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Editor’s Note:  The following is a guest post from Evanston divorce lawyer Joshua Stern.

There are countless websites that promise to deliver traffic to a lawyer’s website. There are some services that go a step further and promise to connect potential clients with a lawyer. In fact, if you have an Esq. after your name, odds are at least one company has told you about the “thousands of visitors” that come to their site every month looking for a lawyer.

Wouldn’t you like to be the one they call?

 When I set out to write this post, I intended to discuss a variety of online referral sources by name. The problem is that there are too many of them. Instead, I am offering my rules for creating an online marketing strategy. Specifically, what NOT to do. These are 6 rules I have used since I started my practice:

1. Never Pay for Leads; Ever. Companies that promise to connect you with clients are incentivized to acquire as many “leads” as possible and then charge you by volume. It’s your job to convert them. The problem is, as anyone who has watched Glengarry Glen Ross knows, the leads are weak. The company has no incentive to screen the potential clients because then it would lose its unique selling proposition, which is volume.  Additionally, many of these companies only give you access to the leads, they won’t pair them with you. That means you will spend your time combing through “leads,” competing against other attorneys to contact these “potential customers” first.  To make matters worse, the “potential clients” are the ones who categorize their legal problem. Many of the leads will be miscategorized. Worst of all, these “potential customers” aren’t obligated to use the referral service. It’s distinctly possible that they will have found counsel by the time you contact them.
2. Stop Caring about “Strategic Partnerships with Google.” Everyone has a “strategic partnership with Google.” Here’s the link where you can register your business as a partner with Google. It is a ubiquitous, and thereby meaningless, distinction. Don’t pay extra for it and don’t base your purchasing decisions on it.
3. Leave Blind Faith at Home. If a company tells you they will get you to the top of Google’s search results, make sure they tell you how. Think of it this way: would you ever hire a travel agent that promised to get you to Paris but wouldn’t tell you how? How about a doctor that gave you a prescription without a name? Of course not. You wouldn’t because you’d be certain that you wouldn’t get the results you were promised or you would acquire them in a less than desirable way. Companies that promise results but won’t disclose their methods will either underperform or will use “black hat” SEO, meaning techniques Google frowns upon. While the former outcome is a waste of money, the latter is even worse. Your site may completely disappear when the next algorithm change comes out. Worse yet, if Google finds your SEO tactics to be in violation of their Webmaster Guidelines, they can impose a manual penalty. Remember the JC Penny fiasco of 2011?
4. Don’t Buy What Your SEO Company Has Already Sold. Speaking of SEO, remember: there is only one #1 result in any Google search. Even if you find the perfect SEO company, you need to be certain they aren’t representing your competitors. Otherwise, you and your competitor are paying for the same thing, and only one of you can have it.
5. Why Are You Listed in that Directory? For those of you who don’t know, directory submissions used to be an easy and reliable SEO tactic. There are more directories online than you can fathom and many of them allow you to list your site for free or for a nominal fee. Google rankings used to be influenced by the sheer volume of directories pointing back to a particular website. Those days are gone. Directories, generally, have little SEO significance. There are exceptions. By and large, you want niche directories or highly reputable directories. A niche directory would be something like Findlaw. A trusted directory might be something like the Yahoo! Directory or DMOZ (Google it). If you don’t have time to make that assessment, ask yourself this: “is this directory listing likely to result in phone calls or clicks to my site?” If the answer is no, don’t list your site. Also, stay out of bad or shady looking directories. You wouldn’t hire a lawyer based on the recommendation of an intimidating and ragged looking stranger and most users aren’t going to use a directory that looks like some late 1990s Geocities monstrosity.
6. Don’t Stop. Online marketing is not something you can do in fits and spurts. You are trying to establish and maintain your professional reputation on the internet. It helps if you enjoy it, but no matter what, stick with it. Don’t underestimate the importance of momentum in marketing.

Online marketing can be confusing, but its importance will only grow. As lawyers, we have a tremendous opportunity to share our knowledge with the rest of the world, helping clients and strangers alike. We are fortunate that there is a demand for our training and that by helping others, we are given the opportunity to improve our reputation and grow our businesses. It’s the perfect marriage.

My 6 rules of what not to do when marketing yourself online should help everyone save some money and will hopefully free up capital to be redirected to more profitable marketing channels. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email.

