♫ You know its gonna make it that much better
…
Wouldn’t it be nice …♫

Music and Lyrics by: Brian Wilson, Tony Asher, Mike Love, recorded by The Beach Boys.

Reba Nance

This is a “Tip” from my colleague and friend, Reba Nance, who is a fellow PMA (Practice Management Advisor) for the Colorado Bar Association:

How to compose and send an E-Mail Without Ever Leaving Microsoft Word from Word 2007, 2003 and 2000:

Many of us spend much of our time in Word. Wouldn’t it be nice to easily compose and send an e-mail in Word rather than having to minimize Word, open Outlook to send the message, and then go back to Word? Here’s how to do it in Word 2003 and earlier versions:

For Word 2003 and earlier versions:

1. Open a new Word document and type the text of the e-mail as a normal Word document
2. Click on the E-mail button on Word’s standard toolbar (you’ve probably never noticed it). To find it, hover your mouse over the icons until you see the word E-mail appear (the button will say Send to Mail Recipient in Word 2007)
3. Enter the recipient’s e-mail address, just as you would if you were typing in Outlook
4. Click on Send a Copy

Word will automatically paste the text of the Word document (where you typed the text of your e-mail) into the Introduction area of the box on top, send your e-mail via Outlook, and then return you to the Word document containing the text of your e-mail. You can then exit the Word document without saving it, and go back to your original Word document.

For Word 2007 – If you use Word 2007, the E-Mail icon is not on the toolbar. You must first add it:

1. Click the Microsoft Office Button (the graphic in the upper left-hand corner), and then click Word Options
2. Click Customize on the left, and then in the Choose commands from box, click on the down arrow (the default is Popular Commands)
3. Choose All Commands from the drop-down menu
4. Now scroll down the list until you see Send to Mail Recipient. Highlight it and then click Add (in the middle of the page) to add the command to the Quick Access Toolbar
5. Click OK
6. The E-mail button should now be on the far right-hand side of Quick Access Toolbar (Look for Save, Undo, Open, etc. It should be the one on the far right-hand side of that list and say Send to Mail Recipient. It will now be there any time you open Word (so you won’t have to do this again).
7. Then, repeat steps 1 through 4 above.

If you have any questions, contact Reba Nance at reban@cobar.org.

Reba J. Nance is the Director of Law Practice and Risk Management for the Colorado Bar Association, 1900 Grant Street, Ninth Floor, Denver, CO 80203, (303) 824-5320 – Direct.

Thanks Reba for this tip that will make it a little bit better…

♫ Taking all of my energy, energy, energy
Taking all of my energy…♫

Lyrics and Music by: Louis Biancaniello, Rico Love, Sam Watters, Wayne Wilkins; recorded by: Keri Hilson.

Energizer Bunny

This guest post is courtesy of Beth Flynn of the Ohio State University Leadership Center and is one of her “Leadership Moments” emails. The OSU Leadership Center is inspiring others to take a leadership role that empowers the world.

In theory, every person on your team is a source of energy for your organization. But in reality, some team members create energy while others sap or destroy energy. If you know your team well, you already know which team members are sappers and which ones are the energizers.

High-energy performers test the limits and spur themselves and others on to even greater results. These are the people who will push you up and add energy to your reservoir. They spark others to perform. It’s fun to watch them in action. A team full of energized people is typically easy to motivate but challenging to manage because their high energy level requires constant direction and focus.

At the other end of the spectrum are the sappers. You know who they are – they complain and whine, and think of every reason possible why plans and strategies will not work. They are the people who pull you down and sap your energy. They blame others for their issues and don’t accept responsibility for what they control. Their negativity and cynicism effectively sucks out the energy right out of the room. A team dominated by energy sappers is relatively easy to lead because there is little forward movement or activity. But it is very challenging to motivate these team members to achieve results because they are content with mediocrity.

You organizational energy is not the sum of your individuals. It is dependent on the ratio of energizers to sappers. If you have more sappers than energizers, the energy will be drained, and in fact the energizers may eventually become sappers. As unfortunate as it is, a negative, cynical person has a far greater impact on the energy of the team than a positive person. Adding a positive person does not counter a sapper; in fact it probably takes at least three energizers to counter the energy drained by one sapper (Cottrell, p. 33-34).

Based on: Cottrell, D. (2009). Monday Morning Motivation: Five Steps to Energize Your Team, Customers, and Profits. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Monday Morning Motivation is available on loan from the Ohio State University Leadership Center. To borrow this resource or any other resource, please go to the resource search page. If you wish to subscribe to the Leadership Moments list: send an e-mail to: flynn.61@osu.edu.

Thanks Beth for always providing us with meaningful, energizing Leadership Moments!

♬ Your a mean one, Mr. Grinch
You really are a heel
Your as cuddly as a cactus
Your as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch…♬

Lyrics by Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel, music by Albert Hague, performed by Thurl Ravenscroft.

