Contact Richard Keyt at 480-664-7478 ! |rk@keytlaw.com

Time Matters for Law Office Practice Management

A question posed on a lawyer listserv that I monitor asked what practice management software to you recommend?  The text below is my response to the questionner.

I’ve used TimeMatters since 1998 and love it.  I cannot imagine practicing without it.  I recently invested a lot of time inspecting and trying the latest online practice management systems and not one comes close to the power of TimeMatters.  I will continue to use TM indefinitely because I must have its power to help me make more money.

My small three lawyer firm has 21,000+ people and clients in TM plus 240,000 documents saved in the TM document management system.  We can find a person in TM and see their phone number or email address in a few seconds.  Everything relevant to that person is available in a few clicks.  I can search the 21,000+ contacts for Simpson and select Homer Simpson then click on the related tab and see the name of the three LLCs I created for him.  Next I can click on one of the LLCs and click related to find out who the CPA is for that particular LLC.  I then click on the CPA’s name and it opens the CPA’s TM record where I see the CPA’s phone number and email address.  I can call the CPA and make a record of that call in the LLC’s contact record.  I can also click on the CPA’s related tab and see that the CPA is the CPA for 15 other LLCs I created.  Based on that I will call the CPA for lunch and do some marketing to the CPA.

TM’s document management system(every law firm should use a document management system) is one reason we have been 100% paperless for nine years.  A person can call me and as I am answering the phone I see the person’s name showing on caller id so that when the person says I have a question about Section 9.2 of my trust I can have the document opened on my computer monitor and be looking at section 9.2 before the client finishes the question.  If a client calls and says I’m at the bank and need a copy of the Articles of Organization for my LLC I can email the pdf version of the document to the client within 15 seconds.  To learn how to be a paperless law office see my article on this topic here:

https://www.keyttech.com/paperless-law-office/

TM allows us to keep everything related to a client in the client’s contact area.  When I look up a client I can see what was discussed during every phone call in and out, every document in the client’s file including pdfs and Excel files, every email message in and out, calendar events, to dos & ticklers, websites relevant to the client, notes made by us concerning the client and other people and companies related to the client such as the CPA or opposing counsel.  If I click on the email tab I see and can access all client email messages.  If I click on the Documents tab I see all documents organized by tabs.  If I then click on the Operating Agreement tab I see all versions of the Operating Agreement for the client and can right click on a document to open it or check the box to the left of the document to email it.

TM has approximately 200 fields that can be customized to be any type of field you desire such as a text field, drop down list, date field, email field, etc.  I have customized TM fields to do many important tasks.  For example to help us track estate plan prospects I created the following custom TM fields: date of 1st contact, type of contact (drop down that includes office visit, phone call, website, referral and other choices), date the person was entered into our automatic follow up email marketing system called Infusionsoft, date we mailed the prospect my hard copy book called “Family Asset Protection,” dates of my 1st, 2nd and 3rd follow up calls and a note field I can insert any text.

TM is a fabulous marketing tool.  As estate planners, we must market if we want to increase our review.

I also created a custom tab for the Contact records called Estate Plan Prospect.  When I click this tab I get a list of all the people who are estate plan prospects starting with the person whose first EP prospect contact date is the oldest.  I configured TM to display in spreadsheet format all of the custom fields mentioned above.  The TM screen lists the name of every contact in the first column.  The next column is the date of first EP prospect contact.  The other columns displayed are all the custom EP data fields.  This fabulous screen  allows me to get an overview of all estate planning prospects and see where each prospect is in the pipeline.  If I see somebody that has not had a first, second or third call I will call that person and make my marketing pitch and mark the date of the call in TM.

When I click the tab called Estate Plan Prospect the display shows only people who have the code EPP entered in their code field.  The ability to create multiple codes for a person or company gives you a lot of power to track and display data.

