Future-Proofing Your Law Firm

I am pleased to announce that I have a new column in Law Practice Magazine, starting with its May-June 2013 "Professionalism" issue.

The column is Practice Management Advice and the first offering is Future-Proofing Your Law Firm.

There has been a lot of change and upheaval in the legal profession. This column outlines eight areas that any law firm, from a brand new solo practitioner to a large established firm, should review to see if they need to make improvement.

 

Saving Emails as PDF Files

Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Outlook work together in many nice ways. A great tip for archiving Outlook folders is to right click on them and select "Convert [Folder Name] to Adobe PDF." Then you can have all of those emails and attachments in a single PDF file and delete the folder from Outlook.

As I was preparing for my ABA TECHSHOW presentation on using PDF files with my co-presenter Erik Mazzone, it occurred to me that I rarely used an equally powerful Adobe/Outlook feature. That is the ability to select several messages from your Inbox or other folder and convert those messages into a single PDF file. Sometimes I may just want to save an email discussion that is not about a client file. And if the ultimate goal is to archive them as PDF, why bother with the intermediate step of saving them in an Outlook folder? But what if new emails on the same subject come in later? As you can see from the graphic below, not only is "Append to Existing PDF" an option, but you also can see the last several PDF files that you either created via Outlook or used Outlook to append an email to the file.

Encryption, Privacy and the Dark Side of the Internet

Encryption, Privacy and the Dark Side of the Internet was written by Duane Croft, a Norman, Oklahoma lawyer with an engineering background. This Oklahoma Bar Journal article covers encryption in depth, while still being readable for the lawyer with only basic knowledge on the topic. Certainly today's lawyer does need to understand the basics of encryption, even if he or she does not care to know the mechanics.

I hesitate to keep labeling things "must reading" but I think you will learn quite a bit from this piece and especially his comments on “scary-level” encryption. So check it out: Download Encryption Privacy and Dark Side of Internet.Croft.OklaBarJ (PDF File)

I also have some companion resources for you. Not Just For Paranoids: 4 Reasons To Encrypt Your Digital Life is a nice article from MakeUseOf.com that does a fine job of pointing out why you would want to encrypt files. It also has some links to additional basic encryption articles.

Encryption Made Simple for Lawyers was published late last fall in GPSOLO magazine. It was written by David G. Ries and John W. Simek. These two colleagues are quite the experts in this field.

Hopefully this trio of resources will give readers some comprehensive information about this subject, which is becoming more significant every day, especially for professionals that deal with confidential, private or privileged information in digital files.

How many does it take to change a light bulb?

Q. How many ministers does it take to change a light bulb?

A. It depends on whether the light bulb is really willing to change!

The same is true for lawyers and law firms.

I've been knee-deep in reviewing materials on change, particularly lawyer and law firm change, for a few months now for a project I cannot blog about just yet. But today several features about change crossed my Twitter feed and appeared in my inbox today. So, lawyers, if you have the time to think about your future this week, here are some resources for you.

No one is more surprised than me that I am leading off with words from a law school faculty member on change. (It is not like most law schools have been rushing to embrace needed changes.) But Frank H. Wu,  Chancellor and Dean of UC Hastings College of the Law has an opinion piece titled What Threatens Law Firms that is short, cogent and, in my opinion, spot on. (Not that the good chancellor needs my approval.) You might quibble with a detail or two, but he certainly isolates some of the issues our profession faces.

A blog post from Bob Ambrogi led me to this video on Guide to Change Management at Law Firms.

You can check out the credentials of the panelists at Bob's blog post. But let me attest, as someone who has seen a fair number of discussions on change management, this one is very good. (And nothing against the appearance of the fine panelists, but you can listen to this one hour program without having to watch the video the entire time.)

I didn't get to attend the recent ReInvent Law™ conference in Silicon Valley or the previous events. But Daniel Martin Katz, assistant professor at Michigan State's School of Law and one of the conference organizers, garnered some publicity afterwards when he was quoted  by announcing at another event, "I'm developing a group of assassins who are going to [reform] the profession." You can stop by the ReInvent Law™ Laboratory website to see new developments.

Richard Susskind, author of The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the nature of legal services has just released a new book called Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future. I'll be writing more about that when I complete it, but don't let my busy schedule delay you from purchasing this affordable new resource.

