Farming More Business - Learn Something from a Video Gamer
Posted on May 17, 2012 by Jeff Krause
Filed Under Law Firm Marketing, Law Practice Management | Leave a Comment
I admit it, I’ve played a few video games. One of my favorites is World of Warcraft. In addition to the traditional quests and monster fighting, World of Warcraft features a complex world economy with resources goods for sale. If you want to kill hundreds of hours, give it a try.
This post is not about video gaming. It is about growing your business. I mention World of Warcraft because of a concept gamers call “farming.” Farming is gathering resources within the game. It’s not very hard. You simply wander around the imaginary world of Azeroth and pick up herbs, ore and other commodities. It is actually pretty boring and, in many cases, there is no immediate reward. For that reason, many players won’t do it.
The real world of business is strikingly similar. There is business out there, much of it just waiting for whoever simply makes the effort to pick it up. Maybe you are not picking it up because it’s boring, there is no immediate payoff, or maybe because you are just too busy. Are you a farmer? Maybe you could learn something from a video gamer.
Here are some simple ways to “farm” more business:
If you blog, write two additional blog post each month. Blogging is a great way to demonstrate your expertise and help people remember you. It also provides many search engine benefits, making it easier for people to find you on the Internet. Sometimes, a blog post will generate immediate calls but, just as often, someone will find the post months later and contact you. Twenty-four additional posts each year are likely to generate a number of contacts.
If you Tweet, tweet at least once every day. This might sound like a lot but success with Twitter depends on activity and Twitter could not be easier. You can tweet about almost anything. Tweet a link to an interesting article or a simple thought of the day. Don’t forget to tweet a link every time you write a blog post. Like blogging, Twitter raises other’s awareness of you and your expertise.
Add two LinkedIn Connnections Every Week. This can be challenging. At a certain point, you might feel that you have added every connection you care to add. However, building your connections is something that never ends. Find more by searching the connections of your connections and don’t forget to connect with people you meet during the course of your day.
Default calendar your follow-ups. How well do you follow up with leads? When you send out a proposal do you schedule a follow-up and stick with it? Personally, this is not one of my own strong suits. However, one strategy that has helped me is to block off a specific half day each week (often Monday morning) and calendar three hours for follow-ups and nothing else. Only after all of my follow-ups are complete do I move on to other things.
Turn something you do into a system. Systems provide your business with consistency and continuity. They ensure that a task is done the right way and can be transferred to someone else. Best of all, they might provide a way for you to free up some of your time. After all, if you systemize one of your tasks you might be able to delegate it to someone else.
Learn a new piece of technology. Spending just a few minutes learning something new about technology can pay big dividends. Used correctly, technology can make you more efficient and productive. Download a new (useful) app, learn something new about Word or Adobe or learn about the social media tools I have discussed.
Remember. The idea here is to do little things that don’t always provide an immediate return but help you grow your business over time. Take a tip from a gamer., “Farming” might be boring but it can help you grow your business and you will be way ahead of others who don’t do it.
Reverse Mentoring for Tech Skills
Posted on April 18, 2012 by Jeff Krause
Filed Under Tips and Tricks | Leave a Comment
A busy first quarter has put me way behind on both my reading and blogging. Yesterday, while trying to catch up, I came across an article from the February 2012 issue of Law Technology News by Brendan McKenna on reverse mentoring. See Could Reverse Mentoring Fly at Law Firms?
Traditionally, law firm mentoring involved a more experienced partner taking a young associate under their wing and helping them learn both the law and how to practice law. Reverse mentoring is where the young associate returns the favor by teaching older attorneys about today’s technology. I see reverse mentoring going on all the time. In fact, I engaged in it years ago when I was in practice.
Reverse mentoring makes perfect sense and it probably happens within your firm right now. It will work even better if you formalize the process and set aside time every week or month for it. I should also point out that firm management should make some allowance for the time spent mentoring and not billing. If you don’t, your young associates won’t be very excited about doing it.
