Google’s Gmail has made news a few times in the past couple of years by “losing” users email – often years worth. While these outages have primarily affected the free Gmail, even access to the paid Google Apps has occasionally been lost. For lawyers who are using the free Gmail as their primary email communication with clients, one must ask “how are you backing that up?”

With Gmail, there are a number of options. You can run Google Gears and maintain a local copy of Gmail. This is a pretty useful option, letting you choose which folders you want to …

Take a hard look at your compensation system and see if it is aligned with your business goals - both short-term and long-term. Ensure that your future is being secured every day by rewarding the types of activities that will ensure progress towards long-term goals - that are in the best interests of the firm as a whole.

Today’s Tip is an expansion on my post to Slaw.ca yesterday. In Tip language, my post would have said “do not panic if a commercial legal research site is down, there are other ways to find decisions.”

Anyone who has ever talked to me about case law research has (been forced to) listen while I wax poetic (or pedantic) about my true belief that the best and fastest way to retrieve the most usable copy of a judicial decision is by using an electronic research source. We are blessed in Canada to have many roads to Rome with commercial …

How often do you find yourself giving new clients directions to your office? Google Maps offers a great tool for creating a map that will show clients the location of your office. Go to maps.google.com and type your office address into the search box. Click on the link icon (look for an icon with 3 chain links at the top right corner of your screen). This will open a pop-up that will give you a URL link you can use to access that same map. Send that link to a new client via email and they can see the map. …

Your Key Statistics Report is the nerve-center of your cash-flow analysis. This report looks directly at the factors affecting cash flow, both in the short-term and in the slightly longer term.

Today’s Tip: Learn what you have access to.
This pithy statement could be read a couple of different ways in the context of legal research.

One meaning is to remember to search your library catalog – in your firm, at your local courthouse or law society library, at your nearest public library, at your local law school. Even law librarians who help fill the shelves should remember to look in the catalog. Favorite sources are great, but other sources should not be overlooked. Searching a library catalog will remind you that there are additional sources to refer to.

Another meaning …

The short opinion survey is one of the easiest, cheapest, and least used client development tools available to the law firm.

In a 1995 Harvard Business Review article entitled “Why Satisfied Clients Defect,” the authors pointed out the important distinction between satisfied clients and completely satisfied clients.  In markets where competition was intense, they noted a tremendous difference between the loyalty of satisfied and completely satisfied customers.  For instance, in the auto industry they found that even a slight drop from complete satisfaction resulted in an enormous drop in customer loyalty.

This phenomenon is not limited to manufactured products.  It …

Today’s tip involves following up.

When your research is initially prepared, you will likely find new items, or pending legislation. These future things may change the landscape that your initial research analysis paints.
Today’s simple tip is to diarize. Everything.

I use my Outlook calendar to diarize either recurring daily or weekly checks for things (like expected orders in council; court of appeal decisions, the expected publication date or comment deadline for draft regulations, etc.) It is very simple to create a calendar appointment that will popup a message to check for something on a future day. I use calendar …

If you’re absolutely sure that you want to delete a file(s) permanently from your hard drive (i.e., bypassing the Windows Recycle Bin – noting that deleted files aren’t really deleted…see below**), select the file(s), then hold down the Shift key while you press Delete. You will get a File Delete Confirm dialog box asking you to confirm your intent to delete the file “permanently”, answer yes to do so. The deleted file will not be in the Recycle Bin.

My personal preference and practice is to “permanently” delete everything, unless I think I might want it back, in which case …

Most firms spend far too many hours and kill way too many trees producing reports which are rarely reviewed, month after month, for their lawyers . The reality is that, in order to successfully manage the financial health of the firm, you only need to get lawyers to look at exceptions to the norm, not the norm itself.

For example, for management purposes, while you look at all the firm’s receivables each month, the reports that you prepare for the lawyers do not need this level of detail. You only need to show the ones which are over a certain …