The point is not really whether a light bulb or a law firm wants to change. We rely on precedent for the law and have a comfort level with doing things as they have always been done. The question is whether your law firm is one that recognizes the need to change.

The Basics of the Lawyer’s iPad

I was asked to write a beginner's level feature for lawyers using the iPad. The result is The Basics of the Lawyer’s iPad. Due to website migration activity here at the Oklahoma Bar, I am providing you a PDF of the article for your download and reading. Download Calloway iPad Basics March16 2013 OklBarJ I hope beginners will find this useful and believe even those with more iPad experience can learn a thing or two.

Coincidentally, the same week, Jeff Richardson of iPhoneJD.com fame posted an updated feature on his blog Advice for lawyers new to the iPad.You will not want to miss that post.

I should also note the video on our YouTube channel -- Getting started with iPad2. With all three of these resources, a late-arriver to using iPads should catch up quite quickly.

 

I've been robbed while out of the country - Please Send Money!

Well, actually, I'm not out of the country, I have not been robbed and I am still in possession of my passport. No hotel manager is breathing down my neck to pay my bill or else.

Most readers smiled when they read this because they have received bogus emails supposedly from their friends outlining the "robbed, stranded, broke, plane about to leave, please wire money" scenerio and they recognize the story as bogus. But people still fall for this scam, often relatives or friends who are not sophisticated Internet users. Many Oklahoma lawyers have received these type of emails recently and it seems like a good time to mention this scam. I received one today that was pretty good. It was from a law firm email address where the spouses were lawyer partners and it had both of their names in the subject line. The email address is their real email address, a now-hacked AOL address. I'm certain most lawyers would not fall for this. But I talked to the lawyer and some of their former clients have contacted them with concern already. So, if you are looking for content for a client newsletter or for your website, this warning might be good to share with your clients.

Two final points: 1) if I am ever stranded out fo the country and need help, I promise to voice call you the old fashioned way and 2) if you do want to send me money, feel free. I promise to put it to a better use than the scammers would have, in my opinion anwyay.

The Stress-Free Law Practice

Does the label "The Stress-Free Law Practice" make you think of unicorns, vampires and other mythical things? Many, if not most, lawyers believe that a large amount of stress just goes along with the important matters that law firms are handling.

Read The Stress-Free Law Practice, my column this month in the Oklahoma Bar Journal, to get some facts about stress and mental health issues in the legal profession. I've included a number of tips from a mental health professional about how lawyers can deal with stress.

What I am Reading Today (Legal Ethics and Money)

I know "what I'm reading" is not a great title for a blog post. But I've noted a lot of good reading material that I wanted to pass along to you today.

Law Society of British Columbia's Cloud Computing Checklist Lawyers are quite correctly concerned about cloud computing because law practices deal with confidential client. But life is not risk-free and it is more a matter of balancing risks than eliminating them. This quite comprehensive checklist is the product of much obvious hard work and a worthwhile download for any lawyer. As the post introducing it notes, hopefully these checklists will shrink in size as the legal profession becomes more comfortable with the cloud and industry standards become more clearly defined.

Tips for Handling Client Funds Trust account problems are one of the top reasons lawyers are disciplined in the U.S. That is the opening sentence of this fine set of tips authored by Mark Bassingthwaighte, who is a risk manager with Attorney’s Liability Protection Society, Inc. (ALPS). There are some simple and clear tips included here and every lawyer who has a client trust should read this article, share it with other lawyers in the firm and set it aside to read it again this time next year.

Accepting Credit Cards on the Go The idea of swiping a credit card with your smart phone or tablet to accept a retainer fee or clients paying their bills online at night while you are sleeping is quite attractive to lawyers. But accepting credit cards can be a challenge for lawyers, especially if they want to accept mobile payments. This article will really help you get up to speed on how the process works. I admit to a bit of positive bias as the author is CEO of the company that provides our member credit card benefit here in Oklahoma. This has been a very popular member benefit.

An Attorney’s Guide to Engagement Agreements  Allison Shields recently wrote a series of posts about the essential elements of a retainer agreement or engagement letter. This is a compilation of all of the posts. She has very clear, brief and easy-to-read points.

Happy Reading!

Facebook Privacy Policy- The oxymoron that can even bite non-Facebook users

One Oklahoma lawyer has declined to participate in Facebook, in part because of the horror stories about privacy breaches. You would think that would make her safe from inadvertent disclosures of information via Facebook. But think again.