Mr. Grinch by Dr. Seuss

Anyone who runs a business knows that it is profitable only if you have funds left over after paying all the bills. This enforces a common-sense mentality in ensuring that your costs don’t get out of control. However, in some offices the principle of saving money is taken to such an extreme that their frugality is actually costing them money. Here are some examples (drawn from the collective experiences of my fellow Practice Management Advisors and myself):

In other cases, there are examples of lawyers putting time into tasks that were much better being delegated to someone else – thereby allowing the lawyer to free-up time to be put into either working on client files or marketing his practice to catch more or better clients. This is a lost-opportunity cost: You are failing to make best use of the time given to you in order not to ‘spend money.’

Other cases have lawyers in the office after-hours, doing tasks that could be done by others (i.e. by an office administrator). The consequences of this time use range from: bad health (which can result from failing to invest time into getting and staying fit – unfortunately no one has yet found a way to take $$ in the bank to buy back health) to disrupted family relationships (failed marriages and alienated children resulting from too much time in the office and too little time spent with kids and significant others) to the inability to enjoy retirement (either due to a life-long reluctance to spend money or due to not spending any time building hobbies or any other pleasurable activities other than practising law).

Someone once said that time = money. We can spend time in making money or we can spent time in saving money. Each of us need to find a reasonable balance between how we use the limited (and fixed amount) of time given to us on the twin tasks of producing work and on saving expenses. Hopefully we can recognize that not spending money can in some cases, result in lost time – and the indirect cost of spending too much time being frugal is being a grinch and letting our lives slip away between our fingers.

(Hat tip to my fellow PMA’s for their assistance in this article).

♫ Can’t pay tax
Won’t pay tax..♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by Chaos UK.

HST Flowchart

Well the HST on legal services is now a reality in BC and in Ontario.

The CRA’s  publication:

Ontario and British Columbia:  Transition to the Harmonized Sales Tax – Services has the displayed flowchart in Appendix A – Transitional rules for services.

A PDF version of this diagram can be downloaded here: HST Flowchart PDF

This flowchart helps clarify the issue as to when HST or GST (and PST for those in BC) applies to legal services. The publication is: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/gi/gi-056/gi-056-e.html

Three other publications from CRA are of particular interest.  They are:

P-206 Litigation Services Supplied to Non-Resident Individuals

and:

Place of Supply Rules

as well as:

P-209R Lawyers’ disbursements

Regarding HST on Medical-Legal Reports:

GST/HST Policy Statement P-248 governs the tax treatment of IME’s.

There are a number of factors that have to be taken into account such as whether the supply was rendered in a “health care facility” or is an “institutional health care service”; whether the facility specializes in the examination of injured individuals and subcontract solely with physicians to perform the examinations and prepare the ensuring expert reports, whether all the services rendered by the physician are provided in the operator’s facility and the like.

The complete list of CRA Forms and Publications are on this web site:

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/menu/APAP_P-e.html

The Law Society of British Columbia in conjunction with the Continuing Legal Education Society of British Columbia has  issued an FAQ Sheet on the HST:

HST law practice FAQ (PDF)

Of course any lawyer is well-advised to seek the advice of a Chartered Accountant as to the tax treatment of their legal services in any particular situation.

There are still further transition guidelines that are to be issued by the Canada Revenue Service, such as how to treat contingency fees.  While the 90/10 Rule noted in this diagram provides some guidance, in my experience many lawyers who work on contingency fee matters do not track their billable hours and as such, the 90/10 Rule provides little guidance in their particular circumstances.

While there are always those who can’t or won’t pay taxes, for the rest of us where this is not an option, hopefully these resources will make figuring out the tax a little bit easier..

♫ Stand by your belief and have faith in this sound
You know that you can always turn it around
Feel the rhythm and its healing remedy
Listen to the sweet melody
Feel the rhythm and its healing remedy
RISE TO THE CHALLENGE! ♫

Songwriters: Miah Camacho, Aulakh,; Anirudda Das, Sanjav Tailor, Savale Rajput, Steve Chandra; Ahmed, Joh Pandit; recorded by: Asian Dub Foundation.

Bob Denney

Once again it is time for Bob Denny of Robert Denney Associates, Inc. [bob@robertdenney.com] to report on What’s Hot and What’s Not in the Legal Profession. With Bob’s kind permission, we are reproducing his latest report here:

In our 2009 year-end report, we said 2010 “will be a year of continued challenge and change.” It is proving to be so although the challenges may be greater than the changes. We cannot cover all the developments in this Update. These are the ones we believe are the most significant – or interesting.

PRACTICE AREAS

Hot

• Health Care. Of course, involving many areas: regulatory, transactional, employment, et all.
• Bankruptcy. Still. Pre-packaged bankruptcies are raising the temperature even more.
• Trusts & Estates. The temporary lifting of the “death tax” is raising the temperature here too.
• Regulatory. In many industries, not just health care, banking and finance.
• Commercial Litigation. Particularly “bet the company” cases, patents and labor.
• Employment Law. That’s why major L&E firms are opening new offices.
• Emerging Companies. It is surprising but the number of former big company executives starting new businesses hit a four-year high in 2009 and continues to increase.

