I Survived by Jeff Krause

Three weeks of posting everyday. Whew! I was pretty sure that I could do it but needed to prove it to myself. Best of all, I was able to fit it into the rest of my day with very little effort.

My strategy, for any aspiring blogger or one who is finding it difficult to post more often, was to set aside specific time. Most of the time, I was able to do it first thing in the morning and very often my topic was something I knew I had to work on that day. I found it to be a nice way to get myself in the right frame of mind. This was especially true at the beginning of the contest. Other times, I used my post a way to unwind at the end of the day. Very often, those posts were about something that came up during the day. I certainly won’t claim that it was easy. However, I found that there was always enough time and always something to say.

One more thing that helped was the fact that blogging more frequently influenced several people to contact me. Not new clients. Rather, other bloggers and opinion leaders in my industry. Getting their attention was certainly a good thing. Knowing that there was an audience certainly encouraged me to keep posting.

Final Blawger Survivor Update: For some of Cynthia Rowland’s comments about the contest visit Leadership, Women, Lawyers. No Reins Girl has some comments as well. Ten of us made it. Good luck to all of my fellow survivors.

Time Matters Boot Camps Back This Fall by Jeff Krause

After a short break over the summer months, IP Associates has scheduled seven Time Matters Boot Camps and seven Time Matters Advanced Boot Camps (Power User Training) for the fall. Neil Johnson will be doing Boot Camps in San Francisco, Columbus, Ohio, and Irvine, California. I will be doing them in New York and Portland and we will be teaming up in Chicago and New Orleans. You can check dates, times and specific locations at the IP Associates website. We will be using Time Matters 10 as soon as it is available, so come out and learn something about Time Matters and see the new version of this popular program.

Blawger Survivor Update: One day to go. Over at Halo Secretarial Blog, Laurie Mapp has a post on working at home with kids. Wow, can I relate to that. Even though my kids are older, having them around the “office” all summer has caused more than a few disruptions. I have one more post to go and my office mates have one more day before they are back to school.

How Are You Using PDF Portfolios? by Jeff Krause

One of my favorite Adobe Acrobat featutres is the PDF Portfolio added in Acrobat 9 Professional. PDF Portfolios are a new way to combine files of any type, not just PDFs, into a single PDF file. The single file can be opened by anyone with Acrobat and the individual files retain the ability to be opened within their native application. With Adobe Acrobat Professional 9, PDF Portfolios are really easy to create. Simply, select Create and Assemble PDF Portfolio. Add the files you want in the portfolio and you are ready to go.

It seems like there would be so many legal uses for PDF Portfolios - demand packages for PI Firms, estate plans, incorporation packets, etc. However, I am under the impression that law firms are not using this great new tool. I am inviting comments from lawyers who are using them in order to share some creative uses for them.

Lastly, if you have never seen a PDF Portfolio or would like some training on it, I do offer training on Adobe Acrobat in person or via the web. Contact me via my Krause Practice Management website.

Blawger Survivor Update: Two more posts to go! Take a look at The Connecticut Employment Law Blog for a post on hurricane policies and preparedness. Most of Dan’s post relates to how you deal with the various employment law questions that arise during a hurricane or other natural disaster. Good advice and it should remind you to dust off your own disaster preparations. Have you tested your backup and redundant power supply lately? I hope Danny strays off into the Atlantic and makes some of Dan’s advice unnecessary.

Almost Forgot to Post by Jeff Krause

Wow, for the first time during the Blawger Survivor contest, I almost forgot to post. It was one of those days where I was able to focus to the point of blocking almost everything else out.

What was I working? I have been working on a technology audit template. I hope to have some additional details and roll this out by Friday but the concept is that I have a HotDocs template that allows me to quickly generate a report about a law firm’s technology status. A firm will be able to submit their information via a handwritten questionaire or via the Internet and the information can then be turned around as a report in less than an hour. Of course, I can use the report onsite as well.

Why a tech audit template? It is the time of year where firms are planning their spending for the remainder of the year. Typically, a report of this type takes me quite awhile to do. This concept gives a quick and easy scorecard that the firm can use to make better decisions.

More when I have the concept ready to roll out.

Blawger Survivor Update: After today, only three posts to go. Today, take a look at Bryan Sims on The Connected Lawyer writing about multiple monitors. I am a huge believer in dual (or more) monitors. I cannot imagine working without them.

Technolawyer BlawgWorld by Jeff Krause

Every week, TechnoLawyer sends out BlawgWorld, which the bill as “Your guide to what’s new and noteworthy on the legal web.” I often forget what a great service TechnoLawyer is. It provides a number of very good services including five different daily newsletters related to legal technology, including the aforementioned BlawgWorld.