We all know that people procrastinate doing an estate plan.  You will make more money if you have a system like TM coupled with Infusionsoft that allows you to track EP prospects and do follow up marketing.  Marketing people say that most of the time when somebody contacts you they are shopping or doing research and not ready to buy.  If you want them to purchase from you when they are ready to buy you must do follow up marketing, but you can’t do that unless you have a system to identify prospects coupled with a system that will market automatically (Infusionsoft) or that allows you to do it manually TM.  For more about Infusionsoft see my review of the software here:

https://www.keyttech.com/infusionsoft-review/

Very soon TM will add a new feature I’ve been waiting for: the ability to check a box next to documents saved in TM’s document management system and have the selected documents uploaded to the cloud to TM’s secure server so that we can send an email to selected people in the TM contact database to give them a link, user name and password to login and access the documents on TM’s server.

TM does much more than what I have described above.  For example, I can prepare a letter in Word that includes merge fields and save it in TM.  I can then do a look up in TM for every estate plan client who signed between (pick a date) and (pick another date) and TM will generate a custom letter to each client by doing a merge of the data fields into the Word document.  A great way to do mass, but customized mailings.

There’s two ways to buy TM, the right way and the wrong way.  The right way is to buy TM from the best TM consultant, a man named Tom Caffery.  You should also buy his TM in a box, which is TM installed on a shoe box size server with one terabyte data storage.  I bought TM in a box from Tom  Tom sent me a package that had the little server in it.  Our IT guy connected it to our system and Tom’s TM guru JP configured it remotely for us.

The wrong way to buy TM is any way that does not involve Tom Caffery.  For TM to work properly you must have it set up and configured by a true TM expert.  If you use anybody else you will become one of the TM haters who complains about things not working right.  Call Tom Caffery at 856-429-3010.

P.S.  Client data is a gold mine, but you can’t mine the gold unless you have a system to compile the data and that allows you to use the data for marketing.

By |2018-01-14T08:40:28-07:00September 3rd, 2013|Marketing, Time Matters|0 Comments

Time Matters Training Materials

I absolutely love Time Matters.  I cannot imagine practicing law without Time Matters, which I have used since 1998.  Legal Loudspeaker, Business & Technology Tips for Law Firms, created a number of educational videos and white papers on using Time Matters.

  1. Performing a Conflict Check in Time Matters (video)
  2. How To Archive & Retrieve Records in Time Matters (video)
  3. 10 Quick Time Matters Tips
  4. Changing Staff Initials in Time Matters
  5. Hiding Fields in Time Matters
  6. Creating Quick Tabs and Saved Searches in Time Matters
  7. Quick Tip for Tagging Record in Time Matters
  8. Setting up an Out of the Office Email in Time Matters
  9. 5 Tips to Quickly Improve Your Time Matters Experience
  10. 30 Time Matters Tips (pdf)
  11. Comprehensive Time Matters End-User Training Manuals
  12. Check out these Lexis-Generated Time Matters Product Videos
By |2018-01-14T08:52:30-07:00March 1st, 2013|Time Matters|0 Comments

Software Used by the KEYTLaw Firm

The following is a list of the productivity software I use in my law practice:

Word 2010 & 2016 by Microsoft

I make my living writing and producing words on paper. Microsoft Word 2010 is my bread and butter program. Word can do it all for those who invest the time to learn Word. I bought WordPerfect 2 in 1983. My license number was 50 something thousand. I became an expert and used WP through DOS version 5.2 until 1998 when the large law firm in which I was a partner switched from DOS to Word and from WP to Word.  I spent the first month after we converted to Word in 1998 learning Word 97 and became a Word expert.  After investing the time to learn Word I have never had a problem with Word.  I know how to use it and how to avoid Word doing things that confound many novice users, including novice users who have been using Word daily for years.  If your primary job involves writing and you use Word, you owe it to yourself to become a true Word expert rather than one who dabbles in Word and cannot understand why things happen or why you cannot get Word to do what you want it to do.

