Great Free Trust Accounting and Legal Ethics Information from Minnesota

Setting up a lawyer's trust accounting procedures in Quickbooks is certainly doable. But if you are not an accounting whiz, you might be worried you missed something. There are other tools like GnuCash (free) or Microsoft Office Accounting 2006 or 2007. Earler this year, the Minnesota Bar Association announced the release of its Trust Accounting Guides that have previously only been available to Minnesota Bar lawyers. In the spirit of public service, all lawyers can now benefit from their step-by-step instructions contained in:

• Keeping Client Trust Accounts with GnuCash 2.2.4;
• Keeping Records for Client Trust Accounts Using Microsoft Office Accounting 2006 or 2007;
• Using QuickBooks 6.0 for Lawyers’ Trust Accounting;
• Trust Accounting with QuickBooks 2005 Professional;
• Keeping Clients’ Trust Accounts with QuickBooks 2010 Professional

This blog post from the MSBA Practice Blog contains all of the details and a link to the download site. You do have to furnish an e-mail address so you can be notified of updates or changes. This is truly a great public service. So thanks to the MSBA!!

But that is not all! As noted in the blog post linked above, they are also giving away Minnesota Legal Ethics, a 400 page ebook treatise by William J. Wernz. You read correctly. They are giving it away for free for you to download. So let's all show the Minnesota State Bar Association our thanks by taking them up on their offer to download these great free resources.

Using Checklists in your Law Practice

Using Checklists in your Law Practice is the title of my Lawyers USA column that was just posted to the Web. I'm sure everyone reading this uses checklists in many different ways. But I hope my column on this very important topic will give you some new ideas. One idea that I recommend to every single lawyer is to get a copy of The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande and read it! The book is not very expensive and may be the book that shows you the way to a more successful practice. You can also "check out" his online checklist for checklists to help evaluate your personal checklists.



Supercharge Your Law Practice

During my almost fourteen years with the Oklahoma Bar Association as the practice management advisor, I have planned or helped to plan quite a few CLE programs, including our OBA Solo and Small Firm Conference. (This year's Solo & Small Firm Conference will be held June 9-11, 2011.)  But today I want to direct your attention to what I think is an extremely important OBA CLE program this week with lots of information about your future.

Supercharge Your Law Practice will be held this week- on May 18, 2011 at the Oklahoma Bar Center and May 19, 2011 at the Renaissance Hotel in Tulsa. The May 18^th program will also feature a live webcast. The live webcast will be a bit more expensive, but all of your staff can sit in and watch it with you.

There is a lot of change ahead for lawyers who want to be successful. It is not just about technology or even hard work. One of our “Supercharge” speakers, Tim Green, gave me this interesting quote from "Making It All Work," a sequel to "Getting Things Done" by David Allen:

            "[S]tudies have proven that the vast majority of all performance improvement is systemic. Additional motivation and intelligence make only a negligible difference in the long run."

Given that observation, we are going to spend some time talking about designing efficient law office systems. We’re going to talk about future trends impacting the legal profession. Some of these trends are quite scary. You don’t have to take my word for it. Read this article from this month’s The Economist- A less gilded future: The legal business has undergone not only recession but also structural change. Ever-growing profits are no longer guaranteed. Nor, for some firms, is survival.

We are going to discuss digital law practice and digital client files. We’re going to demonstrate some tools to use for document assembly in the law office. Law firms need to incorporate document assembly tools to be effective, but that impacts billing and other business matters. I will demonstrate a document assembly tool that a solo practitioner with no staff support and no technology skill can use to automate his or her own forms. This is particularly significant to estate planners. In fact the demo documents in this document assembly program are estate planning documents.

Here is the link for more information and to register for Supercharge Your Law Practice. I hope to see you there, or at least for you to see us via the Internet.

If you cannot make the scheduled dates, the program will be archived for future viewing later. But why wait? Summer is a good time to make some changes.

Deep Thoughts on the Future of Law Practice

There was a great symposium in recent days on the future of law practice. Didn't you get your invitation? Well, that is because it just happened online without apparent advance planning or coordination.  While I was attending my son's high school basketball banquet last night, Jordan Furlong was writing the blog post I intended to write about this. He published his post The Stratified Legal Market and its Implications this morning. While I could feel "scooped," I primarily feel like Jordan saved me an hour or so and probably created a finer product. Here's his lead:

"An extraordinary conversation has emerged among multiple authors in the blawgosphere over the past few days. It revolves around a pressing question: in light of the huge changes in the marketplace, what will become of law firms? ... No fewer than seven articles by six writers have explored this subject so far, and I recommend you take 10-15 minutes and go read these pieces."

