Great news for people like me who use Time Matters for contact management and Infusionsoft for collecting leads off the internet and doing automatic follow up marketing. Time Matters consultant Tom Caffery has an API that will integrate these two great programs. I’ve got to get it!
Stephen Fairley of the Rainmaker Institute: “Websites are an essential part of a law firm’s success when it comes to reaching and converting prospective clients. If you don’t market your law firm, few will know you exist. Your law firm relies on quality prospects and returning clients. Let’s get clear about the challenges we all face. As you know, the legal industry is evolving more rapidly than ever before. Competition, technology and consumerism seem to be taking huge bites out of our business possibilities. Not to mention the challenges of not being able to reach our desired prospects. We’re working harder, feeling more stressed, and not yet seeing the results we want. We are afraid the old answers to building and sustaining our law firms just don’t seem to be working any more. Whether we like it or not, it’s time to take action and re-engineer our marketing efforts and our law practice – or risk our futures. With this in mind, let’s talk about the most common law firm marketing mistakes many lawyers make on their websites and how to correct them.”
I have a new contestant for the worst email signature block spam of the year. I got an email message today with the following text after the sender’s name:
This e-mail transmission contains information that is intended to be privileged and confidential pursuant to the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine. It is intended only for the addressee, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient. If you receive this e-mail in error, please do not read, copy or disseminate it in any manner. Please reply by e-mail and delete or discard the message. Your assistance in correcting this error is appreciated.
Although this e-mail and any attachments are believed to be free of any virus or other defects that might affect any computer system into which it is received and opened, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that it is virus-free.
If your e-mail contained a question, the above response to your question is based solely on the information contained in your message. I would likely need to know more facts and possibly conduct research before giving a response on which I would expect you to rely in the conduct of your affairs. There also may be exceptions to the general legal principles that are discussed in this response. This response is based on my knowledge of Arizona estates and trust law only, and not any other state.
No information contained in any e-mail is a substitute for a personal consultation with an attorney. This message is not intended to provide legal advice, imply an attorney-client relationship, nor be deemed to contain the signature of the sender nor any other party. The sender takes no responsibility for reliance on this message by anyone without specific, actual and not implied, independent authorization by the sender to so rely.
Pursuant to the rules of professional conduct set forth in Circular 230, as promulgated by the United States Department of the Treasury, nothing contained in this communication was intended or written to be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by the Internal Revenue Service, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer for such purpose. No one, without our express prior written permission, may use or refer to any tax advice in this communication in promoting, marketing, or recommending a partnership or other entity, investment plan or arrangement to any other party.
Do you have any examples of signature block spam in an email? Add a comment if you do.
Kissmetrics: “For a company diving into Twitter for the first time, it can be a little intimidating. Where do you start? How do you get followers? How are you supposed to get customers? These are just a few of the questions that arise for businesses that are beginning their Twitter efforts. In this post I’ll address some of these questions and give some advice for making sure you have an effective Twitter account. But before we begin, and just in case you don’t read anything beyond this point, please always remember this:
It should not be looked at as a place to advertise your products. It should be looked at as a place to have meaningful conversations with people important to your business.”
All attorneys need to put USPS postage on letters, envelops and packages. Most lawyers and law firms need to print labels from time to time. The two most common types of labels are file labels and shipping labels. The DYMO LabelWriter printers are made specifically to print labels of all kinds, including USPS postage stamps. The printers are tiny and do not use toner. They use thermal printing technology that causes the content or image to be zapped onto the label paper. You buy rolls of paper for the type of label you want to print. The rolls contain 500 labels or 200 postage stamps.
Every secretary and legal assistant and some lawyers in my law firm have connected to their computer one of two little printers, the DYMO Label Writer 450 Twin Turbo label & USPS stamp printer or the DYMO LabelWriter 450 Turbo High-Speed Postage and Label Printer for PC & MAC. These great and inexpensive little printers make printing shipping and file labels and postage stamps a breeze.
Both of these printers will print USPS approved postage stamps that you can peel and stick on letters, envelops and packages. You purchase postage online using supplied software after you open a postage account. We use the DYMO Label Writer 450 Twin Turbo label & USPS stamp printer to print both shipping labels and postage stamps because it holds two rolls of paper, one for shipping labels and one for postage. Because it is a pain the neck to change the label paper you will want this dual purpose printer unless you never plan on printing anything other than one type of label or stamps. We only have one dual paper roll printer.