Timeslips 2014 by Sage Software

Timeslips is the best lawyer billing program I have ever owned. Timeslips is a critical program in my practice that enhances my productivity and ability to bill for my services. I bought my first law office billing program in 1984, Client Management System by Compulaw. It was a great DOS billing program. Over the years I owned and used Omega, TABS III, and Forob. The latter was a great DOS integrated billing, accounts payable, accounts receivable and general ledger program for which I paid $10,000 in the early 1990s. When I had my eight lawyer firm, we paid a billing clerk $40,000 a year with benefits to do the bills. Today, I use Timeslips alone without a billing clerk and save the money I used to spend for billing assistance. I run Timeslips constantly in the background and enter my time as I work each day. It takes me approximately three to four hours a month to review and edit hundreds of bills and print them in final. I use Timeslips to generate over 600 invoices. Because Timeslips makes a copy of every invoice, I do not retain hard copies of any invoice. If a client calls about an invoice, I can access the invoice in question and email a copy of the invoice in pdf format in a few seconds.  I have not upgraded to a new version because Timeslips has not added a significant new feature for years.

Quickbooks Pro

I have used Quickbooks for my law firm accounting and bookkeeping since 2001.  It is the market leader in small firm bookkeeping software.  My wife does all of the data entry.  We have a bookkeeper make review her data entry and corrections if necessary once a month.  After year end we just give our CPA the accountant’s file and it contains everything she needs to do our company’s federal and state income tax returns.  It produces great reports.  We pay a little extra for Quickbooks to do an automatic backup every day to Intuit’s cloud storage system.  The automatic online back up saved us in early 2012 when my wife’s hard drive crashed and was unrecoverable.  We lost 11 years worth of data on that machine, but all we did was install Quickbooks on a new computer and then restore the online backup and all eleven years of data reappeared as advertised.

Time Matters Version 2016 by LexisNexis

The perennial number one selling and top ranked law office contact management program. This program truly does it all, which is why some of its features have a high learning curve. I have used Time Matters since version 2.0 in 1998. Time Matters is a superior contact manager, calendar, to do list, tickler system, internet email manager, document management system and many other things. My Time Matters contains contact information for over 3,700 clients, referral sources, contacts, vendors and government agencies. I can find a name, phone number, mailing address and email address in a few seconds. Time Matters’ document management system is one reason I am a 100% paperless office. See my article called “A Simple Inexpensive Way to Create a Paperless Office” for a detailed explanation of how we became a paperless office. Time Matters allows me to save everything related to a client, matter or contact in one place. For example, if I access World Wide Widgets matter called “Newco vs. WWW,” I will find every document, internet email (incoming and outgoing), phone call (in and out), calendar event, to do list item and relevant website for the matter, including all such items created by other people. Time Matters gives me total client, matter and contact information in one central location. Can you instantly access a record of a phone call you had relating to a client a year ago or a contract signed by a client two years ago? I can because I use Time Matters.

Outlook

We have Outlook installed on our server.  It is the primary program everybody in my law firm uses to send and receive email.  Some people also use it for their digital calendar.  Our server based Outlook syncs with Time Matters.  If we send or receive an email message in Outlook, we can click on an icon and add the email message to the appropriate contact or matter in Time Matters.  Any calendar events added to Outlook or to the Time Matters calendar sync automatically with the other program.  All email and calendar events also sync automatically with our iPhones and iPads.  If I am out of the office I can check my calendar on my iPhone or iPad and make an appointment that will automatically sync with my Time Matters calendar.

Infusionsoft Customer Relations Management

Infusionsoft helps small businesses grow fast by automating their marketing, sales, and customer management. Infusionsoft centralizes, organizes and automates small business’ marketing, sales, and customer management, which results in better lead conversion, lower labor costs and greater lifetime customer value. I have been using Infusionsoft since the middle of October 2007, and can say that it is fabulous and its marketing potential is unlimited. The CRM lets me do automatic marketing to my propsects and clients.

