October’s Best of the Blogs

• Restrict Others from Formatting in Microsoft Word from Lawyerist.com
• 5 Options You’ll Want to Re-Set in Word from Legal Office Guru
• Outlook:Adding Columns to the Reading Pane from Mission Critical
• For more tips, check out Reba’s Tips of the Week

• New Dropbox Features from Macsparky
• SanDisk 200GB Connect USB Drive from FutureLawyer
• Read Quick from Apps in Law
• Lumsing Dual Port USB and USB-C Charger from iPhone J.D.

Technology

Podcast, Legal Talk Network
If you have any Apple devices or your Samsung phone just exploded, I recommend that you try out this podcast. I learned a significant amount about cool apps to use and features my phone already has that I’m not utilizing. Read more and listen here.

Joan Feldman, Attorney at Work
The metaphor of “clouds and dirt” is a pretty good way to describe the Silicon Valley inspired, high-energy ClioCon, which delivers sessions that motivate lawyers to reach far beyond the status quo in their businesses, alongside sessions that dig deep into using technology to actually work on big ideas. Read more.

Podcast, Legal Talk Network
In this episode of The Digital Edge, hosts Sharon Nelson and Jim Calloway talk with PayneGroup CEO Donna Payne about ways attorneys can better handle their metadata. Read more and listen here.

Marketing

Meranda Vieyra, The Docket
LinkedIn is essentially a 24/7 networking event, and the possibilities for generating business through this platform are out there for all legal practice areas. So the question for lawyers is not why to use LinkedIn but how. Read more.

Stephen Fairley, The Rainmaker Blog
You may have become interested in the law as a noble profession, but to break the seven-figure barrier, you must run your law firm like a business. As a solo practitioner or the owner of a small law firm, your primary focus – after gaining competency as an attorney — is to understand and apply the key principles of business development, operations, management and law firm marketing every single day. Read more.

Miscellaneous

Jane Oxley, Above the Law
Work as an attorney long enough and you’re bound to run into your fair share of irate clients. But how do you handle angry clients without getting pulled into an all out argument? Let’s take a look at a few tips for deescalating irate clients and keeping calm under fire. Read more.

Casey Sullivan, FindLaw
Good writing is often simple writing. That maxim works as well for legal writing as it does for ‘The Old Man and the Sea.’ But as lawyers, it’s easy to let simplicity get lost under a pile of legal complexities, terms of art, and subordinate clause after subordinate clause. Read more.

Carolyn Elefant, Above the Law
By now, you’ve heard, ad nauseam no doubt, the pitch for starting a niche practice. In this slide deck on niche practices, I listed the familiar benefits of niche practices for lawyers. Read more.

Jeff Bennion, Above the Law
According to the Above the Law’s Solo/Small Firm Compensation Report survey results, a little more than a quarter of solos who responded make less than $50,000. Making $50,000 a year while paying off student loans is tough. If you are one of the hundreds of thousands of solo/small firm attorneys out there, or contemplating the jump, here’s what I’ve learned on how to be successful. Read more.