Printing one or more stamps is a piece of cake. You just go into the DYMO software, select the price of the stamp you want to print, select the quantity of stamps then click on the print icon. The printer immediately prints the designated number of stamps. You peel off the paper then peel off the stamps and place them on an envelope or package.
Except for the one person in our office who has the dual roll printer, everybody else has the single roll DYMO LabelWriter 450 Turbo High-Speed Postage and Label Printer for PC & MAC loaded with shipping label paper. When I need a shipping label it takes a few seconds to copy the entire name and address from a Word document or from Time Matters, our contact management database. I then click on the DYMO label icon in Word, paste the name and address into the DYMO software then click on the print icon. A nice high quality shipping label prints with our firm name and logo above the address. Lastly I peel the label off and stick it on the big envelope. The whole process takes about 15 seconds.
I have used a DYMO label printer for many years. It is a great little label printer – a must have item if you print labels or if you want to avoid going to the post office to buy stamps.
In April of 2012 there was a very interesting discussion on the Wealthcounsel member listserve about LegalZoom and its impact on the future of law practices. The discussion was started by Orange County estate planning attorney David Hiersekorn who began a message with:
“I attended a conference this last week and got to hear some pretty smart and influential folks talk about technology. That, and a six-hour drive home, gave me some time to think about our profession and how we are handling technology. Some of you know that I’m obsessed with redefining our industry to better match the way people live and work in the modern era. Well, apropos to nothing, here are some thoughts and observations. I’d love to hear what others have to say.
I’ll start with a couple of examples from history. In the 1870s, Western Union had several opportunities to buy the rights to the telephone. They made a calculated business decision to ignore the telephone, believing that it was only a local communications tool and that people wouldn’t want to communicate over the telephone. We all know how that turned out. More recently, Blockbuster was given an opportunity to buy Neftlix for $50 million. They passed on the deal. Blockbuster is now going out of business.
In both instances, the large, sophisticated companies made phenomenal, existence-threatening mistakes because they lacked the imagination to see what the telephone would become or what online video would become. In both instances, they mistakenly believed that people preferred their method of delivery. The only evidence, by the way, was that people had historically chosen their method of delivery.
Think about that. Blockbuster decided that people would choose the store over the mailbox based solely on the fact that people chose the store when the mailbox WASN’T AN OPTION. It’s stupidity.
Today, our industry is threatened by LegalZoom. I’ve heard people say that ‘my clients wouldn’t go to LegalZoom.’ Really? Are you sure? Because, if you actually believe that, you might be qualified for a spot on the Western Union or Blockbuster Board of Directors.
WE HAVE NO MORE EVIDENCE FOR THAT BELIEF THAN WESTERN UNION OR BLOCKBUSTER HAD WHEN THEY MADE THEIR FATAL DECISIONS, EITHER.”
If you are an attorney whose practice areas includes any of the types of “nonlegal” services offered by LegalZoom then you are competing with LegalZoom whether you want to admit it or not. One of my areas of practice is the formation of limited liability companies. I have formed 3,400+ LLCs since I started counting in 2002. My main competitor is LegalZoom, not other attorneys who charge a lot to form an Arizona LLC and do not give clients much in return.
One of the reasons I form a lot of LLCs is because I only charge $599, a price that includes an $85 filing fee. Check out what I give my clients for $599. I also made a video in which the KEYTLaw Girl explains what people get for $599.
httpvh://youtu.be/oIjhKMA3nQ0
My price to form an Arizona LLC competes with LegalZoom’s price. To help convince people they should hire me to form their Arizona LLC, I wrote an article called “Why You Should Hire Richard Keyt instead of LegalZoom to Form Your Arizona LLC.”
My point is that if you are competing with LegalZoom you need to do the following:
I tell my son who is a CPA who just graduated from the Arizona State School of Law that he should go into practice areas that cannot be replaced by technology. The most obvious area that will never be affected by LegalZoom and the document preparers is any type of litigation. Until they deregulate the practice of law, a law license will be required to litigate.