This is a potentially exciting development, particularly since the last bit of technology “reform” that impacted our Cook County practice was when the parentage courts recently disallowed private attorneys from using the copy machines down at the Daley Center concourse level. Seriously, the “technological progress” was a return to carbon paper. I was going to post a photo of the signage but didn’t feel right about snapping a picture in the courtroom.

But I digress…

The original article was in the 4/22/11 Law Bulletin (full article is password protected), a couple excerpts:

The program, known as e-filing, has been a pilot project for the Law Division’s individual commercial calendar for two years. The service will expand to the rest of the Law Division next month, so trial lawyers can use a credit card to file suits and motions from a computer for an extra cost of $4.95 plus 4 percent of the total filing fee.

Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy A. Brown said she hopes the system will solve a common complaint heard in the Daley Center that court files are sometimes missing or incomplete. But with e-filing, documents will always be available electronically.

“That was a problem that I’ve worked on diligently and just trying to reduce that problem on a manual basis,” Brown said. “But I realized that you can’t watch everybody that’s pulling a file to see if they’re taking something out. And people just do it all the time.”

“And then you have the files going into so many different hands; folks in the judiciary and they decide they want to hold onto something. That’s basically unsolvable. It’s always going to be something. This is the only answer,” Brown said…

Every Law Division case type will be available for e-filing except for building condemnations. Pending approval from Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans and the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, e-filing is scheduled to launch in the Chancery Division in July; all civil cases in the municipal districts in September; the Domestic Relations Division and Child Support Division in December and the County Division in February.

Checkout some useful webinars from the Circuit Clerk’s Website. As many of you know very limited e-filing has been active for certain law division cases for the last 6+ months and this announcement seems to be the final expansion of e-filing throughout the court system.

Who likes recurring monthly expenses?

I hate products/services that require monthly/installment contractual agreements. I think of these as being the carbon-monoxide of a business or personal budget…silent, stealth killers. And that’s the trick for the product or service-provider, right, getting that price point at a low enough level that the consumer thinks “oh what’s $19 per month.” Well, that’s $228 a year fella…real $$$. All that to say I’ve been taking a hard look at some of my Firm’s recurring monthly expenses notably our telephone/fax services and making some changes.

I’ve used eFax since the day I opened my doors back in 2005 and I’ve used eVoice for at least the last 2+ years since I’ve been in a more virtual practice setting. They’re both part of J2 Global Communications, Inc. and for the most part I’ve been pleased with their products but as the largest player in that market place the pricing has crept-up. We currently pay $30 monthly for eVoice and $20 monthly for eFax with an extra charge per page faxed…so generally $50-ish monthly.

In the last week we moved our office telephone# to Toktumi for $15 monthly so I just cut our telephone costs in half. Toktumi also has a $10 flat monthly Internet fax option that includes unlimited monthly sending/receiving of faxes. I MAY just move both phone/fax to Toktumi and bag a $25 monthly/$300 annual expense savings and be quite pleased with myself.

But has the time now arrived that a fax is wholly unnecessary? What are your thoughts or experiences? Anyone dumped their fax machine/number completely?

I used to have my hand in residential real estate a lot more than I do currently…by choice and due to soft real estate market conditions I haven’t been involved with a real estate transaction in 6 months. I think of residential real estate as very fax intensive particularly due to the various contractual notice provisions. So since I’m not really doing real estate any longer and quite frankly don’t want to return to it in the future…why do I need a fax (e-fax account or otherwise)?

My current monthly payment to eFax gets me to May 14th so I have nothing to decide until that point but I plan on being ready to decide by that point. I MAY just use the Toktumi monthly unlimited $9.99 plan. But I’m also intrigued by Pay Per Fax and Innoport Express (the two providers I’ve located) where you simply pay per use to either send or receive a fax. I KNOW that using one of those providers would bring cost savings, my only hesitancy is on the fax “receive” side of the coin. Both of these providers seem to do a similar set-up with receiving faxes. You “reserve” one of their fax #s that is good for some time period like 6 hours and that’s how you receive faxes . Would that be a hassle or turn-off to clients however infrequent it might occur? Someone calls and says I want to fax you something and then I/legal assistant would need to get our temporary # from one of the sites, then call-back the person wanting to fax something, then they can fax something…assuming they fax in the next 6 hours. Obviously a lot more hassle than just having a fax# on the Website or something and folks can fax whatever/whenever.

