LawyerKM

This post is cross-published at iPad4Legal.

There was no doubt in my mind that there would be many, many iPads floating around the Aria Hotel and Casino at the 2010 ILTA Conference.  We saw the writing on the wall in the days and weeks before the conference when it seemed like almost every vendor offered a chance to win one of the magical devices if you stopped by their booth in the exhibit hall.

What I did not expect to see was the huge number of pre-prize iPads in the clutches of what seemed like every fourth or fifth conference-goer.  I’m sure my estimates are a little off, but suffice to say that iPads were everywhere. continue reading…

On Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 2:00 p.m., I’ll be moderating a panel called “How to Increase the Use of Knowledge Management Tools” at the 2010 International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Aria Hotel & Casino.

The panel is made up of three fantastic speakers:

• Kathleen Hogan, (@jkhogan) Practice Support Lawyer, Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP
• Steven Lastres, (@lastrst) Director of Library and Knowledge Management, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
• Tanisha Little, (@tmlittle) Senior Manager Knowledge Management, Morrison & Foerster

Attend this informative and practical presentation and you’ll learn how some of the top legal KM professionals ensure the successful use of KM tools at their firms.  Tips include: effective communication, training, branding & marketing, and measuring & feedback.

Here is the description of the program from the ILTA web site:

What does your firm do to ensure that KM tools are fully adopted and used properly? A firm-wide e-mail announcing your new “KM solution” is not enough. This session is targeted to firms with established KM programs, but where there is an ongoing struggle to ensure the KM department is visible and understood. You’ll learn to market, sell and make the business case for your KM tools.

You can download the presentation materials and get more information about the session on the ILTA website.

If you have questions for the panel prior to the session, you can contact them via the links above, or via Twitter.  Please use the hashtags #ILTA10 and #KMtools in your tweets.

Knowledge Management, Technology & Social Media for Lawyers and Law Firms

See my review of the Power Support Crystal Film iPad screen protector over at iPad4Legal.   Here’s a preview:

I have been a fan of Power Support products ever since I got my first iPhone on Day One (that’s June 29, 2007, in case you were wondering).  To protect my precious First Generation iPhone, I picked up the Power Support Clear Air Jacket Set, which included a thin case and two screen film protectors (one crystal (i.e.,  clear) and one anti-glare).  When I upgraded my iPhone to the 3GS, I did not hesitate to buy a Clear Air Jacket Set for it, as well.  And I am a believer: the case protected my phone from the impact of a few drops, and the film protected the screen from a very nasty potential scratch that would have made you weep.  The scratch marred the film, but did not penetrate the film. When it came time to protect my iPad’s gorgeous screen, my first instinct was to go straight to Power Support…

Read the rest at iPad4Legal…

Shortly after the launch of Apple’s iPad, I wondered (on Twitter) if lawyers were using them. Steven Butler (aka @DisabilityGuy) responded enthusiastically, “I have an iPad and I am already using it in my practice. Working great for reviewing client files.” Of course, I had to talk to him.

Butler is a Social Security Disability lawyer with Linarducci & Butler, PA in Delaware, and he’s clearly an early adopter when it comes to technology. Before the iPad, he tried using a tablet PC, but without a multi-touch screen, it “felt unnatural because you have to rely on a stylus.” The iPad’s stylus-free approach “feels like the right way to do things,” Butler told me, “It requires no learning curve; it’s so simple.”

A Perfect Fit

The iPad is perfect for Butler because the Social Security Administration (SSA) provides all claim files electronically, in TIFF format.  He uses an application from Atlasware to convert the huge SSA TIFF files (many are up to 1,500 pages long) into a single PDF for each matter. Before this paperless approach…

Read the rest at iPad4Legal

Note: This post is cross-posted in my new blog, iPad4Legal, which I co-publish with Michael Aginsky.  In fact, you can continue reading this post there.  And follow iPad4Legal on Twitter.

