All Our Tips
Easy Peasy URLs
Simon Fodden posted about the Supreme Court of Canada Justices and how they almost always agree last week. Great post for its intended commentary, AND, Simon gave a research tip that is worthy of its own post
Remember: when you need to get to the Supreme Court website and can’t recall the official URL, just use Slaw’s shortcut: http://thesupremes.ca or http://lessupremes.ca. Easy peasy.
Thanks for the reminder Simon.
Cash Flow Reports Part 8 – Unbilled Fees and Disbursements
Often law practices look great from the outside. There are lots of clients, the lawyers are always on the run, and from all outward appearances the firm is successful. Sometimes, though, these firms – rather than being a picture of health – are more like a patient with a fatal disease, a silent killer the symptoms of which have not yet begun to show.
That silent killer is unbilled fees and disbursements. As a consequence, all firms should be monitoring the state of their unbilled work and disbursements just as someone with diabetes constantly monitors his or her blood sugar level and takes action to either boost or lower it as needed.
The unbilled fees and disbursements report should be compiled by lawyer, client and area of practice, even though some members of the firm may not like it. This will help the firm to spot results which are starkly out of line with the other members of the firm, and take steps to correct them as soon as possible.
Unbilled fees and disbursements today can easily turn into a cash flow problem tomorrow. If you’ve done the work or advanced the costs, take timely steps to start turning that work and those expenses into profits rather than non-interest bearing loans.
Make It Fun
Legal Research is fun. Stop laughing, I am not kidding! To prove it, I am sharing a Legal Research Jeopardy game that we use to reinforce some of our student training at Field Law.
This template came my way via web download some years ago from the public library world. Hat Tip to innovative public library staff everywhere. Choose File – Download to modify legal research jeopardy for your own use. Shared with Google Drive.
Double-Click Home Button to See All Apps Running on Your iPad
Want to easily see all the apps running on your iPad?
Double-clicking the Home button will show you all the apps that are running on your iPad as icons on a bar along the bottom of the screen. To switch to a running app, just tap on the icon for it.
To remove the bar, just swipe the screen downwards.
Not quite like Alt+Tab for switching apps, but darn close!
CBA Research Lawyers Subsections
An Aesop fable suggests that we should make friends in prosperity if we would have their help in adversity. Thanks to Mike Doerksen, incoming Chair of the CBA Alberta, Research Lawywers Subsection (South) for today’s tip which came from the minutes of their round table wrap up session.
Joan described using the Search Headnotes function on Westlaw, rather than Full Text searching for cheaper and more efficient method of finding relevant U.S. cases.
Thanks to Mike for sharing the minutes. Thanks to Joan Bilsland, Bennett Jones for sharing wi her colleagues. Thanks to the CBA for facilitating research lawyer sharing through subsections, and for inviting law librarians to join these groups as special interest members.
Waste Time More Efficiently With These Keyboard Shortcuts for Navigating Facebook
Would you like to more quickly navigate and jump between different Facebook pages?
Or, if you want to look at it from another angle, would you like to spend less time wasting time on Facebook?
Like many other applications and websites, there are some handy keyboard shortcuts that will let you more quickly jump around the various Facebook screens. Read on to learn them.
But, before we get into these actual shortcuts, some comments on the slightly different keys that are required in the various browsers. Most of Facebook’s keyboard shortcuts correspond with the numbers, starting with 1-5, which more or less take you left-to-right on Facebook’s main navigation links. Next, 6-0 will take you to various settings pages.
For each of the noted Windows and Mac browsers, the basic keyboard shortcuts use the following keys (where the # is replace with the number, letter or symbol listed in the next paragraph ):
- Windows:
- IE: Alt + # (And note, in IE you have to press Enter after entering the noted keys).
- Chrome: Alt + #
- Firefox: Shift + Alt + #
- Mac
- Safari: Control + Option + #
- Chrome: Control + Option + #
- Firefox : Function + Control + #
When substituted for the “#” in the various combinations above, the noted number, letter or symbol takes you to the specified page:
- Above keys + 1: Home page
- Above keys + 2: Your profile page
- Above keys + 3: Friend requests
- Above keys + 4: Your messages
- Above keys + 5: Notifications
- Above keys + 6: Account page
- Above keys + 7: Privacy [And we all should remember to go to this page more often to check our privacy settings!]
