Legal Marketing Tips And Strategies | Legal Practice Pro » Electronic Communications

New Online Resource For Solo Attorneys

Jay Fleischman — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:00:45 +0000

Whether you’re completely untethered or a solo attorney working from a physical office, you know it gets awfully quiet from time to time. You need some help with a legal theory, you want to bounce an idea off someone else, or you just want to connect with like-minded professionals.

For years I was active on the Solosez listserv, run by the ABA (no, I’m not a member of the ABA. Haven’t been one in years. No intention of becoming one again). I loved Solosez, and met a ton of extremely intelligent and excellent friends there. But over time it grew out of control, and I couldn’t follow it effectively. Sadly, I am no longer active on Solosez.

Now my good friend Jonathan G. Stein, a consumer lawyer in Elk Grove, CA (and a fellow untethered lawyer) has created a new listserv. It’s called Solo Lawyer, and it’s a new list for solos to discuss legal issues, cases, law practice management, technology, and stuff like that.

Jonathan already moderates two other listservs on which I participate, and he know how to herd cats pretty well. To that end, his rules for Solo Lawyer are simple:

No politics;
No religion;
No spam;
No soliciting by vendors;
You get 1 warning, then a suspension then you are off the list if you break the rules; and
No water cooler talk.

The fee is a modest $20 per year for lawyers. Vendors are permitted on the list, but as providers of information only – no selling is permitted.

You can join the list by following this link: http://www.discussthis.com/subscribe/sololawyer@solo-lawyer.com. Maybe it’s up your alley, maybe not. But I can tell you this much – there are a ton of really awesome people on the list, and the volume is easily managed.

I’m a member, so drop me a note when you join up!

Email Archiving

Grant Griffiths — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 17:51:02 +0000

There has been some talk recently on the web about archiving emails in a law firm. While I agree that large firms may have the funds and the staff to do so. There are solutions for the small and solo firm. I have been using a great program called MailSteward.

MailSteward will archive all of your email in a database for easy retrieval. Click on the Archive button and MailSteward will go to work storing copies of all your email text, HTML, attachments, and raw source, into a relational database. MailSteward has a wealth of features for importing, tagging, saving, and exporting, including the ability to export your vital email information in a number of standard data formats.

I have mine set to do it everyday at 10:00 p.m. And, once it is setup, you don’t have to do anything. It works great too. Just yesterday I need to find an old email from a client. I simply went into MailSteward and did a search by the client’s name and presto, there in front of me were all of his emails for the last two years. Wonderful tool and great program.

I would give MailSteward 4 1/2 stars.

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Email Archiving

Connected Lawyer – Communication Policy and Vacation

Grant Griffiths — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:58:38 +0000

I wish I had read “the world’s greatest balancing act: creating a vacation communication policy” before I went on vacation. More to follow!! Related posts:The Connected Lawyer – Mobile Computing The Connected Lawyer – Email Connected Lawyer: We have to embrace Technology Related posts:

Gmail

Grant Griffiths — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 15:22:02 +0000

I just noticed I have all these invites left for Gmail. Now, I know most of you already have your account. However, just in case you don’t, drop me an email at grant.griffiths@gmail.com, put GMAIL in the subject line and I will forward an invite.

I recently started to use my Gmail account on my Treo and it works great.

Certified Email?

Grant Griffiths — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 07:37:52 +0000

Here is a question I posted today on the Kansas Family & Divorce Lawyer. I am cross-posting it here as I would love to get your comments and viewpoint on this topic. Is this something we might see and would it work? How would we actually certify the person receiving the “certified email” is actually the person it is meant for?

There has been a lot of talk lately about charging senders of bulk email fees to guarantee preferred delivery of their messages. Including this article at the LocalTechWire.com.

Here’s my question. If there is such a thing as a program called, email e-stamp. Would it be possible or even feasible to send certified emails like we send certified snail mail? Might it be possible to serve divorce papers via certified emails?

Think about it. We send an envelop in the mail. All we do is put document within another piece of paper, lick the flap, put a stamp on it and place that little green card on it. Stick it in a metal box and wait for a reply to come back saying the other party received it. Again, if we have the email e-stamp program, why not stick an email in our out-box, attach a document to it, send it via our email e-stamp and ask that a return receipt be sent.

Certified email? Seems like its day is coming.