Today’s Tip was inspired by John DiGilio who edits the Pinhawk Librarian News Digest. John noted a post at RIPS Law Librarian Blog titled The Art of Delegating. The post has great food for thought for anyone sharing work.

Let me start here: I hate the phrase ‘pushing work down’ – it does not reflect the benefit of sharing work with the delegate. The benefits of personally contributing to a team effort, cross training for broader niche expertise among a group and balancing workflows are well covered in the post.

Now to the tip part.  When delegating legal research …

The Universal Serial Bus or USB cable has become the universal standard for charging and connecting electronic devices. USB cable connectors come in a variety of shapes and they can fit very snugly or offer very little resistance when you plug them in. Getting the right orientation can sometimes be a challenge, and forcing them in the wrong orientation will damage the connectors. Here is a little tip to help you get it right: look for the USB trident logo, it indicates which side of the connector should face up when you are plugging things in. …

♫ Walking in Memphis
I was walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale
Walking in Memphis
But do I really feel the way I feel?  ♫

Lyrics and music by Marc Cohen.

The New York Times on Wednesday Jan 21 published an article “The Benefits of a Lunch Hour Walk” by Gretchen Reynolds.  It has important implications for those feeling stressed, out of shape and suffering from a less-than-optimal mood. She states:

“A new study finds that even gentle lunchtime strolls can perceptibly — and immediately — buoy people’s moods and ability to handle stress …

During a dinner table discussion of paper less practices recently, a friend praised the value of print legislation.  He practices tax litigation, and I was questioning him about the various eBook versions of available in that area.  He reminded me that the speed of cross referencing several sections is enhanced with the finger in book method as opposed to the click and return, especially when you have multiple sections referring to one another.

When I think about using legislation to answer a legal research question an the pattern that I used most frequently, I have to agree.

For the answer…

We’ve all been there: Waiting for an urgent email, text or call while watching the red battery warning light flash as you are running from one place to another. Dimming the screen and closing open apps will keep your device alive a bit longer, but often it won’t be enough.
In this situation, you end up looking for a place to get a quick charge– but as you are in a rush, you don’t have a lot of time to let your device charge-up. Here are two options that will allow it to charge more quickly:

1. Close all open apps

With the 10 year anniversary of Wise Law Blog rapidly approaching  this April, my thoughts have turned recently to the nuts and bolts of law blogging.

There are numerous articles online about the virtues of law blogging, and all the benefits becoming a blogger can bring to you and your firm.

These positives include increased profile, better optimization for your firm’s website, and the genuine professional advantage of being current and engaged in topics of interest to you and your clients.

There is somewhat less guidance online, however, on “how to blog.” Not surprisingly, this is a question new writers …

Lyonette Louis-Jacques posted some great strategies for finding an English translation of case law at Slaw. Today’s short legal research tip: Read Lyo’s Slaw post “How to Find Cases in English Translation, Revisited“…

Get a digital checkup.

Given this week’s news of attempts by “ransomware hackers” to extort payments from three British Colombia law firms by hijacking and blocking access to the firms’ confidential data, that will be my firm’s tech step #1 – and is my first Practice Tip – of the year.

Get a digital checkup.

Like it or not, law firms are increasingly vulnerable to malicious actors online; we are also perpetually vulnerable to the consequences of our own neglect within.

One solution to these very real threats is to institute an Annual Digital Checkup for your firm.

Have a …

There is some rumbling from Alberta this week. The Alberta Courts are no longer publishing decisions on their website, but rather redirecting visitors to CanLII.  The rumbling comes from the seeming abruptness of this move, and the worry over whether decisions will be available as quickly for browsing on CanLII as they were on the Courts website – not about the change itself.

As a process improvement professional, I am the last person who would make a negative comment about change.  How a change project is executed is another matter.

Having CanLII as the primary public source for  Alberta …

Anyone who has spent a lot of time using Excel will occasionally make and error when entering data or a formula. Thankfully, Excel is programmed to tell you that you made a mistake, and it will even give you an error message that will suggest what the problem is. These are the error messages that Excel will give you, and an explanation of what they mean:

• ###### = value is too long to display (make the column wider to fix this)
• #VALUE = the wrong type of argument or operand has been used
• #DIV/0! = a formula divides by 0