Need some ideas to get started? Online legal research, mobility apps, and working remote are good places to start. Once you start, you will find other topics.
Dropbox, Cloud Storage and Encryption
Posted on April 17, 2012 by Jeff Krause
Filed Under Document Management, Security, Tips and Tricks | Leave a Comment
My friend and Lawtopia partner, Craig Bayer, has written an extensive post on Dropbox and similar services that store documents in the cloud. Recently, people have questioned the security of such services.
Craig’s post discusses the various options you have to secure your data and concludes that encrypting your files before you upload them is the answer. Interesting read.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Dropbox and Love the Cloud
Does Your Office Run Itself While You Are Away?
Posted on February 20, 2012 by Jeff Krause
Filed Under KPM News, Law Practice Management, Tips and Tricks | Leave a Comment
Recently, someone who knows me as a legal technologist asked me to write an article on technology and trial techniques. In what now seems like another lifetime, I was a litigator. When I sat down to write the article, I found that I just could not do it. Technology has changed everything about trial technique in the 14 years I have been away. On the other hand, I realized that there is something I do every day that helps my clients be successful at trial - make their office efficient while they are away so that they can focus on their trial.
You know the feeling. You are taking a well deserved and long overdue vacation, have to take an extended business trip or try a case that is expected to take a week. Oh, oh. While you are out, your phone still rings, emails pile up and your to do list doubles or triples in size. How can you enjoy your vacation or focus on your trial without worrying about the mess you left behind and will be returning to next week? Will your office grind to a halt without you there to run it?
There are a number of things that you can do to ensure your law office (or any other business for that matter) continues to work while you are away. Two that immediately come to mind are systems and delegation. I going to discuss both in terms of something I do know - law office technology.
Systems provide consistency, confidence and transferability within your firm. In other words, things are done the same way every time, you have confidence they are getting done, your staff has confidence they are doing things correctly and you can easily transition a task to a new employee. In the past, systems often meant a paper checklist where employees noted each task as they complete it. Technology has dramatically changed this. Today, we can create the checklists automatically, have our computer prompt us for the next step, notify the appropriate people automatically and perform other tasks that used to require much more in the way of direct human input. Practice management systems are a great place to start here. Programs like Time Matters and PracticeMaster allow you to create chains of events and automatically generate the next record. There are even tools that are specifically designed for creating and maintaining systems. Once the system is in place, it is much more efficient than old fashioned paper checklists.
Attorneys used to be pretty good at delegation. I can remember a time when few attorneys typed their own letters. They quickly dictated the letter and their staff typed it up or, in some cases, the staff member drafted it for review by the attorney. Technology has changed this. Most attorneys now type their own emails (which have replaced letters and phone calls as their primary communication method) and most enter their own time. Many now type their own letters, briefs and contracts and some even do routine tasks such as scanning. I am not necesarily saying that this is a bad thing but, think about it. How can your office run itself while you are away, if you do the lion’s share of the work yourself? If you want to get out of the office, you have to delegate more so that things get done while you are away.
Technology can help you with delegation as well. I use my Grundig Digta 7 to dictate my to do list to my assistant, indicating who to assign it to and when it is due. She enters them into our practice management system which distributes the tasks and notifies the person who is being assigned a task. The system then produces reports that tell me the status of each task and displays notes as the tasks are completed. All of this is much efficient than my old system of writing down a long list of to dos and hoping that I could somehow complete them all. The point is, technology should make things easier, not harder. Use technology to help you delegate rather than take on more things yourself.
Systems and delegation are common sense business tools. They won’t help you try your case but they can relieve some of the stress of being out a few day and let you focus on what matters - getting a good result for your client.
Copying a Document Path From Worldox
Posted on February 13, 2012 by Jeff Krause
Filed Under Worldox | Leave a Comment
Every Worldox user knows that the program has some great features. Here’s one that many people might not be aware of.
