19 Practical Tips & Tech Tools for Lawyers

Geri L. Dreiling — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:36:57 +0000

A three-day legal conference summed up in tweets

Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

Saturday marked the end of the Missouri Bar’s Solo and Small Firm Conference. For three days approximately 1,000 lawyers gathered for seminars addressing the latest changes in substantive areas of the law, learned ways to improve practice management and have some fun.

The attendees left loaded with information; as Kirkwood, Missouri estate planning lawyer Robert W. Miller put it: “You feel energized.”

Over the course of three days I tweeted tips and advice gleaned from the speakers. For this blog post I’ve compiled 19 tweets representing a small sample of information shared during the conference.

Use Acrobat Typewriter Tool to fill in "nonfillable" forms.
Need to send a large attachment? YouSendIt or Megaupload.
If you want to follow a site that doesn't have RSS, use Page2rss.
Avoid eye strain when trying to read websites by using Readability.
Check out the iPhone J.D. blog.
Want to avoid endless e-mails to set up meetings? MeetingWizard.com.
Why not save client money by having motion docket via video conference?
Speaker asks: Why aren't lawyers lobbying courts about antiquated time-wasting processes?
Hourly billing can operate as a disincentive for law firms to modernize.
2009 was a big year for alternative fee arrangements between Big Law and corporations.
Want to see your phone on desk top? Sparus EveryWAN.
TrueCrypt is an open-source free program to encrypt hard drive.
Need to meet with out-of-state property expert? Combine GoToMeeting, Skype and Google Earth.
YouSendIt is a good way to share docs and video, plus it provides a record of who opened it.
Freeconferencecall.com: A free tool that saved one lawyer's ski trip.
Giveawayoftheday.com: Free license to one shareware program each day.
For real estate lawyers, Google Earth is a good research tool and has been used at trial.
Mozilla Firefox is a great browser that also has fantastic add-ons.
More solo lawyers are moving to virtual practices. It cuts overhead, and more clients are embracing meetings via Skype.

Special thanks

Of course, it wasn’t all work. Special thanks to Kansas City attorney (and sailor) Donovan Dodrill for the invitation to go sailing on Friday night. He assembled a crew of lawyers and friends for an enjoyable evening on the lake.

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Missouri Solo & Small Firm Conference: Tech Tips & Trial Hints

Geri L. Dreiling — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:38:52 +0000

A brief overview of trial tips and legal technology resources from Day One of MoSASF

Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the Missouri Bar’s Solo and Small Firm Conference. In lieu of my usual Friday roundup, this week I’ll bring you some of the tips and highlights from the three-day conference.

For those unfamiliar with the MoSASF conference, it is a three-day continuing legal education program packed with information that is particularly useful for the lawyer who not only wears the hat of an attorney but is also called upon to serve as the firm’s IT expert, head of HR and accounting and marketing and public relations pro.

In short, the attorneys who attend are typically actively seeking information and ideas for running better practices and providing better service to their clients.

I asked Kathryn E. Van Voorhees, a sole practitioner in St. Louis, what she hoped to gain from the conference. A former in-house lawyer for an insurance company, Van Voorhees indicated that she was mainly focused on practice management. She was trying to determine which technical aids for lawyers made the most sense for her to invest in.

Like many solo and small firm lawyers, she wants to use software that will reduce her reliance on staff.

There’s certainly a variety of software offerings that can help make life for any small-business owner easier. The theme of technology carried over into the substantive session on personal injury I attended.

Several programs were offered simultaneously. Here’s a brief roundup of the ones I attended.

Session 1: Outlook Tips and Tricks

I really like using Outlook 2007 — I like that I can include my logo in the signature line and flag e-mails as to-do items. I went to this session, led by Kansas City attorney Zach Bickel and St. Louis lawyer Tim McCurdy, to see whether I could gather any new tips.

One of my favorites was Contact Capture, a program that you can add on to Outlook that will allow you to add information to your contacts that is contained in another document without retyping all of the information manually.

For example, Word documents — particularly pleadings — often contain other lawyers’ information, such as name, address, phone and fax numbers and e-mail address. Contact Capture will allow you to capture the information and import it into Outlook. The program is free for the first year of use. According to the website, a version for the iPhone is offered as well.

Another software program that interfaces with Outlook, Credenza, is also getting positive reviews. The feature singled out as one of the most convenient is that it tracks billable time.

Session 2: Making the Most of Your PI Case

Even in a substantive session on how to handle a personal injury case, you cannot escape the influence of technology. In this session, Kansas City lawyer Tim Dollar and St. Louis attorney David Zevan discussed case handling from intake to trial.

One of the first things an attorney should do in an accident case, especially an auto accident case, is send out a so-called spoliation of evidence letter, warning various parties not to destroy evidence. Dollar noted that most cars are now equipped with a device called an electronic control module that stores a wealth of information. If the ECM is destroyed, valuable evidence is lost.

When it comes to presenting evidence to a jury, Dollar said, the old way of putting on a case is no longer enough. “We are in a different age of jury pools,” one in which video and visual evidence is increasingly important, he explained. The costs of such evidence have fallen precipitously over the past decade.

Zevan, who is also a LMM client, discussed the impact of a recent Missouri Supreme Court ruling, in Johnson v. McCullough, that state’s lawyers must use reasonable efforts to examine the litigation history of a juror on Case.net, the Missouri court system’s public database. For small law firms with fewer associates and cases in circuits that do not make the names of potential jurors available ahead of time, obtaining the information in a reasonable, quick manner will be a challenge.

Session 3: Bootstrapping Your Practice: How to Develop Your Business Plan and Leverage Free, Low-Fee and Mobile Tools to Start a 21st-Century Practice

In this session, Washington D.C. lawyer Carolyn Elefant outlined the steps lawyers should consider once they decide to start their own practices. Elefant, who also publishes a blog, MyShingle.com, aimed at solo and small firm lawyers, discussed the need for a business plan to address the first 10 days, first 10 weeks and first 10 years of the practice.

Ann Littell Mills, a Springfield lawyer, uses free antivirus and antispyware security software AVG, a nice alternative to the more expensive offerings. She also recommends Vistaprint for business cards.

St. Louis attorney Jim Wieczorek cited the usefulness of LogMeIn, which allows him to remotely access his work computer from home, saving him the drive time and hassle of a commute.

Session 4: Using Technology to Enhance Client Communications

Thousands of smart phones are accidentally left in taxis every year. If you’ve got confidential client information on your phone, you should have password protection, says Catherine Sanders Reach, director of the American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center.

Sanders Reach discussed the use of encryption for confidential e-mails and named several services, including PGP Desktop Software and Hushmail. Hushmail is a Web-based free e-mail service. PGP offers a free 30-day trial.

Looking for free web conferencing and online meetings? Mikogo allows as many as 10 participants to get together, share a computer screen and conduct an audio conference.

More to Come

This is just a small sampling of the information I gleaned from the Thursday conference. Look for me again on Twitter tomorrow (@legalmediamtrs); I’ll be tweeting tips from the conference, using the hashtag #MoSASF. You can also follow @MoBarCLE and @blewski on Twitter for conference information.

I’ll also check out the exhibitors’ hall in greater depth and let you know which vendor has the best prizes, goodies and giveaways.