Of course we could just answer NO when someone asks about faxing something.
What do you think?

This post is intended to serve as a bit of an introduction to a Product Reviews tab that I’ve placed permanently above. I want to talk straight-up about the products and services that I use, that I’ve tried, and tell you what works and doesn’t work for me, an Illinois small (but growing) firm attorney. We exist to give you the practical tools and advice to run a successful legal services business.

Here are eight (8) products/companies that I have used recently and/or products that I use every single day:

QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition. We’ve used this QuickBooks product for our back-end financial management, financial forecasting, and our client billing since our Firm’s inception in 2005. It’s obviously not a specific, legal billing package but the Professional Services Edition does allow us to set varying hourly billing rates and enter thorough descriptions of the services that we’re providing our clients. On the billing side that’s the key…explaining in detail to your clients the wonderful, thorough legal services that you’re providing. I get regular compliments from judges and attorney colleagues alike on the aesthetic appearance of our billing statements. Bank accounts are easily synced with QBs over the Internet. Frankly, to be self critical, I’d like to use the product better in terms of the many business planning, tracking, and graphing options that it offers.

Constant Contact. For the last several months we’ve used Constant Contact for our monthly e-mail newsletter that goes out to some 200-300 clients, former clients, and professional referral sources. Effective communication with these groups of people and keeping yourself “Top-of-Mind” with them might be your most important marketing goal as a legal services entrepreneur. This group (clients/former clients/referral sources) is where 80%-90% of your new business will come (and likely increasing as you meet people and have more clients/former clients). We’ve been sending out an e-mail newsletter for some 3 years, previously as a PDF attachment, with less effectiveness. Constant Contact allows us to choose from 100+ e-mail templates to create a nice-looking, graphical e-mail that appears in the body of a recipient’s e-mail. This grabs attention MUCH better than our old “PDF attachment” version plus readers can easily click on articles and offers that drives them to our Website. We can also monitor bounce, receipt and e-mail viewing rates. I haven’t even tried the survey or event marketing options that Constant Contact offers but they look promising too. Our firm hosts 0-500 e-mail addresses for $15 per month (no long-term contract required). Properly reaching your current/former clients and referral sources is the way to rocket your growth EXPONENTIALLY in years 3, 4, 5 (and beyond) of your business. Sign-up for a 60-day trial with Constant Contact now!

eFax. We’ve used eFax exclusively for all of our faxing needs since our Firm’s inception in April 2005. Quite simply an Internet-based fax “machine” is the only-way-to-go in the 21st century. Here’s eFax’s price listing which includes a monthly charge plus a per-page charge. One of these days a “fax machine” may be unnecessary but at least for us in the real estate field having that proof of fax transmission is often still important for contract “Notice” purposes. With eFax, you send a “fax” using the print instruction on your computer and then choose eFax as your “printer” which then opens the eFax interface. Your fax recipient’s information is entered (and is remembered) and easily sent to multiple recipients. Simply, anything that you can get onto a computer and into digital format is faxable (is that a word?). Receiving faxes come to as many e-mail addresses as you like. Both I and my assistant receive our Firm’s faxes wherever we’re working that particular day. eFax does allow you to select your local area code for your fax number. Multiple documents are easily combined into one fax correspondence in a manner just like adding e-mail attachments.

Regus (Office space solutions). We’ve used Regus for new client meetings, depositions, and multi-person meetings for the last 2 years. Regus is a worldwide company that really does a nice job of servicing flexible entrepreneurs who have office needs and want to project a professional image but without the expense and inflexibility of a traditional, single location-type landlord. I’ve just really begun to see a lot of their advertising around Chicagoland…they currently boast of 28 Chicagoland locations. My legal practice is centered in Chicago and the north/northwest suburbs so it’s nice to be able to use a Chicago Loop location regularly plus a couple outlying locations in Deerfield, Park Ridge, and Schaumburg. In my experience, clients WILL HAPPILY choose the convenience-of-location versue your “traditional” single, permanent location with your diplomas on the wall anytime. We use Regus’ free blue, businessworld membership and pay between $18-$28 per hour for a standard office.

