Author: Bruce Cameron

What’s in a Name

/ Bruce Cameron

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).

Thanks for the Invite, but I may not Follow You

/ Bruce Cameron

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. — Carl Jung

While Jung may have the collective unconscious to have a great signal-to-noise ratio, the part of the collective conscious that Twitter seems to have accessed has a poor signal-to-noise ratio. So, I may not be following you because:

Your stream of tweets is simply a catalog of your every waking moment. A constant bombardment of information eventually becomes noise. I don’t have time for that.

Your tweets are simply monotonous diatribes on a single topic. I left that behind when I left usenet. While others may find that endless catalog of links interesting, I’d rather google for the information when I need it.

Finally, blatant self-promotion doesn’t trip my trigger.

I’m looking for the art, poetry and interspection that occassionally winds its way through general morass. I want to read something that is funny, interesting, relevant, cute, or thought provoking. I use Twitter to be entertained and to meet people. So be a light in the darkness and I will follow.

Crossover to Linux

/ Bruce Cameron

I’ve been running CrossOver on my CentOS Linux desktop for the last week or so and have been quite impressed with the software. For those that may not of heard, CrossOver allows you to install and run Windows applications under Linux without the need for a Microsoft Operating System license. Once installed, its just a matter of click and run.

With the exception of Access, I had no problems installing and running the Office 2003 Pro suite, OneNote, Flash, Quicken, and Acrobat. While the CrossOver install process does add an additional layer of complexity when compared to a native install under Windows, for CrossOver supported applications the process is simply a matter of running an install wizard application and specifying which CDROM contains the application install disk. For unsupported applications, installation gets a bit more complicated and my attempts to install demo versions of Tabs3/PracticeMaster and Amicus Attorney have failed. I should note that, at present, I’ve only tried twice to install these applications and have yet to crack open the relevant documentation so my failures are more indicative of my lack of time than the software’s overall performance.

The Value of Tradition

/ Bruce Cameron

At the onset of my journey to a solo practice, I conducted a fairly informal market survey of my potential client base to see if a virtual office practice would work as well in a rural community as it does in the more densely populated urban areas. While my survey indicated that my potential client base was willing to accept some deviations from their concept of “lawyer” (such as flat fees v. hourly rates), they value the more traditional trappings of an attorney. Here, there is value in engraved letterhead and wax-sealed wills, in the formality of a wood paneled office and a heavy oak desk and there is comfort and confidence in that three piece suit and a good firm handshake.

I found that this is a community that still does business face-to-face and is one where impressions matter, especially when issues such as trust and confidence are involved. The virtual office concept falls flat because the web can never give the feeling of permanence that bricks and mortar provide. It does not matter that a virtual office means lower overhead, that brick and mortar office is permanent — you can trust permanence; you can have confidence in permanence. There is value in tradition.

Rocket Matter Redux

/ Bruce Cameron

Greg Broiles is correct in pointing out that I did leave out hardware costs from my ROI computation. I also left out the cost of Internet access, the availability of high speed Internet access, and a myriad of other factors that would go into an exhaustive ROI computation. Greg’s point is quite valid, any ROI analysis has to be done from a specific set of circumstances and will give different results for different inputs.

I think the software as a service (SaaS) model is the potential of being the next great thing after all it affords the vendor greater control over their intellectual property, eliminates the end user’s upfront software costs, and may reduce the end user’s hardware investment. For the model to work, the end user has to have reliable access to a high speed Internet connection. For those of us in rural areas, we are the Internet’s hinterland and Internet access often means dial-up, high speed translates to 9600 baud, and reliability is dependent on the vagaries of the gods and the local phone company (surveys show that only about 39% of rural households in my neck of the woods have access to broadband Internet service).

I think that both Rocket Matter and Clio have the potential to be great products. Of all the practice management products I’ve reviewed so far, I think that Rocket Matter offers the most user-friendly, KISS interface out there. If it were a standalone product, my decision as to which practice management system to use would be simple. The ugly reality is I’m a one computer, one lawyer practice with a dodgy internet connection and I’m not sure that SaaS is for me. Your mileage may vary.