Practice Blawg » Social Media

Staying Updated on a Budget

Andrea Hable — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:40:53 +0000

Keeping overhead low is one of the most important things a new solo can do while building a practice. While there are lots of ways to save money — from your office choices to technology — something we shouldn’t limit is our education. That is, staying updated on the law and learning how to run a practice. Fortunately, there are many tools for this that are free or reduced cost. Here are some of my favorites:

Read your newsletters. You get a lot of them. Whether electronic or paper, voluntary or involuntary, these are good sources for recent changes in the law or upcoming CLEs and networking events. You don’t have to read everything, but glance through them before recycling or hitting delete. Having a hard time managing the influx of information? Rather than unsubscribing to everything, learn how to to filter your emails so you can go through this non-urgent category once a day or week. (I use tags and filters in my Google Apps and Gmail accounts to keep things under control.)

Buy a season pass. One of the best things I did when I started my practice was buying a season pass. I bought mine with Minnesota CLE, which offers a few different levels of passes, and some of the county bar associations offer them too (RCBA and HCBA). Take into account how many CLEs you might want to attend and compare the cost of buying a pass to the cost of individual courses. You might find yourself attending many more than you’d otherwise attend without the added cost.

Last year I attended the Probate & Trust Law Section Conference, Strategic Solutions for Solo & Small Firms in Duluth, Real Estate Institute, Tax Institute, plus a handful of one-day courses. I recently attended the Family Law Institute to stay up-to-date for practicelaw, and am looking forward to attending most of the others again this year, especially the Solo Small Conference again in August. (I hope to see you there!)

Join bar associations and sections. Shameless plug, I know. But your membership gets you discounts on CLEs plus access to other free services, such as practicelaw.org, Fastcase, and Court Opinions. Depending on your needs, the cost of membership might be cheaper than paying full price or using other services.

Look for free CLEs. Many MSBA sections, county bar associations, and law schools also frequently offer free CLEs. Find these by keeping up with the other sources listed here.

Use social networking. Not only for connecting with your colleagues, social networking sites are also a great way to stay updated. On LinkedIn, join groups related to your practice area and read articles posted by the groups or your connections. On Facebook, become a fan of your favorite organizations or law firms. These might overlap with each other or any blogs you follow, so pick and choose what methods you prefer. Many of my lawyer friends also post interesting legal stories on Facebook and LinkedIn, and keeping up with your connections is a great way to stay in touch with people who might be a good referral or resource.

Join groups and listservs. MSBA section members can sign up for e-mail listservs where subscribers can ask and respond to questions.

Also ask around to other attorneys in your practice area if they know of any study groups. I belong to an estate planning study group and I know there are a handful of others out there. Can’t find one that fits your needs or schedule? Start one yourself. Find a few other attorneys with similar interests. The key is to do it regularly, preferably once a month on a set day, and make sure you’re comfortable asking questions to the group.

Subscribe to blogs. Google Reader is one of my favorite tools. While many people know it as a way to keep up with blogs, it aggregates any site with RSS, making it easy to add news sites and even Twitter feeds. If you’ve never seen it in action, check out this quick explanation of the basic concept, and another for an example of how to set it up. I like it so much because it only shows me the items I haven’t read, so I don’t have to scroll down pages on blogs I haven’t visited for a while, plus I only have to go to one site to see everything. It’s much easier to check Google Reader once a day than to check 20 or 30 blogs every day (or even every week). You also have much more control over what you see than from getting your news on Twitter or other real-time sites since you can decide what to follow, how to view it (expanded or list, new or all), and you can easily mark them all as “read” if you’ve had your fill for the day.

You can also organize your feeds by tags. For me, I have tags for Minnesota, Estate Planning & Probate, National Legal News, Solo-Small, Marketing/Practice Management, Ethics, Legal Writing, Funny, General Business, Opinion, and Technology. I don’t use Twitter, so I also added the mnbar and mypractice feeds to Google Reader. You can view all your feeds at once, by tag, or individually.

Don’t like Google Reader? There are many other feed readers like Feedly or Firefox add-ons. My final tip? Don’t get bogged down by blogs. Either use the “mark all as read” button liberally, or weed out your feeds periodically to keep just the really good ones. Looking for more? Most of my favorites are on the practicelaw blogroll.

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Post tags: Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, MSBA Sections, RSS, Social Media, Solo

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Social Media v. Professional Responsibility?

Andrea Hable — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:32:38 +0000

The MSBA has a presence on the three most popular social media services and also established a site limited to members of the Minnesota legal profession:

Follow the MSBA on Twitter. (updated less frequently in January while Greg is in Italy.)

Join the MSBA group on Linkedin. Network, discuss, and connect with other Minnesota attorneys. We’re up to 661 members as of this posting.

Become a MSBA fan on Facebook. Stay up-to-date with events and news.

Sign up for mypractice. Mypractice is similar to other social and professional networking sites, but focuses solely on the Minnesota legal profession. Membership is limited to Minnesota law students, Minnesota attorneys, and members of the MSBA. Take a tour.

But as with almost everything a lawyer touches, social media use brings up plenty of gray areas. Avoid social media at your peril, but use it at your peril. What’s a lawyer to do? (...)
Read the rest of Social Media v. Professional Responsibility? (488 words)

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Top 10 Top 10s

Andrea Hable — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 23:47:09 +0000

I found myself fascinated with all the year-end reviews and predictions of the past few weeks. Here are my favorites. Although not all ten and not all numbered, I hope it helps you reflect on the old year, prepare for the new year, or at least provide a few good laughs.

1. New York Times Magazine Ninth Annual Year in Ideas. The new legal ideas include lunar legalism; the cul-de-sac ban; and cognitive illiberalism following research after the Supreme Court’s 2007 Scott v. Harris case about the right to a jury trial (Harris was rendered quadriplegic after the police rammed his car to end a high-speed chase).

2. Five Best Motions of the Year. When practicing in Florida, wear appropriate shoes.(...)
Read the rest of Top 10 Top 10s (305 words)

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Ever Present Never Present

Gregory Luce — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:54:05 +0000

I call today’s social media, particularly Twitter, the “ever present never present.” It means that, for many of us, social media is ever present. It is always on, always tempting us to post, to like, to friend, to fan, to wave, to connect, and to think about all of these all the time, especially if to do so requires only taking out your smart phone and typing out 140 characters.

But it also means that you are never present. At lunch with a colleague and Tweeting about it? Not present. At dinner with your kids and thinking too much about a clever post? Not present. Reading tweets in your car while driving? Recklessly not present. (...)
Read the rest of Ever Present Never Present (546 words)

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The Case Against Twitter

Gregory Luce — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:36:45 +0000

For most attorneys, Twitter is not that useful. I’m hardly a Luddite, nor am I an attorney frightened of technology and change. And I also don’t think Twitter is a morass of mindless blather. It is useful, fun, and has vast distributive power. But I’ve concluded that Twitter is not productive for most attorneys – and may actually take time away from more useful activities. Here’s why:

(...)
Read the rest of The Case Against Twitter (786 words)

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