Category Archives: Practice Management

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More Backup Suggestions

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I cannot suggest often enough that you need to have a good backup plan in place. I know Ross Kodner has written on this topic, which he calls the most boring topic in legal technology, multiple times.

Certainly, this is not the most exciting topic around. However, WHEN you have a hard drive fail, you will either be very happy that you had a backup or you will curse yourself for not having one. Trust me, the first emotion is much better.

PC Magazine has a good summary article on the best backup tools available.  The article provides great information of the various backup methods available, as well as the pros and cons of each. Plus, the article discusses specific products, both hardware and software that will allow you to accomplish your backup goals.

This is another great article from PC Magazine. If you have not yet implimented a backup solution for both your home and work computers, you need to change that right now. The PC Magazine article gives you to the tools to do that.

A tip of the hat to the Affinity Law Office Technology Blog for pointing out this article.

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Great Gesture from Rocket Matter

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Rocket Matter has announced that they are offering RocketMatter free of charge to attorneys who have been displaced by the recent floods. The free service will be available to those attorneys for the balance of 2008, or until the attorney establishes their new permanent home.

This is a gracious offer from Rocket Matter, as well as a great opportunity for those attorneys to try out Rocket Matter and see how it works.

On a related note, I will heed Ernie the Attorney’s call and link to the Linn County Bar Association. According to Ernier, the Linn County Bar Assocaition does not have a Google page rank. So hopefully a few links will help that.

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Using a Blog to Manage Information

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My wife has asked me why I blog about the books that I read and the hotels that I stay at. After she asked the question, I realized that one of the main reasons that I do this, is so that I can find the information again when I need it.

Sure, I could make notes about the various hotels, or books, or cool software programs that I find, but where would I store them so that I could find them again? A blog, however, is a perfect way to store this information.

Not long ago, Kevin O’Keefe blogged about using a blog as a personal knowledge management tool. Kevin explained:

With a blog, you file what you read or hear and want to keep in a blog post. Make a note or two offering why the information is worthwhile. Upload key files to your blog. Blog live from seminars you attend. Why make hard copy notes that end up getting tossed or lost?

A blog gives you complete navigation by category & sub-category, tags, and a complete search. You can find what you want over the years.

Plus, the blog is fully searchable using Google.

In the little more than a year that I have had this blog, I have found myself searching my past posts to recover some information that I could not easily find another way. You may not want to post information for everyone in the world to see. Nevertheless, you may want to create a blog that is not publicly available, just to manage your own information.

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Going Paperless?

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I am a huge advocate of moving to a paperless office. In my experience, it is simply a more efficient way of doing things. If you have not yet made the decision to move to a paperless office, Lawyer’s Weekly has a good article on how to get started.

The two attorneys interview for the article both stated that would not go back to paper, one of them stated “I don’t see how digital could not be more efficient.”

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Backups, An Interesting Contrast

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As I was perusing my RSS reader this morning, I came across two blog posts that provided an interesting contrast. First was from the Illinois Trial Practice Weblog. There, Evan Schaeffer points us toward an article from PC World about why you should back up online.

In contrast, I found a post from Futurelawyer pointing us toward an article from Lifehacker warning of some of the dangers of online backups.

At first blush, these articles appear to contradict each other. A closer review reveals, however, that the concerns raised by Lifehacker are slightly different from what PC World is talking about. The PC World article gives a nice overview of some of the online backup services available. The Lifehacker post cautions people about using the unused disk space on their web server as a backup option.

As PC World points out, one of the drawbacks to online backups is the expense. Recognizing this, Lifehacker had previously suggested putting unused disk space on your web server to use. In their latest post, however, they reveal that some web hosts are deleting the backup files as violations of the terms of service. Thus, if you are going to consider using this space for a backup, make sure you read your terms of service.

That, of course, leaves unanswered the question of how you should backup. I believe that a multipronged approach is best. First I suggest a “local” backup of your computer on an external hard drive. I know that there are other media available. However, I think the hard drive is the easiest most convenient way to go. If you are in love with DVDs, so be it. You will need multiple hard drives because you will always need to keep at least one of these off site. This is to ensure that you have a copy of your data somewhere other than the same location your computer is.

