The following is adapted from practicePRO’s Managing a Better Professional Services Firm, and it and the other Managing booklets are available here.

A post-matter client survey is one of the best ways to collect information about what clients thought about the services you provided to them. Make sure your survey is structured to help you identify specific areas for improvement. Ideally, it should include some open-ended questions.

For major or top-billing clients, consider sending a managing partner or other senior person to meet with clients on an annual basis to review and assess how the relationship is going, . . . [more]

Do the wills you are drafting for your clients deal with their digital assets? Does your will deal with your digital assets (personally and for your practice)? I’m guessing that your answers to both these questions is “No.”

My good friend Sharon Nelson did an excellent post on this hot topic on the Ride The Lightning blog. Until recently, lawyers just didn’t think about digital assets. This needs to change as lawyers and clients alike all have significant and growing online presences. It can be very difficult and time consuming for family members and estate trustees to deal with digital . . . [more]

Today is Observe National Stress Awareness Day. As lawyers, we know stress all too well. Ehow.com has a list of five things you can do to reduce stress in your day-to-day life.

1. Prioritize your life. Our lives are stressful because each day is jam-packed with things to do. The list of things to do never seems to end and only carries over to the next day. People tend to do the least important things on the list first and then feel as if they haven’t accomplished enough in their day.

2. Don’t worry if you don’t get through . . . [more]

Would the public tolerate giving judges discretion in the sentencing of murderers?

Are online child pornography offenders likely to commit offences involving sexual contact with children?

Are job training programs for people leaving prison useful?

These — and another four — interesting questions get addressed summarily in the current issue [PDF] of Criminological Highlights, a publication of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies. Although criminal law is a specialty practised by relatively few lawyers, given the present federal government’s interest in crime, it might not be a bad idea if more of us educated ourselves . . . [more]

The following is based on an article that appeared in the January 2012 edition of LAWPRO Magazine. While the details of the insurance coverage discussed in the article are specific to LAWPRO insureds, the issues highlighted in the article apply to all lawyers. Lawyers outside Ontario should check with their own insurance providers about what is covered under their policies.

Lawyer mobility is now taken for granted: The days of spending one’s whole career in a single practice setting are long gone. Consider these scenarios:

Scenario one: A lawyer previously in practice elsewhere joins a new firm. A claim . . . [more]

Irwin Law has recently released a short (132 page) monograph by Professor Karen Eltis of the law faculty at the University of Ottawa entitled Courts, Litigants and the Digital Age: Law, Ethics and Practice. (The book is also available in an iPad version.) It’s a book that should find itself on every judge’s and every lawyer’s must-read list, because Eltis tackles some of the difficult and currently intractable-seeming issues posed by information technology, issues that will only become manageable as they are more broadly understood by all branches of the profession.

The chapter heads will give you a . . . [more]

The following article by Cleo Kirkland, senior recruitment consultant at The Counsel Network in Toronto, is featured in the January 2012 edition of LAWPRO Magazine. The article includes a number of sidebars featuring insights from firms that excel at recruiting and retaining lawyers. The sidebars can be viewed in the full version of the article.

When candidates approach our firm about a lateral move, they all tend to ask a variation of the following questions: which firm is the best for me? Which will make the greatest difference in my career? which offers me the greatest opportunity for . . . [more]

The following article by Wendy L. Werner appeared in the January 2012 issue of LAWPRO Magazine.

On the face of it, interviewing should not be all that difficult – particularly for lawyers. As members of a profession who primarily make their living either writing or speaking, the idea that having a conversation about your interests and abilities in your own profession sounds both logical and easy.

But throw the words “job interview” into the mix and a whole new paradigm emerges. With seemingly so much at stake, job interviews take on a new meaning for people who ordinarily would not . . . [more]

At the end of each year we at practicePRO take a look at what articles, checklists, tips, and other resources had the most downloads. As always, the list contains many resources that remain popular year after year, though there are some items that stand out.

• The Sample Budget Spreadsheet, a supplement to our Managing the Finances of Your Practice page is the first resource to be downloaded over 10,000 times in a year.
• The revised of the LAWPRO Fraud Fact sheet had 3,500 downlaods. We saw an explosion of online fraud attempts against lawyers in 2011, and the Fact

At the end of each year we at practicePRO take a look at what articles, checklists, tips, and other resources had the most downloads. As always, the list contains many resources that remain popular year after year, though there are some items that stand out.

• The Sample Budget Spreadsheet, a supplement to our Managing the Finances of Your Practice page is the first resource to be downloaded over 10,000 times in a year.
• The revised of the LAWPRO Fraud Fact sheet had 3,500 downlaods. We saw an explosion of online fraud attempts against lawyers in 2011, and the Fact

In Elusive Destiny: The Political Vocation of John Napier Turner, Carleton University historian Paul Litt has written a sympathetic and interesting account of one of Canada’s most gifted political figures. Litt leaves the reader wondering what Canadians missed out on by not having John Turner as Prime Minister for an extended time. Those interested can delve into this book.

Turner did serve as Justice Minister for almost four years (July 1968 – January 1972). He was an activist, reformist and progressive Justice Minister but he also served as Attorney General during the invocation of the War Measures Act during . . . [more]

For authors on SLAW, you know that in today’s world, obtaining a publishing agreement with a traditional publisher means that you have to show your publisher how YOU will market and promote your own book. Those authors with a broad reach will of course be more attractive to a publisher. By the time you contact a publisher, you likely have some blog postings and perhaps print articles on your CV, but how about Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other online marketing tools? What to do and where to do them? And a biggie – how much time to spend marketing rather . . . [more]