Archive for September 2014
Try Before You Buy: Can Testing Potential Hires Work for Solo and Small Law Firms
We’ve all been there. After months of sitting on the fence about bringing an assistant or paralegal or associate on board to help dig you out from under, you place an ad or ask around to colleagues for recommendations. You’re encouraged when you identify a job candidate who looks great on paper or comes highly…
Read MoreFuture Fridays: Hitch Your Niche To Another Law Firm
The niche practice as the future of law is also yesterday’s news. Meaning that the benefits of niche practice have been well documented forever, nowhere more extensively than at Chuck Newton’s Third Wave Blog, which is jam packed with dozens of niche practice ideas. But I don’t like re-blogging old territory. So here’s a little…
Read MoreWhose Client Is It Anyway?
Rob Jordan’s recent Above the Law column, The (Alleged) Uber-fication of Legal Services comprehensively compares the latest crop of lawyer match-making services and platforms designed to connect consumers and small business clients to lawyers. One of the characteristics that Jordan examines in distinguishing between services like Upcounsel, Priori, Law Kick or Law Dingo is “data…
Read MoreMaking Solo & Small Law Practice Sustainable – My Upcoming Clio Cloud Con Plenary
Every so often, I’ll go back and review several months of posts at my blog, and a distinct theme emerges. In 2010, it was your client as partner, after noticing the uptick in posts on do-it-yourself client on my blog and others. In 2011, I was obsessed with bespoke on a budget. More recently, I’ve…
Read MoreShould Lawyers Look to Online Dispute Resolution To Resolve Disputes With Clients?
Online dispute resolution is rapidly gaining traction. Modria, a leading online dispute resolution (ODR) platform, boasts that its service is used to settle more than 60 million cases annually. Yet even though ABA task forces have studied, and appear to endorse ODR, I’ve not found much mention of the potential uses of ODR to resolve…
Read MoreRural Round-Up: Practice Opportunities Remain for Those Willing to Stake a Claim
Three years ago, I blogged about opportunities for lawyers in rural practice. That wasn’t just a short term trend either; demand for rural lawyers remains high, as shown by yesterday’s story from the Journal Star about veteran lawyer John Thomas’ efforts to find a successor to his busy rural practice. It’s a great story about…
Read MoreA Legal Tech Tool That Is Actually Very Cool – But Does It Break Ethics Rules?
To date, much of what’s been characterized as legal disruption hasn’t impressed me as much more than a souped-up, techno-powered version of what’s been tried before and failed. Still, I’m no curmudgeon and every so often, I find myself excited about the possibility of tiny law applications like Shake Legal – an app to create…
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