The world of marketing remains a bit of a mystery for many legal professionals.  We know enough about it that many of us become do-it-ourselfers for our websites, blogs and even our branding.

Nonetheless, there is much we can learn from true marketing professionals.

To that end, I have the pleasure today of introducing the first in a series of videos on Marketing for Lawyers and Legal Professionals I’ve done with Sandra Bekhor of Bekhor Management and Toronto Marketing Blog. Sandra’s firm provides marketing and practice management services nationwide to lawyers and other professional practitioners.

In this installment, Sandra …

I am having a wonderful time in Maui this week with my family.  Today’s Tip is inspired by my Aunt Betty who reminded me that it is important that OTHER PEOPLE know what you are asking for.

You may know that the Hawaiian language uses fewer letters than English.  I confess to being completely baffled by local pronunciation.  Betty, on the other hand has visited this beautiful part of the world several times, and has mastered the phonetic discrepancies that twist my tongue.

This is the root of it:

a is always ahhhh
e is the long A
i  is …

♫  Look at that sky, life’s begun
Nights are warm and the days are young
Come get up my baby

Golden years, gold, whop whop whop
Golden years, gold, whop whop whop…♫

Lyrics, Music and recorded by David Bowie.

So many  articles on retirement all deal with the issue of finances and how to plan so you are not caught off guard on the money side.  Since that aspect has been explored in detail, this article is going to take us in a totally different direction. As lawyers, we get so much of our personal identity from simply being …

You spend good time and brain power creating a beautiful research work product. Then what happens?

Today’s Tip: think about where your words go.

Today’s Tip is brought to you by the office of my Outlook Junk Folder in conjunction with my Spam filter and my email rules. These offices are not hungry for YOUR content. With the extra efforts being made by organizations to comply with CASL, items are being scooped into spam quarantines that are not really spam.

This legal research tip is intended for readers as well as writers. Best of luck.…

It crept up on us slowly, but Skype has become an  indispensable technology in the modern law firm’s toolbox.

A bit of historical context will set the stage:

Launched in 2003, Skype was one of the first mass market freely available forms of internet video conferencing. It took advantage of early developments in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to allow users to communicate with each other using their microphones and webcams. Previously video conferencing had been prohibitively expensive for the general public and was largely only used by companies. The burgeoning popularity of broadband over the last few years

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