March 16th, 2011 by Gwynne Monahan
Round up from Clio’s Facebook Page
You may follow us on Twitter, you may “like” our Facebook Page, you may simply read this blog or perhaps some combination of all three. And though our Facebook postings also post to Twitter, we know it can be easy to miss things, or forget to favorite or flag something for future reference. So, we thought we’d start something new: a round up of our recent Facebook postings.
In no particular order, here are some pieces worth reading:
- Law.com Small Firm Business – Shingle-Hanging 201: Another Year, Same Approach. An open, frank, heartfelt piece from David Koller, who will be chronicling his “journey from firm life to solo life and beyond.” He uses the “recency effect” as a springboard for a discussion, and observations, on what brought him into the solo realm. It’s a good read for anyone considering going solo, just starting out or stuck in a rut.
- TechnoLawyer Blog – SmallLaw: You Can Sharpen a Pencil but It Ain’t Gonna Write You a Poem and Other Lessons From My First Year of Practice. In the same newly solo vein as Koller’s piece, but with a technology twist. Pete Armstrong discusses the pervasive misconception that “if you have technology, you have a law firm,” and offers some important lessons he learned from his first year as a solo lawyer.
- North Carolina General Assembly - S254: An Act to Allow Non-Attorney Ownership of Professional Corporate Law Firms. Big news out of North Carolina, and perhaps the biggest non-cloud related news to date. It has sparked controversy over whether or not law firms will feel compelled to make decisions based on the best interest of shareholders instead of firm clients.
- Forbes – North Carolina Bill Would Let Non-Lawyers Invest in Law Firms. In this Forbes post, Daniel Fisher does a nice job outlining provisions of the bill, and safe guards against lawyers putting investor interests ahead of clients, and also draws comparisons to erosion of patient-first medical practices in this “era of managed care.” We’d also suggest reading the comments to the ABAJournal article.
- Law21.ca – 21st Century Solo and MyShingle.com – 21st Century Solo, A Chain-Blog Post, Part II. A very good point-counter point-type discussion about being a solo lawyer in the 21st Century.
- Content Marketing Institute – 12 Things to Do After You’ve Written a New Blog Post. Whether you just started blogging or have been blogging for awhile, these 12 tips are helpful. They range from the obvious, like shortening the URL to the less obvious or easily overlooked, like linking to your blog in your email signature or adding blog posts to your email newsletter.
- New York Times Travel Section – How Not to Get Sick from a Flight. Some helpful tips and information to keep in mind for the next time you travel, especially with conference season approaching.
- New York Times Small Business Guide – A Small Business Made to Seem Bigger. Good article with some useful information on how to use technology to be productive and make your one-person business seem larger. Covers such areas as scheduling, organization, accounting and also offers some offline tools and tips.
- Solo Practice University – Life as a One-Man-Band — The solo Practitioner. Suzanne Meehle offers some good advice on establishing systems for assembling files, managing cash flow, task management, just to name a few. She also offers a simple tip for solos: ask yourself “How do I…?” for every task that you do. She said you can then create a list of major tasks, break them down into sub-tasks and you’ve got your system for completing that task.
Until next week…
