Check this out: http://yoursuccess.blogspot.com/
Terry Brock, a technology guru with marketing skills, to boot, talks about the benefits of using Skype (recently purchased by e-Bay for $2.6 billion) as a phone when you travel.
An interesting idea. And, check out his comment about using the video concept available on Skype via e-Bay!
TechnoLawyer has a new e-book on blogging. Today is its release date and it promises to be quite informative.
I encourage you to take a look. I’m flattered to have our blog included amongst the other great samples selected for inclusion.
Any readers that are currently TechnoLawyer members will be receiving the eBook automatically.
Here is an extended comment from Ross Fishman (reprinted here with permission from Ross), a marketing guru. I always enjoy reading his comments on marketing. Since there has been a lot of discussion recently on several listservs about blogging, I thought you might be interested in seeing his thoughts.
Anyone old enough to remember The Great Web Site Debate? Around 1996?
Web sites were brand new and so generated enormous interest: headline stories, bylined articles, guru speeches, two-day conferences, mountainous direct mailings — mostly by the web-development companies who sold this new product. (more…)
According to a recent survey, 2/3 of customers who try to get service online give up and use the phone instead. That’s an interesting statistic (Inc. Magazine, October 2005) and what’s more interesting is that the phone’s voice mail isn’t much better. An earlier study concluded that 14 out of 15 automated voice-response systems (more…)
Question: How can I get rid of old files and save storage costs?
Answer: The question is a great question! Unfortunately, the answer is not always simple. Here are some observations, however, that might put the issue into perspective.
1. Bring in outside people to do this task; do not disturb the normal flow of your office procedures and current work flow. Engage a disabled person. This provides the person(s) so engaged with an income s/he might not otherwise have and you can generally pay a lower rate than for other folks.
2. Consider using a photocopy machine. Some large companies provide the scanning capability and do not charge a fee unless and until a photocopy is actually made. Scanning and placing files into a .pdf format is not deemed printing photocopies.
3. Begin with the oldest files first, reduce storage space and thereby save on real estate costs.
4. Be sure to have a lawyer or someone with the requisite knowledge review the files and remove all original documents before destruction of the files after scanning.
5. Consult the Rules of Professional Conduct and ethics opinions of your jurisdiction to verify the time for retention of files. After this date and your scanning process, destroy the files.
6. Do more than merely place files and old boxes into a dumpster. Consider hiring a file storage house to shred your tossed files.
7. After all this, consider the following observation by a colleague: “I am in the arduous process of scanning older files and so far, this is what I’ve found out: I have scanned 9,261 pages which is about 270 Mb of data. This is 179 files (about 130 client matters), which fit into about 5 1/2 bankers’ boxes. All of these files were scanned into .pdf format. I have created an archive spreadsheet in Excel, so it is easy to track a document’s location.
Obviously, at this rate a CD is the optimal storage media, because a DVD would basically be too much. Good luck, it’s pretty time consuming.”
How much can you say on a listserv?
In a discussion amongst family law lawyers on a listserv, I just ran across one of the more interesting questions. The facts, as I understand them, are that a request for an expert was made on a listserv; a recommendation was made in response; and then a third comment criticized the referred expert. Participating on the listserv, though quiet during this interchange, was a judge before whom the case was to have been heard the following week!
Is this an ex parte communication? (more…)
MP3 users hearing damage warning
According to the BBC World Edition, “(t)he iPod is the world’s most popular digital music player. The surge in sales of iPods and other portable music players in recent years could mean many more people will develop hearing loss, experts fear…. (more…)
I wrote an article some time ago which references some of the technology aspects when law firms enter into merger discussions.
Listening to some IT people who’ve experienced the “new” life of merged law firms, I began to appreciate the real horrors of merged life. In some instances, in fact, the different technology platforms was too great an obstacle to overcome and the firms decided against merger.
On the other hand, even in the best of situations, with the best of intentions by all parties, each firm must create a technology integration committee and have those two groups work together to create a harmonious and single-purpose technology that serves the needs of the law firm and the interests of the firm’s clients.