Today’s Tip: wear a hat. This tip could also be, change your “hat” if you need to.

I visited he lovely city of Yellowknife today. It was brisk and breezy, but beautiful as always. As I was walking downtown with very chilly ears, it occurred to me that I hadn’t planned very well. I knew I would be walking about, I knew it would be cold, but I didn’t bring a hat.

To make (the inevitable) analogy to legal research: I failed to look in a textbook.

Wear a hat.…

Do you have a burning desire to catch a sunrise or sunset? Google can help. If you type “sunrise” or “sunset” followed by the name a city (don’t type the quotes), Google will give you the time of the next sunrise or sunset in that city and how many hours and minutes until it arrives.

What will Google think of next?…

Everyone hates paying bar dues – especially lawyers who are members of a mandatory bar and have no choice about it.  But as long as you have to pay, why not take a little time to investigate what you get in return?

Your law society or bar association can be a great source of information and assistance for the improvement of your practice as well as a bulk-buying group that negotiates member benefit discounts.  Many bar associations offer ethics and practice management advice as well as discounts on insurance, office equipment, wireless phone service, office products, cloud-based storage and backup, …

A tweet by Dan Bowsher @dan_bowsher caught my eye yesterday:
After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses – http://pri.gg/xAKiqE

Dan has some interesting tweets about Encyclopedia Britannica, though there is another twitter conversation you might find interesting:

Richard Cook‏ @Richhjc13
@stevemjones who needs britannica when u have wiki

Steve Jones‏ @stevemjones
@Richhjc13 Yeah but I bet encyclopaedia Britannia never made mistakes with whether people are alive or dead!! #ripbritannica

Today’s Tip: Use authoritative sources.

Encyclopaedia Britannica remains.…

On a complex PowerPoint slide, you will often can have several objects (e.g. clipart, pictures, textboxes) carefully placed so they appear just where you want them. They could be next to each other, overlapping, partially overlapping etc.

If you want to change the location of several objects, moving them one at a time is a pain because it takes multiple moves to move them individually and all your careful spacing is lost and will have to be set-up again as you move each item.

Next time you need to move multiple objects on a PowerPoint slide, remember this handy trick …

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. …

Have you ever noticed something missing when you are searching in a service. Ever said to yourself, I have this document somewhere, why don’t they? Ever noticed a spelling error or a missing connection in a noteup record? If you were a Wikipedia editor, you would correct misinformation, right?

Today’s Tip: Be a Wikipedian, take responsibility for missing data.

By example, I sent this email to info@pco-bcp.gc.ca – the “contact us” email for the Privy Council Office.

Subject: Gap in the Orders in Council Database

Hello, when reviewing recent orders in council this morning, I noticed a significant gap in

You can change line spacing in Word by clicking on Format, selecting Paragraph, clicking on the Indents and spacing tab, and adjusting the spacing settings. Whew! That’s a lot of work. There is a better way.

Changing the line spacing in a Word document is very easy if you remember a few keyboard shortcuts:

• Pressing Ctrl+5 changes to 1.5 line spacing
• Pressing Ctrl+2 changes to double line spacing
• Pressing Ctrl+1 will give you single line spacing

If you are using Word for Mac, substitute the Command key for the Ctrl key.

Remember these keyboard shortcuts next time you need to …

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, …

I invite myself to meetings all the time, practice group meetings in particular. In our law firm we use Outlook scheduling, at least we try, to reduce the number of “is everyone free for a meeting at X time” emails and phone calls.

When you are meeting with folks outside your organization, you may want to try Doodle for the same effect. Doodle will let you propose meeting times, capture the preferred availability of people you would like to attend, and then assist with scheduling.

Check it out at http://www.doodle.com/.

Hat Tip to Annette Demers who writes for Slaw…