The absolute worst areas of law that will be the most adversely affected by the document preparers are any legal services that produce documents such as entity formations and wills and trusts. A lawyer friend told me recently that a client of his sold a $35 million office building without using an attorney because he used documents he got off the internet.
In the old days lawyers had a monopoly on legal knowledge and they would disclose that knowledge for a big fee. Now knowledge is readily available at the click of a few key strokes and a Google search. Legal knowledge is free or it can be obtained relatively inexpensively on the internet. This new way of obtaining legal information has destroyed the old law firm model. If you are practicing law the old way you can bury your head in the sand and hope your practice survives or you can adjust with the times and use technology to make you more efficient, productive and more money.
All lawyers should read a related story in Atlantic entitled “Why All Law Firms are Doomed to Fail.” The article says:
“The legal industry is in crisis. But its archaic partnership models are built for inertia. . . . Most big corporate law firms aren’t built to run like modern businesses. . . . As Indiana University Law Professor William Henderson wrote yesterday for The AmLaw Daily, fundamental aspects of their business models are under attack from entrepreneurs who are finding ways to do tasks cheaper and more efficiently.”
The eLawyering Blog has a couple of interesting posts on LegalZoom and its affect on attorneys and the practice of law. The first one is called “LegalZoom: The “Good Enough” Legal Solution.”
“LegalZoom, the leading online provider of legal services to consumers and small business, as predicted here previously, finally filed for an IPO last week. The company is seeking to raise $120 million to expand their services both in the US and internationally. LegalZoom’s data in the S-1 filing is now available for everyone to analyze:
- In 2011, 490,000 orders were placed through their web site;
- 20% of all limited liability companies in California were done by LegalZoom;
- During the past ten years, LegalZoom has served over 2,000,000 customers.
- Revenue in 2011 was $156 million.”
The second article is “What Lawyers Can Learn From LegalZoom.”
“Unless you’ve been asleep for the last five years, you have probably heard of LegalZoom, the California-based, non-lawyer legal document preparation company that claims it has delivered over 1,000,000 wills to consumers, and that it is the largest incorporation company in the country. . . . Consumers don’t seem to care that they are not dealing with a law firm. As lawyers, we know the service they are selling is risky for consumers, but for consumers it delivers a “good enough” result. LegalZoom would not be growing at this fast a rate if they weren’t offering something that consumers want and value.”
What do you think? If you are competing with LegalZoom, what have you done to convince prospects to hire you instead of LegalZoom?
Reuters: “The crippled law firm Dewey & Leboeuf LLP filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday night and will seek approval to liquidate its business after failing to find a merger partner, marking the biggest collapse of a law firm in U.S. history. Once one of the largest law firms in the U.S., Dewey has been hit by the loss of the vast majority of its roughly 300 partners to other firms amid concerns about compensation and a heavy debt load.”
A related story in the Wall St. Journal called “The Law Firm Business Model Is Dying” starts:
Rules that were adopted to protect the legal profession from outside competition are actually stifling it. On Monday night the century-old law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf filed for bankruptcy—following in the footsteps of other venerable firms such as Howrey & Simon, Heller Ehrman, Coudert Brothers, and Brobeck, Phelger and Harrison. It is easy to think that greedy lawyers are getting their just deserts. But this should not blind us from seeing that there is a better way for America’s law firms to do business. The problems these firms face today are twofold: Large clients are increasingly using in-house counsel to reduce costs, and the public is increasingly taking the do-it-yourself route given the growing access.
You have to be a subscriber to access the full Wall St. Journal article.
The point of the article is that technology and the times have changed the way lawyers practice law. Attorneys and firms who do not adjust to the changes will see their revenue decrease and in some cases vanish. LegalZoom is here to stay and you can bet it will generate a huge number of competitors.
P.S. I subscribe to the Wall St. Journal and read it every day on my iPhone and iPad. Its only $9/month for full access to the paper.
