters, calendaring court scheduling orders, performing conflict searches, etc.:

“Another successful training approach is to use task-based training. Organize each training session around the tasks that users perform. For example, when training users on the latest version of Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect, show the steps needed to create documents that the user creates every day.”

Well put Daryl – advice that has weathered well under the test of time and is every bit as applicable today as in Y2K when it was written. And especially important in this new era of cloud computing when people seem to be under the utterly mistaken belief that no training is needed on SaaS apps. All I have to say to that is . . . HUH?

Yep, the first consumer preview version of Windows 8 is now available for download. The usual cautions apply:

• Do this only on a non-production machine (i.e. one you’re not emotionally attached to)
• Be prepared to wipe out the machine when done, or have everything inadvertently wiped for you

In other words, use a spare machine! David Pogue talked about the Windows 8 preview in his NYT column on Leap Day here. It’s worth a read. So start to think “Start Tiles” on all devices (Microsoft hopes) instead of Start Menus (as a way to access often little-used programs). Will Microsoft’s approach to operating system unification through device agnosticism work? Too late to counter the IOS onslaught? They’re still a really big company with a lot of money to spend, and a lot of smart people. So I wouldn’t count them out.

I’m trying to figure out the best way to play with the Windows 8 Preview. One of our home systems is an HP all-in-one-touchscreen which would seem to be the ideal platform to experiment. So . . . I’ll need to partition it so I can run the preview in its own virtual machine I guess. Should be fun (and I don’t know the last time I thought that about any Microsoft product – perhaps since my Flight Simulator days . . . ).

Over the last year I’ve worked with more and more larger firms with internal IT staffs. One of the common complaints I hear when I interview lawyers and staff is that their IT personnel don’t seem to “understand” them. These are direct quotes I’ve gotten from law firm staffers and lawyers during technology audit interviews:

• “They don’t understand us  or the pressure we’re under – all they care about is keeping the computers running.”
• “They don’t respond fast enough. When I call them for help, it’s because I need it now, not two hours from now!”
• “All they say is “no” whenever we ask for some new piece of software or some new hardware. Sometimes they say no before we even ask the question!”
• “Aren’t they supposed to work for us?”

Of course, there are two sides to every story and the IT personnel who were the brunt of the comments above had their own views – not surprisingly, generally diametrically opposed to the perceptions of the folks in their firms. I’ve heard the following from in-house IT staff:

• “They just don’t understand the pressure we’re under to keep this system running.”
• “Well, if we had the budget, we could have enough people and resources to actually do the job they hired us to do.”
• “They ask questions about thinks we don’t know anything about – how am I supposed to be an expert at both Citrix virtualization and evidentiary laws for trial presentation?”
• “When someone says they need me NOW, what am I supposed to tell the person who I’m helping right now who also has a big problem?”
• “If I could only clone myself.”
• “I asked to join ILTA so I could learn more about the legal part of technology in our firm and could have more support resources, but they said they didn’t want to spend the money.”

Think about that – how different might attitudes be, all around – staff, lawyers and IT personnel – if the IT staff responded like an outside IT company that wouldn’t get paid, wouldn’t get referred, wouldn’t get customer references, if it didn’t have a profit-centered, relationship-maximizing attitude, just as if they were “ABC IT Integrators, Inc?”

In a January 30th LTN column, Doug Caddell, CIO of Foley & Lardner wrote another in a superb series of articles about law firm IT department approaches, philosophies, attitudes, etc.  The title of the article is “Yes Please:  Instead of an automatic “no,” IT leaders must focus on making things happen.” Doug points out that “many IT managers have a tendency to focus on why something cannot be done, instead of focusing efforts on what it takes to make something happen.”

In his November 20, 2011 article, “What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering,” David Segal understates his core issue. When I attended law school in the mid 1980’s (Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, WI), we didn’t have a single course that taught us anything whatsoever about how to run a law practice as a business.

Since becoming an attorney in 1986, I have devoted my entire career to being a law practice management and legal technology consultant. I chose that career path, in large part, because of what I perceived as a serious need to fill the educational and preparatory gaps created by an American legal educational system that has been focused almost exclusively on teaching “the law,” to the nearly complete exclusion of teaching students how to actually practice law.

