Tag Archives: Lawyer

Keep Your Law Firm Organized: Tips & Tricks

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Organization: it’s one of the keys to every modern law firm’s future success. The more organized your firm is, the more efficiently it will operate. And taking advantage of new law firm software technologies is one of the keys to achieving efficiency.

As Jim Calloway explained in his article “Future Proofing Your Law Firm,” found in the most recent edition of the ABA’s Law Practice Magazine, in the absence of technology-driven, efficient practices firm-wide, you’ll soon find that your firm will be unable to compete with more forward-thinking firms:

Information technology is becoming more interwoven into our lives and business operations every day. A few years ago it might have been appropriate to have a simple feature phone and not a smartphone. But today, not being able to set an appointment on your smartphone does not inspire confidence about your legal ability. Technology purchases and training are and will remain a critical part of law firm operations for long into the future. Out-of-date technology slows down business. It is increasingly dangerous to use an antiquated billing system or to not have a good document management system.

Simply put, you cannot take 10 or 15 minutes to do something that other lawyers can do in a minute, whether you bill that time or not.

The good news is that 21st century law firm software makes it easy to stay on top of  your busy law practice and keep everything organized–from your contacts and billing to your documents and more.

There are many different type of software available. Although many lawyers prefer the one-stop shop offered by a full-featured law practice management software system,  you can certainly piece-meal a system together using stand-alone apps and software to keep track of all the important aspects of your practice. The choice is yours, but if greater flexibility, mobility and affordability are what you seek, then make sure you don’t overlook cloud-based law firm software options.

So let’s explore just a few of the ways that these software programs can help you to stay organized and thus increase your law firm’s productivity, efficiency, and profitability.

Contact Management

One of the easiest ways to stay organized is to have client and contact information readily accessible. There are many ways to manage your client and contact information. but the easiest way is to use software designed for this very purpose.

If you’re looking for a stand-alone software program designed solely for contact management, Salesforce is a very popular cloud-based option. Law practice management systems are also a great choice, since any well-rounded platform should include a contact management system that allows you to relate all system contacts to all relevant client files in your system. Some systems also have mobile apps, which make it easy to access and input contact information no matter where you are using just your mobile devices.

Billing on the go

Billing on the go is one of the easiest ways to save time and increase profitability. It used to be that the only time you could enter billable time was once you returned to the office. And for many law firms that continue to use premise-based billing software, that is still the case. For these firms, billable time is often lost when lawyers attempt to piece together time billed while away from the office. Phone conversations are often forgotten, as are conversations with clients or opposing counsel in the hallways of the courthouse.

Fortunately, cloud-based billing, whether from a stand-along billing app or your law practice management system’s mobile app, solves this problem. With the touch of a button, billable time is easily input no matter where you are, saving you time and money.

Document and File Management

Gone are the are the days of misfiled documents or entire files. Law practice management software eradicates this problem by making all data easily accessible and searchable from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection. File organization is a snap when your office is paperless and documents are stored in the cloud.

Another benefit–you no longer have to worry about documents being left behind at the office when you’re in court. As MyCase customer Erin Levine recently explained, she’s more organized and efficient because she can easily access documents right from court using the MyCase mobile app:

“My malpractice insurance premium is lower since I’m far more organized because of MyCase and it includes a built-in conflict checker,” she said. “And when I’m in court and someone claims I never filed an order, I can pull out my iPad and access a copy of the filed order right in court.

So why wait? Get started today! Take advantage of the different law firm software options available and move toward a more organized and efficient law office. Once you incorporate these tools into your day-to-day law practice, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without them!

Guest Post (Ed Poll): Perception Versus Reality: “There Are Too Many Lawyers”

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Today’s guest post was written by Ed Poll. You can learn more about him at the end of the post.

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A lot of M&M's.

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The United States has 1.25 million lawyers, and the perception from a regular stream of news stories suggests that is far too many.  Old and prestigious law firms have failed, lawyer layoffs have continued, law school graduates have sued their schools for misleading them about employment chances, and (according toThe New York Times) law school admissions for the upcoming 2013 academic year are headed for a 30-year low (down 38 percent from 2010).