We all want the content in our websites and blogs to have high Google search engine rankings. To achieve that goal there is a learning curve that requires an investment of your time. Do yourself a favor and take the courses Google offers in its free Webmaster Academy. Google says that the goal of the academy is “to help you create great sites that perform well in Google search results.” To graduate you must complete 19 tasks. Here are the major topics:
If you have a Google+ profile (you should) this short video explains the concept of the “circle” and how it can organize your Google+ to give you a better Google+ experience. I do recommend that attorneys who want to create content on their website or blog create a Google profile and configure Google + and create “rich snippets” using Google’s rel=author. For more on this topic read ” “Google Plus & Google’s Rich Snippet.”
httpvh://youtu.be/ocPeAdpe_A8
I figured out how to configure my website/blog content with Google so that when Google displays search results that show a link to any of my pages or posts my picture will appear to the left of the link. People say that having your picture next to your Google search result will substantially increase the number of clicks the link will receive. I’m ready to implement this new feature Google calls “rel=author,” but I am going to up date my bio picture first. Some people also call this feature “rich snippets.”
The process is confusing, but not difficult. This video is by Google employee and SEO expert Matt Cutts. He and Othar Hansson discuss how to rel=author works. I recommend watching this video first so you will have an understanding of the big picture.
For more about this topic read “Google Plus & Google’s Rich Snippet.”
httpvh://youtu.be/FgFb6Y-UJUI
In the process of configuring my Google profile I came across an interesting and useful article that has nine tips for taking a picture to upload to your Google profile.
I’m going to take some advice from the article and create a new picture for my Google profile picture.
There a tons of scanners on the market so the choice of a scanner for your law office can be daunting. You can spend a lot of time researching scanners and then take a chance on one or you can follow my advice and purchase the scanner used in my law office that does a great job for a relatively small amount of $$. I have been scanning documents since 2001 and have been 100% paperless since March of 2004. For more on the paperless law office read my article called “A Simple Inexpensive Way to Create a Paperless Law Office.”
I bought the first scanner for my law firm in 2001. It was a multi-function Hewlett Packard Laserjet 3300 printer/copier/faxer/scanner. The machine was great at three of its four functions, but as a useful law office scanner the HP 3300 sucked big time. The problem with the the HP 3300 was it only scanned at two pages a minute. That may be ok for home use, but it just doesn’t cut it for use in a busy law practice that does a lot of scanning. Attorneys typically create and receive a lot of paper so they need a fast scanner, i.e., at least 20 pages per minute (ppm).
In 2004 when I went paperless I researched the scanner market and purchased two Xerox 252 scanners for approximately $700 each. We still use both of these scanners. I do recommend this family of scanners (see the Xerox DocuMate 262i Color Duplex 38 PPM 76 IPM ADF Scanner for $715), because they are fast (38 ppm) and do a great job, but so is my favorite scanner, the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Scanner for PC. The ScanSnap iX500 is only $415 (Amazon varies the price – it was $301 for two days in May) and it comes with Adobe Acrobat XI standard (a software program almost everybody in a law firm should have on their personal computer or on a server).
I recommend that all lawyers (except those that are tech-retarded), legal assistants and secretaries in a law office have a personal scanner on their desk. The best way to be paperless is for the people who know a particular document best to take a minute or two to scan the document then save it in the law firm’s document system. Do not create inefficiencies, bottlenecks and added expense by letting people send their documents to a designated scanner who scans docs for a large number of people. The best time to scan and save the pdf file is when you get the letter or the document. You know best where the document should be saved and how to name it. Once saved the document is now on your system to be accessed and viewed by others in your firm (unless you attach security to the document using your document management system). If your firm does not have a document management system it should.
My Law Office Scanner Recommendation: the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500
I recommend that attorneys and law firms buy the $415 – $450 Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner for PC and Mac
. This is a $279 (as of 1/19/14) stand-alone software program.Buying the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner for PC and Mac (PA03656-B005)
Acrobat XI Standard
Twain Compliance
From time to time I read on email message forums that lawyers do not want to buy the ScanSnap iX500 because it is not “twain” compliant. I have no idea what that means, but I can tell you that in the eight years my law office has been 100% paperless we have never needed a twain compliant scanner. To learn more about twain and why the ScanSnap iX500 is not twain compliant and does not need to be read “Why Doesn’t ScanSnap come with TWAIN drivers?“
Does your law firm have a stand alone fax machine that sends faxes the old fashioned way? I mean does your law office print the document to be faxed, insert it into a fax machine and push the send button and watch while the machine scans each page and then uses its modem to send the fax to the recipient? Do your incoming faxes come into your fax machine over the phone line and does your old fax machine then print a hard copy of the fax?
eFax
If so, your law firm needs to move into the 21 century and use the not so new fangled technology to send and receive faxes. My law office has used efax.com to send and receive faxes since 2004. It’s great. To send a fax I do the following:
One very nice feature is eFax maintains a record (including the content of the fax) of every fax my firm has sent since we purchased the service.