- Above keys + 8: Facebook’s Facebook page
- Above keys + 9: Facebook Terms/Agreement
- Above keys + 0: Facebook help center
- Above keys + ?: Search
- Above keys + m: Compose a new message
There you have it, go forth and waste time more efficiently with these Facebook keyboard shortcuts
Cash Flow Reports – Part 7 – Realization Rate
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Money often costs too much.”
It is, unfortunately, true that you have to work over $1.00 worth of time to collect $1.00. The question is: how much more? How do you measure this?
One of the ways of measuring the cost of making money is to look at your realization rate. Accordingly our next cash flow report is:
#7 – Realization Rate
A lawyer’s realization rate is the percentage of actual income paid to the firm for the billable hours of each timekeeper. For example:
Let’s look at Partner X:
- Assume Partner X bills 200 hours per month
- at $200 per hour
- for a total amount billed of $40,000. ($200 x 200 = $40,000)
- Of that amount, 10 hours are written down (taken off the books) for various reasons, and
- clients pay a total of $30,000.
- Partner X’s realization rate is 75% ($30,000 /$40,000 x 100).
Now let’s look at Partner Z:
- Partner Z bills 150 hours
- at $200 per month ($200 x 150 = $30,000)
- but she has no “write downs”
- and her clients pay 95% of her billings for a total of $28,500.
- Although Partner X bills more hours his low realization rate means that Partner Z is generating almost as much income for the firm with far fewer hours billed.
Your computer-based time & billing program should be able to create a realization report for you. Examine the results and use it to help guide any discussion of compensation for partners and associates. A low realization rate indicates that a lawyer is using resources of the firm inefficiently – which is usually a sign of poor client or file selection.
Benchmark: Realization rates should be no lower than 90% .
An Amazing Collection of Google Search Tips!
Today I came across (hat tip to my assistant Tim) an amazing post titled How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques on John Tedesco’s blog.
In that post, Tedesco relates the content from a presentation by Google research scientist Daniel Russell. This post has the most amazing collection of Google tips I have ever seen in one place.
Everyone that uses Google to search the web should take time to read and learn the tips and search techniques covered in this post. It covers all the basic syntax tricks, but also some more advanced searching techniques. You can find it here.
Cash Flow Reports – Part 6: Accounts Receivable
Ahh the age-old problem of lawyers: collecting accounts receivable. The bane of the lawyering class. The inconvenient truth is that if you are working on the basis of an account receivable, you are most probably working for less – and in some cases far less – than your standard hourly rate.
Woody Allen once said: “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.“
So, if money is better than poverty, our next cash flow report to produce (and examine) on a monthly, if not more frequent, basis: Aged Accounts Receivables.
Your accounts receivable should be grouped according to current, over 30, over 60, over 90 and older. Look at the total amount of accounts receivable: Are they increasing or decreasing? What percentage are they of your annual billings? Fifteen percent is high – 5% is within the range of acceptability.
How old are they? Uncollectable accounts represent holes in the bottom of the financial boat; they will sink the financial ship if not plugged. If you do have unpaid accounts that have been outstanding for more than 30 days, do something about them– quickly! Remember that aging only benefits cheese and wine. Make early attempts at collection and determine whether or not further time and energy is warranted.
Remember: Attempting to collect an unpaid account from an unhappy client often leads to professional misconduct complaints and possible malpractice claims – both of which can be emotionally and financially draining as well as PR nightmares. By acting quickly and decisively – and staying within your written client credit policy – you can minimize your exposure to bad debts.
Here is a further tip: A firm we know had a partner who was retired yet still wanted to come to the office a few days a week and do something useful. In an inspired moment, the firm assigned him the job of collecting the firm’s accounts receivable. He knew the clients, he knew the firm, and the magic happened. The managing partner told us that, “The firm’s accounts receivable never looked so good!”
Government News Releases
Today’s tip is about watching what the government is doing. News releases by government bodies often contain information that is not yet posted to other sites. This was recently brought home to me by an Alberta Government news release about a future regulatory change as well as a Government of Canada news release about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Especially with regard to regulatory changes in the provinces, news releases about issues may pre-date actual legislative authority for an action.
Check out the Canada News Centre or your provincial or territorial government website’s news page. Most jurisdictions offer RSS feeds for monitoring.