However, the reality is that these headlines, all focus on “BigLaw” – the large corporate firms with many hundreds or even thousands of lawyers. While doom-sayers proclaim that the legal profession’s problem is too many lawyers, demand for legal services is still very large among the Main Street folks who can’t pay $1,000 an hour legal fees. These people need and will continue to need help with wills, divorces, taxes and house purchases. Such customers offer a lot of work to firms with costs flexible enough to be affordable.

What work will these lawyers do? It’s an undeniable fact that as society becomes more litigious, lawyers must deal with new causes of action all the time, and these affect the lives of everyday people.  Here is just one example.  In Los Angeles last year, the owner of a Honda Civic hybrid won an unusual Small Claims Court lawsuit against the auto giant for misleading statements about the high mileage her hybrid was supposed to, but did not, get. Experts said this judgment could transform product liability litigation nationwide for informed plaintiffs with a good small firm lawyer who can bring an individual lawsuit, rather than an expensive class action.

The point here is not so much the court action itself, but the fact that such causes of action affect the everyday lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people around the country.  Such people will need lawyers to help them.  The mega law firms with many hundreds or even thousands of lawyers may serve the 1% of the corporate world that is relentlessly pushing them for fee and overhead reductions. But, there will be a large group of customers – the 99% – who need sole practitioners and small firms

There is plenty of work available for those small firms that are affordable in their cost structures and nimble enough in their legal analysis.  Legislators have to justify their existence and continue to write new laws, providing work for lawyers to interpret these laws and advise their clients on their benefits or perils. Clients still look to lawyers when they need help or want to right a wrong.  The market is there for those lawyers who give up the perception that success as a lawyer means billing $1,000 an hour and making a million dollars a year – and who accept the reality that charging an affordable fee to help everyday people is a good way to make a living.

Edward Poll, J.D., M.B.A., CMC, coaches and consults attorneys throughout the country in the areas of starting and operating a law practice, strategic planning, profitability analysis, and practice development. He blogs at LawBiz, is a syndicated columnist and regular contributor to several major legal publications. His latest book, Life After Law: What Will You Do With the Next 6,000 Days? has received national recognition for helping lawyers plan for the time they decide to leave the practice of law. Ed is a Fellow, College of Law Practice Management®, Board Certified Coach to the Legal Profession, SAC® .  

Should Legal Education Reform Include Law Practice Management Skills?

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Law School Textbooks

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Lately, the blogosphere has been abuzz over the idea of legal education reform, in large part due to the recent release of Stephen Harper’s book “The Lawyer Bubble.” In his book, Harper discusses what he believes to be a looming crisis facing the legal profession, caused in part by the ailing economy and our profession’s failure to respond to the changing times. He suggests, among other things, that solutions include revising law firm structures and reforming legal education, in part by incorporating “practical skills” into law school teachings.

So when a My Shingle post from 2011 written by my co-author, Carolyn Elefant about whether law schools failed to properly train law students popped up in my RSS feed, it struck me as very apropos. In it, Carolyn argues that solo lawyers don’t require special skills training in law school, since “creating separate practice tracks for big law and solos would widen the chasm even further.”

But she goes on to suggest that “(i)ntegrating practical skills (for example, contract drafting into Contract Law) would improve law school further, as would incorporating discussion of ethical issues into substantive law classes instead of ghettoizing it as an independent unit void of context.” In other words, the practical aspects of lawyering should not be overlooked when designing a 21st century law school curriculum.

Fast forward to 2013 and the debate rages on when it comes to integrating practical skills with substantive teachings. For example, at the Legal Skills Prof Blog, Professor Scott Frueweld, in the context of discussing the book “The Lawyer Bubble,” explains that, despite the argument of one of his colleagues to the contrary, practical skills training should be an important part of every law student’s law school experience, since “classes that are labeled ‘skills classes’ bring about deeper learning of concepts. Skills teachers do not teach skills in a vacuum. Skills must be taught in a knowledge domain, such as civil procedure or fair use.”