What I like best about eFax is that all incoming faxes are converted to Adobe pdf and sent to us as an attachment to an email message. I can add up to five people in the firm to receive the same fax. Both of my legal assistants get every fax I get and they handle most of the faxes. Any email can easily be forwarded to another person in our firm or anybody outside the firm. When we get a fax that we want to keep we click on the Time Matters save icon in Acrobat and save the pdf file to the client or matter in our Time Matters document management system. For more on our document management system see my article called “A Simple Inexpensive Way to Create a Paperless Law Office.”
Every attorney in our firm has his or her own dedicated eFax phone number. This allows each attorney to have a fax number that causes faxes to that number to go only to the attorney associated with the number and up to four additional recipients in the firm. eFax also retains every incoming fax in case you need it.
Here’s the cost of an eFax Plus account as of the date of this post:
| Choose a local or toll-free number | |
| 150 Included inbound fax pages per month | |
| 150 Included outbound fax pages per month* | |
| $.10 per page overage charge | |
| $10.00 one-time setup fee | |
| Lifetime storage |
Monthly Plan: $16.95/mo
Do yourself and your staff a big favor and switch to the new way of sending and receiving faxes.
What do you think? Do you use a different digital fax service? Tell us about it.
Hewlett Packard Laserjet Printers
Ever since 1985 when I bought my first Hewlett Packard laser printer I have only purchased and used laser printers in my law practice. I am biased towards Hewlett Packard laser printers because in my experience they are fast, produce high quality text and never need maintenance and produce high quality text output. I’ve probably owned about 20 of them over the years and can only remember calling a repair person one time to fix an ailing HP Laserjet.
The first HP Laserjet printer hit the market in 1984. It was a 300-dpi, 8 ppm printer that originally sold for $3,495, but the price was reduced to $2,995 in September 1985. I bought the original HP Laserjet printer in 1985 for $3,000. Can you imagine paying that kind of money today for an 8 ppm printer? The printer replaced an impact printer that I was using to print documents and letters sent to clients. Laser printers produce the best quality text. I would never print documents on an inkjet printer and send them to clients or anybody else. HP has sold over 100 million Laserjet printers.
In 2001 I bought two HP Laserjet 3300 printers. These were great four in one printers that included a fax machine, scanner and copier. The machine had a 50 page sheet feeder. It also had a top that could be lifted to copy over-sized paper or open books. I still have one of them that we use in the office solely as a copy machine.
HP 2055DN Laserjet
HP LaserJet P2055dn Printer Monochrome
Now I give everybody in my firm a personal HP 2055dn Laserjet printer. The printer is relatively small and fits easily on a desk or small table. It only prints in black, but at the high rate of 35 ppm. The HP 2055dn Laserjet also does automatic duplex (both sides of the paper) printing. As of the date of this post Amazon is selling the printer for $349. If you don’t want duplexing then get the HP P2055D Laserjet for $249. Amazon sells the HP 05A black toner cartridge for these two printers for $72 today. The average cartridge yields 2,300 standard pages.
I believe that everybody in the office who produces paper should have a personal printer to increase their productivity and make them more efficient. These HP 2055 printers are relatively small and inexpensive. They are also fast even when printing on both sides of the paper. They print high quality text. Do your staff a favor and buy enough of these printers so they do not have to share with other people. The HP Laser printers are also very reliable.
Xerox Phaser 6360 Color Laser Printer
My firm also has one high speed laser that we use when we have big print jobs. I form 40 – 50 Arizona limited liability companies every month. We prepare about 350 pages of text for each one. For big print jobs we use the Xerox Phaser 6360 color laser printer because it is very fast – 42 ppm including duplex printing. We print our longer documents on both sides of the paper to save paper and reduce the size / number of pages we put in the LLC portfolio. I do love this printer, but it has two issues you need to know about:
Did you ever want to send somebody a link to a web page, but the URL for the page was very very long? There is a simple way to convert a long URL into a tiny URL. Just copy the URL, go to http://tinyurl.com, paste the long URL into the box, click the make tiny url icon and copy the URL generated by Tiny URL.
