To survive and flourish in tough economic times, lawyers must find ways to practice more efficiently. The first step in handling any client or practice matter is to gather pertinent resources and get a sense of the “forest through the trees.” To this end, practicelaw has added “At-A-Glance” mindmaps (part of our Jump Start series) to its arsenal of forms, checklists, links, and articles. The maps are designed to get an attorney up to speed quickly by collecting resources and showing their interrelationship.

We don’t have expertise in every area of law, but we are very familiar with MSBA practice resources as well as non-MSBA resources, and how they might help an attorney. We started experimenting with this concept several months ago and settled on using mind maps to illustrate the resources available on a couple of topics:

• “law 101″ or overview topics of areas of law or issues
• “hot topics”
• technology topics for lawyers

Last week we posted mind maps which visually depict information and resources available on

• Basic Estate Planning
• Documents Involved in the Purchase of Sale of Residential Real Estate
• Managing Law Student Loans
• Finding a Legal Job in Minnesota

We’ve also provided instructions to help you navigate around the maps, follow the links, access information.

The beauty of a mind map is its ability to convey more information, show relationships more easily, and communicate faster than text alone. One of the attorney presenters at the ABA Technology Conference last April showed how he uses mind mapping software as a practice management tool and a litigation aid. Harvard, UCLA, William and Mary are a few of the law schools that have purchased mind mapping software to use with their students. As law schools employ more visual teaching methods, more students graduate and bring to the legal profession a knowledge and appreciation of the ability of visuals to communicate.

In the coming months we will add to our collection. The maps are a great way to save you time in getting up to speed and in finding pertinent resources. Check them out and let us know what you think.

© Nancy Hupp for Practice Blawg, 2012. | Permalink | No comments yet | Add to del.icio.us
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• Posted an At-a-Glance Jump Start titled “Counseling the Distressed Homeowner.” Several Nutshells (short summaries of issues) are linked to and part of this new resource. More information here.
• Solicited and added a few new checklists to those already on the site.
• Added seven brand spankin new civil litigation forms.
• Revised 35 Guardianship and Conservatorship forms and procedural checklists. More information here.
• Went multimedia by posting a video series by Minnesota Lawyers Mutual on disaster planning and recovery, plus related PDFs. More information here.
• Posted the quarterly Labor and Employment Law section newsletter and the monthly Probate section Tax Committee Newsletter.

Last but not least, we’ve responded to user calls and emails and consulted with practitioners on future needs which will enable us to post again in August on What’s New at practicelaw.

© Nancy Hupp for Practice Blawg, 2011. | Permalink | No comments yet | Add to del.icio.us
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Now you can relax a bit too, or at least have a better chance of making a solid impression on one of Minnesota’s state district court judges. The Minnesota State Bar Association’s Civil Litigation Section has just published the results of its first Judicial Survey, which comes with judges’ answers to many frequently asked questions, including:

• Do you regularly conduct hearings and motions by phone?
• Will you accept telephone calls from attorneys to rule on discovery disputes that occur during the course of a deposition?
• When do you normally set the pretrial in relation to the trial?
• Do you require counsel to sit or stand during questioning of witnesses?
• When do you require that final witness lists be exchanged and filed?
• Have you ever held counsel in contempt of court?

All in all, there are more than 50 questions that the Civil Litigation Section asked all Minnesota state court judges, with most responding to all questions. Of the 289 state district court judges in Minnesota, the survey responses include 138 judges, a nearly fifty percent response rate. That’s pretty good for the first chapter of a new and valuable service.

© Gregory Luce for Practice Blawg, 2010. | Permalink | No comments yet | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Directory, Judges, Judiciary

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Bench & Bar of Minnesota, the MSBA’s monthly magazine, can make it a little easier to find new job listings as soon as they are posted. Starting in October, mnbenchbar.com, the online site for the magazine, began offering email and RSS subscriptions to all of its classified ad listings. Now, whenever a new job is posted with Bench & Bar, you can get instant notification by email or in your RSS feed reader (don’t know what RSS or a feed reader is — check out our post here on the topic). Sign up for either of the services on the mnbenchbar.com classified ads page, or by clicking on one of the subscription buttons below.