HostGator Web Hosting. I’ve used HostGator to host my Firm’s Website (Olsonlawfirm.net) and two blogs (SoloinChicago.com & ClosingChicagoRealEstate.com) for just over 1 year. I previously used 1&1. My change was motivated by HostGator’s superior support for the latest WordPress versions for us bloggers. When I finally got serious about migrating the blogs from Blogspot to their own domains I needed the latest in WordPress support. Granted our Website could use some work, but HostGator does have easy-to-use sitebuilder software to get a basic site up quickly and easily. The back-end of our sites gets managed through a cPanel. I think HostGator’s “back-end” management has been the biggest positive change for me. I love the Webalizer feature and being able to really drill down into our traffic numbers by referrers and traffic by time of day/month. Also, our content is backed-up with one click. Further, the online chat customer service has always been spot-on.

eVoice. I’ve used eVoice for our office telephone answering for more than 1 year now. eVoice is an automated answering software program that allows you to create a personalized greeting for callers and then routes calls wherever you want. Pricing ranges from $12.95 to $29.95 per month depending on minutes and the number of extensions you need. eVoice has been great for us with 2-3 people working from several different locations. Callers to the Firm are greeted with a friendly, descriptive, automated answer but callers can reach myself or our legal assistants with the push of a single button. I think this is a better and more cost effective option than many of the “virtual office” options that charge you each time they answer a call and forward it to your cell phone and I find it more professional than you as lawyer answering your own phone. Yes, it is an automated answering service (gag) but I think that is becoming more and more the business norm. eVoice does not place your callers into some endless loop of automation, rather, with one press of a button they can leave me a voice-mail or get patched immediately to my cell phone. Call me now and tell me how it sounds…312-629-9900.

Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind. If you want to learn about blogging and general online business building, Yaro’s blog Entrepreneurs-Journey.com and some of his coaching programs are the place to go. His Blog Mastermind consists of 27 weekly Internet-based lessons which include text, audio, and video instruction. Blog Mastermind also includes a very useful forum and online community for interaction with thousands of other students. The program works very usefully through initial blog set-up and structural matters to content production, then traffic building, and finally monetization. Blog Mastermind costs $450.

uPrinting. I’ve become a huge fan of this company following recent business card and greeting card purchases. And the issue isn’t merely the quality of their end product but rather it’s their quality online, do-it-yourself design tools on their Website. I was able to create a quality, two-sided business card for $40 (500 cards). uPrinting’s pricing, quality, and design tools made them a no-brainer for our printing needs.

Interestingly that phrase from the kids show, Wonder Pets, came into my home because my wife cares for a 2-year-old little boy once-a-week and apparently he’s a big fan of the show and the jingle has caught on. Yet of course our focus here isn’t Saturday morning television but rather ‘Down-to-Earth advice for Legal Entrepreneurs.’

And how you handle your telephone number and telephone answering is critical. Along with the various ‘office options’ that exist these days, I’d say that the variety of ways to handle your phones was a classic example of something I didn’t know that I didn’t know when I started my Firm some 4+ years ago. And don’t underestimate the importance of the telephone in your law practice because at least in my experience, although the various forms of social networking and your general Internet presence is a key part of your ‘sales funnel,’ when it comes times for client to retain attorney that process starts with a telephone call.

Consider 5 of the good/bad/ugly ‘telephone solutions’ that I’ve used and observed in my practice…

1.  The traditional receptionist(s)/legal assistant(s) answers all incoming calls. Likely your best option if you have the personnel to do this. It’s great because this person can serve as a gatekeeper to help you as lawyer be more productive and your receptionist should be able to simply handle many of the purely logistical calls without your needing to give those calls one iota of attention. Plus with the right personality this person or people can be a great sales force for you.

2.  An automated, Internet receptionist. I’ve used this option over the last year or so with this provider, Onebox.com (part of the same company that created eFax.com) at a cost of some $30 per month. I know there was at least one other major player I was considering when I set this up but I can’t recall that alternative off hand. I’ve always used some combination of part-time and contract staff so option #1 has never been viable for me. Here, callers hear an automated greeting that I created and a caller is given a couple different options, one of which is to reach me (Call our office @ 312-629-9900 if you want to hear an example). Then that call to our office number rings to whereever I want it to which currently is my cell phone. My opinion is that this presentation sounds very professional, callers expect companies to use some sort of filtered, automated answering system these days up front, and they still can get to me with only the press of a button.