I always skim the 50 or so blog topics included in the post but am often to busy to read them at the time. Today, however, I did have a chance to review a few of them and found one that is worth sharing (actually more than one are worth sharing - but I only have time to share one). Way back on March 16th, Matthew Homann at The (non)Billable Hour wrote a post entitled Ten Rules of Client Service. A number of the tips in Matt’s post struck home as I have struggled over the last few months with growing pains and am trying to refocus on customer service. It is a great read and one I suggest is worthwhile for anyone, including non-lawyers.

If you are not already a TechnoLawyer subscriber, visit www.technolawyer.com and join the 13,000+ members.

Blawger Survivor Update: It looks like we only lost one Blawger last week. Looks like there are only 10 of us left. Today, I will send you over to The Nutmeg Lawyer for a post called Hate Tracking Time? Chrometa Can Help. Recently, a client of mine also mentioned Chrometa. In short, it is an application that installs on your computer and records what activities were performed and how much time was spent doing each. It makes it easy to understand where your time is being spent or to determine whether you have billed everything on any given day.

LexisNexis Practice Management Reaches Out to the User Community by Jeff Krause

This morning I had the pleasure of catching up with Loretta Ruppert and learn more about her new role as Senior Director of Community Management at LexisNexis Practice Management. For those of you who don’t know Loretta, her background includes years as an accountant and legal technology consultant and she was instrumental in the development of Billing Matters. Loretta went on to lead the billing and accounting portions of Practice Management when Time Matters was acquired by Lexis a few years ago.

Loretta’s new role is to be a “community organizer” for Practice Management (and I mean that in a good way <g>J). She will be working to bring together the community of product users, consultants and technology leaders and to create a resource to facilitate better communication and cooperation between these groups. She plans to make use of social networking technology to keep people informed of what is happening with various products, innovative new uses for them and in the trenches stories of how people are getting the most out of them. I have extended an open invitation to Loretta to use this blog as a forum for discussion at any time and hope that she will soon begin writing guest posts.

You can reach Loretta or follow her on various social networking via the links below:

Twitter: www.twitter.com/lorettaruppert

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lorettaruppert

FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/lorettaruppert

Blawger Survivor Update: I cannot believe I have made it two weeks without missing a post. Today, I will send you over to Brian Sims at The Connected Lawyer for a post on how to find free photos for your presenations.

Time Matters Tip - Modifying Special Dates by Jeff Krause

Are you annoyed by Time Matters popups warning you that you have scheduled an appointment or a reminder for Flag Day or St. Patrick’s Day? Yes, it might technically be a holiday but you are working and you would like Time Matters to leave you alone about it. All of these holidays can be modified or deleted entirely from Time Matters.

To modify Special Dates, select the Calendar Menu, then Special Dates. Once within the dialog you can add, change and delete any of these dates. Among the settings are the ability to flag the Special Date as a Legal Holiday. Unfortunately, if the Special Date is in the list, you cannot tell Time Matters to not warn you of it. However, you can remove the date entirely.

Still need some warning that a day is a legal holiday because some of your clients may be closed that day? Just add a recurring Event for 7:00 AM that day each year. It will appear on the calendar to give you warning without prompting you every time anything is scheduled on it.

Blawger Survivor Update: The group seems to be holding up very well. Take a look at Cynthia Rowland’s post over at Leadership, Women, Lawyers on Thinking Outside the Box, or When Marketing Doesn’t Help. She makes some great points about honing your skills rather than simply coming up with marketing tips. The best marketing campaign in the world does not help when you are selling a product or service no one wants or not able to deliver on your sales promises.

Time Matters Tip - Connecting Existing Matters to a New Form Style by Jeff Krause

Flight delayed. Might as well post.

You finally have found the time to customize your Time Matters screens the way you have wanted to all along. Now you have a dilemna. You have lots of existing Matters using your old form styles. Now what? Do you simply change the classification codes? Stop! If you do this, you could lose data. If any fields (and, more specifically, data types held in those fields) have changed, you could lose data. This is because data in a form style will simply update to the new format of the field unless you are careful.

One simple way to handle this is to do nothing. Use your new code and new form for new Matters. Let your current and old Matters wrap up using your previous form style. While not ideal, this saves time and avoids the pitfalls I have described above.

If that is not an option, follow this process:

Print out the old form style
Print out the new form style
Carefully detail fields that have changed
Carefully detail which data needs to be moved to make it work in the new form style
Locate and tag all of the Matters that have to be updated
Select Process, Change Records
Select New Template
Select “Move Data from one field to Another” then follow the prompts to tell Time Matters which data in the old form should be moved to work with the new form
Select More Changes and continue to tell Time Matters which changes to make
The last change should be to change the Code to your new one
BACKUP WHEN PROMPTED
Select Finish

If you have done everything correctly, your data will now be in your new form. If I am making this sound easy, it is because I have done this many, many times. Therefore my last piece of advice is to call an expert if you don’t feel comfortable doing this. Why waste your time and jeopardize your data when there is probably someone who can do this for you in a few minutes?

