Lawyers Free To Blog!

 Horace Hunter is a criminal defense lawyer in Virginia.  He is also a blogger.  Unfortunately the State Bar of Virginia did not the reasonableness of such conduct, and it disciplined Hunter over his criminal law blog where he wrote about cases he had handled and other criminal-law issues.  To legal bloggers this ruling had a chilling effect.

Hunter appealed the discipline, and he has been vindicated.  As reported by Robert Ambrogi on his LawSites blog:

In a decision last week, the Portsmouth Circuit Court sided with Hunter, overturning the finding of misconduct under Rule 1.6, which governs confidentiality of client information. The court concluded that the finding violated the First Amendment.

The court did uphold one aspect of the disciplinary committee’s conclusion. It said that Hunter should have included a disclaimer on his website warning that results could vary in others’ cases. It upheld a public admonition for this violation and ordered him to add the disclaimer to his site.

Please click here for Robert's article.  Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law

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Planning For Trial

A trial is a project.  It involves multiple steps, at prescribed times.  There are checklists, and deadlines, and collateral choices.  As lawyers we tend to pigeon hole what we do, and look at it as unique.  When it comes to trial, we get a bit paranoid, and refuse to think out of the box.  Sometimes that is appropriate.  Other times it is not. 

Why shouldn't there be an easier way to plan for a trial?  Guess what, there is.  It is called project planning.  It has been part of the business world vernacular forever.  There are business school classes on the subject.  Countless books have been written about it.  Lecturers and consultants make their living off of it.  There are valuable tools and techniques out there that we can use, if we just get a bit more flexible with our thinking.  We lawyers do not always have to operate with proprietary focus?  We don't always have to reinvent the wheel.  How about we take some of the established business world project planning wisdom and let it help us make our trial planning easier?  Don't call it a trial.  Call it a project.  Then benefit from all the project planning help that is out there.

I have just come across an iPad app that impresses. OmniPlan is designed to help you visualize, maintain, and simplify your projects. Break down tasks, optimize the required resources, and monitor your entire plan—all at a glance. Collaborate with your colleagues and share every detail, update a calendar with your days off, or mix and match. Accept and reject changes one-by-one or all in one go. OmniPlan provides features like Gantt charts, schedules, summaries, and milestones to let you manage all of your activities. OmniPlan helps you manage projects that are as simple or complex as you need them to be—without the complexity.

For an app this app ain't cheap:  $49.95.  Even if you don't buy it, check it out to see how project planning can be applied to trial planning.  It does a lot of great stuff!   If you are intrigued, but don't want to spend that kind of money there are plenty of other apps out there; and other project planning software; and books; and articles.  Just substitute the word "project" with the word "trial," and you have a whole arsenal of tools at your disposal.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law #Harding&AssociatesFamilyLaw #californiafamilylaw #divorce #family law #superlawyers #americanacademyofmatrimoniallawyers #Pleasantondivorce #AlamedaCountyDivorce #ContraCostaCountyDivorce #lawyers

Pinterest For Lawyers

Pinterest seems to be the latest social media craze.  That leads to question #1:  What is it?  According to Wikipedia

Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies, and more. Users can browse other pinboards for inspiration, 're-pin' images to their own collections and/or 'like' photos. Pinterest's mission is to "connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting" via a global platform of inspiration and idea sharing. Pinterest allows its users to share 'pins' on both Twitter and Facebook, which allows users to share and interact with a broad community. Founded by Ben Silbermann, of West Des Moines, Iowa, the site is managed by Cold Brew Labs and funded by a small group of entrepreneurs and inventors. It is one of the “fastest growing social services in the world. . . .

Pinterest users can upload, save, sort and manage images, known as pins, and other media content (ie. videos) through collections known as pinboards. Pinboards are generally themed so that pins can easily be organized, categorized and discovered by other users. Pinterest acts as a personalized media platform, whereby your own content as well as anyone else's uploaded pins can be browsed on the main page. Users can then save their favourite pins to one of their own boards using the “Pin It” button. Content can also be found outside of Pinterest and similarly uploaded to a board via the “Pin It” button which can be downloaded to the bookmark bar on a web browser.

Okay, fine.  Question #2.  What can it do for lawyers?  Matthew Hickey at the Sociable Lawyer Blog offers this:

Because Pinterest is almost entirely visual, it isn’t an intuitive fit for legal marketing. Still, if you are creative, there are ways to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your website or to generally promote your practice. As with any other form of social media, the best place to start is by engaging with the social network on its own terms. Create a few boards for pinning images that interest you. For example, if you are a foodie, start pinning recipes that interest you. If you enjoy music, pin images of your favorite bands or albums. Maybe you are looking for inspiration to remodel your home or are in the market for a new dining room table: pin images that look like products you’d want for your home. The odds of being followed by others are much higher if you are an active and contributing member of the network.