For example, as part of my marketing plan to get more limited liability formation business I wrote an article called “10 Critical Facts Every LLC Owner Must Know.” I put a teaser link on my Arizona Limited Liability Law website. When people click on the link to obtain a copy of the article, they are asked to give their first and last name and email address. On entering that information, Infusionsoft automatically begins the following campaign:

A. Infusionsoft sends an email to the person and asks the person to click on a link to opt in to receive the 10 Critical Facts article.

B. When the person clicks on the link, Infusionsoft sends a second email to the person that contains a link to the 10 Critical Facts article that is on a password protected page on my LLC law website. The email is a sales message that gives the prospect reasons why he or she should hire me to form their LLC.

C. Over the next several months, Infusionsoft sends additional follow up email messages to the prospect that are intended to get the person to hire me to form their LLC.

This Infusionsoft assisted marketing system works for me because in 2011 I formed 522 limited liability companies.

Watch the Infusionsoft Demo Video

If you want to collect leads that come to your internet website and do automatic followup marketing and make more money, you owe it to yourself to watch the short Infusionsoft demo video.  Important Concept:  Getting traffic to your site is great, but if people visit and go away without your system getting the visitor’s email address at a minimum you are losing potential clients and revenue.  Use Infusionsoft’s double opt in email marketing system to add more money to your bottom line.

See my review of this fabulous automatic marketing system called “Infusionsoft Review: The Cheapest & Best 24/7/365 Marketing Department.”

Acrobat by Adobe

Adobe Acrobat XI Standard is must have program for all lawyers. I have a 100% paperless office because I scan all documents into Acrobat format (.pdf) using Acrobat.  When you have Acrobat running on your computer, it adds a feature to Word that allows you to create .pdf files directly from Word documents, which is much faster and creates very small files. For example, by telling Word to print a 55 page Operating Agreement, Acrobat created the .pdf file in about 30 seconds and the file size was 253k.

I use Adobe Acrobat XI Professional to create pdf fillable forms.  I love this program.  It is very easy to create pdf fillable forms once you take a little time to learn how it’s done.  Acrobat Pro can convert a Word document into a pdf fillable form with fields automatically.  It’s a piece of cake to then fine tune the fields and their properties to make the form exactly like you want it to be.

To learn more about how my law firm uses Acrobat read my article called “A Simple Inexpensive Way to Create a Paperless Law Office.”

Hot Docs

Hot Docs is the best automatic document assembly software on the market. You or your Hot Docs programmer use HD to create templates with powerful programming features and logic to assemble finished documents in Word. All of the legal forms that I use frequently for my clients are assembled automatically using Hot Docs templates. I recommend that you hire an experienced professional HD programmer to create your templates and automate documents that you or your firm routinely create for internal use or for clients. Anybody who creates the same basic document over and over (for example, lawyers who prepare contracts, pleadings and other form type documents) should use Hot Docs to automate the process. Hot Docs is the reason my legal assistant and I were able to form almost 600 limited liability companies (and all related documents including an Operating Agreement) in 2012.  I could not practice law and be as productive as I am without Hot Docs, my fabulous automated document assembly program. For Hot Docs template development, I recommend Bart Earle who programs my templates. Contact Bart at Capstone Practice Systems; phone 781-652-8419 or email Bart at [email protected].

I was a beta tester and early adopter of Hot Docs Document Services.  This is the cloud based version of Hot Docs.  It is really really slick.  See my quotes about this new service in an April 9, 2012, press release.

Wealthdocs by Wealthcounsel

Wealthdocs is the best estate planning software that money can buy. Wealthcounsel’s automatic document assembly software called Wealthdocs produces wills, trusts, LLCs, FLPs, and almost every ancillary document an estate planner could possibly want or use. Wealthdocs has a very high learning curve, which you would expect for an automated document assembly program that can produce anything from a simple will to extremely complex trusts and estate plans designed to save millions of dollars in federal and state estate taxes. It requires a lot of up front time to learn and use the software effectively. With its high learning curve and $10,000+ price tag, Wealthdocs is not for the technology challenged or technological faint of heart. I love Wealthdocs because it: (i) produces outstanding estate planning documents for my clients, and (ii) allows me to operate a very efficient and profitable estate planning practice.  To learn more about this fabulous software for estate planning lawyers go to its Why WealthDox page.