If your computer crashes, it’s of no concern that your backup drive was sitting by your CPU. If your building, floods, burns down, is swept off to Oz, etc., then you will certainly regret the fact that your backup drive was destroyed along with your regular drive. Thus, it is essential that you keep at least one copy of the backup off site at all times.

If you have office that is separate from your house, this is fairly easy to do. Simply carry the backup drive from the office to your house and return the next morning with the next drive from your house to the office. This becomes more difficult if your office is in your house. If this is the case, you really need to find a location away from your house to regularly take your backups. This location, should be easy for you to access and it should be located somewhere that you can conveniently visit frequently.

In addition to using backup drives and keeping them offsite, I also recommend that you find an online backup service and backup those critical data files (such as client files) with the online service. This gives you added protection in the event that a natural disaster hits both your office and your off site storage location. This is certainly possible with events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, tornadoes, etc. The online site gives you an additional location (hopefully in another part of the country) where your data can safely weather the storm.

I know this seems like overkill. However, if you ever lose your data because of a hard drive crash or a natural disaster, you won’t think that it is overkill at all.

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SaaS and Support Options

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Web-Tones recently posted an entry titled Darkside of SaaS. In the post, the author explains:

As we move more and more of our computing to the cloud one thing will become painfully obvious. It is not the service provider with the coolest interface or lowest cost that will win. It is the provider that can deliver 24/7 world class support.

He then asserts:

Here is a dirty little secret about SaaS: a major screw up on the provider’s part can bring your online world tumbling down in a NY second. Try to find a number that you can call and ask a question like WTF just happened? Nope, can’t do it. Just have to submit a ticket to the cloud and hope that someone responds in time to save that major deal you are working on.

I think he is right, as far as he goes, but the problems he highlights are not limited to SaaS applications. You have these same problems with the company that provides your internet service, or fixes your computer when it breaks, or, for that matter, services process for you.

Anytime that you are about to enter into agreements with providers, you need to ask yourself what happens if something goes drastically wrong. If you lose your connection to your SaaS provider, do you have another way to access the information? If your internet connection goes down, does your provider guarantee to have it back up in a certain period of time? Do you have an alternate connection you can use? When your computer crashes, does your service contract provide for on site service within 24 hours or do you have to send the computer off site to be fixed? When you must have someone served immediately, can you reach your process server and will she get the person served for you?

You should be asking the same type of questions with all of these service providers. Of course the answers you want may not be the same. For some people, it is vitally important that they be able to reach their service provider 24/7/365. For others, they may need to reach someone only between 7 am and 10 pm.

The important thing is that before you sign a contract for any of these services, you need to decide what is important to you. Then find a provider that will meet your requirements. If you must be able to speak with someone in support at 3 am on Saturdays, make sure you can do this. If you need guaranteed uptime of of a certain amount, find someone who will give you that guarantee and who actually has penalties that give the guarantee teeth.

As Web-Tones emphasized, depending on your requirements, cost may be the lowest factor in consideration when shopping for a SaaS or any other provider.

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Is This Normal?

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I have a case in which opposing counsel is sending me approximately 1,000 pages of nonconfidential pages of discovery. He asked if he could send them to me electronically (note, these are from a third party and, for a variety of reasons, edicsovery is not a concern). He currently has the files in PDF and he asked his assistant to email them to me.

Not surprisingly, somewhere along the way, something ate the PDF attachment. I talked with him yesterday and asked him to burn a CD for me and I would have someone pick it up. His response was that he would have his assistant put in a request to create the CD, but he could not promise when it would be completed because his assistant had to follow the proper channels.

Is this normal? I am unusual in having simply grabbed a blank CD yesterday and burned some documents to it before mailing it off (ironically enough, to the same attorney).

I guess that I am just curious about how most firms typically do these types of things. Please note that opposing counsel does not work for a large firm.

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An Interview with Larry Port from Rocket Matter

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Rocket MatterLast week I had the opportunity to conduct an email interview with Larry Port from Rocket Matter. Rocket Matter is a web based practice management and time and billing solution. In the interview, Larry tells us about Rocket Matter and a little about how it works.