While you’re enjoying all that Pinterest has to offer, you might as well create a board for legal topics. If you already have a law blog (which you should) be sure to start thinking creatively about the images you use for your posts. When you create a new post, pin the images in the post to your law board on Pinterest. It’ll only take you a few seconds. And while you are at it, take a few seconds to think about the description for your image, being sure to include as many relevant keywords as you can in the description (but also try to make the description sound natural since people may be reluctant to repin your image otherwise). If you have an interesting portrait or images on your office website, you can pin those images too with descriptions like “Attorney blogger and entertainment lawyer specializing in drafting music industry contracts and startup formations.” You may find it worthwhile to create images that contain messages directly within the image. Ultimately, the value of your image on Pinterest will come down to how exciting the image itself is. In other words, I wouldn’t waste my time with that boring stock image of scales or a gavel if I were you.

Still a bit unclear?  I understand.  I am not on pinterest myself, but I do hear the chatter.  Question #3.  What next? If you want to investigate further Jason Miles over at the Social Media Examiner blog has written 5 Ways To Tell if Pinterest is Right For Your Business.  Hi instructions might allow you to translate your law practice into pictures pinned to the pinterest corkboard. 

At this point in time, it's not working for me.  Doesn't mean I won't keep my eye on it.  Right now though, I am not seeing the marketing value for my law practice.



Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law 

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LinkedIn Tips

Followers of this blog know that I derive great entertainment value from LinkedIn.  I like the way the site looks and works.  It is fun to scan the profiles of other professionals, and to follow the discussions of certain groups.  Does it, or will it create business for me?  I am not so sure.  I think it has potential, but no measurable success so far.  None the less, it still is fun, so I go with it.

At the Social Media Examiner blog Jeff Korhan has posted 10 LinkedIn Tips for Building Your Business.Some of Jeff's tips include (1) using appropriate keywords and phrases in your heading and title (2) mirroring your online and offline business networks within LinkedIn, (3) tagging your skills and expertise, (4) adding video to your profile to make it come alive, and (5) tagging and filtering connections to organize and build relationships.  There are step by step how to instructions, and helpful videos demonstrating the hows and whys.  If you want to roll up your sleeves and get dirty building your LinkedIn profile, this is a great instructional tool.  Please click her for Jeff's original article.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law
 
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AAML Negotiation Seminar in July

The 2012 AAML Negotiation Seminar is scheduled for July 13th and 14th, 2012 in Chicago.

Harvard Law School Negotiation Program, the preeminent executive negotiation training institution in the world, has agreed again to co-sponsor the AAML Negotiation Seminar. Harvard will send two of their nationally recognized experts in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution to teach this seminar:

More info available on the AAML website. http://www.aaml.org/event/2012/july/13/2012-aaml-negotiation-seminar

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law #Harding&AssociatesFamilyLaw #californiafamilylaw #divorce #family law #superlawyers #americanacademyofmatrimoniallawyers #Pleasantondivorce #AlamedaCountyDivorce #ContraCostaCountyDivorce #lawyers

Symposium A Success

The Northern California Chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers hosted its 36th Annual Symposium May 18 through 20, 2012.  I had the privilege of being the Chair for this year's event.  It was a rousing success.  200 lawyers, and roughly 100 of their spouses, partners, and guests gathered at the Silverado Resort in Napa for a beautiful, warm weekend of fellowship, friendship, and legal learning  (their may have been a bit of wine tasting and food noshing thrown in for good measure).

We had the special privilege this year of being joined by the AAML National Executive Committee, in town for its planning meeting.  Planning and pulling off the Symposium was a ton of work.  It is in my rear view mirror now, and while I am still tired, I am feeling good!

Be sure to visit the Chapter's website for information on next year's Symposium.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law

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WordPerfect - It's Alive!

The first word processor that I used as a baby lawyer was WordPerfect.  I loved it.  The interface was clean.  The functions were easy to understand and remember.  It was stable.  Then the company got caught up in the high tech explosion of the 90's.  Expansion and mergers reduced WordPerfect to a battered shell of its once reliable self.  Compounding the problems, Microsoft was vigorously marketing Word.

Eventually the dilution of the WordPerfect product and the predominance of Word in the user world force me to switch.  It was painful, and I still harken back to my first love . . .WordPerfect.

Guess what?  WordPerfect is still around.  It is actually a suite of products, like Microsoft Office, and it is looking good and getting better.  Here are some of the features:

• WordPerfect® X6 word processor
• Quattro Pro® X6 spreadsheet program
• Presentations™ X6slideshow creator
• Corel® WordPerfect® Lightning™ digital notebook
• Corel® PDF Fusion™ PDF creator
• Core®l Perfect Authority Table of Authorities creator
• WordPerfect® OfficeReady® pre-made templates
• Mozilla® Firefox® web browser
• Nuance® PaperPort® 12 SE PDF manager
• Mozilla® Thunderbird® integrated email
• BrainStorm training videos
• NEW! WinZip® file compression utility
• NEW! WinZip® Courier™ email compression utility
• NEW! ZipSend™ file sharing web service
• NEW! VideoStudio® Essentials video editor

There is a legal version crafted just for us lawyers.  It includes a table of authorities generator, redaction tools, and my old favorite, the "reveal codes" feature.

The list price for the suite is $379.99.  It is not an option for me because our firm infrastructure is too intertwined with office.  But for a solo or small firm starting from scratch, WP looks to once again be a viable option.  Click here to visit the WP website.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law 

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