3.  Cell/Office phone self-answered by you, the lawyer. I generally find this tacky and not productive and wouldn’t recommend it. If you’re answering your telephone, with the rare exceptions, you’re not earning income which is a no, no. Plus I think there’s a bit of a negative perception if “my lawyer answers his own telephone.” And if you do this via a cell phone I definately think there’s a TOO CHEAP factor that hurts you.

4.  Your telephone straight to voicemail. I’m not sure if #3 or #4 is worse and I see a lot of small law firms using some combination of the 2. I don’t think this option has to be that bad IF the voicemail message is friendly, descriptive, and sales-oriented and that messages get returned relatively quickly. Personally, I’ve been less suprised that many firms I call use this option than I’ve been with some of the terrible and almost anonymous messages I hear at lawyer offices.

5.  Virtual office package answering/telephone answering services. What I mean here is where a human being is the first answer of the call but it’s a person with no relationship/knowledge of your firm. So here you’re attempting to make your firm seem professional and larger than it is. Often this is coupled with the virtual office provider’s willingness to forward calls immediately to another location or your cell phone.  This set-up is useful for ‘business image’ building. The only thing I don’t like about it is that this is where many of the virtual office providers like a Regus for example nickle-and-dime you. Any time I got my calls forwarded to my cell phone I was charged for that forward maybe $1 per call which would add $100ish to my tab each month.

Anybody doing anything better/different??

Editor’s Update: I wanted to give a little better “back story” on how/why I got to where I am sitting in option #2 above. So back when I founded my firm in a space-for-services arrangement at 120 S. State Street I bought our current, 312-629-9900, telephone number straight from the phone company and our phone’s were answered by a shared receptionist. Then some 6 months later my firm was relocated to our own office and we ported the phone number as part of that move. At that location for some 3 years we were in option #5. As I stated above, the one aspect of #5 I didn’t like was we were officed in a sort of executive suite where our office lease included receptionists but you have to watch the add-on expenses like forwarded phone calls when I was out of the office and needed calls forwarded. Finally, for the last year or so I’ve been in option #2. For us it’s an effective way to allow for the decentralized nature of 2-3 staff people who don’t work in a single location that costs a reasonable, flat-fee each month.

Like many lawyers I tend to call many other lawyers. It’s interesting the different sorts of methods used to answer the phone in lawyers’ offices from a wonderful, warm, and helpful receptionist to the straight-to-voicemail alternative. Actually, with all of the different option out there these days it’s probably worthy of a much more complete blog post in the future (hint, hint).

But for now, so I called another lawyer (I think) recently where a caller wouldn’t even know that he was calling a lawyer’s office. I thought it was a lawyer because this person had sent us some pleadings with a phone number listed on the bottom section of the pleadings. But the voicemail message was completely anonymous stating that you’ve reached such-and-such number and please leave a message, click.

If I was a potential client and needed a lawyer ASAP and that’s the message I heard on a voicemail I think I’d move on to the next option rather quickly.

**Editor’s Note: Many thanks to Bryan Sims for sharing some technological advice with our readers. If you missed previous segments of the interview look here and here. Very sage advice…I found his 5 “must have” pieces of technology particularly informative and are you kidding me, he uses three monitors! If you like what you’ve heard here, I see he’s also joining me on the dais at the ISBA’s Solo and Small Firm Conference, October 22-October 24 (really I’m joining him on the dais). Or just come on down to see Exhibit A in the history of Illinois pay-to-play politics:  The Abraham Lincoln Hotel & Conference Center.  5th Annual Solo & Small Firm Conference:  Creating a Thriving Practice in Challenging Times.

SIC: List 3 cheap and simple technology changes/upgrades a lawyer could make with the potential for a big payoff.

TCL:

The first thing I would recommend echoes what I just said. Learn how to use the stuff you have already paid for. Leverage the technology you already own before you think about spending money on something else.

Second, scan everything. Being able to work with electronic documents only is unbelievably liberating. With my laptop, I have access to every document on every file on every case on which I am currently working. Further, being able to access a document, a pleading, a piece of discovery, anything to do with my file without having to find the file and then search through it is a huge time saver. However, this works only if you scan everything. If some of your stuff is in paper and some is electronic, you will never know what is where. However, if you scan everything, you will be rewarded with savings in time and greater efficiency.