If you are thinking of trying a web based practice management solution, you may want to take a look at Rocket Matter.

What is Rocket Matter?

Rocket Matter is an easy-to-use web-based legal practice management and time and billing solution. It’s designed from the ground up to facilitate the practice of law in small and solo firms. Rocket Matter is also referred to as Software as a Service, or SaaS, since it is a web-based, hosted application.

Specifically, Rocket Matter allows law firms to manage calendars, to-do lists, contacts, matters, and time and billing in one integrated and simple solution. We created a technology we call “Bill as you Work”, which traps billable time as lawyers and paralegals go about their day. The net result is a product that allows firms to operate more efficiently and reduces the amount of time that gets lost for invoicing.

Since we host Rocket Matter on our servers and it’s accessed via the Internet, users have ubiquitous access to their information while never having to spend money or time on software installations or upgrades.

Tell me more about Bill as you Work. How does it work? What does it capture?

The whole idea behind “Bill as you Work” is to capture time as you go about your day to day activities, so that at the end of the month when it comes time to bill you don’t end up losing all of your precious hours. For example, when you schedule a deposition in your calendar, you can choose to bill for the time spent when you create the appointment. Likewise, your to-do items can be instantly converted from simple reminders into billable items that can end up on your invoice. The application also contains its own stopwatch, so you can time any activity you work on and funnel that directly into billing.

As time goes on, we will look to incorporate “Bill as you Work” into new features as well.

The rest of the interview continues below the break

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The Fear of Getting Rid of Paper

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Chuck Newton addresses our fear of getting rid of paper. Chuck has some great thoughts here and it is a post that anyone who is moving to a paperless practice should read. Chuck describes this fear as:

So fear fits.  You want to scan and destroy the document, but you cannot because of lingering doubts that something bad is going to happen because of it.  But, we have to remember that FEAR is just an acrostic which means False Impressions Appearing Real.

Despite knowing this, I understand this fear.  I have experienced it myself.

Chuck concludes, however:

I have just decided to live with the guilt and any small risk that might exist and to destroy the paper. I scan it and maintain it on my computer, on a DVD and/or on Basecamp after the file is closed. I still make sure I do not take or give original documents back that the client provides to me, with the exception of those, like fee agreements, which I draft and the signatures on which I maintain.  Of these I  scan and then destroy the originals of these documents.  To do otherwise, would be to seriously defeat the purpose of that I am trying to achieve.

Chuck raises some great points in his post. If you are looking to reduce the paper in your office, you should check out his entire post here.

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Do Your Clients Know What You Do?

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Recently Solo in Chicago questioned whether he should list his practice areas on his business cards. After reading his post, I remembered an encounter that I had with a client of mine. I had previously represented her in a matter. The matter was an area of law that comprises approximately 10% of my practice.

About a year after we had resolved the previous matter, she called me again. She started her conversation, “I know this isn’t the type of law that you do, but . . . .” She then proceeded to ask me a question that fell squarely into the type of law the comprises the majority of my practice.

She had taken the single matter I had represented her on, and had extrapolated it to my entire practice. In fact, however, that was a small portion of my practice. I am just glad that she called me on the next question she had, even though she did not think I practiced in that area.

Recently, I was again reminded of this story and Peter’s post when I read about a customer experience survey on the Good Experience Blog. The post explains:

A friend of mine runs a company whose site sells a wide range of products, all sharing a particular attribute. For the sake of example, let’s say his site sells organic fruit only – bananas, pears, oranges, apples, and so on – all healthy and extra-tasty.

The company then ran a customer experience survey to gauge the usability of their site. The post then explained what the company learned:

But what he really learned surprised him. It was something much more basic, and much bigger, than any tactical improvement.

Here’s what he told me when I saw him after the labs:

“The customers didn’t even realize that we only sell organic! That’s the whole point of our site, and they missed it! It totally transformed how we’re thinking about our redesign.”

I don’t have an answer to this question, but I wonder how often our clients see our practices through the narrow lens of their matter and never realize the other services that we provide. Further, what can we do to change that?