Law Practice Tips

Published By Jim Calloway

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By: Jim Calloway

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Jim Calloway

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Some lawyers were concerned when the Model Rules of Professional Conduct were changed to include a comment that competence as a lawyer included an appreciation of “the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.” Now 31 states have adopted some version of this language in comment 8 to Rule 1.1, according to legal technology journalist Robert Ambrogi who maintains regularly updated information about the comment adoption on his blog. Many of the legal technology…
You may not have heard of something called the Data-Driven Ethics Initiative. The organizers say it is an initiative to gather and use data to completely overhaul and improve the Rules of Professional Conduct to better benefit the public. Skeptics say it is an effort primarily funded by online legal tech companies with goals that are more tied to their business development plans than reform. The organizers say on their website that they have law…
Right before our Oklahoma Bar Association Solo & Small Firm Conference kicks off, the OBA announces six new practice management member benefits. (June 6, 2018) Six new member benefits to help Oklahoma lawyers better manage their practices have been announced by the Oklahoma Bar Association. Members who sign up for new subscriptions will receive discounts to Clio, CosmoLex, MyCase, PracticePanther, Rocket Matter or Zola Suite, all cloud-based practice management services for law firms. “Supporting Oklahoma…
ABA TECHSHOW was held March 8 – 10, 2018. So the column, A Brief Recap of ABA TECHSHOW 2018, by me and OBA PMA Darla Jackson is not exactly “hot news.” Such is the result of print publication deadlines sometimes. But only a few of the previous TECHSHOW 2018 reviews mentioned the interesting relationship between TECHSHOW exhibitor Logikcull and the Ramones or provided you with the Electronic Discovery Reference Model chart. And I know…
It has been Collaboration Week for lawyers. It’s not like the ABA or Congress designated it as such, but that still seems to be the case. The “week” actually started last Friday when Attorney At Work published Tech Tips: Collaborating Well With Others. The post noted: For this edition of Friday Tech Tips, we asked the practice management technology experts: “What’s your best tech tip for collaborating well with others?” Here’s good advice from…
Keeping the customer satisfied should be an important of every business today. This includes law firms, even though we refer to our customers as clients. My column in the Oklahoma Bar Journal, Keeping the Customer Satisfied, outlines some ideas to do just that. One of the first rules is to not do things that aggravate the customer, like having them waste time in the the law firm’s waiting area for a long time after…
Yesterday’s feature on Attorney at Work was Does Email Tracking Violate the Rules of Professional Conduct? It was written by Mark C. Palmer, who is Professionalism Counsel for the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism. He cites a recent Professional Conduct Advisory Opinion from the Illinois State Bar Association, (Opinion No. 18-01, issued January 2018) along with advisory opinions from Alaska Bar Association, New York State Bar Association and Pennsylvania Bar Association to…
Managing a Law Practice in the Age of Intelligent Machines represents my attempt to speak to those lawyers who are perplexed by the number of things they are reading and hearing about law office automation and artificial intelligence replacing lawyers. That can happen and I cite one example where it has happened already. But many, hopefully most, lawyers will be using automation and AI to better serve their clients. I hoped to provide a general…
Leadership and management are two different concepts. But both involve working with others to reach common goals. Leadership in a law firm is challenging because lawyers are by their nature very independent and once a law firm has more than a handful of lawyers, there will be lawyers with a number of differing ideas and goals. The litigation lawyers look at world differently than transactional lawyers. Legal assistants often feel more loyalty to “their” lawyer…
A few weeks ago I wrote about Dennis Kennedy’s feature on Thinking Smartly About Smart Contracts. My link to his blog post had an additional link to his useful discussion of blockchain. It seems to me that smart contracts will catch on relatively quickly, especially with big multinational corporations doing business in many countries. Ken Grady has written something about a vision of future of the law and legal services that merits your attention.…