The final recommendation I would make is to add a second monitor to your desk. When I first added a second monitor, I was amazed at how much more efficiently I was able to work. This is especially the case in situations such as quoting from a case, or responding to a motion. The best testimony I have seen to the effectiveness of a second monitor is that I have never found anyone who uses two monitors that would ever be willing to go back to just one. The biggest drawback to using two monitors is that you feel cramped when you are away from the office and have only your laptop screen to use.

That being said, I love my multiple monitor set up (I now use 3) and do not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who asks.

SIC: I see you’re a big Adobe Acrobat fan, how do you use Acrobat beyond merely reading/ creating PDF files?

TCL:

I use Adobe Acrobat on a daily basis in my practice. One of my favorite ways is to use it with my research. When I find a relevant case, rather than printing it to paper, I print it to PDF. I then highlight, annotate, and otherwise mark up my cases, just as I would if I had printed them to paper. However, now I have my cases with me, wherever I go. Plus, if I need a copy for the judge, I can simply print the case, without the annotations. In the Print Dialogue, on the upper right under Comments and Forms, you can choose whether to print just the documents or the document with comments.

I also use Acrobat to handle all of my documents in a case, whether pleadings, correspondence, discovery, or anything else. I store them all in PDF and run Adobe’s OCR (optical character recognition) process on them. By doing this, I can easily build an index to search all of the documents in a particular case.

I have also found that Adobe works great to store deposition exhibits. At the conclusion of a deposition (dep), I can put all of the exhibits together keep them as a single PDF that I can keep with the electronic copy of the dep. This means I never have to search for a paper copy of a dep exhibit. Also, by bookmarking the file, I can easily jump to any particular exhibit that I want to.

Additionally, I find Acrobat invaluable in preparing discovery. For example, the Bates Stamping feature allows me to stamp hundreds of pages of documents in a span of a couple of minutes. Also, if there is any information that I need to redact, I can use the redaction feature to securely and completely redact the information from the document.

Acrobat is a very powerful program with some great features. I urge anyone who has never explored some of these features to check out the webinars that Adobe has put together to get an idea of all of the things that you can do with Adobe Acrobat.

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How to manage e-mail, IT and more…compliments of The Connected Lawyer.

SIC:  How should a small law firm manage IT? Self-manage? Outside consultant?

TCL:

There a lot of factors that must be considered when answering this question. The two key questions are the number of computers involved and knowledge the attorney has about technology. The smaller the set up (e.g. 1 desktop, 1 laptop) the more easily that it is for a tech savvy attorney to handle his own IT issues. However, if complications develop or the set up becomes more complicated, then it may be time to hire an outside consultant. It does not have to be a complicated issue for you to waste an entire day of billings trying to solve a computer problem.

My advice is to look for an IT consultant who can help you before you have problems. One of the best ways to do this is to ask other attorneys who they use. For example, chances are that a consultant can set you up with a backup system more efficiently and more cost effectively (once your lost time is included) than you can do yourself. Once you find such a person, keep his info handy to help you with issues as they arise.

On the flip side, I don’t think it benefits anyone if you don’t have someone in your office who at least has a basic understanding of how your computer system works. Just make sure that you are spending your time practicing law and not fixing computers.

SIC:  How should folks efficiently balance the constant flow of e-mail with the need for uninterrupted, billable work time?

TCL:

Oh, if only I had a magical solution for this problem. The best advice I can give is to turn off your automatic notifications that tell you that you have received an email. Once you do this, keep your email program minimized and check it only when you want it. For example take a break every hour or so and spend 5 to 10 minutes handling your email. Alternatively you can ignore your email for longer periods of time and then allocate more time to check it, for example, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

I have one additional recommendation that applies regardless of how you manage your email when you are at your computer: on your smartphone, turn off the automatic notification that you have received an email. If you want to check your email on your phone that is fine. However, do not be a slave to it.

SIC:  What’s a common technology mistake or two you often see in the legal profession?

