At one time or another, most of you will have plugged your smartphone or cell phone into computer to charge it. And on occasion, many of you may have charged a camera, GPS or other device on your computer. Using a computer or laptop for charging these devices is especially helpful in a pinch – most often when you forgot your charger at home and have a dead device.

I’m also sure that those of you that own an iPad or other larger tablet will have tried to charge it on your computer only to be frustrated by the “Not …

By the time I have money to burn, my fire will have burnt out.  ~Author Unknown

There is much talk today about lawyers moving to alternative billing. We happen to be in favour of trying to bring the practice of law back to its roots in terms of delivering value to clients (ie results-based billing) rather than just time spent on the file (input-based billing). But does that mean that you as a lawyer can give up tracking your time? To those who say yes, we respectfully disagree. While you may not bill by the hour, tracking your time does …

Today’s Tip”: Look far afield.

When looking for articles from a medical journal I was reminded about the excellent service offered by the National Library of Australia. Their coordinates are:

Document Supply Service
National Library of Australia
Canberra ACT 2600
Enquiry Hotline: 1800 235 627
http://www.nla.gov.au/document-supply-services/contact

A recent fee for service item was sent to me with unbelieveably excellent turn around time which saved a one hour trip to the off site storage facility of my local University library.  Their catalogue linked web request form and credit card payment process is well thought out and very efficient. Weighed against my …

You may have noticed that the pictures on your digital camera or smartphone are always stored in a folder named DCIM. Ever wondered why? Here is the answer:

At some point in the distant past, the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) created a standard defining where and how digital images would be stored on digital media used in cameras. This standard gives direction to camera manufacturers on the directory structure, file naming method, character set, file format, and metadata format for the storage of digital images on media used in cameras.

Having such a standard means that …

A lawyer's trust account often poses a lawyer’s greatest risk for ethics trouble. Yet it seems that one of the tasks lawyers quickly delegate is that of properly maintaining client trust accounts.

Most search engines have the capacity for searching a phrase: internet engines, ebook search tools, services like Westlaw Canada, LexisNexis Quicklaw, Maritime Law Books National Reporter System, CCH Online, and legal information institutes etc.

Today’s Tip: use the phrase search.

It is much more efficient for a first database (and I use this term very broadly) look to use a narrow search and then expand to if you need to “catch everything”.

Test this out by looking at results for:

constructive trust

and then do it again for

“constructive trust”

Happy New Year.…

You can do lots of interesting things when you give social media tools permission to connect with each other and with other third-party apps. But beware, in doing this you also giving up your privacy.

I think it is safe to say that many of you don’t put much thought into clicking “Yes” when those little permission pop-up messages appear on your screens during an app installation (usually at the end when the app is already installed or starting up for the fist time). And further, I’m sure most of you don’t fully realize how many permissions you have granted …

Although moving to a different accounting package may be a troublesome undertaking, remaining with one that doesn’t help you run your business will be more expensive and troublesome in the longer run.

Some of you were lucky enough to have Santa leave a new computer or laptop under your Christmas tree. That’s great news. Now for the bad news: Unfortunately, most new computers come preloaded with a tons of junk software you don’t really want or need. These can be trial versions of various programs, including mainstream ones like Microsoft Office Online, one of the popular security suites, toolbars, utilities, games and other programs you have never heard of (and will probably never use).

Nice to have a chance to try some of these programs out, but in the long run you …

Instead, we advocate using historical realization rates against billable time to get a better picture of how each lawyer - and the firm in general - is doing from a financial perspective.