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Law Practice Management Tips Track Sneak Preview - Now More Tips Than Ever
March 2006
ABA TECHSHOW 2006. The Law Practice Management Tips Track runs all day
Friday April 21.
Year after year, the 60 Tips in 60 Minutes presentation is the most popular session at ABA TECHSHOW. Why? Quite simply because there is no better place to learn dozens of amazing practical technology tips. What do our attendees say about the tips session? We regularly hear things like: “Best CLE session I ever saw.” “Worth the price of admission.” “I never knew you could do that.”
So this year, in conjunction with the joint ABA TECHSHOW 2006 and LPM Section meeting, we are presenting a special all tips track with 4 separate tips sessions. Sixty tips each at 4 sessions translates to 240 of the best practical tips for doing things better with technology. Wow!! Each session will focus on one of the four core areas of law practice management: finance, marketing, management and technology.
We have an amazing collection of tipsters speaking on the LPM Tips Track. All are all legal technology leaders and luminaries. They include David Bilinsky, Ellen Freedman, Laura Calloway, Bill Gibson, Walt Karnstein, Reba Nance, Natalie Kelly, Jim Calloway, Matt Homann, Greg Siskind, Rick Ferguson, Reid Trautz, Blair Janis, and Vedia Jones-Richardson.
Don’t miss this tips extravaganza. As a sneak-preview teaser, here are some of the actual tips that will be featured this year:
Redaction Tool for Microsoft Word 2003
According to our friends in Redmond: This tool makes it easy for you to mark sections of a document for redaction. You can then redact the document so that the sections you specified are blacked out. You can either print the redacted document or use it electronically. In the redacted version of the document, the redacted text is replaced with a black bar and cannot be converted back to text or retrieved. Sensitive government documents, confidential legal documents, insurance contracts, and other sensitive documents are often redacted before being made available to the public. With the Word 2003 Redaction Add-in, users of Microsoft Office Word 2003 now have an effective, user-friendly tool to help them redact confidential text in Word documents. Go to www.microsoft.com/downloads and search for "redaction".
Format Painter
This word processing tool will help you to produce a uniform appearance throughout your documents. When a segment of a document is formatted the way you want it, such as right justified, first line indented, separated paragraphs, numbered, or whatever, you can click on the format painter paintbrush icon and then apply the same formatting to other text throughout the document. A double click of the format painter icon will keep it active, to format repeated segments until you click on the icon again to release it.
Bluetooth and Cordless Headsets
Cradling your telephone handset on your shoulder for extended periods of time will ultimately result in what I affectionately describe as “carpal neck syndrome”. To avoid this, use a Bluetooth or wireless headset. Some of these are compatible both with your wireless telephone and with your office or VOIP telephone systems. Once you try one of these headsets you will never go back to using a regular telephone handset.
Go Graphical
Pictures can say more than words and can explain to not only a judge and jury the events which occurred or may have occurred, but also municipal councils, tribunals, and boards of directors courses of action or events which are otherwise incommunicable in mere words. The software to obtain, modify, annotate, and share photographs and graphics are very inexpensive and are commonly available at most software sources, and much free information is available on-line from Microsoft.
Mental Health Breaks
All work and no play makes for a dull lawyer. Take a mental health break once a day. Relax, look out the window, call a friend or check out a totally useless web site such as http://svt.se/hogafflahage/hogafflaHage_site/Kor/hestekor.swf (Click on/off each horse) , or waste a few minutes at http://www.njagyouth.org/liberty.htm or http://www.widro.com/throwpaper.html , or play some classic games at games.yahoo.com. My newest favorite quick diversions are the 30-Second Bunny Theater and JibJab political videos. Have a few laughs, then GET BACK TO WORK!