So, despite the passage of 2 years, many continue to believe that the importance of revamping legal education to include “practical skills” is paramount. However, one thing struck me as I read through the legal education reform posts about the inclusion of “practical skills”– that business and law practice management skills are rarely discussed.

For some reason business and law practice management skills take the perpetual backseat to “lawyering” skills and, of course, to substantive skills. So much so that they’re not often taught in law school, or are relegated to a single 2 or 3 credit class–in large part because, as noted in “The Lawyer Bubble,” most law schools are incentivized to prepare students for careers in large law firms, despite the fact that at least 63% of lawyers practice law in small law firms.

As a result, law students graduate from law school with little, if any, practical business knowledge, technology expertise, or law practice management experience. This leaves bar associations with the burden of bridging the legal education gap by forming law practice management sections devoted to teaching lawyers the nuts and bolts of running a law practice.

Of course, the bar associations’ efforts are simply stop gap measures and last ditch efforts to attempt to supplement insufficient legal educations. Instead of relying on bar associations to teach basic business skills, law schools should lead the way and anticipate and serve the needs of their graduates by teaching important law practice management skills to their students.

Whether this will happen anytime soon is anyone’s guess. Criticisms of the current system are nothing new, but even so, legal education reform has been slow going. So for now, lawyers will have to take it upon themselves to ensure that they’re fully armed with the necessary law practice management and practical skills needed to run a successful law practice. And bar association programs are a great place to start this educational process.

But even so, let’s hope that the mounting pressures on the legal industry discussed in the “Legal Bubble” will serve to spur much-needed change, both in our profession’s long standing, but outdated, traditions and in the curriculums of law schools.

Let’s hope. That being said, I’m not sure about you, but I’m not holding my breath.

–Nicole Black

How Legal Case Management Software Can Change Your Practice

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Use Recommendations

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Bar disciplinary actions–they’re something every lawyer worries about. The good news is that the most common client complaints that lead to disciplinary actions can be easily avoided by using innovative 21st century tools–such as legal case management software–designed to help you stay on top of your busy law practice and change the way that you do business.

But first, what are the biggest reasons for client complaints? According to Todd Scott at the  RU@Risk blog, lack of organization and failure to communicate with clients are among the leading reasons behind many ethics complaints: “Allegations of lawyer incompetence, disorganization, having a conflict of interest or not properly communicating with the client dominate many of the ethics complaints clients make against lawyers when they are unsatisfied with their matter outcome.”

The good news is that legal case management software makes it easy to avoid these types of claims. As Scott explains:

(C)ase management software is in a class of its own for organizing a law office that may otherwise be in disarray…

A basic case management system will replace paper calendars, rolodexes, timesheets, notepads, manual tickler systems, and telephone message pads.

But sophisticated case management software programs can do more than just help keep your law firm organized; more robust programs can change the way that you serve your clients, while simultaneously solving the client communication problem as well.

Regular client contact is the key to happy clients, as Jared Correia recently explained at the Attorney at Work blog. He recommends that you ensure that you regularly contact your clients about their cases, even if nothing new has happened:

A main ingredient of the vast majority of bar complaints circles around lawyers’ poor communication cycles with clients…One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a lawyer is only talking to your clients when you need something from them, or when they call to yell at you. Set up a protocol to contact your clients on a recurring pattern, just to check in.

And that’s where effective legal case management software with built-in client portals comes in. Using online portals, your clients have instantaneous access to information about their cases and can quickly and easily find answers to many of their most common questions. They’ll no longer need to contact you to find out their next court date or obtain a copy of a document from their file.

Instead, your clients will have 24/7 access to their files and can use their client portal to get whatever information they need, right when they need it–even if it’s the middle of the night. And, that leads to happy clients, as Mark Brenner, a MyCase customer, recently explained:

 “In California you can actually get sanctioned by the Bar for not adequately communicating with your client…That risk has been virtually eliminated with MyCase because my clients are always notified whenever I work on a case. And my clients feel validated by the notification. As a result, my index of dissatisfied clients has simply disappeared. All of my clients feel like they are my only client–and it’s all because of MyCase.”