Will Get Hot

• White Collar Crime. Fraud just one reason why this will eventually be Red Hot.
• M&A. Consolidation of health care providers is expected to heat this area up even more.
• Energy and Environmental. They’re related in many ways.
• Nuclear Energy. The Energy Act of 2005 began a “nuclear renaissance”.
• Anti-Trust. The Justice Department has been slow to ramp up for this but it’s ready now.
• Labor Litigation. Due to discrimination suits by laid-off employees and also employers monitoring employees use of social media at work.
• Islamic Finance. But deals must be Shari’ah compliant and adhere to Islamic law.

Cool

• IPOs. One third of the companies that had announced them postponed or canceled in May.
• International Arbitration. Too expensive because it takes too long.
• Real Estate. Except distressed deals and tax assessment appeals due to lower property values.

GEOGRAPHIC MARKETS

• Brazil. BigLaw firms continue to open or expand in San Paolo.
• Ireland. As we reported last December. Dechert to open office in Dublin.
• Pennsylvania! Several firms are now focusing here because they see growth opportunities in health care, pharmaceutical, financial, energy and education industries.

MARKETING & BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

• Legal directories. Many lawyers strive to be listed in them despite continued reports that few GCs refer to them in selecting outside counsel. U.S. News and World Report will join the fray this fall when, in collaboration with Best Lawyers, it will publish lawyer rankings.
• Social media. Continues to grow but some lawyers realize it can’t replace face-to-face contact.
• Client teams. Continue to prove their value for the firms that form them. The challenge is how to devise a compensation system that rewards teams for their successes.
• Internal marketing. In the April/May issue of Strategies: the Journal of Legal Marketing, consultant Bill Lowell says focus on your staff before your clients. Marriott Corporation’s credo has always been: “Take care of your employees and they will take care of your customers.”

OTHER TRENDS & ISSUES

• Co-Managing Partners. Foley Hoag one of the most recent to follow this trend which we first reported in 2006.
• Alternate Fee Arrangements (AFA). Much is written and discussed about them but, according to Lexis Nexis’s recently completed research, 60% of legal fees are still by the billable hour. When clients say they want more “value”, do most of them really mean just lower fees?
• Uniform Bar Examination. Once seen as a radical idea, Erica Moeser, President of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, says six-to-ten states will use it this year.
• Associate salaries. Creeping back up at BigLaw firms.
• Non-Lawyer CEO. Stafford Rosenbaum is the first firm we know of to name a non-lawyer, non-partner CEO.
• Mergers. Other than international (see below), they continue to decline but are expected to increase later this year although behind the pace of several years ago. One reason may be that many small and mid-size firms have been doing well and aren’t seeking a safe harbor any longer.
• Conflicts. BigLaw firms are facing more of them because of suits against banks. SmallLaw and MidLaw firms are benefiting from the growing demand for conflict-fee lawyers.
• Cloud Computing. Interest is increasing in this remote storage of client data and work product on the Internet. However, ethics and confidentiality issues are arising because it is outside the direct control of the law firm.
• Mandatory Retirement. Three years ago both the New York State Bar and the ABA recommended the profession drop retirement policies. A few BigLaw firms did so and Sidley Austin settled an age discrimination suit brought by the EEOC. Now the Commission has sued Kelley Drye & Warren over its policy of de-equitizing partners who turn 70 and has made it clear it intends to continue its assault on such policies. But most BigLaw firms are keeping them to maintain profits per partner and to force senior partners to turn clients over to younger lawyers.
• Management Transition. A number of firms are announcing new leaders a year in advance to provide time for an orderly and seamless transition. Very smart.
• Downsizing. Now it’s office space. SmallLaw as well as BigLaw firms are taking advantage of the weak leasing market to move to less expensive space, reconfiguring it from 900 sq. ft. per lawyer to 600. And in some BigLaw firms, offices are now “transparent” i.e., with glass walls.
• International mergers. A few more have been announced since the merger of UK firm Lovells with Hogan & Hartson this year. The SuperLaw category is growing.
• Revenue/lawyer (R/L). Although profits/partner increased in many firms last year, American Lawyer says more than half of the top 100 U.S. firms had a decrease in R/L, which it regards as a far better indicator of a firm’s financial health than P/P.
• Outsourcing. UK top 20 firm CMS Cameron McKenna expects to outsource its entire support staff function at year-end, thereby cutting expenses 10%-15%, The firm said the agreement includes development of a shared service model that could be made available to other law firms.
• Professional development. More firms are dropping lockstep compensation for associates for a “performance model” which involves increasing professional development programs. Yet most PD directors report their budgets have been cut. Doesn’t make sense.
• Law school clinics. They are providing legal representation for people who can’t afford an attorney as well as an opportunity for law students to gain courtroom experience.
• Law school applications. They’re on the rise at some law schools despite the bleak hiring picture. Some observers feel a law degree is replacing an MBA as the advanced degree of choice for a career in business.
• Billing summer associates. Citigroup is the latest company that has announced it won’t accept billing for summer associates’ time.
• Women partners. According to the Project for Attorney Retention, women comprised 34% of the 2010 new partner classes, up from 28% in 2009. However, women still make up only 20% of firm partnerships and probably even a lower percentage of equity partners.
• Looking ahead. Most pundits have stated that the historic law firm model – whatever that means – huge associate salaries, billing-by-the-hour and leverage are all dead. We don’t agree.

