Rural Lawyer

I’m finding that starting a firm is a process of choosing answers to a myriad of questions and hoping that each choice is going to be the right one — your typical entrepreneur worries. The one bright spot is that information is plentiful out there from general small business advice to technology review sites. Here’s some sites I’ve found useful so  far.

My go-to site for general small business advice is: SCORE.org. From on-line articles to confidential counseling, SCORE provides no-nonsense practical help from people who have been there and done that. With over 300 offices and over 10,000 volunteer counselors nationwide, there should be a SCORE office and volunteer mentor near you.

Every business needs a mission and every mission needs to be expressed. For those of us with writer’s block, there’s Mission Statements – your on-line source for mission statement inspiration. My current favorite is Sandoval Law Firm’s mission statement: “To provide fair, honest, and equal representation to those in need of legal aid.” Short and to the point.

Without adequate information, technology choices are difficult to make, and for legal software your standard review sites like CNet just aren’t much help. Not to fear, litiReviews by LexBe is here. Full text reviews are organized by software category and application name.

For those of us that see marketing as terra incognita, festooned with the warning Hic Sunt Dracones, Duct Tape Marketing is here to help. The articles section offers simple affordable solutions to problems ranging from advertising to web site design. My only quible is that a given topic heading not seem to always align with the subjects covered by the articles filed under that heading – I don’t see the connection between “Virtual Assistants” and “Online Gaming Can Be Expensive – Here’s how to Pay to Play“.

OK, personal digital assistants (PDA’s) have become a de rigeur pocket accessory; providing order and nagging reminders through out the day. Wouldn’t it be cool if there were something similar for all your research? Well the dawn of the personal research assistant is upon us. The heavyweights are OneNote and Evernote. These are the electronic equivalents of your notepad/3-ring binder. With either, their utility is limited by your inventiveness. However, if all you need is a little help with research tasks, consider using the Firefox  add-in Zetero.

Zetero automatically captures citation information from web pages, allows you to capture and annotate images, web pages, links, etc right in your browser, and then store your searches before exporting your data to Word, OpenOffice or WordPress (great for  jotting down ideas for that next blog entry).

If nothing else, the Story of Stuff is a thought provoking look at the life-cycle of the stuff in our world.

I know its early, but before you blow all your Christmas shopping money this holiday season, take a moment and consider sending some of that moola to Heifer International. Heifer’s mission is to bring an end to world hunger by helping people obtain a sustainable source of food and income. The concept in a nutshell is that Heifer makes a gift of livestock to one individual in a community. They teach that individual sustainable agriculture (how to breed for quality, how to care for the livestock, etc). In return, that individual agrees to share the offspring of the gift animals along with their knowledge, resources and skills with others in need.

If there is one thing I could give to the struggling people of the world it would be self-reliance.

Everyone deserves the dignity of providing for themselves and their families. That’s why I support Heifer International.”

— Walter Cronkite

Your firm name is important. It often provides the first impression your clients have of your firm. It is your corporate identity, your nom de guerre, and for some it can be an ethics violation. The ABA Journal is reporting that solos who add “and Associates” to their firm names may be in violation of ethics rules.

After reading the ABA Journal article, I called the Minnesota Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board and confirmed that they agree that were a solo to add “and Associates” to their firm name, they would not be making a truthful representation. This also applies to phrases such as “The Law Offices of …” if there is only one physical office, “and Associates” if there is only one associate, “and Associate” if the person referred to by the word associate is not an attorney (paralegals don’t count).