Jay Reeves

Want a New Year’s Resolution that’s free, painless and guaranteed to improve your Law Life? Resolve to make 2023 the Year of Managed Expectations.  To succeed, you don’t have to join a gym, swear off Ghirardelli Premium Chocolate Squares, or cancel Netflix. You will have to change your thinking – and perhaps a behavior or two. But if you stick with it, great riches will come your way. Read More

When you hear the word “plagiarism,” you probably think of student essays and literary works, not legal work product. And yet lawyers can be plagiarists as easily as high schoolers and published authors. For an eye-opening example, consider a recent ruling in Stilp v. Borough of West Chester (U.S.… Read More

You don’t have to bust your budget to get top-quality Search Engine Optimization. There are lots of available tools – most of them free – that can do it for you. “Search engine optimization (SEO) software helps you check for backlinks, analyze keyword efforts, and monitor ranking progr… Read More

Here’s a risk management reminder: careless handling of a privileged communication can jeopardize its privileged status. This can include inadvertently showing, sharing or sending it to someone else by way of email. A cautionary tale is the California case of Fourth Dimension Software v. Der Touristik D… Read More

If you want to maximize the productivity of employees working from home, stop micromanaging them. Studies show performance improves when workers have a degree of control over where, when and how they do their jobs. “The key is resisting the temptation to make work tactical only through strict processes,… Read More

A client may retain a public insurance adjuster who will be paid a contingency fee from any recovery – and the client’s attorney can even call the adjuster as an expert witness at trial. This is so even though attorneys are generally prohibited from paying expert witnesses a contingency fee. That&… Read More

If you want to create a law office team that is loyal, hard-working and super-productive, don’t focus on their salary or benefits. Give them autonomy instead. “Providing employees with autonomy at work is more likely to generate creative solutions, especially if the work is complex and d… Read More

Lawyers are natural born storytellers – and if you have a good one to tell, there’s a new publishing house that wants to hear from you. LMCS Press is a full-service publishing house specializing in helping lawyers and legal professionals turn their dreams into books. Recent titles include From Wel… Read More

Wonder how it would feel to land the reigning NBA champions as a new client? Just ask legal tech company Rocket Lawyer, which recently signed an agreement to become an official legal services partner with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. Needless to say, Rocket Lawyer – which says it will be the &… Read More

How would you like to have a personal, on-call expert to help you run your law practice? Well, you’ve got one if you’re insured with Lawyers Mutual. North Carolina’s leading professional liability carrier has created a Law Practice Management Program. Its inaugural “advisor in reside… Read More

Do you know how much ROT is in your law firm? If not, you should find out. In the world of information technology, ROT stands for Redundant, Obsolete or Trivial data stored in your firm’s system. A high level of ROT could put your firm – and your clients’ data – at risk. “A recen… Read More

If you are in a solo or small firm practice, don’t waste time trying to be like bigger firms. Instead, lean into your size, which makes you flexible, accessible and local. That’s what consumers are increasingly looking for. “According to a recent Nielsen study, 12 percent of global cons… Read More

Here’s some risk management advice: in a fishing tournament, it’s a bad idea to stuff your prize catch full of lead weights. If you get caught, you’ll not only be disqualified, you may also find yourself angling to escape a deluge of bad publicity.  It happened recently in Ohio, where t… Read More

It seems the Dawn of the Legal Platform is upon us, though it remains to be seen what impact this will have on your firm. The concept of the Legal Platform – essentially a standardization of all the software, hardware and applications you use in your firm – has been discussed in law tech circles fo… Read More

When you think of legal directories, Martindale-Hubbell and AVVO are probably the first two that come to mind. But there are lots of other online directories which, in combination with your existing marketing channels, can solidify your firm’s brand and increase its visibility. “An online lawyer d… Read More