Month: June 2009

Sixty Pounds of Oats

/ Bruce Cameron / 1 Comment

When doing field work there comes a point, when keeping the tractor on course becomes automatic and the drone of the engine merges with the radio to produce a banjo punctuated white noise, that is marvelously conducive to deep thought and contemplation. As it is hay season here in Rural Lawyer land, there is plenty of field work to do. While baling, I found myself contemplating the supposed death of the billable hour and the various heirs to its throne.

As far as I can tell, the billable hour’s cause of death was a lack of value – that too little work was spread out over too much time and billed at too high a rate. And, if I understand the argument for using some type of alternative fee structure is that they replace the possibility for this kind of abuse with new and different possibilities for abuse Continue reading →

The Mutable Cloud

/ Bruce Cameron

Emmerson observed that “nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same”. The same observation can be made about web-based practice management systems.  In her latest screencast, Nicole Black does an excellent job in reviewing the mutable world of web-based practice management systems. She does an excellent job of comparing and contrasting the features of the 3 major players in the web-based LPM world (Clio, LawRD & Rocket Matter) with on-screen demonstrations of each of the systems. If you are thinking of investing in a web-based LPM service, Ms. Black’s screencast is a must see.

While Ms. Black does provide some general words of warning about the ethical traps and general risks involved with using web-based systems (in fact, I applaud her insistance that one checks out the service’s data backup and recovery systems before investing), I would have liked more in-depth information on these subjects. Continue reading →

Looking for Zebras

/ Bruce Cameron

Background  item #1 – when faced with the task of outfitting a law practice, it does not help when your trusty computer decides that it is time to pack up and move to that great bit-dump in the sky.

Background item #2 – I’m a guy, a pilot and a blooded computer geek which means that shiny gadgets attract me like a trout to a fly. It also means that I’ve a passing knowledge of what can go wrong and the associated costs to fix it. It also means that I’m a wee paranoid about losing client data.

The perfect storm has arrived – I need new hardware; time to go shopping Continue reading →