SC Small Firm.com

Archive for the ‘Tips & Tricks’ Category

Have you been wondering how to use Adobe Acrobat to complete forms? Many forms are available on government websites for lawyers and the public. What do you do if you find a PDF form you want to use, but the author didn’t enable the right to fill out the blanks using Adobe Reader? First, save it to your computer. Then, open the saved PDF file using the full version of Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional (essential software for all law offices). Go to the file menu across the top and select tools/ typewriter and enable the typewriter tool by clicking on the typewriter symbol. Your curser will change appearance and look like an “A”. Hover over the line you wish to fill in, click once and start typing. Each time you type, you will need to click the typewriter symbol again. For more Adobe tips, see the Acrobat for Legal Professionals blog .

Fellow Practice Management Advisor, Linda Oligschlaeger,  of the Missouri Bar, recently published 15 Recession-Response Tips for Small Firm Lawyers in the ABA Law Practice magazine. These tips are now available online.

#6 is “Look at the resources offered by your bar association.” The SC Bar was one of the first nationwide to launch a web resource for lawyers dealing with a down economy. If you haven’t already, visit the Career Counsel pages.

Ben Schorr, CEO of Roland Schorr in Hawaii and author of one of my favorite new books, The Lawyer’s Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007 (which you can check out from our lending library or purchase your own online) has a tip for testing backups that I love. It’s simple and it makes sense.

Most experts agree that if you haven’t tested a backup, you can’t be certain you really have a backup. Ben’s tip is this: An easy way to test backups is to create a small file called “#BackupTest” and put it with your documents.  It can be a Word document or whatever; it doesn’t really matter.  Every now and then, delete it from your system, then try to restore it from your most recent backup.

Throughout the years I’ve talked to lawyers who found out the hard way that their computer backup wasn’t functioning or was corrupted. A test restore of a document could have prevented a lot of expense and anguish (not to mention protecting the lawyers from possible ethics violations).

Like so many lawyers, I am torn about using Facebook. I initially began using it because it was a cool new gadget and I’m a dweeb — oh, and to stay in touch with friends and family. My goal has been to try to keep Facebook purely personal (and private) and use Linkedin for professional connections. It isn’t always easy.  Realistically, Facebook is a social networking website. Its very foundation is sharing with others by the widest medium possible: the Internet. How does privacy jive with this?

Well, you can strictly limit your information on Facebook (including the fact that you are even on Facebook) to just the friends (connections) you choose. That is an important fact. But where I ran into difficulty was in trying to keep my friends, but limit what some of them saw. The fact is, while I do want to stay in touch with my connections, I don’t feel the need to stay in touch with some as often as others.

Was I successful limiting what some of my friends could view? Mostly, but not 100%. If you want to try this, go to Settings/Privacy Settings/Profile and then go down the list of everything you see, choosing “customize” where possible. Options are to let everyone on Facebook see something, or just friends of friends, or only friends. Plus, there is the added option of customizing by individual. After each setting you change, be sure to click “Save Changes.” Don’t change a bunch and then click it, or it may not work.  Also go to Settings/Application Settings and edit those as well. It’s tedious. You can type a friend’s name in a field in Facebook settings to see how that friend views your page. That’s how you will know if you were successful or not.  Good luck!

Follow me on Twitter! Just sign into Twitter and look up SCBar_PMAP and follow me. Today’s tweet: great tips on using a USB drive for more than storing data. Plus, learn how to password protect your USB with Rohos Mini Drive 1.5. Too many of us don’t do this and it’s critical if we have any confidential client or personal information stored on the USB.