Bob has given us some excellent tips on how to turn around our practices to make maximum benefit of the economic times that we are going through. All it takes is rising to the challenge!

♫ I know his journey ends never.
His Star Trek will go on forever…♫

Music by: Alexander Courage, lyrics by: Gene Roddenberry.

Sooner or later, every firm must deal with the issue of succession planning. Given that the ‘boomers’ are all nearing retirement age, this is a looming – and lurking – issue for most firms.

This issue can arise in several ways. One major way this issue comes to the forefront is the lease for the office is coming up for renewal. At that time the partners who really don’t wish to keep practising for another 5 years refuse to sign onto the lease. This throws the partnership into a crises and most likely leads to the firm going ‘supernova’ – the firm explodes and a group of partners leave (usually the ones with the biggest book of business) and the remaining ones are left to try to pick up the pieces (or most often, simply close the doors and turn off the lights on their way out).

More subtle ways of this occurring happens as major keystone partners start to leave – one by one – until what is left is a shell of the former firm. This is death by a thousand cuts as the major income earning assets of the firm depart leaving only the liabilities of the old firm in the hands of those remaining.

A third way is when the founding partners realize that every one of the up-and-coming associates who could have been partners have left after staying with the firm for a certain time. These partners-who-could-have-been have each come to the conclusion that the ‘old guard’ were not willing to give up control of the firm and their were better prospects for them elsewhere. As a result, there simply isn’t anyone left to buy-out the founding partners and again, the only option is to close out the firm one day.

Other partners have woken up one day to find that the ‘old guard’ have agreements with the firm to fund their retirement plans that were entered into early in the history of the firm. These ‘unfunded liabilities’ typically don’t show up on any financial statement that lands on the desks of the partners.

As a last resort, other firms end up trying to frame themselves as merger candidates to younger firms that may be willing to pay for the book of business of the firm. Here the firm doesn’t continue but is simply assimilated by the other firm as a way to retire the older partners of the practice.

Of course, there are other firms who do successfully transition the firm to the next generation that respects the needs of the ‘old guard’ for some payment for their building up the firm that doesn’t place horrendous payment obligations on the shoulders of the incoming guard. The question is, how can a firm follow this path rather than one of the more tumultuous ones?

The ‘gentler’ path is most often initiated by the younger generation courageously starting the conversation with the older guard along the lines of: “So – how much longer are you planning on being here?” This is not an easy conversation to start – but once started, you are now on the path to have a dialogue on the entire issue of succession, transfer of clients, payments, timelines, expectations and the like. Without this conversation being started, the firm continues to lurch along, steadfastly ignoring the elephant standing in the room that only gets bigger – and older – by the day.

Successful transition from one generation to another is difficult to initiate most often due to the sense that in raising the issue, someone in the firm is operating from a position of self-interest. This is why a consultant is most often brought in to start the process and to guide and frame the dialogue. Someone who does not have a financial stake in the outcome of the decision can be seen as being objective and fair in a way no one in the firm can be. Furthermore, they often have experience in guiding the conversation around the minefields and pitfalls that can derail – or destroy – the process.

Furthermore, a transfer from one generation to another involves many issues, not the least of which is the question of control. The old guard may hold all the cards and might (rightfully) fear that once they have transferred over enough voting rights, they may find themselves outside of the firm sitting on the curb following a palace revolt. This is particularly apt where there is an overwhelming percentage of the firm held by one or only a few partners. It may be trite to say that there is an issue of trust at play here.

Intimately connected with trust and control issues is the question of money. Of course the retiring partners understandably want a payout for their efforts in creating the firm, by valuing “goodwill”. Unfortunately, in many cases, these same partners do not look at this issue from the perspective of the younger generation, who are asking themselves, quite rightly, what can the firm reasonably afford by way of payments for an intangible asset such as goodwill? Often these two numbers may be worlds apart. Again, someone neutral can help with this dialogue which is fraught with difficulties whenever someone who has a stake in the outcome raises it.

The process of retiring the older guard oftentimes requires the rewriting of the partnership agreement, typically by placing ‘earn-out’ provisions on the old guard. These earn-outs require the older generation to actively mentor the younger generation and ensure the successful transfer of major clients of the firm to the younger partners in order to continue their partnership buy-out payments based on the collective billings from these key clients.

Along with the transfer of money and ownership is the question of transfer of management. If the old guard want to see their firm continue into the future, they need to successfully groom the younger set for – and transfer over – the running of the firm to the up- and-comers. Unfortunately, many firms have looked at their second string and not seen the skill sets that they believe should be present to make this a reality. There are many ways to deal with this, but ignoring it isn’t one of them.

In the longer term, the younger generation should be doing something that is not typical – start planning their retirement – now. Bring in a financial planner to meet with the younger partners as the time of their elevation to partner to assist them with setting out a financial plan for their future – and thereby leave the entire firm in a better position overall.

