Would you like to more quickly navigate and jump between different Facebook pages?
Or, if you want to look at it from another angle, would you like to spend less time wasting time on Facebook?
Like many other applications and websites, there are some handy keyboard shortcuts that will let you more quickly jump around the various Facebook screens. Read on to learn them.
But, before we get into these actual shortcuts, some comments on the slightly different keys that are required in the various browsers. Most of Facebook’s keyboard shortcuts correspond with the numbers, starting with 1-5, which more …

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Money often costs too much.”

It is, unfortunately, true that you have to work over $1.00 worth of time to collect $1.00.  The question is:  how much more?  How do you measure this?

One of the ways of measuring the cost of making money is to look at your realization rate. Accordingly our next cash flow report is:

#7 – Realization Rate

A lawyer’s realization rate is the percentage of actual income paid to the firm for the billable hours of each timekeeper.  For example:

Let’s look at Partner X:

• Assume Partner X bills 200

Today I came across (hat tip to my assistant Tim) an amazing post titled How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques on John Tedesco’s blog.

In that post, Tedesco relates the content from a presentation by Google research scientist Daniel Russell. This post has the most amazing collection of Google tips I have ever seen in one place.
Everyone that uses Google to search the web should take time to read and learn the tips and search techniques covered in this post. It covers all the basic syntax tricks, but also some more advanced searching techniques. …

Ahh the age-old problem of lawyers:  collecting accounts receivable.  The bane of the lawyering class. The inconvenient truth is that if you are working on the basis of an account receivable, you are most probably working for less – and in some cases far less – than your standard hourly rate.

Woody Allen once said: “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.“

So, if money is better than poverty, our next cash flow report to produce (and examine) on a monthly, if not more frequent, basis: Aged Accounts Receivables.

Your accounts receivable should be grouped …

Today’s tip is about watching what the government is doing. News releases by government bodies often contain information that is not yet posted to other sites. This was recently brought home to me by an Alberta Government news release about a future regulatory change as well as a Government of Canada news release about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Especially with regard to regulatory changes in the provinces, news releases about issues may pre-date actual legislative authority for an action.

Check out the Canada News Centre or your provincial or territorial government website’s news page. Most jurisdictions offer RSS feeds for …

Where are the money pits in your practice?  One of the biggest is called: “Unbilled Disbursements”  These disbursements represent expenditures on behalf of clients that you expect will be recovered in due course.  Of course, therein lie the assumptions: that you will be able to bill for them and you will be able to recover them in time.  But there is a quote of Ayn Rand that is appropriate here:

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

Yes you need to expend funds on files you …

I posted at Slaw about my need for pop culture references for legal research training for law students. When I tweeted about my post Sarah Glassmeyer responded with the wiki I’ve got a hit. Wow!

A wiki describing video clips, songs and print illustrations from pop culture that can be used in class to demonstrate research techniques or legal concepts

What? Why? What?
Three excellent questions, to paraphrase Buffy. When preparing for class, we’ve all occasionally found ourselves wanting to throw in a little something which illustrates that lecture’s core concept — a brief example that will stick in

Through the course of the day, you will find many smaller tasks coming to your attention. They can come from many sources – perhaps you all of a sudden remembered something you wanted or needed to do, and more often than not, someone else will ask you to do something.
You can’t suddenly drop what you are doing every time one of these tasks comes up – you would never get anything done. But you need to make sure you capture a reminder of these tasks so you can complete them.
Here is a simple way you can do this: …

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said:  “Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.”

There is an old adage that time equals money.  But unbilled time doesn’t equal money until it is billed and collected.  Accordingly, our cash flow report #4  in this series of posts is: Work In Progress:  Is your WIP increasing or decreasing?

What does your WIP report say about time that you have banked?  Is it trending larger or smaller or staying about the same?   If your WIP …

I was reading the proclamation for beginning the 1st Session of the 28th Legislature recently, which made my mind turn to run-on sentences. The Proclamation reads in part:

WHEREAS it is deemed expedient for certain causes and considerations to convene the Legislative Assembly of Our Province of Alberta for the First Session of the Twenty eighth Legislature, WE DO WILL that you and each of you, and all others in this behalf interested, on Wednesday, the 23rd day of May 2012, at the hour of 1:30 in the afternoon, at Our City of Edmonton, personally be and appear, for the