My experience, after 26 years in the field educating and guiding lawyers in the better operation of their practices, is that the majority of attorneys I encounter are woefully under-prepared or entirely unprepared to successfully manage the business operations of their practices, to manage their professional and non-legal staff, nor even in many cases, be prepared to generate enough business to weather ordinary, if not unusually difficult economic times.

Like me, most lawyers I encounter came from liberal arts undergraduate backgrounds. My classmates nearly 30 years ago were English majors, Political Science majors, History majors and even one Philosophy major. I was an Economics major; about as far removed from the realities of the business demands of running a business as one could imagine. So if lawyers today are ill-prepared to be business people, I would say it’s fair that they come by that lack of background honestly.

However, I have long railed against what I view borders on utter neglect on the part of the American legal education system. The legal educational systems all too often falls back on the outmoded and backward tradition in failing to prepare lawyers to deal with the realities of the modern legal marketplace. While a graduate of a law school might be able to perform a mean footnote check reviewing a brief, and have an enviable level of mastery of using online legal research services, how many know anything whatsoever about how to manage anyone. Or how to negotiate a commercial lease. Or how to make sound decisions about the technology systems to drive their practices forward. Or anything about quality control systems to yield a “best practices” approach to serving clients. Or how to read a profit and loss statement or even what dual-entry accounting is all about. Or how to calculate their return on investment for a new multifunction device. Or that “customer service” isn’t something that professional organizations are except from. Or even to understand the essentials of electronic security in order to comply with the universal legal ethical requirement to protect confidential client information. In my quarter century of direct field experience, perhaps less than 20% of the lawyers I encounter are in any way prepared to make the right decisions related to the operation of their law practices as a business.

To be sure, some law schools make an attempt by offering what is usually an elective third year course on law practice management. But it’s not enough – law schools from the top tier Ivys on down – should feel a sense of obligation not only to their customers (a/k/a students) to prepare them to earn a living, but to the general public – to prepare them not to step into early malpractice traps because they just don’t know what the heck they’re doing in terms of the logistics or mechanics of modern law practice. Larger firms need associates to be a profitable leverage source quickly – there is little time to invest in training and the pressure to pay for their salaries is greater than ever.

In an economy where many law graduates have limited or no early employment prospects, to prepare them to survive – so at a minimum, they can work in a law practice capacity to start paying back their student loans. That’s not likely to happen if they’re stuck wearing a barista’s apron because they don’t have the practical skills to open a business and make it work in a tough economy.

It’s time for the American legal system to wake up and smell the coffee – elevating law practice business and management education to the level it requires – as important as taking courses in constitutional law or contracts. And to do it before their graduates are making lattés for a living and defaulting on their student loans.

Why am I feeling Andy Rooney-ish (sans the live caterpillars crawling on my brow thing)? Because I’m tired of getting terse, impolite, uncivil emails. In the legal profession, there’s already far too much incivility, not to mention adding the layer of technology-infused terseness those of us in the legal technology world face daily when dealing with ESL or ETL tech support personnel.

What I mean is this – email is correspondence, right? How many of you have crossed into that communication realm where 90+% of your correspondence comes to you and/or is sent from you electronically, without ever touching physical paper. For some of us, as I wrote about more than 15 years ago (so long ago that I can’t even find the piece online to cite), seeing a paper letter today feels sort of “exotic,” doesn’t it?

So if email is correspondence, two things occur to me:

1. Stop calling it email – there’s no such thing really, it’s just correspondence. And if it’s correspondence, which is just a type of document, stop treating it differently than all your other documents. I mean, why segregate your correspondence and let it hibernate in the bottomless black hole otherwise known as your email inbox and sent items folders? Shouldn’t it be stored with all the other documents on each case wherever those documents are stored and however you organize them? (ideally with a proper legal document manager like Worldox GX2, or its equivalent).
2. If it’s just correspondence, why do we tolerate the nearly universal lack of proper communication etiquette? How often do you get correspondence with no letterhead, no salutation (“Dear Whoever,” or “Hi Whoever”), no initial pleasantry (“I hope you’ve been well”) and no proper professionally courteous closing. Never. So why are these ingrained and time-honored correspondence conventions almost totally ignored when we send correspondence via email? I’m tired of terse messages from people and I suspect you are too.

So stop it. Be more polite when sending correspondence electronically (“ecorrespondence” is a much better term than email). Be nicer. You might be pleasantly surprised at the response. A little more civility could go a long way.