Most firms would prefer to see their ‘Starship Enterprise” journey to never end. In order to do so, Captain Kirk and his crew have to ease out of the control deck and watch the younger generation take over the helm. Sometimes that transfer is best aided by someone who is beamed on-board who is neutral, objective and respectful of the needs, views and goals of all those concerned – and who does not form part of either group. After all, no one wants to face the possibility that their only option is to be assimilated by the Borgs.

(Hat Tip to my friends at LawPact for providing the inspiration for this post).

♫ Hold you in his arms yeah, you can feel his disease
Come together, Right now, Over me..♫

Lyrics and Music by Lennon & McCartney.

There is a conference going on in at Duke University School of Law on May 10/11. Judges, lawyers and others are going to be gathering to see if they can ‘fix’ the US federal civil justice system.

Seems that they see a bit of problem:

“To prepare for the meeting, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System canvassed chief legal officers and general counsel who are members of the Association of Corporate Counsel from around the country. Fifty-five percent agreed the civil justice system is “too complex,” while 97 percent agreed that it is “too expensive.” In addition, 80 percent disagreed with the statement: “Outcomes are driven more by the merits of the case than by litigation costs.”

This sounds eerily familiar, considering our new BC Supreme Court Rules coming into effect on July 1. One can ask: If the same symptoms are felt in different jurisdictions, perhaps all of the jurisdictions are feeling the same disease?

Albert Einstein once said: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” To me this indicates that perhaps the problems with the current system are inherent within the system itself since that is how it was designed. To follow this further, then adjusting the rules – in any fashion – and no matter how well thought out – may be the legal equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Aside from the comments of the ACC noted above related to complexity, cost and other factors, what are some of the structural weaknesses of the current civil justice system?

• Synchronous: The current system calls for all parties and their counsel, the judge and others to be physically present in the same location at the same time, usually on multiple dates. Lives are complex today and setting aside that time to be at a location can take time and has a cost – particularly if the date ends up being rescheduled for one reason or another.

• Geographically tied: Time is money and having to physically travel to a set location – time and time again – has a cost in terms of lost time (opportunity cost) as well as the actual costs of travel.

• Institutional costs: Courts, Judges, court staff – all have costs associated with them. Governments which must bear these costs can either absorb them or seek to recover them from the parties themselves. However, seeking to recover these from the parties only acts as a further disincentive to seek justice.

• Procedurally detailed: Individuals come to the justice system to seek redress. While process is important, dealing with complex rules can also serve as a barrier to those with smaller claims that do not justify the hiring of lawyers to assist. Process can also be manipulated by those crafty enough to figure out how; which results in the frustration of justice.

• Adversarial: Perhaps the most central feature to the civil justice system is its reliance on the adversarial approach to justice. Problem is that the public these days seems to be favouring approaches that take the parties from a problem (ie adversarial) mode to a solution mode.

• Intervention: The judicial system renders a judgement at the end of the process, only after the parties have subjected each other to long and drawn out processes. Parties, however, wish to have a degree of reality and objectivity injected at an early stage to prevent the process from becoming long and drawn out.

One of the new dispute resolution systems is ODR – Online Dispute Resolution. Vancouver will host an international conference on ODR in November that will involve the UN, governments, industry and representatives from many nations, all centred around the use of ODR in consumer disputes (the writer is on the organizing committee). Come together – lawyers and judges – attend and perhaps ODR can be grafted into the system to solve client disputes in different ways that may be faster, less-stressful for the client and cheaper.

(This post was originally written for the Canadian Bar Association – British Columbia Branch’s newsletter “BarTalk” in the column “PracticeTalk”).

This blog post has been cross-posed to: http://www.odrandconsumers2010.org/.

♬You’re my latest, tell you you’re my greatest
My latest, my greatest inspiration
You inspire me, inspire me…♬

Lyrics and music by: Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, recorded by: Teddy Pendergrass.

2010 Techshow logo

This column was written for the Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia’s magazine “The Verdict” immediately after ABA TECHSHOW in March. That edition of The Verdict has just hit the streets (print publication lags being what they are…) so here is the column on ABA TECHSHOW 2010:

Well the three days of the 2010 edition of the American Bar Association’s TECHSHOW wrapped up on March 27. This leading legal technology conference had three major themes this year.

Theme One: The Cloud

Ethics, security and privacy concerns aside, the cloud has arrived. Whether it is using SaaS applications (software as a service) or law firms building virtual deal rooms using SharePoint, working on the cloud is now a reality for virtually all law firms.