This lawyer loves phtography and she had shared photos she made with her friend via text message and email. Due to an automatic update of Facebook in December, every one of the pictures her friend had on her phone were posted to Facebook--automatically. Of course that were no inappropriate pictures, but still this lawyer who had intentionally avoided Facebook found it troubling that numerous pictures of her had been posted there.

I found this a bit hard to believe. But a little research found an article on C|NET Prevent Facebook from automatically importing photos. Sure enough a December update to Facebook provided for automatic synchronization will all photos on your smart phone or iPad with Facebook. And as with all things Facebook, a click in the wrong place can opt you in to the service. You can read the article to learn how to opt out. Supposedly the pictures would be private and not posted to a user's Timeline until it was done manually. I'm not sure that is how it worked in this case.

But the idea of all photos on your phone being automatically posted to Facebook is pretty scary. I imagine somewhere there was someone who was shocked when they logged into Facebook and found their very private pictures had been posted there. And if they all were posted to the Facebook Timeline in December for all to see, in some cases that might have made for some very interesting discussions at Christmas family gatherings.

Unexpected Uses of Tech Tools and Unintended Consequences

Your smart phone will do many things that are far beyond what most people would have associated with a telephone not that long ago. We have so many tech tools and gadgets now that that unintended uses are sometimes more interesting and innovative than the intended uses. Why should everyone have cloud storage now? Why would a cloud-based company like Evernote endorse a brand of paper notebook? Why would a lawyer use an iPad to take movies for work? (I got to travel to South Carolina to learn about that last one.) The answers to these questions and more can be found in the attached Oklahoma Bar Journal article Unexpected Uses of Tools and Unintended Consequences. Download UnintendedTools.Calloway.OklaBarJ

Will Predictive Coding in e-Discovery Become an Ethical Requirement?

Every December I do a Recent Developments in Law Office Management and Technology program for the Oklahoma Bar Association's two-day Recent Developments CLE. For 2012 the big story in legal technology had to be the rapid changes in e-discovery and predictive coding. Predictive coding means searching documents using algorithms to locate relevant documents rather than a lawyer reading each document. The best predictive coding practices have lawyers intensely involved in the process and use sampling and testing to determine how well the algorithms are working. See the Wall Street Journal's Law blog's post After Court Decisions, Clients Mull Swapping Lawyers for Machines for more detail. (This is also an example of the kind of headline that makes many lawyers think this must be a bad thing.)

Changes in the law generally happen slowly. So it is noteworthy that the first opinion requiring a predictive coding protocol for document review in a case where both sides generally agreed it was required happened early in 2012 and later in the year we saw a order issued by another court telling the parties they had to show case if they didn't want to use predictive coding during discovery in a case. That is rapid change.

Recently an ABA Journal article was published with the title Lawyer for E-Discovery Company Predicts Predictive Coding Will Become an Ethical Obligation. Some attacked the obvious bias of the source in comments to the article and others predicted ethical and malpractice horrors ahead for any lawyer who dared "outsource" their duties to machines or non-lawyers. There's a bit of "protect our turf" bias in those comments as well.

I don't really see predictive coding becoming an ethical requirement only because I see it gaining more acceptance as a business requirement long before ethics rule-making bodies have a chance to consider it.

There are so many emails generated every minute in businesses that there is no way to avoid this. Suppose a lawyer has to review two million emails to decide what is to be produced in discovery or a law firm receives one million emails in response to a discovery request. Do the naysayers really believe that the only ethical and practical way to approach this is to hire teams of lawyers to manually read each email? Predictive coding is simply a tool that lawyers and courts will use to deal with the massive amount of information before them. Judges will learn more about searching and sampling. It will be a change, but a necessary one. And, thankfully, most cases will not involve millions of emails.

