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Tech & Web

To Blog Right, You Need to Imagine Your Audience

January 26, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Of all of the commandments of blogging, know and write for your audience ranks at the top of the list.  But for those who blog to silent crowds who never email or send comments, the primary source of information about our readers comes through statistical data generated by our stat counters on the popularity of [...]

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MyPocketAttorney: Rock It or Block It?

January 23, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Ever intrepid tech-adventurer, Bob Ambrogi has uncovered yet another interesting find: My Pocket Attorney, a site that provides a  template that lawyers can use to create a branded mobile app for their law firm. Apps developed through the MyPocketAttorney suite of tools include features such as one-touch dialing so that users can call your office, [...]

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Client Portals – Love ‘em or Leave ‘em

December 16, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

There’s an article by Donna Seyle in Law Practice Today that provides a comprehensive round-up of various platforms for client portals and practice management. As the long list of products suggests, they’re all the rage – though as Marc Lauritsen notes in the concluding paragraph, large firms have long offered extranets to clients. What’s new [...]

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UPDATE: Can You Spell I Went Overboard? Try I-L-T-S-O

April 15, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Update [May 3, 2011 - I've made a few more cuts to the post] Update [April 17, 2011]: Last Friday, I posted the entry below, which was critical of the newly formed International Legal Technical Standards Organization and its proposed tech standards. There, I argued that the proposed standards as overkill, and the entire effort [...]

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Book Review: Virtual Law Practice: A Useful Guide for Virtually Any Kind of Law Practice

March 17, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Libraries may be nearly obsolete, but somehow we can’t rid ourselves of Melvil Dewey’s fetish for classifying books. We cabin books into narrow, topical silos – the business book, the practice management book, the substantive law treatise – and gravitate to those directly related to our interests, while ignoring the others. If I didn’t blog [...]

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Bespoke or Be-Gone: Lessons from the E-discovery trenches

March 7, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Make way for John Henry, Round 2 . Just as the steam-engine rolled over John Henry, recent advancements in e-discovery technology similarly enable machines to accomplish the work formerly performed by a team of 500 lawyers, reports the New York Times. Moreover, not only do computers perform e-discovery less expensively, but also with a precision [...]

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Using Security as a Selling Point for Your Practice

December 17, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

A few weeks ago, Jordan Furlong (who’s North America’s answer to Richard Susskind) tipped me off to Clearspire, a new, “new kind of law firm.” Billing itself as a revolutionary law firm, Clearspire’s website reads like a page out of Susskind, hitting all of the buzz words like alternative billing, combining legal advice with business [...]

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MyShingle Weighs in on ABA Ethics Initiative

December 16, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

Well, I was an hour or two late, but I got my comments in on the ABA Issues papers on web use and cloud computing. You can read them below. ABA Comments

Read more Ethics 20/20 7 comments

Avoid the Client-Portal Potty

December 6, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

What’s not to like about an online client portal?  Setting up a site that enables clients to access their records or check the status of their case 24/7 offers the benefit of convenience and saves costs by eliminating the need for staff to respond to client requests for information. Client portals aren’t pricey either.  Technologies [...]

Read more Ethics & Malpractice Issues 7 comments

Plug & Play Technology Solutions for Solo and Small Firm Lawyers

November 11, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

Though I’m fascinated with the idea of technology, the nuts and bolts of what to use and how to choose bore the living daylights out me!  Honestly, I have no interest in all of the bells and whistles of a particular tech tool; I just want to know it works in a law practice like [...]

Read more Solo Practice Trends 2 comments

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