While this may sound esoteric, chances are that you are already using cloud-based applications and probably don’t realize it. For example if you use Google Mail or Google Docs or store photographs on Flickr or are on Facebook or LinkedIn, you are on the cloud. Legal regulators, insurers and ethics committees have only started to wrestle with the professional responsibility, privacy, security and potential liability issues that are part of practicing on the cloud. The world, however, is waiting for no one as a host of cloud-based applications for lawyers as well as cloud-based virtual law firms rise on the updrafts. The cloud offers the ability to market your practice (web 2.0), to collaborate with clients (secure deal-rooms), to run your practice (practice management, time and billing, document management, legal accounting are just a few of the legal cloud-based applications) as well as to practice virtually (by adding a web-presence to your existing firm). In terms of the future of the cloud, several speakers speculated about practicing law via an avatar in virtual worlds. We shall see where that idea goes and what the legal regulators do with the implications of that possibility.

Back in this world, one of the more interesting cloud-based applications to be shown at Techshow this year was PBworks (www.pbworks.com). PBworks Legal Edition is an online collaboration platform for law firms. It allows a law firm to open up one or many secure, encrypted collaborative work spaces, both inside and outside the firm. PBworks includes case management, client extranets, knowledgebases, deal rooms, document hosting and more.

Theme Two: The Mac Track and all things Apple

The move to Apple-developed devices by lawyers was another huge theme. Whether it was the Mac computer (desktops or MacBooks), the iPhone or speculation over the impact of the iPad, Apple has certainly made incredible inroads in the legal community. In recognition of this, Techshow had a full day Mac Track and MacBooks were seen being used by attendees everywhere. In terms of cool applications, there was a full session on cool applications for lawyers for the iPhone. On the Mac application side, Marketcircle Inc., (www.marketcircle.com) a Markham Ontario-based developer showed many award-winning applications for the Mac-based lawyer. What really caught my attention was how they took Daylite and tweaked it into business productivity software for a lawyer as well as Billings, a practical time-billing and invoicing application for the Mac.

Theme Three: The Paperless office

Techshow evaporated any doubt about the coming of the age of the paperless office – it is here. Perhaps the most telling statement that was made by a presenter from a large firm is that they now consider document management passé – everything is being run from their email application (principally Outlook). Attachments, emails, voicemails (which now come into their inbox as a transcribed text) – all of these and more are linked to client files within Outlook and the search function in Outlook has become a very important component of how they work and find information.

On this theme Gavel & Gown Software (via a wholly-owned subsidiary) showed “Credenza”, an add-in for Outlook that turns Outlook into a full-fledged practice management system. Intended for solo and small firms (it is presently limited to 3 users but will be expanded beyond that this summer). It is the practice management solution for those who would not otherwise consider a full stand-alone practice management system. Credenza extends Outlook by allowing you to organize information by client/matter (rather than by contact, which is how Outlook usually works). In Credenza you can track billable time and phone calls, manage documents, check conflicts and much more. The pricing model is also interesting – it is $9.95 per user per month. Furthermore, to collaborate, see everyone’s time, documents and other information on the client file within Credenza does not require you to purchase Microsoft Exchange – a huge advantage for reaching out to the solo and small firm lawyer.

The Keynote Department

The conference keynote speaker was Ari Kaplan, a lawyer and marketing & technology author who spoke on how new technologies are exploding in the world of marketing and communications. He had many innovative marketing tips during his energizing presentation – such as using the web to find the media contacts (and then contact by email or phone call them) where and when you are giving a presentation to see if they are interested in covering it (he has appeared on talk shows and been interviewed by newspapers as a result). He noted that there are web sites devoted to matching media with speakers and writers that can be used by lawyers seeking some publicity and exposure. Furthermore, Ari brought home another theme at TECHSHOW and that was the growing use of video on the web. Lawyer marketing-types need to host video on their blogs or web pages and set up their own channel on YouTube in order to capture the eyeballs of people looking for lawyers via the Internet. Ari made one other great point and that is to market yourself by looking for ways to help others. Rather than promoting yourself, you let your interest in the needs of others speak for you. Powerful stuff.

You can watch Ari in Video on his webpage here.

Other Tidbits Department

Nancy Duhon, one of the speakers at Techshow, demonstrated how voice recognition is now transforming how lawyers work by going well beyond just transcribing voice to text. She – and many other lawyers – now have largely replaced the keyboard with a microphone – and tell their computer what to do rather than going hands-on.

The benefits of switching to Windows 7 for a law office was emphasized several times along with moving to Microsoft Office 2009 (and shortly, 2010).

The use of twittering at the conf was incredible and allowed people to catch the major points of the other sessions that were running concurrently with the session that they were attending by running Twitter on the wireless network on their laptops. Furthermore, ‘meet-ups’ (such as the “Beer for Bloggers” event hosted by Kevin O’Keefe) were largely organized via Twitter.

The degree of face-to-face social networking that occurred was also a huge benefit to attending the Conference. Attendees mingled and interacted with the faculty and themselves courtesy of the many social networking activities that were organized as part of Techshow. Examples were the opening reception and the ‘Taste of Techshow Dinners’ on Thursday and Friday nights (which were small group dutch treat dinners hosted by Techshow speakers in restaurants all over the city). Since a large number of attendees travel to Techshow there is a great deal of networking that occurs over these events during the conference and afterwards.

In terms of networking there were a large contingent of Canadians at the Conference including the second Vice President of the CBA President Trinda Ernst QC and David Paul QC from Kamloops, to name just two.