Please take the time to read Jordan's post. My criticism is that Jordan must be a speed reader if he thinks anyone can find, read and digest all of those fine posts in 10-15 minutes.

Well, actually, I have another criticism  of Jordan. He failed to note that this week also saw the release of the Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology podcast 41st Edition where Sharon Nelson and Jim Calloway "discuss a number of trends that impact the future of the legal profession. They outline several challenges and then give strategies and tips for dealing with these challenges. As Yogi Berra once said, 'The future ain't what it used to be.' A resource list is included in the show notes." The podcast and show notes home page is here.  (Note: Those of you who usually get the podcast on iTunes may not be able to due to the aftermath of the launch of the new ABA website. So visit the link instead.)

Of course, this was recorded before any of the articles noted above were posted. It is very interesting how many people are thinking similar things at about the same time.

I have put together an Oklahoma Bar CLE on this topic that many of you may find of interest. It is called Supercharge Your Law Practice and will be held May 18, 2011 in Oklahoma City and May 19th in Tulsa. But everyone reading this post is invited to attend via the live webcast on May 18. Put it on your calendar now. You can always register for a webcast at the last minute. (Although you should just register now. We know what happens to those open days on a lawyer's calendar.)  Webcast info.

I have been thinking about this program for a long time and then I met a solo practitioner from  Guthrie, Oklahoma, Tim Green, who has given me some great insight into designing law office production systems. I am so glad Tim has offered to share his knowledge with all of you. We're going to go in depth on systems, methods and tools.

So, read the articles noted about, listen to the podcast and enroll in our OBA CLE. Don't let the future sneak up on your practice and your livelihood.

Reviewing 2010 Should Make Lawyers Think About the Future

While doing my annual review of the year in law office management and technology, my focus kept returning to the numerous predictions of challenging change ahead for lawyers. Some of these trends are already apparent and others are coming into focus. For my column in the December 2010 Oklahoma Bar Journal, I decided to discuss some of these trends and provide some resources to lawyers as they contemplate the future. I hope you appreciate my column titled Reviewing 2010 Should Make Lawyers Think About the Future. Download Calloway Reviewing 2010 and the Future

Secure Passwords- You are the weakest link

This month's Law Practice magazine brings an interesting feature from Sharon Nelson and John Simek titled Creating Secure Passwords: The Rules Have Changes (Again). They cite some researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology who put together some fast CPU's with clusters of graphics cards to crack eight-character passwords in less than two hours. So that makes it pretty clear that eight-character passwords need to be "upgraded." The researchers suggest a 12 character password. According to their theory, an 11 digit password might be cracked within 180 years while a 12 digit password would take 17,134 years. What a difference a digit makes!

You might think either combination would be fine as you do not plan to live 180 years anyway, but Moore's law tells us that computing power will continue to increase. They cover some good tips on creating strong passwords and highlight a couple of products that are useful. As we all know, stronger passwords are much harder to remember. In fact, if you want a laugh, go to this Microsoft resource on how to create a password you can remember. They have a nice little table with an example. While their points are valid, the example they end up with at the end of the table is impossible for most of us to remember.

There are several things people do that could compromise their passwords without the need for a high speed CPU with clusters of graphics cards. Ever leave your mobile phone somewhere? Ever forget a password and have to recover it? Now put those two thoughts together. If you leave your phone somewhere and your receive e-mail on your phone, someone at the friend's house where you left it could do a few password recovery routines and get your passwords. Then they could delete the e-mails and you'd never know--at least until you got your bank statement or information about your other valuable online accounts. So an important rule on protecting your passwords is to put a security code on your mobile phone. The same logic applies to always hitting the Windows key and letter L to lock you computer when you leave your office. It is certainly unlikely that someone will sneak into your office. but not impossible. And if they see you going to lunch and they go in and close the door, they have a nice window of opportunity.

There are other issues with security of your e-mail account. Maybe you don't set up to get e-mail on your iPad if you let all of the teenagers play with it when you have it at home. Or maybe you set up an a-mail account just for password recoveries. Standard operating procedure is that IT Departments often force you to change your password every 60 days or so. I understand the logic, but doesn't that make it more likely that employees will write down their passwords and keep the paper somewhere in their desk? Security guru Bruce Schneier acknowledges that most people write them down and says if you do, it is probably better to keep them in your wallet. This makes sense to me as long as long as you do not put the service or account name next to the password. It won't be near your desk where the password could be used to log into the network. And, most importantly, if you lose your wallet and a bad guy finds it, he'll be too busy with your credit cards to worry about cryptic writing on scraps of paper.

