All Our Tips
MS Outlook Tip: Drag and Drop Items of One Type to Create Another
Sometimes you will get an email from a client and that will trigger the need to have an in person meeting. This requires the creation of an entry in your calendar. To save time and avoid re-entering all the information in the email, remember that you can create an appointment in your calendar by dragging the e-mail message to the taskbar Calendar icon and dropping it there. All the information from the original email will automatically be transferred to the new calendar entry – no need to retype it. Make any necessary edits and save the meeting entry. This trick works with other types of Outlook items.
Spotting the Embezzler…
As the economy remains depressed, most who still have a job feel fortunate, however, lack of economic growth usually translates into steady or even declining compensation – often in the face of demands for greater productivity. Hard times like these, in turn, sometimes motivate workers, from the lowest paid to the highest, to seek to supplement their income through skimming profits from their employer How do you spot a person who is likely to engage in dishonesty within the firm, and how do you prevent it?
Those who embezzle usually have one (or more) of these motives:
- Need for cash for a separate business opportunity
- Need for cash for an opulent lifestyle
- Need to “correct” compensation inequities
Those who embezzle are almost always presented with the opportunity to do so as a result of weak policies and procedures within the firm. For example:
- Partners find it easier to steal from the firm by diverting money through the types of transactions they regularly handle as lawyers or by “writing off” work that they have instructed clients to pay them directly for “outside” the firm. This is one reason why it’s so important to generate and regularly review financial reports, including one on WIP and AR that are written down or off.
- Staff members are more likely to take advantage of flaws in the accounting systems and internal controls, such as failure to tie all funds received, whether as checks or cash, to a receipt number which is tied to the deposit slip and the ledger entry, or to forge a partner’s signature or “rush” something needing a signature past a busy partner who doesn’t have time to examine it properly.
The tell-tale signs of an employee who is helping him or herself to firm or client funds include:
- Refusal to delegate work, or to let anyone see what they’re working on
- Desk or file cabinet draws that are suddenly locked when they weren’t before
- Excessive work hours – there from “can” to “can’t” and never out on vacation or sick
- Sudden change in personality, becoming withdrawn
- Obvious stress level that is out of line with the person’s work responsibilities
- Sudden bursts of consumption that don’t fit with what you know about their salary or personal situation
The best way to avoid these problems is by the use of strong procedures, separation of duties, rotation of duties, and spot audits, such as having someone not associated with bill paying or disbursements to clients pick several transactions randomly and place follow-up calls to make sure the transactions actually went as recorded.
Hat tip to LawPRO magazine’s The Many Faces of Fraud issue.
Be Creative
I believe that creativity is a skill that can be developed. I have to believe it because I am still working on colouring inside the lines. To enhance your legal research work product, sometimes you need to think outside the lines.
For example, think about unconventional places where information can be found. I am not talking about a Google search.
A good example of creative thinking is set out in a case called Sparks v. Dubé, 2011 NBQB 40. Even though precedent suggested that an ex parte order for preservation of information on a Facebook account would be difficult, defense counsel in this case took a creative and slightly different angle in their argument and were grated the order. There is a very nice precedent for what such an order might contain at the end of this decision too.
Hat tip to Karen Sawatzky of Tapper Cuddy in Winnipeg, and columnist at Slaw.ca for sharing the case.
5 Ways to Make an Easy-to-Remember, Ultra-Secure Password
Have several tips in draft, but came across (hat tip to Ben Schorr) this really great post on Yahoo’s Upgrade Your Life blog: 5 ways to make an easy-to-remember, ultra-secure password.
This is a must read. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Essential and very practical advice in this post – please read it – I guarantee you will change a bunch of your passwords.
And it closes with a good suggestion for those of us that can’t remember all our passwords: Consider using a password manager like LastPass and 1Password. With a password manager, you’ll use a master password to access the program or app, and it will auto-fill password entry fields for you as you log in around the web. Both these programs are well regarded and come in mobile and desktop versions to help you keep both your computer and phone safely locked down.
How Do You Set Your Goals?
How do you set your goals? Dr. Edwin Locke has set forth the SMART way to set goals. They should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-Bound
Based on this work, a few years later, Dr. Locke (of the University of Maryland) teamed up with Dr. Gary P. Latham (of the University of Toronto) and wrote: “Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation” along with other publications. (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dabbish/locke.pdf)
Their core findings are illustrative:
1. The highest level of effort occurred when a task was moderately difficult, and the lowest levels occurred when a task was either very easy or very hard. They found that difficult goals consistently led to higher performance.
Accordingly, you should set goals that cause you to stretch and grow!
2. When goals are self-set, people with high self-efficacy set higher goals than do people with lower self-efficacy. They also are more committed to assigned goals, find and use better task strategies to attain the goals, and respond more positively to negative feedback than do people with low self-efficacy.
This shows that you should have a positive, direct hand in setting your goals – you will be better motivated, better committed and better able to respond to changing conditions!
3. Goals affect performance through four mechanisms.
- First, goals serve a directive function; they direct attention and effort toward goal-relevant activities and away from goal-irrelevant activities.
- Second, goals have an energizing function. High goals lead to greater effort than low goals.
- Third, goals affect persistence. When participants are allowed to control the time they spend on a task, hard goals prolong effort.
- Fourth, goals affect action indirectly by leading to the arousal, discovery, and/or use of task-relevant knowledge and strategies.
