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…

Renaming a file in Windows Explorer is very easy: Just select the file with a single click and press F2. This allows you to edit the file name. When you are done, click Enter to finish.

But what happens if you want to rename multiple files? Yes you can press F2 multiple times, but there is a better way!

When you need to rename multiple files, press F2 and edit the name of the first file as you normally would. But, don’t press Enter when you are done. Instead, press Tab. This will jump you to the next file in …

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 …

There are two possible approaches to personal current awareness:

1. Develop excellent searching skills so that you can find what you need when you need it
2. Pick a fairly narrow specialty and read everything new about that that you can find

I often recommend the first approach to students or junior lawyers who haven’t decided their particular area of legal interest.  Most lawyers I know make a best attempt at the second approach once they find their practice niche, but then most lawyers I know work at mid-size or larger firms where they refer things outside their niche area to colleagues, …

“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 …

I wrote about the trouble I have with Acronyms yesterday at Slaw. Today’s Tip: Use an Acronym Dictionary!

I have a nice little book on my reference shelves called Acrobuster. It is a dictionary of Canadian English acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations.  It is available in these libraries. There are other print sources, but I like this one because it is Canadian.

There are also online Abbreviation or Acronym Dictionaries:

Abbreviations.com
Internet Slang Dictionary & Translator
Acronyms and Abbreviations from Businessballs.com
Acronyms search tab at The Free Dictionary

Do you have any favourite sources?…