There is a great post today over at The Mac Lawyer called How to Protect Files on USB Drives. Go to the link provided and check it out.
On The Third Wave Of Lawyering
December 12, 2006 By
Maybe you’ve never heard of the third wave of lawyering. That’s OK, lots of people haven’t. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t on the horizon and coming at us fast. Better join the crowd or get out of the way before it runs you down.
OK, so we begin with “Wave Theory” as postulated by Alvin Toffler. Toffler talks about how society goes through waves, beginning with an agrarian society and moving into an industrial one. First we hunt for dinner and then we figure out a way to build a factory for it.
The upshot is that an industrial society by definition mandates uniformity of product – McDonald’s in New York is exactly the same as McDonald’s in Topeka (or so I’ve been told). We order one from column A, one from column B. If we don’t like the type of bun the burger comes on we don’t have a choice.
So, too, with legal services. The consumer of legal services walks into an office and is greeted by a receptionist. The consumer takes a seat in the waiting room and wait for the lawyer, who eventually comes out and speaks with the consumer in the office or conference room. Consumer is quoted a fee and either accepts or declines. Pay a fee and walk out, a done deal.
The Third Wave is upon us and is also refered to as the “post-industrial” society and the “information age”. This society is represented by “subcults” or diverse lifestyles, “adhocracies” or fluid organizations that adapt quickly to change, and where information begins to substitute for most material resources. Mass production is replaced by mass customization; offering personalized and cheaper goods, services.
And how does this all relate to lawyers? Well, a “Third Wave law firm” works from homes, cubicles or small shared offices free from the confines of standardization, centralization, concentration, synchonization and bureaucracy, which has primarily contributed to the disatisfaction of lawyers with the practice of law. A Third Wave lawyer doesn’t have a full-time staff but prefers to work with Virtual Assistants or freelancers on specific cases or tasks.
Third Wave lawyers don’t maintain traditional offices that most consumers typically associate with law firms. They are paperless, enabling them to keep all information at their fingertips at all times. They do their research online. In short, they do business whenever and where ever they happen to be at that moment. Third Wave lawyers refuse to be confined by time, space and the restrictions that a typical law office employs.
The most important part of being a Third Wave lawyer is to fire your full-time staff. Every one of them gets shown the door, which will promptly close as they leave the premises. They answer their own phones, read and respond to their own email, faxes and mail, and maintain their own schedule. In short, they take control of their world.
There are a ton of financially successful Third Wave lawyers, and the number is growing by leaps and bounds. I like to think of myself as a Third Wave lawyer, but here are some others:
- Chuck Newton, bankruptcy lawyer in Texas;
- Grant Griffiths, family lawyer in Kansas;
- Peter Olson, a solo in Chicago;
- Susan Cartier-Liebel, a lawyer and consultant to solo practitioners; and
- The Greatest American Lawyer.
Work online, use the Internet as much as possible, and your clients will do the same. How would you feel if you took in half the number of cases each month but got to keep 95% of your gross income as net profit? Would you like to work less, make more, get off the hamster wheel that keeps you tied to the office until all hours of the night, and spend some time with family and friends?
If so, then the Third Wave is for you. Stop making excuses about why you aren’t doing it and can’t do it – you can.
Google Confirms: Use Description Meta Tags
December 5, 2006 By
Different search engines use meta data in different ways. While it’s well accepted that unique, keyword-rich and well written title tags are an absolute must for your search engine optimization efforts, some SEO experts have discounted the value of meta description and meta keyword tags in the past.
Vanessa Fox, product manager for the Google webmaster tools, has confirmed that unique meta description tags for each web page help Google determine the uniqueness of a web page. The meta description tags are used to create the text snippets that are displayed in Google search results underneath the page heading.
Google would normally create this snippet by looking at the content surrounding the query term on the web page. However, for more generic searches, where appropriate content is not found on the web page, Google will simply grab some text from the top of a page, which is often part of the site navigation, and highly unsuitable to be displayed as text snippets for a search result.
On November 5, 2006 Vanessa posted on onto Google Groups that, for “most queries, the generated snippet is based on where the query terms are found on the page . . . But for some more generic queries, where a logical snippet isn’t found in the text, the generated snippet seems to be coming from the first bits of text from the page – in this case, boilerplate navigation that is the same for every page.”
If there are unique meta description tags available, Google will use these instead as a text snippet. So keep the following rules in mind for all your web pages:
Comprehensive Resource for Those Considering Switching to Macs
October 9, 2006 By
The The Mac Lawyer provided this great post today containing resources for those considering switching to Macs. Which of course you should do NOW.