I could copy and paste the below URL into a Word document or an email, but why not convert it into a tiny url.
Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/7xjczdy
Go to http://tinyurl.com and bookmark it so you can easily convert long URLs in a matter of seconds.
Another site that does the same thing as TinyURL is Bitly found at http://bitly.com/.
I got an email today from a lawyer who said check out my article at : http://blog.firmname.com/index.php/estate-planning-2/7-major-errors-in-estate-planning/#more-147. Have you ever gotten an message with a link that is mostly numbers such as www.firmname.com/blog/12/5/030455020110304440500060.phx? I am sure you get lots of email messages that have URLS with a long string of text or numbers and/or text that doesn’t make much sense. I call these URLs “gross URLS” or for WordPress users “gross permalinks.”
Do yourself and your readers a favor and do not create pages or posts on your website that have gross URLS for four reasons:
The last point may be the most important because you want your URL to contain key words that may help increase the page or post’s search engine ranking. Think about the most important key words in your post and use them in the URL / permalink. If you are writing an article about Arizona widget law which of the following URLS is better:
Must Have Productivity Software by Insight Software Solutions
Macro Express is the premier Windows macro utility. It can automate all of your common computer tasks. I love Macro Express because it saves me a tremendous amount of time and makes my computer life easier. Macro Express satisfies my biggest requirements for law office software, i.e., it makes me more efficient and productive. Everybody in my small law firm uses Macro Express constantly throughout the work day and they love it.
Do you type the same text into Word, email messages or other programs over and over? We all do. Every attorney and law office staff person is constantly typing the names, phone numbers and email addresses of themselves and firm personnel into email messages and letters. Imagine how much time you and other people in your office would save if the contact information could be zapped instantly into a Word document or an email message. Using macros to insert repetitive text has the added benefits of always inserting the desired text (no omitted text) without any spelling errors.
Macro Express is a program that allows you to create a macro (memorized computer keystrokes) to automate virtually anything you do repeatedly on your computer. I use it primarily to insert text into Word documents or email messages. If you use the same text or phrases over and over, why waste time typing the text from scratch each time you need the text when you can type a short abbreviation that inserts the text instantly at the point of your cursor? Not only does Macro Express save time it eliminates typos and insures that the exact desired text is generated every time just the way you want it.
For example, when somebody calls and asks me about forming a limited liability company, I ask them for their email address so I can send them a marketing email message that has links to pages on my website about LLCs. The message is several paragraphs of text. With Macro Express, I simply type “.llclink”
I have several email signatures that I can insert as closings to email messages depending on whether I am sending a message to a person related to estate planning, entity formation or some other area of law that I practice. If I am sending an email message to an estate planning prospect I want my signature block to read:
Richard Keyt
Wills, Trusts & Estate Planning
Phone: 602-906-4953, ext. 1
Fax: 602-297-6890
Arizona Estate Planning: www.keytlaw.com/arizonawills
BM (before Macro Express) I either had to type this closing from scratch or have it saved somewhere that I could access, copy the text then paste it into the message. AM (after Macro Express) all I need to do is type the text that invokes the macro and a second later the text is inserted perfectly into my email message.
Macro Express makes it simple for me to have a different email signature block that is area of law specific for the intended recipient of the message. If you are trying to get somebody to hire you for widget law don’t send the person a message with a signature closing that says you do thing-a-ma-jig law.
Macro Express is an incredibly powerful macro recorder and playback utility. Automate all of your common tasks by simply turning on the recorder, performing the actions one time, then playing back the macro when needed. Or use over two dozen Quick Wizards to guide you through a series of questions and build the macro for you. To create more powerful macros, utilize the Scripting Editor.
Macro Express can also automate procedures. You could create marcos to configure Word to print to your color printer, your black and white printer or to Adode pdf. Think of Macro Express as a recorder that records your key strokes. You start the recorder, hit whatever keys and/or mouse clicks you want to record then stop the recorder. Give the macro a name and the short keys you want to use to invoke the macro and you are done. Now when you type the keystrokes that invoke the macro the program will replay the recorded keystrokes. Macro Express has a wizard that makes creating macros extremely easy.
