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Practice Management Assistance Tip of the Week and Pipe

PMA TIP OF THE WEEK

From the Practice Management Advisors of North America
Disclaimer: The PMA Pipe and PMA Tips are offered as a service to our members. Materials and links on these pages are intended to provide only guidance and are not legal authority. Some information is from jurisdictions other than Florida, and may reference the law of other jurisdictions. Views and opinions expressed by the authors of the articles contained in the PMA Pipe or PMA Tips may not be those shared by The Florida Bar’s Law Office Management Assistance Service (LOMAS). For assistance with law practice management and law office management issues particular to Florida law firms, we suggest that you contact a LOMAS practice management advisor for a confidential teleconference at (866) 730-2020 or (850) 561-5616.

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THE PMA PIPE
An outpouring of information, blog excerpts and articles from PMA's across North America

Does Coaching Really Help? A recent caller on the PA Bar Association Hot Line wanted to know whether coaching really helps. His practice had taken a downturn, and his girlfriend suggested that perhaps he needed to update his skill set to better enable him to engage prospects and seal the deal. She recommended coaching. He was skeptical. He wanted a viewpoint from "a dog who isn't in the fight." My answer?
from: PA Law Practice Management by Ellen Freedman  02/09/2012
Kudos to Best Buy for Making E-Waste Disposal Easy We are all drowning in electronic trash. Ok, maybe not all of us, but most of the people and businesses I know. Old routers, cables, telephones, discarded laptops and CPUs. Oh my! I had three big boxes filled with just cables, routers, headsets, and other paraphernalia. On top of that, 3 dead laptops, 2 laptop cooling stands, and 4 dead CPUs crowded a corner of my office. I wanted to dispose of these items in some responsible, environmentally-friendly manner.
from: PA Law Practice Management by Ellen Freedman  02/09/2012
Using Outlook Efficiently with Quick Steps Ever wish you could be more efficient with Outlook?  It’s easy!  Learn how to use Quick Steps. Check out this great post from the Outlook Blog. Office Blogs from Microsoft are a painless way to learn Office tips and tricks and stay on top of changes to Microsoft products.  Visit the Office Blogs home page for [...]
from: Oregon Law Practice Management  02/07/2012
Zero Tolerance for eFiling Errors In April the Oregon State Bar will publish my article, ”Zero Tolerance for E-Filing Errors: How to Avoid Committing Malpractice with a Few Clicks of Your Mouse.”  I don’t want to give all my tips away (smile), but here is a small snippet to whet your appetite: While some courts have excused lawyers for missing a [...]
from: Oregon Law Practice Management  02/07/2012
Announcing 2009 International Human Rights Award Recipient The recipient of the Section of Litigations 2009 International Human Rights Award is Edwin Rekosh. The Award will be presented during the ABA's Annual Meeting in Chicago at The Fairmont Hotel on Friday, July 31, 2009. Learn more about Mr. Rekosh and the International Human Rights Award.
from: ABA Section of Litigation: Online Resources for Litigators  02/07/2012
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Addresses the Section of Litigation Concerning State Court Judicial Campaign Contributions and Disqualification The Section of Litigation is pleased to present audio recordings of the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor who spoke on January 9, 2009 in Scottsdale, AZ to a plenary gathering of Section members. Justice O'Connor led a panel discussion concerning state court judicial campaign contributions and disqualification, a subject of great interest to the legal community in light of Caperton v. Massey, currently pending before the United States Supreme Court and on which oral arguments were heard on March 2, 2009.
from: ABA Section of Litigation: Online Resources for Litigators  02/07/2012
Can Email Create Personal Jurisdiction over a Foreign Defendant? A recent Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, finding that email and telephone communications are insufficient to establish personal jurisdiction over a foreign defendant in a lawsuit asserting tort and contract claims, is causing litigators to once again consider the importance of forum selection clauses.
from: ABA Section of Litigation: Online Resources for Litigators  02/07/2012
The iPad for Litigators is a hot topic Later today I will be presenting for an online CLE titled The iPad for Litigators. Don't bother rushing to enroll as the program is now sold out. The last I heard they were closing in on 600 registered to take...
from: Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog  02/05/2012
Reporting NSF Rule 1.15(h) of the S.C. Rules of Professional Conduct mandates that all lawyers with a trust account must file a written directive with their bank requiring the bank to report any non-sufficient funds (NSF) transactions. If you have an IOLTA account, please confirm with your bank that you have a directive filed. It is the [...]
from: SC Small Firm.com  02/05/2012
