What is the most meaningful point of value that lawyers and other legal professionals are able to bring to our clients?

In What do Lawyers Sell?, Law 21’s Jordan Furlong addresses this crucial question from a  client’s point of view, and really hits it out of the park.

I’ll let Jordan do the talking from here:

Almost every client, when he first contacts a lawyer, is legitimately anxious about something important. He’s worried, he’s not sleeping well, his emotional well-being is compromised. ”Peace of mind” is what that client gets in that blessed moment when he can say

When it comes to Google Reader, the world is pretty much divided into two camps.

There are the power-users, for whom this soon-to-be-expired RSS service has long been an indispensable lifeline to the news of the day. And then there is the rest of the world, known primarily (in this regard) for uttering bewildered phrases like “what’s Google Reader?”

I suspect that a disproportionately high percentage of SlawTips readers, being so unusually sophisticated, informed, curious (and unabashedly good looking), will fall into the first camp – legal-information junkies who can’t imagine the world after the Black Monday ahead when …

Prism, the National Security Electronic Surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) has caught a great deal of press lately.  This surveillance program has raised questions as to how individuals can protect their data from being snooped upon.  These revelations have led to discussions on ways that allow people to use encryption for protection.

I have been advising lawyers to use encryption technology for some time. When contacted by a lawyer who has had a laptop stolen from a car or elsewhere my first question to them is:  “Did you have the laptop …

As summer arrives, so does a new articling season throughout the nation.

The future of articling has been subject of much debate over the last year.  With the dust now settled on those deliberations,  Canada`s law offices will, over the next few months,  begin to welcome their new crops of eager and talented students-at-law.

For many students, it will be the best of worlds and the worst of worlds. And since articling rarely comes with a user manual, here are a few SlawTips for Students-at-Law on succeeding and navigating through the many challenges ahead in your new articling gigs:

1. There

There are at least two types of realization that comes to play in the financial management of a law firm. In this context we are speaking of Billing Realization and Collection Realization.  Both of these represent potential ‘leaks’ in the financial boat of the firm if the firm is not properly attentive to these numbers.

Billing realization is the percentage of recorded lawyer or paralegal time that actually ends up on the bill sent to the client. For example, if $1,000 worth of time is recorded on the time sheet, but is whittled down and billed out for $900, the …

Today’s practice tip is get ready for change, because sometime soon, eCourts may be arriving in Canada.

It may seem like equal parts pipe dream and unscheduled inevitability, but in the context of an acknowledged access to justice crisis in Canada, the call for technological modernization of our nation`s courts seems to be approaching critical mass.

What will this brave new future look like? How can we ready our practices?

The recent Report of the Court Processes Simplification Working Group, delivered by the National Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, articulates a …

Sooner or later all of us will be facing a big decision.

Most of us put off making that big decision for a number of reasons…we fear making the wrong decision, we feel we don’t (yet) have enough information, we fear that we may be making the decision for the wrong reasons or we fear offending the feelings of those that are near to us by our choice (that may conflict with their views of what you should do).

Having done considerable research into this area just recently – in reading many papers, blogs and advice sites (and compared their …

Have you ever been at court or a critical meeting and wished you had a document with you that was still tucked away at your office?

Here’s a tip that will ensure you always have every document in your client file handy, wherever you are.  Copy your entire client folder to Dropbox (or Google Drive) the day before any court appearance or other major event.  Your client folder will then be available to you remotely, via the Cloud, if you need to check any documents that you left behind.

Dropbox and Google Drive are free online services that allow …

All of us have to manage our time and our deadlines.  At this point in my career, I think I have tried out a fair number of the alternatives:  a DayTimer paper calendar, a paper notebook, Microsoft Outlook as well as other various appointment programs etc etc etc.. I think my all-time favourite was a very good personal information program entitled EccoPro (which was unfortunately dropped by the developer but I now see it has been kept alive by a strong user group at http://www.compusol.org/ecco/).

So the search went on.  That was, until I found Wunderlist.

An …

With tax season either just behind us (or just ahead, depending on your filing date), it’s an ideal time of year to review all things accounting and financial at your firm.

What’s your assessment – are your bookkeeping and accounting systems working for you and your practice?  Could some basic financial planning make a difference in the year ahead?

With tax-time 2014 – and the regulatory and financial well-being of our practices – in mind, here are a few questions we could benefit from pondering (and acting upon):

• Are your firm’s financial records Law Society-compliant and up-to-date? Are there any