Your increased productivity will quickly pay the small cost for Macro Express. Use it to automate boring, repetitive computer tasks. Perform tasks quicker, more reliably and with less stress. Reduce wear and tear on wrists and hands. Macro Express provides all the tools necessary to create macros that will simplify your computing life. You do not need to know any programming language or have any programming skills. Everything is created in simple steps. Use Macro Express for quick insertion of boilerplate text, international characters or symbols. Speedily populate a database with information from a file. Manipulate text strings, open web pages, prompt users for input, back up files and much more.
The program contains hundreds of commands to automate practically any function on the computer. These include keystrokes, mouse movements and clicks, launch programs, send email, move and resize windows, variables, logic, input boxes, questions, menus, ASCII delimited and text file processing, network connections, file manipulation, math calculations, waits, pauses, repeat loops and much more.
For more powerful and complex macros, it’s easy to create if/then/else logic that examines variables and makes decisions based upon what it finds.
Macros may be launched via hot keys, shortkeys, mouse clicks, window controls, a window title, a pop-up or floating menu, or via the macro scheduler. Assign macros to play back in all Windows programs, in only one specific window or program, or in every program except the one defined.
Your time is valuable so give yourself a productivity present and buy Macro Express. It’s only $39.95 for a single user license. Click here to buy Macro Express.
Do you have your own law blog? Does your law firm have a blog? Do you want to get more clients? Do you want to make more money? Does a bear . . . oh never mind. I am a big advocate of the attorney law blog. It works for me. It can work for you.
The term “blog” is short for web log. In the early days of blogging a blog was a series of posts displayed on a website in reverse chronological order. People typically created a blog with content about a specific topic because they wanted to provide a source of information about their topic of interest. You can find many blogs on any topic you can imagine. The quality of each blog depends on the creative talent, knowledge and writing ability of the blog’s creator. Nobody know how many blogs exist, but there are millions of them.
Here is my list of some of the reasons a lawyer should have a blog:
Thanks for contacting me about terminating your Arizona limited liability company. To hire us to prepare the documents to terminate an LLC, complete our service agreement found here:
www.keytlaw.com/azllc/killllcagr.pdf
For more information on terminating an Arizona LLC, see my article on this subject found here:
www.keytlaw.com/azllclaw/terminating-llcs/how-to-terminate-an-az-llc/
A great way to get ideas for blog posts is to listen to questions prospects and clients ask you in email messages and over the phone. I am sure you have the same experience I have with people who ask the same common questions about widget law (ok maybe questions about your area of practice, not widget law). These commonly asked questions make great blog posts. Turn these questions into a post you can email to prospects and clients to show your expertise. See for example a blog category on my Arizona Limited Liability Company Law website called “How Do I.” When I get a call or email message from somebody that asks me a question I’ve answered on my blog I send the person a link to the blog post.
An very important fact of blog life and the key to a successful client generating blog is that you must create good content. This means you need to invest the time to create posts. This leads me to Keyt’s Technology Rule #5, which is call the Website Content Equation. The equation is:
more posts = more content = higher search engine rankings = higher web traffic = more new clients = more revenue
Schedule times for content creation and set a goal for a minimum number of posts every week. Over time your content quantity will grow and the Website Content Equation will put more money in your pocket.
I’ve had an iPhone and an iPad since each device was first offered for sale. I do love both of these incredible electronic computers/phones/do-it-alls. Today at lunch two of my long-time former law partners showed me their new first time-user iPhones and they asked me what apps to get. Which apps to get from iTunes is something that comes up a lot with me and my friends. Here is a list of my favorite iPhone & iPad apps for lawyers, attorneys, law firms and other iPhone and iPad users:
Productivity
News Apps
Games
Miscellaneous Apps
What are your favorite iPhone and iPad apps? Please tell us by making a comment.
The Google +1 button is a shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.” Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1’s can help friends, contacts and others find the best stuff when they search. Watch this short Google video to learn more about how to use Google +1.
httpvh://youtu.be/OAyUNI3_V2c