Practice Matters

Online Backup Services

/ Bruce Cameron

If the first rule of the digital age is “save early, save often” the second has to be “backup your data daily” and unless you are an ubergeek with a home-brew 18 server complex with Raid 5 disk arrays capable of doing disk to disk mirroring build into your hall closet, online backup services like BackBlaze, Carbonite, iBackup, SugarSync, or Iron Mountain may be a solution to a problem you hope you never have.

However, not any on-line backup solution will do for the paperless law office (or for that matter, a law office that maintains any electronic client information). After all there is an ethical duty to protect client data and maintain client confidentiality. So before running out and signing up for the cheapest on-line service out there be sure that the service provides an automatic, encrypted backup service that gives you exclusive access to your files (or at least a written statement that files are kept confidential). Then, periodically check your backups by doing a file restore – remember doveryai, no proveryai (trust but verify)

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Starting the Firm

/ Bruce Cameron

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“.

A little help

/ Bruce Cameron

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).

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).

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.