Macro Express by Insight Software Solutions

I love this productivity program.  I have used it for over ten years.  Everybody in my law firm uses Macro Express because it saves all of us a tremendous amount of time.  If you type the same things over and over you need this program because once you create a macro to insert that text at the point of your cursor you will never type the text again no matter what program (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, your browser, Gmail, etc.) you are using on your computer.  To learn more about this fabulous software program more read my review of Macro Express.  Click here to buy  Macro Express for $39.95 per user.

Sugar-Sync

A program that automatically backs up your important files to the cloud is a MUST HAVE PROGRAM! Sugar-Sync is installed on your server or local computer and configured to automatically back up to the cloud your entire hard drive or files and folders that you select.  These types of programs are very inexpensive when you consider the cost and nightmare you can have if your programs and/or data is destroyed on your server or local computer.  It comes in handy if you accidentally delete a file or files and need to restore them.

By |2019-06-17T07:04:00-07:00April 12th, 2012|Infusionsoft, Software, Time Matters|0 Comments

Richard Keyt’s Law Office Tech Bio

Below is a chronological list of my major law office technology accomplishments since I bought my first computer in 1983. Since 1980, I have practiced law full time while conducting a never-ending search for software and hardware that will make me more productive, more efficient and more money. The search has been fun, extremely successful and very profitable. I recommend that you invest more time in technology and you too can reap the rewards.

Why I Wrote this Tech Biography

The reason I am publishing my law office tech background is so that people who read my articles on law office technology can see that I have knowledge, experience and a practical basis on which to base my pontifications. Too many law office technology gurus blow mostly hot air and do not know what they are talking about. I think the reason so many law tech pundits are so far off base is because do not have real world knowledge and practical experience with respect to the subjects about which they opine.

For example, if Joe Pundit writes an article telling you what is necessary for a successful law office website and he does not have a successful website, why would you believe anything he says about the subject?  How does Joe Pundit measure a successful law firm website? If it is based on awards or recognition of other law office technology gurus, then www.keytlaw.com is a total bust because it has never won a single award or even been recognized by a guru. Heck, all www.keytlaw.com does is generate traffic (an average of 163,000/month during 2011), a measurement that does not even exist in the mindset of the average law office tech expert.  Per Avvo and www.alexa.com my website is one of the 25 most visited law related websites in the United States.  My Arizona Limited Liability Company  Law website is the primary reason I formed 522 limited liability companies in 2011 and 3,300+ since I started counting in 2002.  Translation:  When it comes to law office technology I can talk the talk and walk the walk.

Why I Love Legal Tech Pundits

I am not bitter that my website has not won any awards or gotten any recognition. I would rather have a lot of website traffic and the business it generates than one worthless website award. The fact that people write about law office technology without a clue about their subjects cracks me up. I love the fact that people who cannot do law office technology write about it because as long as the average lawyer in the United States learns about technology from people who do not understand the subject it means there are very few lawyers who can ever acquire the knowledge necessary to compete with me in the high tech world of the 21st century law practice.

Time Line of Technology Knowledge & Accomplishments

1.  First Computer:  I bought my first computer in 1983 for around $3,000. It was a Compaq portable with a 9 inch green screen. It had 256k or RAM and two 5.24 inch floppy drives

2.  First Word Processor:  I bought WordPerfect 3.0 in 1983. My license number was in the 50 thousands. I became a WP expert and used it until 1998 when the large law firm in which I was a partner switched from DOS and WP to Windows and Word.

3.  First Law Firm:  I started a two lawyer firm in 1984 with the Compaq computer, WP and an impact printer that cost $1,000. We saved forms and client documents on many 5.25 inch floppies.

4.  First Billing Program:  I bought my first billing program in 1985. It was the “Client Management System” by Compulaw. CMS was a great program for its time. I learned how to use CMS and taught to every secretary and staff person in my firm who used it, which brings me to Keyt’s Technology Rule Number 1.