That’s why the right legal case management software can change your law practice. You no longer have to struggle to stay organized and in touch with your clients. Instead, case management software simplifies your practice, making it easier than ever for you to efficiently run your busy practice and focus what really matters: practicing law and achieving good outcomes for your clients.

–Nicole Black

Law Practice Management Wrap Up

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We here at MyCase love to read and learn everything there is to know about law practice management. So we make it a point to follow blogs that focus on law practice management in the 21st Century. And, every few weeks, we’ll share some of the posts that we found to be most interesting.

So now, for your reading pleasure–our wrap up of some of our favorite posts from the past few weeks:

–Nicole Black

Get the NEW MyCase App for iPhone & iPad TODAY

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The MyCase team has been very hard at work in order to make MyCase the best mobile practice management solution on the market. After all the hard work, we are very excited to announce the launch of the brand new MyCase iPhone and iPad app!

MyCase phone_hold2Get Happy Clients

The new MyCase app is the first of its kind to allow your clients to log in as well.

Your clients will be thrilled to know they have exclusive 24/7 access to the case information you choose to provide them; e.g. documents for review, invoices to pay, court dates to attend, and messages that have been shared with them.Take Your Practice

Take Your Practice With You

Take your law firm on-the-go with the new MyCase App for iPhone and iPad – all of your case information and billing history is right at your fingertips.

  • Free for you, your staff, and your clients.

  • Create events, tasks, billing entries, and contacts.

  • Send secure email messages to your colleagues and clients.

  • Get real-time notifications.

  • The first and only iOS app to have a login for both attorneys and their clients.

MyCase gives you the freedom to practice law on your own terms. It’s the perfect app for lawyers – Get your FREE MyCase mobile app now!

Click Here to Download

A MyCase Practice: Angela Sigman | Florida Foreclosure Defense Attorney

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AngelaSigmanFor Angela Sigman, the law was a second career path. She began her career by working full-time at the local police department while she attended college and raised her son.

When her son turned 13, she decided she wanted to go to law school: “Sappy as it sounds I became a lawyer because I was inspired by ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ I was intrigued by the practice of law and it was something that I’d always wanted to do.”

So, she sat her son down and discussed her aspiration to become a lawyer with him. After obtaining his blessing, they moved so that she could make her dream of becoming an attorney come true. The rest, as they say, is history.

All in the family

Angela is now a sole practitioner in Florida, where her law practice, Sigman Law Firm, P.A., is focused mainly on mortgage foreclosure defense. She opened the firm in 2011 after working for 2 small Florida law firms. From the very start, her firm was family run. According to Angela, it’s one thing that sets her firm apart from others: “We’re different because we’re a family run firm. My mom started out as my office manager and now my husband is my office manager. It’s really interesting to be run by family members and to be able to work together to make the firm a success.”

It’s all about improving her clients’ lives

For Angela, one of the most rewarding aspects of being a lawyer is helping her clients through difficult times. She explains: “When I’m able to help other people, it’s all worthwhile. But my job can be frustrating at times because you can’t always help people as much as you’d like–sometimes the law gets in the way.”

Even so, she always tries to achieve the best outcomes for her clients and does everything that she can to improve their lives. She explains: “I have a picture with a quote hanging in my conference room because I think that some of my clients who are going through difficult times might be able to relate.  It says: ‘Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.’”

The move to the cloud–and to MyCase

For Angela, a cloud-based law practice management solution was the only option. “I do a lot of work from outside the office,” she explains. “So it helps to have everything in one place no matter where I am, whether it’s home, court, or somewhere else. The cloud makes it possible.”

Choosing the right law practice management software was extremely important to her. As a result, she carefully explored all of her options, eventually choosing MyCase: “I did a ridiculous amount of research and was actually using Clio at first. But there were some key features that it just didn’t have. So after conducting more research, I started using MyCase.”