On a recent visit to my favorite local coffee shop, I pulled out my netbook (this was before I got my iPad) to do a little surfing.  The server told me that they had instituted a new policy: No Computers.  The strange thing is that this place had previously embraced the ‘net crowd (or at least I thought it did because they offered free WiFi).

They Giveth and they Taketh Away

How strange: free WiFi, but no computers allowed.  I understand why they implemented this new policy: they didn’t want me buying a $2 latte and occupying a seat for 4 hours.  Not good for business. If this catches on (as it may be), it may become an issue for virtual law office lawyers and mobile lawyers, like Niki Black, who — based on her tweets — often gets work done at coffee shops.  (Niki also writes about iPadding lawyers at Legal iPad).

What’s a Computer?

I was really devastated.  I loved that coffee shop — in part because of the free WiFi (they have good cappuccino, too).  My gut reaction to the news was, “Umm. OK. Can I use my iPhone?”  Thankfully, the answer was yes, so I used the WiFi to surf on that for a while.  And that got me thinking: What’s a computer?  My netbook (a Toshiba Mini NB205 Series 10.1-Inch Netbook (160GB Hard Drive) isn’t a “full powered” laptop, but it is definitely a computer.  My iPhone 3GS can do almost anything my netbook can do.  Why is it OK to surf on my iPhone, but not my netbook?  I’m still filling up a seat at a rate of fifty cents an hour.

At that point in time, I had already mentally committed to getting and iPad.  I just had to figure out if it as going to be the WiFi-only version or the WiFi+3G (I subsequently decided to get the 64GB WiFi-only version for reasons that I’ll probably write about).  But, prior to the big announcement about the iPad, I was considering an Amazon Kindle.  I never got one (the iPad obviated that for me), but that day at the coffee shop, I wondered: would they let me sit there with a Kindle?  I could read a book on one of those for hours and still slowly sip that latte.  For that matter, I could do the same thing with a paperback.

Of course, my current, real-life concern is whether they’ll let me use my new iPad while enjoying a cup of joe.  I haven’t been there since I acquired it, but I’ll keep you posted.  If challenged, I think my response will be, “This is not a computer, it’s a magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price.”  And what if I just use my iPad to read an iBook? (see Kindle issue above).  I’m so confused.

Are they Luddites?

Perhaps people tend to stay planted in coffee shop seats longer if they are surfing the web than when reading an old fashioned book (I haven’t done the research).  If that’s the case, then I get it.  If not, then what’s next: banning all devices and media?   Absent any evidence to the contrary, there is only one conclusion: coffee shop owners are a bunch of Luddites.

What do you make of all this?

Are you running into the same problems at your local caffeine supply place?  How will this  affect the mobile lawyer?  Perhaps more importantly, will judges start allowing iPads in their courtrooms?  The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York has started to allow personal electronic devices under certain conditions.  You can see Standing Order M10-468 In The Matter of Electronic Devices and General Purposes Computing Devices here (opens PDF).  It’s a start.

Knowledge Management, Technology & Social Media for Lawyers and Law Firms

Everyone knows FYI — short for “For Your Information.”  People have a habit of sending emails with FYI as the subject, or forwarding emails with FYI as the only thing they contribute.

I dislike FYI — and try to avoid using it myself — because it is ambiguous.  This blogger really hates it.  Most of the time people use it, they actually want you to do something or take some action – they don’t just want you to have the information.  Maybe they want to speak with you about the content of the email.  Maybe it’s information about an upcoming meeting — a time change, perhaps — that you need to know to alter your behavior.

Another problem with FYI is that it implies low priority, or unimportance.  If I have 30 new email messages in my inbox, and one simply has FYI as the subject line, you can be sure I’m reading it last.

As much as I dislike it, I know that it’s here to stay.  So, as they say, “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em.”  I’m not sure that I’ll completely adopt the FYI practice, but I’ll join in the concept by proposing a counter acronym: YAR.