Accordingly, a major part of time management is learning to set your own goals at levels that energize you and seek to drive you to learn new information and approaches. By setting SMART goals, you can make the most of your time and motivate yourself to perform at your best (as well as your team).
Keep Your Skills Sharp
Today’s Tip: Take advantage of training opportunities.
Since we are in back to school mode, I thought a training tip would be appropriate. Legal research, like many other skills, is enhanced by practice. We don’t always have a chance to practice everything we need.
When was the last time you did research for a point in time historical regulation? When did you last need to find a United Nations document? Are you confident that if you needed ALL the commentary about a point of law you would be able to find it?
There are plenty of offerings to help you keep your research skills sharp. Check out your local continuing legal education group, the Canadian Bar Association, your local law library. You might find a legal research offering that will help keep your skills sharp.
September is also a great time to revisit training from the vendor of your commercial legal research provider.
An Easy Way to Access Multiple Printer Format Settings
If you routinely print two or more kinds of documents, each requiring its own printer settings, you’ve probably found it frustrating to have to re-enter all the printer properties every time you change documents.
There is actually a very simple trick to avoid having to do this. Simply install the same printer two or more times, but with different names and settings.
This way, you simply select the “printer” that has the group of print settings you want each time you print.
To install a printer with new print settings in Windows, go to Start, Settings, Printers, and click the Add Printer icon. Install the printer as you would normally, inserting the driver disk if you have it. When you come to the screen where you name your printer, name it something that differentiates it from your default printer. The name should also remind you of what the special printer settings are. For example, “”HP4landscape””.
When you finish, right-click on your new printer and select Properties. Enter the special print settings for the new printer, and click OK.
Now, when you want to print using the new print settings, you can just select appropriate printer name from your program’s Print dialog box.
A Moment of Time…
Approximately 20 years ago, I was told a story. This particular story was a true one. It was about a man who was otherwise rather unremarkable except for one little matter. At the outset of his life, he had set down on a list all the things he wanted to do during his lifetime. At the time of the story telling, he was in his 70’s; he had managed to cross out all but a few remaining items – and he was eagerly anticipating accomplishing the ones that remained on his list.
How many of us can look back and say that we have used our time accomplishing those goals that matter most to us? How many of us have even taken the time to identify these personally important goals? John Lennon wrote: “Life is just what happens to you, while your busy making other plans” (Beautiful Boy lyrics). How do you set priorities, cull the wheat from the chaff, and set your own journey to reclaim your life?
There are many books that will help with sorting out your life’s priorities and still others that will help with managing your time. We believe that the two are inseparable – trying to manage your tasks without taking the time to decide what is important (or unimportant) in your life is simply increasing the tempo of your life without taking any steps towards any meaning in your life; similarly deciding what is important in your life without addressing how to structure your time and your priorities to take you towards your goals simply leads to frustration as you see your life drifting away.
Accordingly we believe that to truly give direction to your life as well as make the most of your time, you must address both of these two components: namely how to sort out the truly important goals for your life and then how to find the time to pursue them. Only in this way do we believe you can find both satisfaction and meaning in your life.
Take a moment – a long weekend is a perfect opportunity – and write down the goals of your life (your ‘bucket list’ if you may). Learn to play the guitar. Write a book. Go skydiving. Learn how to sail or ski. Sort them into columns…”Must do”, “Would like to do” etc. Now look at your life ahead of you…can you plan them into your calendar?
By focusing on the big things in your life, hopefully we can emulate the fellow at the start of this post and find ourselves having accomplished all or most of them by the time we reach our golden years…by taking a moment at the present time.
Understand the Acronym
Today’s Tip FWIW: Understand the Acronym.
Robert Fulford, from the National Post, wrote about acronyms in his article When Words Die yesterday when he had to use acronymfinder.com to decipher FWIW.
Thanks for the link Robert. For what it’s worth, I was happy that you spelled out FWIW for me in your post.
Acronym Finder has the search benefit of a search for either and acronym or a phrase translated into an acronym with their ‘word in meaning’ search. Since, as Robert’s article points out, acronyms are making their way to common media, rather than just texts and twitter, it is handy to be aware of acronyms and as a potential search term.
A useful example of a search term is the 750,000th definition in the acronym finder database. From their blog:
The abbreviation added was NPQTL, which stands for “National Project on the Quality of Teaching and Learning”, an Australian education project to develop and implement national teacher competency standards.
NPQTL – you would definitely want to search both the acronym and the phrase in order to find out everything about this project.
HS [happy searching]
BTW – this post uses the words acronym and initialism interchangeably for convenience. Acronymfinder.com does not distinguish between the two either.
Privacy Commissioner Launches Handbook to Help Lawyers Apply Privacy Law to Their Practices
PIPEDA and Your Practice: A Privacy Handbook for Lawyers was launched by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at the Canadian Bar Association Canadian Legal Conference and Expo 2011. This handbook explains how the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) relates to the everyday practice of Canadian lawyers in the private sector.
PIPEDA covers the collection, use and disclosure of personal information in the course of commercial activities. Like other organizations in Canada, lawyers and law firms must comply with the requirements of applicable privacy legislation in their jurisdictions. This resource describes best practices in managing the collection, use and disclosure of personal information, responding to requests for access to personal information, and the potential application of PIPEDA. The Handbook covers practical privacy issues that arise in the course of managing a law firm and conducting litigation.
The handbook is available in PDF and HTML formats on the Privacy Commissioner’s website