5.  Created Legal Form System:  Beginning in 1984, whenever I had to prepare a contract or legal document for a client and if I did not have an applicable form, the first thing I did was prepare a form document and then modify the form as necessary for the client’s document. I did this religiously and still do it to this day. As a result, I now have over 500 legal forms that I created and use in my practice. I rarely have to create a new form any more. A good form system is essential and money in the pocket for any lawyer who produces the same documents over and over.

6.  System Administrator of My Firm’s Novell Network:  In the early 1990s the law firm of which I was a founding partner needed to network the firm’s computers. I selected Novell’s Netware 3.11 software as our network operating system. Everything I read said it was great software (and it was), but it required a full time system administrator. I had my computer guy install Netware 3.11 and network all of the computers. I studied how to administer the network. In a relatively short period of time, I learned how to use Netware to satisfy my firm’s needs. I was the sole system administrator of the network. I added, deleted and modified all users and software. I made daily backups. I did it all and it only took a few hours a month.

7.  Purchased First Document Management Software:  Shortly after installing our Novell network, I purchased a document management program called PC Docs. I not only installed it on my Novell network, but I also was the only person to administer it. PC Docs was the leading document management program sold in the U.S. when I purchased it. My firm had eight lawyers plus legal assistants, secretaries and staff, all of whom were creating and accessing documents on the network. With thousands of documents being created every year, we desperately needed software to manage those documents and secure documents from being accessed by people who did not have a need for access. I paid $350 per user for PC Docs, which included a $100 per user premium for the full text indexing feature of the program. The benefit we got from PC Docs far out weighed the cost. I believe that every law firm should have a document management system (“DMS”) to manage the documents created by the firm. A DMS eliminates creating Windows folders, file names and exotic & unique to each firm document file naming conventions. The user creates a profile that identifies the document including document type, name, client and matter and the DMS stores it and makes it easy for anybody with the required security to access the profile and the document. Currently I use Time Matters for my document management system, and it is fabulous.

8.  Installed Full Text Indexing on Network: When I installed PC Docs, I “turned on” the $100/user full text indexing feature we purchased. Turning it on was a simple matter of answering “yes” to a question asked in the system administrator’s area of the software. I also added a dedicated computer on our network and gave it the task of indexing on the fly the text of all documents saved on our network. Full text indexing allowed anybody with the appropriate security to search for a word or text phrase and find within a matter of seconds all documents on the network that contained the word or text phrase. When I joined the big firm and became a partner, I found that the firm had paid the extra $100 per user for full text indexing, but the IT department (not knowing what full text indexing was or why lawyers might want to us it) did not have indexing “turned on.” What a waste of $20,000+.

9.  Wrote First Contact Management Program: In the early 1990s I looked at the contact management programs on the market and was not impressed. I knew then that I wanted software that could track information about my clients and contacts. I purchased WordPerfect Corporation’s relational database called “DataPerfect,” and learned how to create relational databases. I created a contact management DataPerfect database I called the “Office Information System” or “OIS” for the eight lawyer firm that I founded. The program retained names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers and other pertinent information about our clients and contacts. Everybody used the OIS, which was on our Novell 3.11 network. At its peak, the OIS had information about more than 7,000 clients and contacts. This leads me to Keyt’s Technology Rule Number 2.

 10.  Wrote First Time Keeping Program: In the early 1990s, I could not find a lawyer time keeping program into which I could enter my time on a daily basis so I wrote one using DataPerfect. I used the program for several years until I switched to a lawyer time keeping program built into the time and billing program used by my firm. My time keeping program had the names and numbers of all clients and matters. It collected my time by day, client and matter. It printed reports that showed how much time I worked by the day, week, month, and year. At the end of each month, I printed all of the time for the month and gave it to my secretary to enter into our billing system.

