Preparing for eFiling and eService: essential office tech
eFiling and eService are rapidly replacing the old way of doing things in local courts across the U.S. In Texas, for instance, almost every one of the state’s 260 local courts will soon require electronic filing (and therefore also eService) and in California, more and more courts are moving online every month. To ensure that […]
How to keep your law firm’s data safe from hackers: Encryption 101
Encryption is one of those topics that sounds so fiendishly complex that most legal professionals don’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole. The thing is, it only sounds complicated. In fact, enabling encryption is quick and simple. So simple, in fact, that some legal tech writers think it’s negligent not to implement it. […]
Use these Outlook settings to prevent “oh no!” moments after clicking send
How many times have you clicked send on an email only to realize a few seconds later that you’ve accidently emailed the wrong person, sent a snarky comment to an entire list of people, or left an embarrassing typo in the first line? I don’t mind confessing to a couple of email howlers in my […]
Beyond bookmarking: 3 Acrobat features for legal professionals
The advent of electronic court filing means that knowing your way around PDF editing software, like Adobe Acrobat, is no longer an optional skill. That’s because all states that introduce eFiling have ruled that only PDF documents will be accepted. The good news is creating PDFs is simple — you can save directly to PDF from your word […]
eFiling and pagination: How to stay within the rules
Habits of a lifetime are hard to break. One such habit in the legal profession has been to paginate certain prefatory sections of court filings using Roman numerals. It’s what we’ve always done. Well, as with so many other long-term law office habits, the introduction of electronic court filing means that this is a habit that you’re […]
[Updated ebook] The top reasons court filings get rejected
Receiving notification that your court filing has been rejected by the clerks can be seriously frustrating. In terms of time, cost, and risk to your professional reputation we’re sure it’s an annoyance you could do without. It happens, though. And, as the courts in more and more states move to implement electronic filing — with […]
Cyber security for the law firm: top blogs, books, and resources
There’s a lot of information out there about how to protect yourself against cybercrime. It’s of varying degrees of quality, however. Much of it is also only of partial relevance to the legal profession. In other words, getting to the information you need can be tough. That’s why we’ve written this concise list of the […]
How to use Word’s readability stats to improve your legal writing
It’s generally accepted that good legal writing is concise writing. It’s not always easy, though. It’s especially difficult in the legal field, where simplicity can get lost in an ocean of impenetrable jargon, superfluous triplicate phrases, and never-ending sentences. The result is often writing that’s hard work to read or even completely unreadable, even by […]
5 ways to boost your productivity that are backed by science [Updated]
Originally published December 15, 2015. Updated January 20, 2017. The internet is full of articles claiming to provide the secret to limitless personal productivity. If only we got out of bed earlier, organized our email more often, or divided our day into 25-minute bursts of activity followed by tiny little breaks. There’s even one study […]
What are the main cyber security threats for law firms?
Law firms are big targets for cyber criminals. The sheer volume of sensitive and confidential data held on law firm computers and servers makes them an enticing target for budding cybercriminals. The consequences of a serious data breach extend far beyond just embarrassment — lose a client’s data to cybercrime attack, and you could be […]
10 actionable productivity tips for legal professionals
There’s one big thing that’s killing our ability to focus and give our work the attention it requires: Digital distraction — the overwhelming bombardment of text messages, emails, pop-ups, new feeds, and updates from which it is almost impossible to hide. That’s a big problem, especially if you work in a profession like the law […]
5 legal trends to start preparing for in 2017
As we begin the new year’s first full week of work, it’s the perfect time to look ahead and review what’s in store for 2017. Okay, so it’s well known that technological advancement in the legal professions can sometimes be slow. Therefore, many of these trends have been in the works for years and perhaps […]
[New ebook] How to produce a court-friendly PDF
With more and more courts requiring that court documents to be filed electronically, most papers are being created, delivered, and read as PDFs. In order to aid the management and readability of electronic documents, the courts have put in place several rules and requirements for the formatting and structure of PDF filings. If you’re filing […]
Top best practices for exhibit scanning
It’s a near certainty that, no matter how hard you strive for your office to be paperless, you will find that you need to scan items such as incoming correspondence, signatures pages, and exhibits. As the items that often have the most detail, it’s important to learn the best practices for exhibit scanning as one […]
New eFiling rules in California: customer questions
On January 1, 2017, a number of new eFiling rules will come into effect in the California state courts, further delineating how documents should be formatted and prepared when they will be electronically filed with the court. To help you to prepare for the changes our training team is running a number of MCLE-accredited webinars (sign […]
7 best gifts for legal professionals
The holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year — both at work and at home. Often that means that we struggle to find a chance to source gifts for our friends and colleagues or to treat ourselves to a little something special. Sometimes, gifts for legal professionals can be some of […]