It is an unfortunate fact of life that the most trusted of employees could be stealing money from their employer.

This is the second of two posts dealing with the management side of taking your office paperless. The first post from last week dealt with the first 5 things to consider from a management perspective.  This post looks at the remaining 5 things to be part of your paperless plan.

Here are the next 5 things to consider:

1. Research: Do a thorough investigation of the available tools to help you (document management systems, electronic faxing, scanners, data backup systems, security systems, document conversion companies, process consultants, storage formats, storage devices, remote access devices etc…). Knowledgeable consultants can help you out

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Accordingly this post is the first of two based on that presentation dealing with the management side of taking your office paperless.

Real estate costs can be one of a law firm’s highest expenses. There’s no reason to pay rent to house hundreds of case files, especially closed files, that could be much more inexpensively stored off site or converted to electronic format. As soon as possible, set aside some time to determine which files can be destroyed, which can be moved off-site for less expensive storage or digitized, and then, if you haven’t already done so, implement a system to begin creating a paperless file for each new case as you open it. You might even be able to rent out …

Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”

The world’s premier legal Technology conference takes place this Thursday-Sat, March 29-31, 2012 in Chicago. www.techshow.com has the complete schedule, speakers and more. Can’t make it this year? No worries. You can be there virtually by following the Twitter stream from the conference. #ABATECHSHOW is the hash tag to follow in Tweetdeck or similar Twitter software. In fact, many attendees follow the stream while at Techshow (both of the authors do!).

Why would you do so? The twitter …

The best time to prepare a to-do list for your day is 15 minutes before you go home the night before.

Why 15 minutes before?  Because it may never happen if you leave it as the last thing to do before you go home.  By the time you do just a few last minute jobs wishfully thinking “this won’t take me long” it starts to get late.  Then you are rushing out the door.  The list might not get done.

15 minutes before makes it more likely that you actually do it and give it the time it deserves.  It …

Poor delegations skills are a real time-waster, and poor delegation is usually brought on by the attitude “If you want something done right you have to do it yourself.” This is an attitude that lawyers seem to have in over-abundance.

As the author and psychology professor Dr. Amiram Elwork explains in Stress Management for Lawyers, poor delegation skills can really hinder a lawyer’s career advancement and create great stress, too. If you cannot effectively delegate work, you will never be able to maximize your achievement through the efforts of other people., limiting your ability to leverage your own talents. …

If you spend any time at all with practicing lawyers, you will invariably hear one or more complain that the practice of law would be wonderful “… if it were not for having to deal with those darn clients.”

Many lawyers view their clients as an obstacle standing between them and getting the “real work” of practicing law done. The day is busy enough without all those clients calling, coming by the office without an appointment and needing to have their hands held.

While being available to your clients when they need, or think they need, you will, of necessity, …

As Richard Ferguson, a lawyer friend of ours says on his email message:

“People may forget what you said….
People may forget what you did….
but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Despite the fact that we lawyers make our living communicating, many of us don’t take steps to optimize client communications. This is a shame, because highly effective client communications leads to both great case outcomes that satisfy the client’s legal goals and a great lawyer-client relationship that can result in higher work satisfaction and repeat business and referrals. Accordingly, here are our suggested steps to …

“It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating” was said once by Oscar Wilde.

The final tip in this series is the capstone issue in our Top 10 Financial Mistakes posts – and one that we feel is facing most firms today.

This capstone issue is how to deal with the introduction of new partners while funding the buyout of existing but aging partners. Without a succession plan that compensates aging partners over time by establishing a retirement fund, the firm might be unable to attract new partners. The reason is that prospective partners who are …