Lots of banks and other important online services only require an eight character password. But they often have another line of protection. A few bad logins and you get locked out of the system, for a while at first, but then permanently until you contact the institution. They could be annoying, but not as annoying as your funds all being transferred out of your stock brokerage account.

This is not to say that that I disagree with Sharon, John or the researchers they cited. I think 12 characters is the new standard. Just remember that you and your habits are a weaker link than whether  you have 10 or 12 character passwords. For many of us, the habit during the holiday season may be spending the money as soon as it comes into the bank account so no bad guys can touch it. But if you haven't set a security code or PIN on that mobile phone in your pocket or purse, why not do so right now?

Is the World Wide Web Too Much Like the Wild Wild West?

Since Twitter was hacked today, it seems like a good time to post my September 2010 Oklahoma Bar Journal article "Is the World Wide Web Too Much Like the Wild Wild West?" Download Calloway Wild Wild Web in PDF format.

The article begins: "The World Wide Web sometimes seems more like the Wild Wild West these days. The digital equivalents of robbers and gunslingers seem to be hiding around every corner." I identify many of the risks and point to some solutions.

I didn't go into password security in this particular piece, but your attention is directed to this article on Lifehacker: How I'd Hack Your Weak Passwords. Some will no doubt be surprised to see their passwords in the author's top ten list.

The Ins and Outs of Metadata Mining

"The ins and outs of metadata mining" is an article published this week in the Canadian edition of Lawyers Weekly.  I was quoted in the article, along with Canadian legal technology experts like Dominic Jaar and Dan Pinnington.

September's Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology podcast was titled Metadata – What You Can't See Can Hurt You. My podcast teammate, Sharon Nelson, and I discussed metadata. Sharon, as a principal of a computer forensics firm, has practical insights on this topic. I discussed the ethical issues of metadata mining. We hope you find this podcast enjoyable and informative.

Last month I did an Oklahoma Bar CLE webinar on Legal Ethics and Metadata. The archived version of this can be purchased and viewed for MCLE ethics credit, depending on your jurisdiction's MCLE rules, of course.

The Lawyer's Weekly article notes some metadata mining techniques and contains a lot of useful information. Some lawyers remain uniformed about the significance of metadata, but with online resources like the three listed about, there's really no reason for that.

Unbundling Legal Services in the 21st Century

Unbundling legal services is a term we lawyers have attached to the idea of assisting consumers by providing, by agreement, less than the typical traditional "turn key" legal service. This might involve drafting documents for a pro se litigant to take to court themselves or giving a client a training session on how to represent themselves effectively in small claims court.

In my view, for a variety of reasons, there will be more of this type of service provided by lawyers in the future. One obvious reason is that this method can be much more afforable than the lawyer going to the courthouse, as in the above examples. Some aspects of this practice have been controversial, with opponents complaining it is unfair for a litigant to appear to be "on their own" when they have had assistance. But there are a lot of reasons why this practice will grow and not all of the reasons are economic, but that is for another blog post. To me then the question is will these services be provided by lawyers with competence, training and ethical standards or by anonymous websites or shady characters operating in gray areas with no accountability, rules or regulations? (I do recognize California and some other jurisdictions have somewhat different systems.)

Today your attention is directed to Unbundling in the 21st Century: How to Reduce Malpractice Exposure While Meeting Client Needs in the Oregon State Bar Bulletin, authored by the extremely competent Beverly Michaelis. This is an emerging issue and a good read. 

Scrubbing Metadata from PDF Files

A PDF file created from a Microsoft Word document contains less metadata than the original Word document. There is less potentially embarassing metadata, like deleted comments. For a lawyer, perhaps the scariest type of metadata would be a comment made by a client on a document that was then deleted, but might be somehow viewed by a third party using a metadata viewer tool.

But the conversion to PDF does not cleanse a document of metadata-- by design. That is an important point. Lawyers are busy people and they move quickly through many tasks. So some subtle distinctions may slip by like while a deleted comment may not transfer via a PDF conversion, a comment in the document can still be transferred to the PDF even if is not visible while normally viewing the PDF file.

So lawyers do need to be concerned about metadata scrubbing in PDF documents. And I direct your attention to two recent blog posts that amount to a conversation between Dave Stromfeld, Acrobat's Senior Product Manager, and blogger Sharon Nelson on the various tools included within Adobe Acrobat to view and remove metadata.

The posts are Adobe's Advice on Purging PDF Documents of Metadata and Adobe Offers More Helpful Metadata Scrubbing Tips. There are so useful ideas here for both lawyers and law firm IT departments.