Worldox links with many programs but, every once in awhile, I use a program that requires me to browse Windows Explorer to find a document in Worldox. There are two issues. First, I have to know the path of the document and, second, I need to know the document number. There is a trick that makes this much easier.
When prompted to find a document via Windows Explorer, minimize that screen and run a Worldox search for the document. Once you find the document, you will see the document number, assuming your display shows the document number. Next, right click on the document in Worldox and select Edit then Copy Location to the Clipboard. See below.
Minimize Worldox. Reopen the Windows Explorer window and paste the location into the search path. Depending on the program, you may need to remove the document number from the path before you start the search. See below.
When you hit the Enter key, Windows will open to folder you have specified. If you remember the document number, find it in the list. If you don’t, just reopen Worldox to look it up. Select it in Windows Explorer and you are ready to go.
This technique saves me about a minute every time I need to browse for a document in a program that does not support Worldox.
Offline Viewing of Dropbox Files on Your iPad
Posted on January 23, 2012 by Jeff Krause
Filed Under Time and Billing, Tips and Tricks | 2 Comments
A client asked me a Dropbox question this week. I should have known the answer but the question had never occurred to me before. I had to figure it out. These types of questions make great blog posts. If one person is asking the question, there are probably more.
The client was boarding a plane in a few hours. For the first time, he planned to take his iPad rather than his laptop. He had copied a number of documents tha
t he needed to Dropbox. However, when he disconnected from his wireless network, he could not access the documents. They were only available when connected to the Internet. He wanted to review these documents while on the plane. How, he asked, could he save a local copy of the documents on his iPad?
The answer is simple but I did not know it until I looked it up. Dropbox files are not automatically saved to the iPad. In order to save a file locally on your iPad, it must be indicated as a Favorite. You indicate a file as a Favorite by highlighting it in Dropbox and tapping the star in the upper right of the screen.
One more thing. In the Dropbox settings on your iPad, there is a Local Storage setting. By default, this is set a 500MB. If you need to store a lot of files locally on your iPad, you may need to adjust this setting.
For those of you who have never tried Dropbox, it is a useful tool. It allows you to share files between your desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones. If you sign up using this link, you can get 2GB of free storage and I get 250MB of additional storage for my account.
Chrometa Helps You Capture Your Time
Posted on January 19, 2012 by Jeff Krause
Filed Under Applications, Cool Stuff, Law Practice Management | Leave a Comment
Have you ever had one of those days where you were busy all day? You moved from one item to the next, dealt with interruptions and was able to get a lot of work done. Problem is, you look down at your timesheet and it is almost blank. You try to reconstruct your day but all you can really come up with is about 5 hours when you know you were busy for 8. Where did that time go?
Entering your time immediately after you finish each task is the way to go. We all know that. The problem is that this is not always realistic. Emails are pouring in, you are switching between applications and you get into a rhythm as you do things. Entering your time breaks that rhythm. Many legal billing applications have timers - PCLaw and PracticeMaster have very good ones. These work but you still have to start each time entry and classify it at the beginning when you start timing it. This helps but, at least for me, it does not completely solve the problem.
Enter Chrometa (http://www.chrometa.com). For a small monthly fee, Chrometa monitors my computer. It determines which window is active and automatically records the time I spend in that window. It uses information from the active program to specifically identify that time. For example, if I write an email to my Lawtopia partner Carol Schlein with the subject line “Chrometa Is Really Awesome,” Chrometa will record how much time I spent on that specific email. Same for documents (where it uses the document name) and Internet browsing (where it records the site and time spent on it). Periodically, everything is sent to Chrometa where I can view all of my time. I can even switch computers although I have to remember to pause Chrometa on the computer I am leaving or it will record me as away.