Subscribe by Email Subscribe by RSS

Or you could just go old school and search the classified ads online or, if you want true old school, wait for the magazine to hit your digital or snailmail inbox around the middle of each month.  Your choice.

© Gregory Luce for Practice Blawg, 2010. | Permalink | No comments yet | Add to del.icio.us
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Addresses. This is the bulk of the moving to-do list, but is one of the easiest things to do. First and foremost: forward your mail. You can do this online at USPS.

Financial

• Bank accounts
• Credit cards
• Accountant
• Any automatically billed accounts (e.g., online or office supply stores, website hosting, courier services)
• Other financial accounts (e.g., small business loans)

Professional Memberships

• Attorney registration with the Minnesota Supreme Court (information here)
• Minnesota State Bar Association (address change form) Note: Make sure to double check your published address preferences
• District bar associations
• Minnesota CLE (update your profile on its website)
• National, specialized, or minority bar associations (e.g. ABA, MWL, MABL, MLBA)
• Other state bars where licensed
• Law school alumni association

Insurance

• Professional liability (malpractice) insurer
• Liability insurer, as this is probably with a different provider

For Business Entities

• Minnesota Secretary of State (for change of registered address and/or agent: login or download PDF)
• Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board
• Tax-related information

Client Matters

• Make sure your clients have updated contact information
• Update the court and opposing counsel in any active cases

Office Supplies and Marketing Materials

• Order new checks and deposit slips
• Order new business cards
• Update your email signature
• Update your website
• If you keep a stock of printed letterhead, envelopes, invoices, return address labels, brochures, or other marketing materials, reorder with your new address.
• If not, update your letter templates.

E-mail

If an email change coincides with your address change, also update: listservs (your listserv email will not be changed automatically when you update your MSBA contact information), e-mail newsletters not from the above organizations, LinkedIn and any other online accounts that use an email address as your username. Consider sending an email to everyone in your contacts.

Utilities. It seems like there is hardly anything we can do without internet these days. Make sure everything is ready to go on day one, or plan for some reduced efficiency.  Switch over your:

• Internet service
• Phone and fax service
• Depending on what services your landlord provides, also check into: liability insurance, electricity/gas, water/sewer, trash/recycling, etc.

Notaries. Complete instructions here. If you are registered at your home address and only moved your office, you may not need to file this change.

• Change your address with the Secretary of State
• If you changed counties, register in your county and order new stamps

Marketing. A new address is a great opportunity to send out announcements to friends, clients, and business connections. Remind them of your practice areas and any new services they might not be aware of.  Here’s a short list of ideas:

• Mail new address announcements or “we moved” postcards
• Have an open house and invite people to check our your new digs
• Add your firm or attorney nameplate to the lobby in your new building

Tips. A few final thoughts:

• Plan to take a few days to settle in and get everything set up. You might feel like you’re losing a few days of work, but you’ll make up for it in efficiency once you start back up. It will be much easier to take client calls when you don’t have to open three boxes to find their file.
• Keep your active files, checkbook, and phone numbers handy for emergencies.
• Pay your monthly bills early so you don’t have to hunt them down (or forget) to mail them.
• Measure to make sure your furniture will fit into your new space. If it’s an option, consider painting before you move furniture.
• Get rid of things you don’t need and to switch to a paperless office system, if time permits. I’ve been switching over to paperless since I got my scanner a few months ago, and can say without a doubt the most annoying things to move are all of my CLE binders and magazine articles that haven’t make it through the scanner yet. Save yourself the backache and get organized before moving.
• At risk of subjecting myself to teasing for being an organizing geek, I will share with you my *secret* for making sure all of your addresses are changed: Make a spreadsheet. Check off when you request an address change, then when you actually receive mail at the new address.

Do you have anything to add? In particular, I’d like to hear from anyone with employees or a litigation-based practice, as I have neither and I expect there are things I didn’t think about with regards to each.

Once all of my address changes have gone through (so I know I haven’t missed anything), I’ll make a downloadable checklist for practicelaw.

© Andrea for Practice Blawg, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Logistics, Moving

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