There was a big focus on Solo and Small Firm lawyers at the conference with many applications being shown. Two that struck me were OneNote and Evernote. OneNote is an application from Microsoft that you install on your computer and Evernote is a cloud-based application. Both of them allow you to create digital notebooks for projects, for organizing your practice and the like. If you like working from a paper-notebook, then these digital versions offer all that but the benefits of being able to clip, store and organize digital information quickly and easily.

60 Tips in 60 Mins Department

Of course one of the most popular sessions at Techshow is 60 Tips in 60 Minutes. This year was no disappointment. Some of the great tips were as follows

• www.vdownloader.com or www.zamzar.com -These sites allow you to download YouTube videos and convert the video to the format that you want. This way you don’t need to find web access to view videos once they are downloaded onto your computer.
• Google’s advanced search allows you to use the power of Google to search a specific domain (web site) on the web. To use it, go to “Advanced Search” and then type in the domain…type in search terms…will search the entire site that you point it to…
• www.tripit.com – use this site to not only manage trip info but share it with travel companions.
• Use Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com) to email marketing newsletters that make it through the spam filters.
• Microsoft’s forgotten attachment detector (www.officelabs.com/projects/forgottenattachmentdetector/pages/default.aspx). Download and install this Outlook add-on that detects when you have forgotten to add an attachment to an email.
• Get the new Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 with its software add-on bundles (for Mac or for PC).
• Get a digital camera for your practice – and add client photos to your practice management system or Outlook.
• Download www.xobni.com – which searches contact names within Outlook and gathers information about the sender by connecting to social media and your network and displays that information in Outlook.
• Show your non-billable time on your invoices. By displaying the effort and freebies that you are doing for your clients they are less likely to focus on what you are charging.
• Drag and drop PDF’s directly from ‘thumbnail views’ in Adobe
• Scheduling meeting times with www.agreedate.com
• Use www.goodsearch.com and the charity of your choice gets $ every time you search the web.
• Visit www.thinkgeek.com for loads of cool stuff.
• Got to www.netlingo.com for all the terms of the day – as well as acronyms…
• Drag and drop emails from your inbox to “Tasks” in Outlook…and Outlook will create a task from the notes in the email.
• Download ‘Edocrab’ onto your blackberry or iPhone and while shopping, take a picture of the barcode of an item ….then upload it to their web site –and it will send you reviews and other prices from competitors nearby.
• Relational database software can be corrupted by wireless networks.
• ‘Maestro’ add-on for Worldox will look at every PDF on your system and determine if it is text-searchable or not – and convert it if not.
• Be careful when using the Cloud: AOL’s Xdrive was withdrawn by AOL (with warning) while Omnidrive and Mediamax failed with no warning whatsoever.
• Use Simplyfile (a filing assistant for Outlook) which was described as a work of genius (I use it and agree!).
• Payne Consulting has released their “Outlook Send Assistant’ which flashes up an idiot box reminding people that they were BCC’d on a email so they don’t hit “reply to all”…
• Add a digital photo frame with pictures of you and your lawyers at work in your reception area.
• Use Google adwords as apparently 30% of the population follow the links on the “Sponsored Sites” in a Google search according to a Google study.

Mark your calendars now to attend the 25th anniversary edition of Techshow in Chicago in April 2011 and come home with your latest and greatest inspiration for your practice!

♬ This boy has got it made
Media exposure
It will make him all the rage
But he’s not playing
He’s not playing
He’s just having
Adventures in modern recording…♬

Music and lyrics by: Simon Darlow, Trevor Horn, Bruce Woolley, recorded by The Buggles.

This column starts a new category theme in this blog: “Tips”. This tip comes from British Columbia lawyer Richard Fowler.

On Slaw.ca there have been posts on recording in the courts. Most recently, Mr. Justice Richard Granger posted on Technology and Court Reporting. Mr. Justice Granger stated:

Unfortunately, court reporting in Ontario has not kept pace with the emerging technology which is available in the market place today and which could greatly assist judges in having a command of the vive voce testimony during the trial and when preparing their reasons for judgment.

As Mr. Granger notes in his post, such real-time reporting is not inexpensive. For most trials, but particularly for criminal ones with legal aid and court budgets under so much pressure, the cost of such a system is simply prohibitive for counsel to bring into the court. Accordingly, there must be a better way!

The Globe and Mail in an article entitled “No Laptops Please: We’re Lawyers” reported on lawyers who were attempting to bring CDs instead of boxes of evidence and laptops to court:

All of those boxes would have made a much more unwieldy prop. But given the slow pace of technological change in Canadian courtrooms, perhaps cramming them in for effect would have been more appropriate.

Earlier this month, a Whitby, Ontario, justice of the peace told criminal defence lawyer Sean Robichaud to put away his laptop, after the Crown objected to it as a potential recording device. He was forced to ask for an adjournment since his entire defence was stored on his hard drive.

Back at the law society, Mr. Stern repeatedly consulted a laptop during the proceedings. But a newspaper reporter was asked to put hers away, because it can interfere with the hearing room’s recording equipment and computer system. (The court reporter said that it wasn’t a problem that day. But rules are rules.) Don’t even think of getting out your BlackBerry.