How do you squeeze more into a RT? Use a RT taxonomy. Corresponding in 140 character messages can be a challenge not only for the person who tweets, but also for those that want to retweet the original message either in endorsement, disagreement or a simple "check this out." Bruce Carton of Legal Blog Watch suggested that twitter users adopt a taxonomy for retweets in his recent post The 'RT Taxonomy': Creating Different Flavors of Retweets detailing a suggestion by Ontario lawyer and blogger Antonin Pribetic, (who pens The Trial Warrior Blog) in this tweet . Pribetic suggests using a taxonomy of the existing RT (which designates a retweet) plus an additional symbol to convey one of several possible meanings.
from: Nerino Petro's Compujurist.com  02/03/2012
Guess Who the ABA TECHSHOW 2012 Keynote Is…… Using clues that will be supplied by the ABA, be one of the first 5 to correctly guess who the ABA TECHSHOW 2012 keynote speaker is and be entered int o a drawing for a discount on registration. A new clue will be posted daily until the first five correct guesses are made.
from: Nerino Petro's Compujurist.com  02/03/2012
The Best Legal Research Tools are Free: In Brief When is the last time you used the PLF publication In Brief as a resource in your practice?  Did you know that In Brief addresses 23 areas of practice plus civil procedure, cases of note, malpractice traps, and practice management tips? Our archive of informative articles is fully searchable online and free to all Oregon [...]
from: Oregon Law Practice Management  02/03/2012
Discount Coupons for Legal Services The South Carolina Bar Ethics Advisory Committee has published a new Opinion, 11-05, referred to informally online by some commentators as the “Groupon Opinion.” The question asked by a SC Lawyer was: Does a lawyer violate the Rules of Professional Conduct by contracting with a website to offer vouchers that can be purchased from the [...]
from: SC Small Firm.com  02/03/2012
Boosting Your Productivity in 2011 With the New Year just around the corner, soon many of us will resolve to improve our law practices in 2011. To help with those resolutions, the ABA Inside Practice newsletter has published Tips for Boosting Productivity at the Office from our book. The list has a dozen practical ways to improve productivity within a [...]
from: The Busy Lawyer's Guide to Success  02/01/2012
Building and Maintaining a Profitable and Efficient Law Practice On March 16, 2012 the Professional Liability Fund will host Building and Maintaining a Profitable and Efficient Law Practice featuring Ann Guinn, Richard Slottee, and the PLF Practice Management Advisors. This CLE will give you important tools to manage the financial side of your law practice, including: Analyzing and understanding your firm’s finances in order [...]
from: Oregon Law Practice Management  02/01/2012
Bad Online Reviews About Lawyers or Law Firms I get a call at least every couple of weeks from a distraught attorney who has had a negative comment posted on their Facebook page, in a blog comment, or on some other site. From the attorney's perspective, it's a painful experience, because it reflects on their reputation, and that's what they spend a career building. "What should I do? What can I do?" These are the questions I am asked.
from: PA Law Practice Management by Ellen Freedman  02/01/2012
Big Government Takes Giant Step to Help the Little People Asset Acceptance LLC, a major U.S. buyer of consumer debt, agreed to pay a $2.5 million civil penalty to settle charges that it used deceptive collection practices. The FTC began its probe in 2006, and the charges include a whole host of unspeakable practices which victimized many. So thumbs up to the FTC for being persistent in pursuing this case with tenacity.
from: PA Law Practice Management by Ellen Freedman  02/01/2012
Ten Tips to Supercharge Your Online Presence . . . is the title of my article I co-authored with Jim Calloway and Nerino Petro in the February issue of Law Practice Today that was just published last week. Jim, Nerino, and I selected these tips from our presentation 60+ Best Marketing Practices for Lawyers in 60 Minutes. The tips focus on web-based marketing, including social [...]
from: The Busy Lawyer's Guide to Success  01/31/2012
5 basic steps for building a solid social media brand There is a great post on the Social Media Examiner blog today. It asks the question: “What message does your brand convey to socially engaged customers?” I think too many people (and their SEO consultants) try to take the tact that you need to be all things to all people in all channels.  Unless you [...]
from: The Busy Lawyer's Guide to Success  01/31/2012
Sorting Out Social Media Later this year I will be submitting an article for the Oregon State Bar Bulletin entitled “Sorting Out Social Media: Tools & Etiquette.”  For those of you who can’t wait, here is a sneak preview: Sorting Out Social Media: Tools & Etiquette If you are blogging, tweeting, or posting status updates to build your brand and [...]
from: Oregon Law Practice Management  01/31/2012
Beyond the Basics of Google My Sites for Sore Eyes column in the just-released GPSOLO eReport is Beyond the Basics of Google. Long time readers of my blog may have seen a lot of this information before. But if you have some colleagues who would...
from: Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog  01/30/2012

[Revised: 12-01-2011]