The first one you should visit ‘Switching to Mac: Useful Sites and Articles‘. This site contains a comprehensive listing of articles written for people in your situation. Some of the featured sites listed on this list are:
- Get a Mac from Apple
- Switch To a Mac blog
- Switching To The Mac: A Guide For Windows Users from TechWeb
- Tips for a Mac Switcher from BoydCreative blog
- CrossOSS: Cross Platform Software Database
Source: ‘Switching to Mac: Useful Sites and Articles‘ by Chris Howard of The Qwertyrash Blogs.
Source for Post The Mac Lawyer.
Guarding Against The E-Mail Faux Pas
September 18, 2006 By
Ever send an e-mail to the wrong person? You meant to send it to “joe@joe.com” but mistakenly sent it to “joe@jack.com”? Your e-mail client auto-fills in the address, and you were in such a rush to dash off a quick note that your mind didn’t fully process mistake in the address.
Most of the time it amounts to nothing more than an, “Oops.” But once in awhile you may find yourself in the awkward – and possibly legally liable – position of having sent an e-mail to someone who should definitely not have seen the message. Take, for example, the case where you send a message to opposing counsel that was meant for co-counsel. Or a confidential client e-mail goes off to the case trustee.
Some would tell you to simply avoid e-mail for these conversations, and I agree to an extent. But it’s just not possible all the time, especially if you’re a member of a confidential listserv or other mailing list. But fear not, there’s a simple hack to get you through.
When I have a confidential listserv or recipient, I set that person up as a contact in my e-mail program; the name, however, is preceded by a +. Therefore, a confidential recipient would be “+Joe Smith”. When I typed that person’s name into the “To:” field I would need to type “+Joe Smith” or the e-mail address would not auto-fill. It’s useful for listservs in particular, especially given the fact that most of them are “listserv@xxxx.com.”
My NACBA listserv, for example, is set up with a name of +NACBA. I also subdivide using #, % and & based on level of security.
It’s just an additional level of security for when you need to send out a message that should not get into unauthorized hands. It’s saved me a ton of embarrassment more times than I can possibly recount. And given the fact that I correspond with many of my opposing counsel by e-mail, it’s probably saved me some money as well.
On the Road? Check out these Mobile Security Tips
July 28, 2006 By
The latest issue of Law Practice Magazine is out, and an article written by Tom Mighell inter-alia wrote was included. It’s called A Road Warrior’s Guide to Mobile Security, and it contains a number of helpful tips and tools to keep your technology safe while you’re traveling. The article is available free of charge for the next month or two; then you’ll need an ABA membership to access it.
Source for Post Inter Alia.
VolumeCare 5 and your Treo
April 29, 2006 By
As many of you already know, I recently purchased a Treo 650. One of the complaints that I read about was the volume on the Treo. So in my search to fix that little problem, I found VolumeCare 5 Pro. This is a great third party program for your Treo that actually boast the volume a lot. The only bad thing is, it does not boast the volume for my new Treo BT earpiece. I will post about that in a later post.
Here is what PalmGear.com says about this great program.
Volume Care increases the maximum volume levels for each Treo speaker. Studies have proven volume increases up to a 250% in handset volume, speaker phone volume and wired headset volume. VolumeCare will also allow you to adjust your voice volume (microphone) so others will hear you loud and clear.
VolumeCare also allows you to set pre-defined default volume listening levels for each speaker type on your Treo. So you can preset the listening level for your earpiece separately from the Speaker Phone.
For the price and for what it does, this is a great bargain you should not be without. I will write more in the very near future about my Treo and what I do with it and what I have on it. In the meantime, for those that have a Treo, please post comments here with your own tips and hints.
Technorati Tags:
Palm, cell phone, Solotips, Treo 650
The wireless iTunes powered home
January 25, 2006 By
This is from a blogging friend of mine. Check this out and if you don’t use a Mac, I am so sorry.
I knew, when I bought my Airport Express, that I could broadcast music throughout my home. Well, I knew that it could be done in theory at any rate. It was great to know that it could be done but given that I don’t have anything set up to enable me to actually do this, I left it at that. Anyway, the iPod blog has a great post with a great guide to making this all possible. Now all I need to do is save up and buy the sound system that enables all this …
(Via Neuvo.)
Technorati Tags:
Apple, Mac, iPod, iTunes, Airport Express
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