Many lawyers deal daily with a subtle form of procrastination – working on “busywork” to avoid the important but intimidating jobs that they should be working on. This behavior creates a vicious cycle that causes stress which, often, leads to additional procrastination which, in turn, leads to more stress and, you guessed it, more procrastination.

Following on last week’s theme, Today’s Tip is about judicial consideration of statutes.

CanLII: Navigate to the act that you are interested in and click the Noteup Tab.  This tool allows for a judicial consideration search for the whole act, or for a particular section.

CanLII very correctly offers this warning:

Results are highly sensitive to the manner in which citations to a specific section are formatted in the texts by their authors. Some of them are not currently recognized by CanLII.

This feature does not currently support subsections or other subdivisions of a section. Therefore you may search

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Do you dread moving to a new computer because you have reinstall all your software? If so, you need to know about Nitite. This amazing free service automatically downloads and installs more than 90 popular no-fee apps. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, Skype, Google Talk, iTunes, Hulu, Spotify, QuickTime, Flash, Java, Adobe Reader, Dropbox, Evernote, Mozy, Google Earth to name a few. Am betting most of these apps are on your computer.

Ninite fully automates the installers to run offscreen. No Clicking Next, Next, Next… It also automatically says “No” to toolbars and other junk. The Ninite installer always installs …

In order to keep being strategic and focused, you need to keep your skill set current and sharp.  Take time to not only stay current on your area of the law but also in the skills necessary for the effective running of your practice.

Today’s Tip idea comes from Corey McDonald, Paralegal with Justice Canada in Edmonton.

Cory mentioned yesterday that it would be helpful to know the different steps for doing the same task in LexisNexis Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada and CanLII.  I chose to write about Noting Up. Here are the steps for each system for noting up a case to see if it has been judicially considered

CanLII – click on the “search decisions citing this decision” link.

LexisNexis Quicklaw – click on the citator symbol or the “noteup with QuickCITE” link at the top of the decision or go directly …

Collecting a network of contacts is the very essence of LI. Here are some tips for building a good collection of LI contacts.

Do consider the quality, not the quantity, of your LI contacts: We all want to be popular but ultimately, the quality of your contacts is more important than the quantity. While a high number of LI contacts may look impressive at first, potential clients will dig deeper and judge you by the details in your profile and the quality of the people in your network.

Do make it easy for people to connect with you: LI allows …

“Life is a series of interruptions interrupted by interruptions” is a quote that we had always attributed to John Lennon, but that may be apocryphal.

Anyone who has ever worked in a law office knows that interruptions are the bane of a lawyer’s existence. We can’t tell you how to get rid of them, but we can offer some suggestions to help you control them and reduce their impact on your work.

To control interruptions, make sure that you and your secretary both take your previously scheduled work sessions as seriously as you would a client interview. If …

Plenty of innovation is happening around real-time search. Simon Fodden told us about Google adding real-time search in August 2010, Connie Crosby has blogged about the importance of real time news and information, and I have shared a tip about Social Mention.

Today’s Tip: Check out Topsy.

Topsy is marketed as a social intelligence tool.

Our fast-indexing technology ingests massive amounts of authored content from the world’s largest social networks and our live-ranking software applies influence algorithms to social data, identifying the most important content seconds after it has been posted to the social web. We produce

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Box.net recently announced that it is giving away 50 GB of free storage to anyone who uses a free Box Personal account on an iOS device. This promotion only runs for 50 days (Starting October 12).

To get your free space in the cloud, follow these steps:

1. Visit the App Store and download the Box app for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
2. Log in to your account or register for a new one directly from the app.
3. Start sharing and collaborating in the cloud.

And another bonus: Your account will have an increased file size upload limit of 100MB …

This is the essence of management - acting quickly and appropriately once you have sufficient data on hand to indicate an improvement in how you operate. Appropriately following up based on the information that you receive from your organization - transforming it to a learning organization - will lead you ...over time...to the goals that you have set for you and your firm.