11.  Owned & Operated a Four Phone Line Electronic Bulletin Board System: In the mid 1990s, I become interested in the forerunner of the World Wide Web called the bulletin board system or BBS. I set up a computer in my home connected to four phone lines. I learned how to program BBS software called TBBS and created a very popular BBS called “Phoenix Online.” My BBS offered the public many fun games, Roger Ebert movie reviews, 20 gigabytes of downloadable files, and free internet email. Anybody could register on Phoenix Online and get and use an internet email address that ended in “@phoenixonline.com.” Creating my BBS in the mid 1990s helped me in 2001 when I created www.keytlaw.com.

12.  Caused My Big Law Firm to Add Document Types to PC Docs:  When I joined the big law firm (80+ attorneys) in 1996, it was essentially using the same software that I had purchased and installed for my eight lawyer firm. Both firms used Novell 3.11 for networking, WordPerfect 5.2 for DOS, WordPerfect Office, and PC Docs. When I joined the big firm, I noticed that nobody in the firm really understood PC Docs and how to use it. See Keyt’s Technology Rule Number 1. In addition to paying $100/user for full text indexing and not turning it on, the IT department taught firm personnel to insert the document number in the document name field of the document profile and to give every document one of two document types, either “pleading” or “letter.” This made it very difficult to find documents because when you looked at all the documents listed under a matter, all you saw in the document name field was a number of seven digit numbers characterized as either a pleading or a letter. When I gave the head of the IT department a list of 60 or 70 document types and asked that she add them to PC Docs, she said she could not because “it would double or triple the size of the document type database.” Like many IT types, she thought I was a lawyer who did not know s___ from shinola about networks and law office software and she could fool me like she had fooled everybody else. With a network of over 200 users and huge gigabyte file servers, adding the new document types would have been a few thousand bytes at best and of no significance on the network. I had to write a memo to the Board of Directors to get them to approve adding the document types to PC Docs. They never did turn on full text indexing

13.  Caused My Large Firm to Purchase Time Matters 2.0: When my large law firm switched from DOS to Windows in 1998, I had to replace the OIS and DataPerfect with a Windows based contact management program. After researching the available contact management programs at that time, I concluded that Time Matters 2.0 was the best contact management program. I convinced the Board of Directors of my firm to purchase a 20 user license. I became the systems administrator of TM 2.0 on the firm’s network. The only people in my 80 lawyer firm who used Time Matters from 1998 – 2001 when I left the firm were the people in the corporate department. The firm had a wonderful training room with ten computers connected to the network, white boards, tables and chairs. I used to offer classes on how to use Time Matters and never once had a lawyer attend. Only a few secretaries ever came. This leads me to Keyt’s Technology Rule Number 3.

 14.  Created an Internet Website Gets a Ton of Visitors:  In 2001, one of my areas of practice was internet law, including domain name law. I wanted to show my clients and potential clients that I understood the internet. I also had a desire to write articles to help people understand the law. In the winter of 2001 I started my website at www.keytlaw.com. I did not start tracking visitors until November 2002. I can remember when I was paying $300 a month for pay for click advertising and getting 3,000 visitors a month to www.keytlaw.com.  I thought it was awesome to have that many people visiting “my place of business” every month.  For the calendar year 2011 www.keytlaw.com had 1,957,043 visitors (an average 163,000/month in 2011).

 15.  Learned Microsoft FrontPage: To create my original website, I had to learn Microsoft FrontPage. It has a learning curve, but once I got over the initial hump, it has been a easy to use and simple program ever since. I am the only person who has ever worked on www.keytlaw.com. It is entirely my creation. I could have paid somebody to create my website, but for what I now have, I would have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. Had I not learned FrontPage, I would now be completely at the mercy of whoever was my current web developer. The slightest change would cost money and perhaps take hours or days to appear. Because I knew FrontPage, I can fix an error on my website myself in a few minutes from the time a user alerts me of the error or bad link.