MyCase–it’s all about the features

And she’s never looked back. That’s because she can’t imagine running her law practice without MyCase. She explains: “It’s helped tremendously in terms of keeping everything organized. I particularly like the task manager because it helps keep things organized and saves me a ton of time.  The timekeeping features are helpful as well. Being able to go to one place and get everything done–that’s the best part about MyCase.”

According to Angela, another invaluable feature is MyCase’s client portal. She couldn’t imagine her practice without it because it improves client communication immensely. ”The feedback from clients has been great in terms of communication. Also helpful is that they’re able to upload documents and share them across the system,” she says. “And from my perspective, it’s much easier to communicate using the client portal. I especially like that I can see when a client logs in. That way I know the client saw the document, which is such an improvement over email, where you never know if they received it or looked at it. And I love that they can comment on it as well, so we can go back and forth about the document and it’s all in one place.”

Advice for new solos

After running her own firm for 2 years, Angela’s learned a thing or two. When asked if she had any advice for new solos, she immediately replied: “One thing I’ve learned after opening a solo practice is that if you handle too many types of matters you can easily get overwhelmed . So I really try to narrow it down to the areas I enjoy. It helps a lot to focus on a few areas you’re really interested in because if you don’t it becomes too time consuming to work on cases that involve unfamiliar areas of law that you’ll never work on again.”

Making the world a better place

As if she didn’t already have enough on her plate, Angela has grand plans to use her law firm to help those who are less fortunate in her community. She explains that “one of my goals is to start a non-profit that is somehow connected to my firm which would help local charities by taking a percentage of our profits. I also envision holding other fund raising events through the non-profit. So that is another one of my goals–to get that going and make a positive difference in the lives of people who live in our area.”

So, it should come as no surprise that when I asked Angela how she would like to be remembered, she answered “As someone who was compassionate.” Indeed.

Top 5 Resources for Solo Lawyers

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English: Icon of Law Firm--owned by user.

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So, you’ve decided to head out on your own and start your own law firm, but have no idea where to start. Well, worry no more! There are plenty of resources available to newly solo lawyers, both online and offline. Whether you’re looking for information on the nuts and bolts of setting up your office  or are researching your legal software and technology options, there is a vast array of information designed to get you on the right track. So, let’s get started.

Books

There are a number of great books about the ins and outs of starting your own law firm. These books walk you through everything you need to know when starting a law practice:

Blogs

Of course, there are a number of great law blogs devoted to solo and small firm attorneys which cover topics ranging from marketing and technology to law practice management issues. Here are a few of the most useful blogs for solo and small firm lawyers:

  • Attorney at Work–a group blog covering a wide range of topics relevant to running a small firm practice
  • Lawyerist–another group blog devoted to providing information useful to solo and small firm lawyers
  • Solo in Colo–A blog by a solo attorney in Colorado that focuses on practical resources for solo attorneys
  • My Shingle–Carolyn Elefant’s long-standing, extremely helpful blog devoted to all things solo.

Online forums and resource centers

Aside from blogs, there are a number of other online resources available for solo and small firm practitioners. First off, don’t overlook the solo practice listservs and groups offered by your local or state bar associations. And, in addition to those resources, here are a few of the more well-traveled online resources created for solo attorneys:

Technology Resources

Technology is at the heart of every 21st century law firm. This is especially the case for solo firms, since cloud-based law practice management software and mobile technologies make it possible for solo attorneys to compete with larger firms in ways never before possible. So learning about new and emerging technologies is an important part of opening and operating a solo practice. Here are a few great places to start:

  • Google + community–Cloud Computing for Lawyers is a community devoted to legal technology, including cloud computing, and its use in law practices
  • MILO group–A Google group for solos and small firm lawyers who use Apple products in their firms
  • ABA Legal Technology Resource Center–The ABA provides lawyers with a wealth of information related to using technology in a law office
  • ABA Technology books–The ABA’s Law Practice Management Section publishes a large number of legal technology books designed to teach lawyers about law software, emerging technologies, online security, and more.

