This is a New Year…the time to resolve to (finally) go paperless.

What are some of the benefits that can be achieved by moving to a paperless document office?

Cut Your Storage Costs

Paper takes up space.  Paper legal files take up lots of space.  Space is expensive.  Cut out the need to store paper and you  have cut your costs.  Especially if you are simply storing closed files for regulatory and insurance requirements.

Moving to creating, filing, searching and storing legal files in a digital form means cutting your costs to simply store all that information in paper form.…

This is a new year. A time to make positive resolutions to take you to your future. Part of building the bridge to your future is to outline your expected income and expenses for the next 12 months by building a Budget and then tracking your actual income and expenses against that budget.

As we head for the end of the year, your mind is probably already turning to things you’d like to change in the new year.  We think that aiming for an empty inbox each afternoon is one of the best resolutions you can make.

The holy grail of current email management is the empty inbox.  This is often referred to as Zero Inbox, RAFT (Refer, Act, File or Toss) or OHIO (Only Handle It Once).  The idea behind all these systems is that you deal with each item in your …

One thing that has changed is that today's legal rebel does recognize that the power of the Internet means that they no longer have to be alone. Courtesy of new collaborative tools, legal rebels can bring people together into virtual teams and practice in ways never before possible as a solo.

There are at least two aspects to legal technology.  The first and most obvious one is “What is the latest and greatest?”

While there is a certain group that gets very excited about legal technology, there are the managers and bean counters in firms who cringe when the ‘tech heads’ start talking; they only anticipate the costs and potential disruptions in workflow that could arise from introducing something new into the well-oiled and functioning office machine.  After all, change can be expensive and we are not talking about just the cost of the new stuff!

Accordingly, to satisfy both camps …

One of our fellow PMAs recently shared a group photo that was taken almost 15 years ago.  It prompted us to think about that meeting, and some of our former colleagues who have gone on to other employment in other industries.  One such person is Diane Ellis, a brilliant lady who once worked with the Arizona State Bar and is now a successful psychologist and counselor.  The following is a tip that she was the mastermind behind, and it’s probably even more useful now than it was when she first coined it.  We’ve spiffed it up a little to take …

In writing this tip, we are cognizant that today is American Thanksgiving and that Canadian Thanksgiving was not all that long ago.  Of the authors, one of us is American and one is Canadian. Accordingly it seemed appropriate to focus today’s tip on the act of giving thanks.

What is giving thanks?  It is also called gratitude, thankfulness, gratefulness or appreciation. It is a feeling of genuinely and positively acknowledging the acts of another.  It costs nothing but means everything.  In some cases it can never be felt or acknowledged by those whose acts you are appreciating – such as …

There are many ways to orient your practice.  Many lawyers set up their practices around their needs in terms of producing legal work. This is all quite natural since you need to be working in this environment at all times – it makes sense to set things up so you put your needs first so you are working as effectively and efficiently as possible – right?

Wrong.

Advisor after advisor states that to exceed client expectations – to have clients who truly sing your praises to others – you need to place your own needs second behind those of your …

There is much interest in taking a law firm paperless today and for good reason.  Moving to the digital or paperless practice of law offers many benefits and cost-savings in addition to being *green*.

We find that when starting to talk about going paperless, the discussion typically becomes mired in details such as: ­e-document formats (Adobe Acrobat PDF/A — the archival PDF format), the media on which the electronic documents are to be stored (locally? backed up onto a remote device? on the cloud?), scanners, remote access, security  and the like. Some firms want to discuss using  electronic storage only …

As Hurricane Sandy barrels down on the east coast and BC is still gently trembling from last week’s earthquake, we can’t help but advise you to think about what would happen if a disaster were to take place in your city, to take a look at what plans you currently have in place to cope, and to make changes if needed.

Busy law firms  seldom think about the possibility of an office fire, but the effects of a fire could devastate your law practice.  The fire doesn’t even have to start in your office suite; down the hall or one …