WordPress Update:  In 2009 I learned WordPress and have been using WordPress ever since for www.keytlaw.com and all of my websites.  WordPress is an incredible program for creating websites and blogs.  If you are not using WordPress and administering it yourself you are making a big mistake.  WordPress is so simple it eliminates the need to spend big bucks with some outside web developer.

 16.  Learned Search Engine Optimization: From the first days of my website, I researched and studied search engine optimization. Because I understand search engine optimization, many of my web pages are highly ranked by Google and other search engines.  Some of my web pages have more than 3,000 visitors a month. Many pages average over 1,000 visitors a month. Imagine the amount of new business you could generate if you had 500, 1,000 or more people reading one of your informative articles every month.

 17.  Learned Hot Docs Programming: In 2001 I purchased Hot Docs. Hot Docs is the recognized world market leader in the document automation software industry. It has also won virtually every industry award – including Law Office Computing Reader’s Choice Award for Document Assembly and the TechnoLawyer Reader’s Choice Award for Document Assembly and Automation – for five consecutive years. Since purchasing Hot Docs, I paid over $2,000 for four days of basic and advanced Hot Docs training from LexisNexis and created many Hot Docs templates that I use in my practice to quickly produce legal documents. Hot Docs is the reason my legal assistant was able to form 522 limited liability companies in 2011.

 18.  Created a 100% Paperless Office: My law practice creates a tremendous amount of legal documents, correspondence and paper. By using available technology, my practice became paperless in March of 2004. If you would like to learn how your office can become paperless, see my article called “A Simple Inexpensive Way to Create a Paperless Office.”  As of April of 2012, we have over 140,000 documents in our Time Matters document management system.

 19.  Created an Online Store for My Law Firm: My clients can purchase legal services online and pay by credit card. I created online engagement agreements that clients can sign with digitally secure signatures and click on a submit button to email the agreement to me. Clients can pay for our legal services in our online web store. My website has a shopping cart for legal services.  Check out my web store where I sell legal services and products. and my legal forms store.

 20.  Adopted Infusionsoft in 2007, an Automatic 24/7 Web-Based Customer Relations Management system: I use Infusionsoft’s CRM to do automatic marketing 24/7 to clients and prospective clients. We add prospects and clients to campaigns that automatically send out a series of email marketing messages to them over an extended period of time. The CRM is a fabulous way of automatically keeping in touch with clients and prospective clients. It has substantially increased our lead capture rate and bottom line.  If you want to collect leads from your website and make more money, the first step is to watch Infusionsoft’s video demo that shows how it works its magic.  You want people to visit your website, but you must also capture their email address so you can do follow up marketing.  Marketing gurus say that most of the time when people visit your site they are shopping.  If you do not capture a prospects email address so you can send follow up email messages the prospect will probably not remember you when the prospect is ready to purchase.  We offer free reports that visitors obtain only if they give their name and email address.  Once they sign up for our free report on widget law we know they are interested in widget law and will send follow up emails about widget law and why the prospect should hire us as their widget law attorneys.  Infusionsoft collects the prospect information through webforms it creates and then does automatic email  follow up marketing.

To learn more about Infusionsoft and how I use it to collect leads from my website, do automatic follow up marketing and make more money, read my review of Infusionsoft called “Infusionsoft: The Cheapest & Best 24/7/365 Marketing Department.”

21.  Website Marketing:  I have created many websites used successfully by to generate new clients.  Click on the link on the top menu row to see all of the websites KEYTLaw attorneys have created.  We believe in web marketing.  It works for me and my law firm.

22.  Facebook:  We created a Facebook  Page that actually sends traffic  to our websites.  Check out the KEYTLaw Facebook page.

23.  Web Videos:  We believe in using videos to inform potential clients, get more web traffic and market our services.  See our video series called “Ask the KEYTLaw Girl” (used for LLC formation marketing), testimonial videos and our other videos on our Youtube channel.

By |2019-06-17T07:03:11-07:00April 1st, 2012|Infusionsoft, Tech Stuff, Time Matters|0 Comments
Copyright 2001-2015 Richard Keyt | All Rights Reserved
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