At the end of the day, I log in to my Chrometa account and all of my time is there. From there I can check which items belong to specific clients. If, for example, I worked on an email and reviewed a document for a client, I simply check both entries and assign them to that client. I can annotate the entry before I assign them. Once everything is assigned, I can export a report to Excel that groups all of my time by client. Chrometa also has built in exports to several legal billing systems as well as .csv for exporting to just about anything. I will cover those in another post.
Chrometa is a very useful tool. It does not replace my billing system but it compliments it very nicely. I spend most of my time at my computer and Chrometa helps me keep an accurate record of everything I do. It also allows me get things done without the immediate need to stop and record it. Now I know where my time is going.
View Menu Settings in Time Matters Records
Posted on November 9, 2011 by Jeff Krause
Filed Under Time Matters, Tips and Tricks | Leave a Comment
Today, while I was doing a webinar for the Time Matters Virtual User Group, a question was asked about hiding several fields on the Billing Form. Specifically, the user was interested in hiding the Date and Code fields at the top of the form. In answering the question, I discussed a feature of Time Matters that many users don’t seem to be aware of.
All Time Matters records have a “View” Menu. The View Menu allows you to show or hide different areas of the form. For example, on the Billing Form, you have options to display or hide the Reminders Area, Notify Area, Record Information, Rate and Override Areas and User Areas. The specific areas available for display vary from record type to record type. Areas that are not checked do not appear on the Billing Form. To answer the question for our webinar attendee, I suggested they uncheck Record Information as this would hide the Date, Time, Duration and Code area of the Billing Form.
Time Matters Billing Record View Menu
It is important to understand that “View” selections do not actually remove the fields. You are simply deciding not to view them when you look at a particular form.
Also, keep in mind that this is a user level setting. Hiding an area for one person does not hide it for anyone else, so you will have to go around station to station if you want to make the change for everyone. It is possible to copy the setting using the User Level Setup Copy function. In this case, you would be copying Form Settings. Just be aware that you might overwrite other Form level settings if you use that feature.
10 Ways to Minimize Risk When Running A Law Firm Webinar
Posted on October 21, 2011 by Jeff Krause
Filed Under KPM News, Lawtopia News | Leave a Comment
On November 10, I will be doing a webinar entitled 10 Ways to Minimize Risk When Running a Law Firm. I will be presenting along with Christopher T. Anderson, a Georgia attorney who is now the Product Manager for LexisNexis Firm Manager. The webinar is sponsored by LexisNexis.
Here is the description of the webinar:
As an owner of a law firm, it’s critical that due diligence is being used to minimize risk for you and your law firm. After all, it is your professional responsibility to ensure you are keeping complete and accurate records of your client and matter activities, protecting client privileged information i.e. backing up the data, restricting access to information and knowing who works for you. Learn what some of the biggest reported disciplinary actions are today and how you can prevent them from occurring in your law firm.
Here is the link to register for the webinar.
Wisconsin Solo and Small Firm Conference is Next Week
Posted on October 19, 2011 by Jeff Krause
Filed Under KPM News, Lawtopia News | Leave a Comment
There is still time to register for next week’s Wisconsin Solo and Small Firm Conference at the Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells.
The WSSF is my favorite (and busiest) conference of the year. This time around I will be speaking four times on a variety of topics including Legal Forms, The Ethics of Cloud Computing, Adobe Acrobat and Remote Computing. You can take a look at the conference website for more details or visit the Events list at Krause Practice Management Facebook Fan Page for more information. I am also chairing the Technology Track along with Sean Sweeney this year. The technology track committee has put together a nice selection of topics.
I am also looking forward to the presentation by my friend and business coach Chris Carman of ActionCoach Elm Grove. It is not in the technology track so I am going to have to find a way to sneak off for a bit and listen in on “7 Secrets to Running Your Practice.”
As usual, Krause Practice Management will be exhibiting this year. My schedule is so packed that I have asked my Lawtopia partner Dan Hutchison to come down from Minneapolis and give me a hand in the booth.
I am sure this year’s show will be another great success and I hope to see you there.
