A Thank You File helps you remember what you have done for people when the winds of life threaten to blow out our own light - and help rekindle that spark within us.

Today’s tip is about budgets. For many law firms, fall is budget season. Why not think about budgeting for individual research projects?

Things you can consider:
– what format do you need downloaded cases and materials in? Free and fee sources offer different outputs so do your gathering once.
– how much research time so you have to het an answer? If you only have an hour, spend it (on commentary) wisely.
– have you (or someone you work with) answered this question? Updating work product you have makes for a fast and inexpensive research budget

Happy planning!…

Ever seen someone get up to do a PowerPoint with no clue about how to advance (or reverse) the slides. Ouch!!! Here are four neat tricks for navigating through your PowerPoint slides.

First, remember to use the space bar to advance to the next slide – one tap on the space bar will jump you one slide ahead. Of course, you can use PageDown or the right or down cursor keys to do the same thing, but the space bar is a much larger and easier to hit target if you are nervous or your hands are shaking.

And please …

Create feedback loops for your practice. Without feedback loops on your law firm activity, you will not have any real data to use in determining if you are in fact progressing towards your goals.

The Privy Council Office, among many other responsibilities, prepares Orders-in-Council and other statutory instruments to give effect to Government decisions.

The PCO website is the first place to look for proclamation dates of federal legislation – proclamations are published in Canada Gazette Part II, but the Gazette publication is sometimes far later than the Order in Council that brings a federal Act in to force.  The PCO maintains the .

For example, on October 6, the PCO published Privy Council Order Number: 2011-1164. this is the instrument that says:

Therefore, His Excellency the Governor General in

…

As of yesterday, Canadians can use Google’s Map Maker to correct and add details to places in Canada that appear on Google Maps. You can add roads, hiking paths, buildings, businesses and just about any other detail or point of interest that only a local person would know.

Map Maker brings the Wikipedia model the world of online mapping and proves once again that there is order in chaos. People in 188 other countries and regions around the world have had a chance to use Map Maker and the results are amazing. Changes are reviewed by Google staff or other …

By continually meeting your client's expectations and fulfilling the plans that you set together for their file, as well as gradually implementing your overall plans for the firm, you will be taking discrete steps that will take you to your goals.

I am the kind of law librarian who likes to read legislation.  I know, it is weird.  It is particularly nice to have frequently needed legislation sources in my pocket.  I have posted before about the keeping your rules of court handy on your eReader.  Today’s Tip includes steps for putting statutes on your mobile device.

John Papadoupoulos wrote about the Canadian Law app that is available through Apple’s App Store. This app sounds neat, and it might work very well for you. I prefer law from the source and thought it would be good to outline the alternative for …

Sometimes data just demand to be presented in the form of a table. Besides, there’s something pleasing about lining things up this way and that way; it seems to make whatever is in the table cells clearer and your sense of control firmer.

While creating tables in Word isn’t all that hard, it does require going up to the menu and fishing around for the right buttons to push. If all you want is a series of compartments — cells — for confining a set of thoughts in a single row, you can whip up a table right from the …

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it” according to Dwight Eisenhower.

A leader rarely exists in a vacuum. Leaders have to interact with those whom they wish to influence in order to achieve results.  That involves effectively communicating with those with whom you wish to interact.

There are so many aspects of the practice of law that are dependent on effective communication that it is difficult to know where to start.  Accordingly, perhaps the most important quality of communication is listening.  Lawyers often assume that in …