TCL:

The biggest mistake that I see is that attorneys do not effectively use the technology that they have. For example, I see attorneys all of the time who treat their word processor as an expensive typewriter. They never take advantage of the various features that allow them to properly format a document, or track changes, or generate a table of contents. Instead, they try to do all of these things by hand.

Similarly, I see attorneys will full versions of Adobe Acrobat who use it only to print PDFs they download from the Internet. I have seen attorneys create a document in Word, print it, and then scan it so they can have an electronic copy rather than simply printing the document to PDF from Word.

Simply put, the biggest mistake you can make is to not understand how to use and leverage the technology that you have already paid for.

Editor’s Note: Naperville, IL commercial litigator and prominent technologist Bryan Sims was nice enough to spend a little time with us here at SIC touching on some technology matters impacting small law firms. Many of you likely already read his blog, The Connected Lawyer, and likely have seen him at one of his many continuing legal education speaking engagements. If you need an expert witness or speaker on the problem of metadata (what is it?) or the effective use of Adobe Acrobat he’s your guy. And on a personal note I think of him as one of my earliest friends which friendship began in the blogsphere (we’ve actually now met in person). I’m going to role out this interview in a few chunks over the next weeks because apparently Bryan is soooo connected that he just couldn’t stop tapping his keyboard in response to my questions.

List 5 “Must-Have” pieces of technology for an attorney (hardware or software).

1. A Good Backup System.

Let’s start with the boring stuff first. No one gets excited about the backup systems/protocols. However, this could be the most important decision you make. Much of what you do is stored electronically. When you lose data (whether from a hard drive crash or other problem), you want to be able to be back up and running as quickly as possible, without having to re-create all of your work.

There are two key components to a good backup system: First it has to be multi-layered. By this I mean you should have a local backup (external hard drives work well for this) and a remote backup, located far from your office in the event of a natural disaster. Remote backups over the internet (with a reputable service) provide the best protection in the event of a catastrophic fire or natural disaster. However, absent this, you don’t want to be trying to restore all of your data from the internet if your hard drive crashes. It will simply take too long.

The second key component to a backup system is that it has to be automatic. Buy a program (such as EMC Retrospect or Acronis True Image) that will automatically make your backups. If your backups are not automatic, you will not do them and you will be very unhappy when your hard drive crashes.

2. Laptop:

The second key piece of technology that a lawyer should have a is a laptop. The key thing here is that you should be able to work from anywhere. This does not mean that you should work all of the time. Instead, it means that you should be able to work from wherever you want. To do this properly you need a laptop.

3. Scanner:

Another aspect of being able to work from anywhere requires that you have access to you documents. The best way to accomplish this is to make sure that, to the extent possible, you work with electronic copies of your documents. To get these documents into your computer, you need a scanner. Once you move to working with electronic documents only, you will be amazed at how much more efficient you become.

4. SmartPhone:

Although I consider a laptop a must, I don’t expect you to carry it with you everywhere. As a result, I believe that a smartphone is an essential piece of technology. This allows you to be somewhere other than your office and still handle not only telephone communications, but also to review email, documents, and faxes from the palm of your hand.

Again, the purpose is not to work all of the time, but rather to allow you to work from where you want to be, whether that is in your office, on your back deck, or on a business trip. For example, my wife gets to travel for business. At times, I go with her. Because I make use of mobile technology, I know that when she is in meetings or otherwise working, I can do the same. Once she is done, we can spend time vacationing.

Also, I see a lot of people getting hung up over which smartphone to buy. Should they get an iPhone, or a Storm, or a traditional Blackberry, or a Pre? The reality is get what works for you. Start by deciding what company has good service in the locations you will use your phone (such as your home and office). Once you decide on a service, pick a phone from that company that you like best that allows you to work the way you want. The iPhone may be perfect for the attorney next door, while you may prefer the Pre. There is no perfect phone. Pick the one that works best for you.

5. Virtual Fax:

Once again, lawyers lag behind the rest of the world. If you talk to people in other industries, they never use faxes anymore. All such communication is done via email. Lawyers, however, still insist on using faxes rather than email. That, however does not mean that you remain tied to a fax machine. Get a virtual fax service and you can send and receive your faxes via email. Not only does this free you from the operating cost of a fax machine, but it also means that you receive your faxes wherever you can access your email. There are a variety of services available with differently priced plans. Shop around and you can find a service that is right for you.