So it was refreshing when Richard Fowler told me of his success in bringing his own recording equipment to court. In his case it is the Livescribe PULSE recording pen (www.livescribe.com). In Richards words:

Essentially I use the pen to make notes of a witnesses testimony and at the same time it records the oral testimony. I can then download to my laptop a copy of my handwritten notes that has the audio synchronized. I can click on any part of the handwritten notes and listen to the audio. This allows me to make sure that my notes, in crucial portions are accurate.

The judge was Madam Justice Arnold-Bailey of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, sitting in New Westminster, BC. The case is R. v. Butorac. I gave an undertaking to the court that I would not use the audio for any other purpose than for preparation and presentation in this trial. I based my request upon the practice directive which gives the media a right to record for the purposes of checking the accuracy of their stories.

Lightscribe PULSE pen

Perhaps others can follow Richard’s trail-blazing efforts to allow lawyers to make real-time recordings of court proceedings that are more accurate than scribbled notes. I would like to thank Richard for passing along this Tip on his adventures in modern recording and I look forward to posting (and hopefully – receiving) further Tips from dedicated readers!

Hat tip to Nevin Fishman of Bernard & Partners for forwarding along the Globe and Mail article!

♬ Everything is not what it seems
When you can get what you want by the simplest of means
Be careful not to mess with the balance of things
Because everything is not what it seems…♬

Lyrics and music by: John R. Adair, Ryan David Elder, Bradley Jay Hamilton, Stephen R. Hampton, recorded by: Selena Gomez.

CBC News on May 4, 2010 in an on-line article entitled: “Bank of Montreal alleges huge mortgage fraud” reported on a potential $30 million mortage/real estate fraud in Alberta.

The article is disturbing, as the size of the fraud and the number of people involved is not small: there are apparently 14 inter-connected groups involved:

Toronto forensic accountant Al Rosen said he has never seen anything like it.

“This is massive in the sense that it is so broad and so deep,” Rosen said Tuesday. “This is [allegedly] a huge fraud. I can’t think of any situation that has so many people involved and over a period of time like this one.”

The people involved ranged from ‘straw buyers’ who fronted the purchase of the properties for inflated prices based on fake, inflated wage and net income documents, to lawyers, to bank employees and ‘masterminds’.

The Bank has filed a lawsuit arising out of the fraud for two reasons:

“One was to recover as much as possible of what was taken from the bank from the fraud,” Ralph Marranca, the bank’s spokesman told the CBC on Tuesday.

“And secondly was to send a very strong message to fraudsters and anyone who might contemplate something like this that the bank will pursue this very aggressively and will not tolerate fraud.”

As laudatory as the Bank’s actions to pursue the fraud and the fraudsters, this matter raises more questions than are answered in the CBC article.

For one, ‘irregularities’ were detected as early as 2006. This indicates that the frauds continued for several years. It is disturbing that procedures and processes could not have been implemented or changed that would have stopped or at least slowed the fraudulent activities.

Secondly:

During its investigation, bank investigators seized records that showed millions of dollars from the alleged scheme have been transferred to such countries as Lebanon, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan

It appears that the fraudsters exploited weaknesses in the Canadian Banking System in order to potentially fund terrorist activities. Alarmingly, the article indicates that the Bank of Montreal is not the only financial institution targeted:

Other banks don’t appear to be as aggressive in their approach, even though documents indicate they may have been targeted too. Bank of Montreal investigators found documents that showed one Calgary management company had 150 suspect mortgages from 16 different financial institutions.

Despite all the efforts to prevent money laundering in Canada, the fraudsters appear to have found a well-oiled funding machine.

Third, where are the RCMP, CSIS and the police in all this? There is no mention of criminal investigations paralleling the civil action. Doubtless the Law Society of Alberta and the lawyers of Alberta will be conducting their own investigations, if they haven’t already started.

Fourth, and certainly not least, what steps could the bank have taken to stop this from happening in the first place?

Rosen said this alleged fraud illustrates how weak and ineffective the controls are in our banking system.

“To me the most exasperating part of our business is we are not doing what we are supposed to be doing,” he said. “We are kidding ourselves that we have good systems, because we don’t.”

What is disturbing is that while the $30 million loss is huge, it really is a drop in the bucket compared to the Bank of Montreal’s income.

For fiscal 2009, BMO said its net income decreased 9.7 per cent to $1.8 billion.

$30 million would represent approximately 1.67% of Bank of Montreal’s 2009 net income if my math is correct.

It would have been comforting to read that the Bank is taking forward and systematic steps to change the balance of things in order to prevent this from reoccurring from a structural and strategic standpoint, rather than focusing on recovery of their lost money and the pursuit of the fraudsters, which, at least from the CBC article, appears to be the focus of the Bank’s actions. After reading the article, I am left with the feeling that everything is not as it seems….

(Hat tip to Deborah Gillis QC for passing along this article!).

(Cross posted on www.slaw.ca)