Conferences

Last but not least, don’t forget about the assortment of great legal conferences aimed at solos. These are fantastic educational and networking opportunities. So choose to attend one of two of these and invest in your practice and your future:

So if you’re thinking about hanging out a shingle, there’s plenty of information out there to help you establish a solo practice that works for you. So why wait? Seize the day and turn your dream of starting a solo law firm into a reality.

–Nicole Black

Forecast for Law Practice: Cloudy and Mobile

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There’s no doubt about it: lawyers are rapidly embracing cloud-based law practice software and mobile computing.  As we recently reported, according to the American Bar Association’s 2012 Legal Tech Survey, a whopping 89% of lawyers now use smartphones and the percentage of lawyers who use tablets for law-related tasks nearly doubled over the period of one year, increasing from15% in 2011 to 33% in 2012.*

According to William Peacock at the Technologist blog, running your law practice on the go using cloud computing, legal practice software, and mobile devices may very well be the law practice of the future:

We’re becoming an always-connected workforce. It’s no longer sufficient to run your office from your office. You’ve got to have access to your data at all times. That means cloud-based practice management software is going to become a near must-have in the near future.

It’s the ability to access your law firm’s data, right in the palm of your hand no matter where you are, that is so appealing to many lawyers. And, as Joe Dysart explains in “The Mobile Lawyer,” an article from the most recent edition of the ABA Journal magazine, it’s law practice software in the cloud that makes this a reality:

App fanatics cite all sorts of reasons why they believe mobile is the future of law computing, but the ability of apps to technologically arm an attorney on the go continues to be one of the format’s greatest draws…

Many apps…offer attorneys fingertip access to all the firm’s data that’s stored in the cloud, no matter where they happen to be.

Immediate access to information is key for many many lawyers–especially when in court. We discovered this after conducting a mobile survey of MyCase users, from which we learned that the majority of mobile users accessed MyCase using their mobile devices at least once every day, most frequently in court.

That’s why we recently released the first law practice software mobile app of its kind–for both clients and lawyers. The new client-facing MyCase app  allows legal clients to access their case information and securely communicate with their attorneys on the go. And, the lawyer-facing app allows MyCase customers to securely manage all aspects of their law practice on go.

In fact, MyCase customers often tell us how useful it is to be able to quickly and easily access case documents using their mobile devices and MyCase’s legal practice software platform. Erin Levine describes the benefits of 24/7 mobile access: “(W)hen I’m in court and someone claims I never filed an order, I can pull out my iPad and access a copy of the filed order right in court.” Another MyCase customer, Samantha Thomas, reports similar experiences: “No matter where I am, I can log onto MyCase and access my files. So if I’m at court and a judge tells me an Order isn’t in their file, I pull out my iPad, log into MyCase, and show the judge the time-stamped order. The judges love this.”

Speaking of judges and mobile devices–even judges have gone mobile, sometimes to their detriment, as recently happened in a Michigan courtroom.  A Michigan judge inadvertently triggered his smartphone’s voice commands, in violation of his own policy forbidding the disruption of courtroom proceedings by electronic devices. The good news is that he treated his violation the same as he would have treated anyone else’s. The AP reports that he subsequently “held himself in contempt and paid $25 for the infraction.”

So, the moral of the story is make sure you’re complying with court rules when using your mobile device–even if you’re the judge!

*For more interesting statistics about how lawyers use cloud-based law practice software and their mobile devices, make sure to check out our infographic on the Rise of Mobile for Lawyers.

–Nicole Black

ABA Techshow 2013 Round Up

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The Round-up

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ABA Techshow 2013 is now behind us and what a great experience! There was something for everyone–from networking to learning about new technologies and exploring the EXPO Hall.

And, now that things have settled down, the blog posts about the conference have been rolling out. So, if you couldn’t attend this year, here’s a round up of some of our favorite post-Techshow 2013 reflections (including 1 of our own):

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