Opening a New Law Practice - New resources

The articles from "Opening a Law Practice" issue of the Oklahoma Bar Journal, published in October 2012 are now all available online. Enjoy and share this post with others, especially a lawyer or law student who is contemplating setting up a law practice.   
• Starting Solo - From Oath to My Own Office
        - by Byron J. Will
• Equipping the Law Office 2012 - by Jim Calloway
• Going With the Flow -- The Truth About Cash Flow
        Management - by Douglas Gierhart
• Great Resources Abound but Time Does Not
        - by Jim Calloway
• Insurance for Lawyers and Law Offices -- From the
        Basics to "I Didn't Know You Could Insure That!" -
        by Jennifer Beale
• Professional Liability Insurance - The Rest of the
        Story - by Alison A. Cave
• Success in Solo and Small Firm Settings
        - by Jennifer Kirkpatrick
• Ten Things to Know When Starting a Small-Town
        Practice - by Stephen D. Beam and Jon K. Parsley
• The Agony and the Ecstasy - Tips on Starting Your
        Own Law Practice - by Tracey Garrison
• The Non-Tech Side of Starting Your Own Practice
        - by Michelle Harrington
• What's Your Exit Strategy - by D. Scott
        Pappas
• Trust Accounting 101 - by OBA Ethics Counsel Travis Pickens

 

Reinventing Legal Education

Failing Law Schools by Brian Z. Tamanaha was published in June 2012. Among the most startling assertions in that book was that law schools will produce 45,000 new graduates annually while only 25,000 openings for lawyers are projected each year through 2018. Professor Tamanaha includes many strong critiques of how law schools operate today.

Predictably some law school deans and professors have gotten defensive about this book and other criticisms and have responded. The responses and counter responses have gotten interesting over the last week or so, so I thought I would pass some along to practicing lawyers who read this blog.

Last week Lawrence E. Mitchell, Dean of Case Western Reserve University’s law school, published an OpEd piece in The New York Times titled Law School Is Worth the Money. For those of us paying attention to these issues, this was probably one of most singularly unpersuasive pieces of professional writing that one will ever read.

Not suprisingly the legal blogosphere reacted quickly and strongly. Three days later the TaxProf Blog posted this lengthy list of dissenters to Dean Mitchell's opinion piece. A Google search reveals many more posts since then, including this one from Kyle McEntee, Executive Director and founder, Law School Transparency, which was posted as I was completing this post. These posts were not just from the "law school scam bloggers," who have been regularly posting on this topic, but from sources like the State Bar of Michigan blog and WestLawInsider, where the writer referred to "the Case Western dean’s misrepresentations (and sometimes outright lies)." This is only one instance of some tough talk about the OpEd.

I can count on my friend and colleague, Jordan Furlong, for some great insight on many topics and today he weighed in with How to kill (or save) a law school. This is great and provocative reading for anyone interested in the topic. I should note that I agree with Jordan when he says "I like law schools, and I hope they prosper." Jordan's primary point goes to law firms and law schools. If you want to deal with change and competition, first say, "if we were building a competitor to our business, what would we do?" Then do it now, before someone else does. Both law firms and law schools are constrained in what they can do in many ways, but those constraints are loosening.

Since many readers from other jurisdictions know me as an Oklahoma law blogger, I should note that "we're doing fine" here (as the song lyrics go.) We have had no huge law school expansion. We still have the same three law schools as when I was deciding where to attend. There are more practical skills taught in Oklahoma law schools, reflecting the reality that more and more graduates will find themselves in a solo or small firm setting rather than a very well-compensated apprenticeship. I guest lecture several times a year to law classes on law practice management and the University of Tulsa had me speak this year on the future of law practice to a mandatory program for 2L's.

Tech Toys for the Holidays --and Holiday Gift Ideas for Lawyers

It is the holiday season, which means it is time for the annual Tech Toys for the Holidays edition of the Digital Edge podcast. Sharon Nelson and I have searched far and wide for some fun and interesting technology toys for the lawyer or lawyer's spouse. We hope you enjoy the 2012 edition.

Our friend and colleague Reid Trautz has also just posted his 8th Annual Holiday Gift Guide for Lawyers on his blog. He does not limit himself to tech items and this year he has interesting features like rock star wannabe shirts and chocolate covered bacon candy. MMMMMM!

From Twitter today I also learned of the collections of "Tech Gifts for your Significant Other" and "Tech Gifts for Babies and Toddlers" from techlicious.com.

For those who are looking for a more traditional gift for the lawyer in their life, maybe the kind of gift that doesn't plug in and has pages that turn, ABA Publishing has a very interesting collection of books that would make fine gifts for lawyers. Included among these is The Little Book of Cowboy Law.

So saddle up and round up some of these gift ideas, folks.