Blawger Survivor Update. Tax Girl has an interesting post on how the IRS is offering a Voluntary Disclosure Program for UBS customers who are concerned they may come under scrutiny for money held at the Swiss banking giant. UBS will turn over records for 4450 accounts out of the estimated 52,000 accounts held by U.S. citizens. The dilemna? If less than 10% of the accounts are being sent to the IRS, do you take the chance that you are part of the 90%. I am glad I don’t have choose.

Benefits of More Frequent Blogging by Jeff Krause

I have been doing Blawger Survivor for just over a week. In fact, today is the 7th post out of the fifteen required. While I certainly enjoy a challenge, one of the reasons I wanted to do this was to see if more frequent posting would increase readership and page views. The results for last week are in.

Now, granted, I had not been posting very often prior to the contest. For that reason, I was only experiencing about 25 views per day. However, it looks like more frequent posting and Blawger Survivor has increased page views on my blog by about 50% in just the first week to around 35-40. Still not as many as I would like but clearly more frequent posting is having an impact.

Blawger Survivor Update. Speaking of the contest, it looks like quite a few of us are still alive. Bryan Sims over at The Connected Lawyer writes that he was recently interviewed for an article on must have tech tools and that he will be presenting on the topic at the ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference in October.

Creating an Email Retention Policy by Jeff Krause

Recently, two different clients have asked me to help them create an email retention policy. In that my clients are law firms and law departments, they have been able to write the specific language themselves. My assistance has been in helping them determine what the policy needs to include and how to formulate the actual policy. Here are some of the guidelines we have come up with.

What needs to be retained and for how long? Most firms consider an email retention policy because there is too much email clogging up their server. Therefore, their real goal in creating an email “retention” policy is to get rid of what they don’t need and keep what they do. What you have to keep depends on ethical obligations, client requests and many other factors. Therefore, the first thing your policy should do is define exactly what needs to be retained. List the types of emails that need to be retained and the reason that you are retaining them.

Determine how you will index and file the retained emails. Saving emails in a disorganized fashion defeats the purpose of an email retention policy because it becomes impossible to find them when you really need them. How do you organize your emails? The obvious answer is a document management and/or practice management system. Document management systems like Worldox offer features to categorize, profile and index emails. The same is true for practice management systems like Time Matters. Thus, the second step is to determine how you will save the emails so that they can be found and retrieved when necessary. Your policy should include the method required to save emails, including any specific information regarding profiling and indexing.

What happens to the rest? The last big question you have to ask is what happens to the emails that do not have to be retained and, assuming they are going to be purged, when they will be deleted. It is not hard to come up with a policy here but it can be very hard to enforce it. If your users are following the previous two guidelines, any emails left unfiled beyond a certain number of days are the ones that can be deleted. However, if they are not following them, some emails requiring retention will be mixed in with the emails to be purged. The answer? Training and policy enforcement. Your users have to be thoroughly trained regarding the importance of saving emails and how to do so. For your part, some mechanism must be in place to verify that they are doing so.

Once again, these guidelines do not attempt to suggest the actual language of your email retention policy. They are intended to help you formulate the language in your policy.

Blawger Survivor Update. Quite a few survivors left. Today, I will send you over to The Nutmeg Lawyer, where Adrian Baron has a post called Twits Tweeting on Twitter. The post describes some “interesting” posts by right-wing nutjobs. I probably come from the other side of the political fence and could find just as many posts by left-wing moonbats. I think the interesting thing is how the Internet has become a place where all of the extremists finally have a place to hang out and exchange conspiracy theories. Perhaps the ability to put just about anything on the Internet, and find people who believe it, is one of the reasons our country has become more divided along partisan lines than at any other at any time I can remember.

9:30 PM. Looks like I survived one more day.

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I Survived by Jeff Krause

Time Matters Boot Camps Back This Fall by Jeff Krause

How Are You Using PDF Portfolios? by Jeff Krause

Almost Forgot to Post by Jeff Krause

Technolawyer BlawgWorld by Jeff Krause

LexisNexis Practice Management Reaches Out to the User Community by Jeff Krause

Time Matters Tip - Modifying Special Dates by Jeff Krause

Time Matters Tip - Connecting Existing Matters to a New Form Style by Jeff Krause

Benefits of More Frequent Blogging by Jeff Krause

Creating an Email Retention Policy by Jeff Krause

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