Google is one of the run-away success stories of the Internet. They rethought the business model for search, they drove all sorts of innovations and they have changed the way that all of us think about information.

Because they know that they can’t stay on top of the search heap without the best people and practices, they recently decided to use their data gathering and analysis capabilities to determine what makes a good boss. Now, using the information they came up with, they’ve rethought the rule book for managing people and teams. It’s no surprise that their ideas on management …

Today’s tip: Use what you have.

Knowledge is always useful, especially when it can be used more than once. This tip is a simple reminder to look first to what you (or your colleagues) have already done when you have a research question: you organization’s document management system, your binder of research memos, your personal precedents.

Yesterday I saved a client a few dollars by updating a past memo that we had written for them. Even though the context of their question was different, the information was something we already knew.…

A very short but useful tip this week. If you need to quickly resize a Window, remember that double-clicking the Titlebar of any Window (the horizontal part of a window across the top where the name of the document and applications usually appears) will toggle it between full screen size (the same as Maximize) and its former size (the same as Restore). If you want to resize a window the Titlebar is a bigger target than the caption buttons. Unfortunately this trick doesn’t work on a Mac.…

Regardless of how you say it, in order to make every day a successful one and keep your energy and enthusiasm levels high, you should spend the first few minutes of it (or – even better – a few minutes at the end of the day before) determining what your most important tasks are. Jot them down.

Today’s Tip: Check with the media.

If you’re trying to find the text of a judgment that has just been released and it is not on the relevant court’s website, check the websites of the Globe and Mail and National Post. They will quite often scan in the court judgment (assuming the case is important enough) and link to it from the relevant news story.

Globe and Mail
National Post

This tip is from Susannah Tredwell, Library Manager, Lawson Lundell LLP in Vancouver, BC. Follow her on twitter or come and see her speak at the Canadian Association of Law …

You should be very comfortable with the basics of navigating PowerPoint when you are doing a presentation. It looks rather unprofessional when someone gets up in front of an audience and has difficulties in the middle of their presentation. Here are some helpful PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts that will help you navigate through your presentation.

One of the most helpful keyboard shortcuts is using the Space Bar to advance to the next slide. Of course, you can use Page Down, however the Space Bar is a much larger target and it’s easier to hit that if you are nervous or your …

Change the sequence of tasks to get ready for a meeting well in advance to avoid being caught in the time crunch and end up being late.

Today’s Tip: research with an eye to time relevance
OR
talk about today’s dollars.

When you are reading case law with a monetary award, you might want to look at that award in today dollar values.  The Bank of Canada Inflation Calculator is a great link to put in your favourites as it can quickly give you a present value for a historical figure.

How significant is inflation? $10000 in 1969 is worth $61,354.17 today.…

Many installations of Microsoft Office have “Full menus” disabled. What does this mean? You only see limited menu choices (i.e., the ones you have used before and recently) when you click on File, Edit, View, Insert, etc.

When Full Menus is off you can’t see menu commands that you don’t use often or have never used before unless you click the two downwards pointing chevrons at the bottom of the menu – this forces Windows to show all the available commands on that menu. You can also double-click the menu to expand it.

When you expand one menu, all of …

At the beginning of every new case, give your client a roadmap that is a written chronology or frequently asked questions sheet for each particular type of matter that you handle, to guide your clients through the process.