YAR is short for “your action required.”  Unlike FYI, the meaning is clear.  And unlike FYI, it’s not to be used as the only thing in an email subject line or the only thing that you contribute to an email forward.

YAR is an indicator.  It’s like the “urgent” flag that you can add to emails in Microsoft Outlook.  But it’s right there in the email itself.  If you see YAR in an email, you should read it first, because you have something to do.

How do you get people to respond to your emails?

Have any other tips to help promote clear communication?  Please share.

Knowledge Management, Technology & Social Media for Lawyers and Law Firms

I’m a “social media evangelist.”  I encourage responsible use of social media.  I think that having a good LinkedIn profile, for example,  is important.  Since I often spread the good word, I often get questions about how to use various social media sites.

One question I get a lot is: “How do I get my picture from one website (e.g., my firm’s web page) to appear on my LinkedIn profile?”   Not rocket science.  I can practically do it in my sleep.

The first time someone asked me, I called them and walked them through the steps involved.  It took a few minutes.  No big deal.  I didn’t mind doing it once.

But when someone else asked me the same question, I kicked myself for not taking a few extra minutes to write it down and send it to them in an email.  So, I did.  Now, if a third person asked, I’d be ready and forward that email – so as to not reinvent the wheel.

The third time was déjà vu all over again.  I knew I had answered the question before.  I knew I was ready to answer it again.  But now I just had to find it.  It was somewhere in my rat’s nest of Outlook folders.  It took several minutes, but I found it and forwarded the answer along. Not horrible, but there had to be a better way.

That better way was a wiki.  I had learned my lesson.  The next time I would be ready.  I saved the instructions into a wiki page.  No more email folder hunting.   I knew it was in the wiki.  A quick search for “LinkedIn” would bring it up.

That next time was today.  The whole transaction took me about 20 seconds.

The goal is to do things once, then re-use what you’ve done.  It saves time and frustration, and allows you to provide faster and more consistent customer service.

How do you use wikis to make your life — and the lives of others — easier?

Knowledge Management, Technology & Social Media for Lawyers and Law Firms

There is a nice article in Law Practice Today by Dan Pinnington called The Greatest Hidden Windows and Office Tricks for Lawyers.  I am always trying to find new ways to be more productive, so I like these tips from the article.  Many of the tips are pretty well known, but here are some of my favorites:

• Keyboard Shortcuts – “To help you remember to use new shortcuts, try putting a Post-it on the edge of your monitor as a reminder.”
• Alt+Tab for switching between programs
• Cascading and tiling windows – If you right-click an empty area on the taskbar, you will be given three choices: Cascade Windows, Tile Windows Horizontally, or Tile Windows Vertically.
• Paste Special – allows copy and paste without pasting the formatting from the source.  After you copy the desired text, “place the cursor at the point you want to add it to your document.  But instead of clicking the ‘Paste’ icon, click on ‘Edit’, then ‘Paste Special’, and then select the ‘Unformatted’ option. The text will adopt the format of the receiving document and any formatting from the source document will be lost.”

Check out the whole article here.

Knowledge Management, Technology & Social Media for Lawyers and Law Firms

On Friday, March 12 at 12:15 p.m. I’ll be speaking about Knowledge Management at the Legal Marketing  Association Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado.

There is a ton of buzz about this conference on Twitter (and I thought legal tech people loved Twitter).  The conference goers are using the #LMA10 hashtag on Twitter to converse.  Check it out here.

Here is the description of my session, from the conference materials:

Title: Leveraging Knowledge Management to Increase Efficiency and Improve Your Firm’s Bottom Line

Topics for this session include:

• Best practices for completely aligning your knowledge management processes with the business processes and goals of the entire firm
• Collaborating with marketing and business development groups to use knowledge management to impact your industry and practices teams, and clients
• Examining ways in which knowledge management can improve profitability and impact the bottom line
• Different technologies firms are using and how information-sharing improves internally as a result

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Presenters:

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Knowledge Management, Technology & Social Media for Lawyers and Law Firms