All Our Tips
5 Steps to Keeping Client Information Organized
For many of us, getting and keeping client information and documents organized is a struggle. Without a proper process in place, one generally ends up with piles, emails, notes and scraps of information all over the place – and by that I mean in both your physical office and on all your various devices and digital equipment.
Below I share with you 5 steps that anyone can take to get and keep each new client’s file, information and documents organized:
1. Create a client contact sheet.
A client contact sheet is exactly as it sounds – a sheet of paper containing the client’s contact information – telephone number(s); address; personal email; perhaps date of retention and any notes you may have taken during your initial consultation.
You can create a form for your client contact sheet and print out several blanks – which you fill in by hand as you are in the consultation or you can also type out the information and print out your client contact sheet after you have been retained.
Once completed, the client contact sheet gets stapled to the inside left cover of the initial file folder. You will soon realize how handy it is to have this information at your fingertips and not just stored digitally.
2. Create a physical file.
Once you have been retained, you will need to open a physical file. Depending on the type of law you practice, this file may grow to include several red wells with several subfolders including correspondence, client documents, pleadings, motions, forms, memos to the file, etc. However, to start, you need just one manila folder with the client’s initial documents, the signed retainer agreement and a completed client contact sheet. As the file grows, you add red wells as necessary.
3. Create a digital folder.
On your computer’s hard drive or your firm’s networked drive, you will need to create a folder for the digital files and electronic information for this client. I am a big believer in grouping like things, including clients. So, first create a directory/folder labeled “Clients”, then create a sub folder/directory in it for each client. Whenever you receive an electronic communication or document, save it directly to the client’s electronic folder.
4. Add information to electronic contact database.
After creating your physical and digital folders, you must now add your client’s information to your contact database. For me, that database is Outlook but your firm may use a legal specific product, such as Rocket Matter. Since the onboarding process for clients has several steps – and since we all know how easy it is to be interrupted by more urgent work (especially after the physical file is created and paperwork moved out of your line of vision), on my client contact sheet I have a box to check off after the client’s data has been entered into Outlook. I cannot tell you how many times I have looked at a contact sheet and see the box NOT checked. Of course, I immediately add the data to Outlook and check off the box at that point.
5. Add information to billing/financial software.
Obviously, you’re going to have to bill this client, so will need their address and contact information stored within your billing/financial software. There is a box on my contact sheet for this as well.
That’s it. If you follow these 5 steps every time you take on a new client, you will always have each client’s information handy and you will be in a position to move forward in keeping all the documents, files, emails and information provided by this client organized.
Andrea Cannavina (@AndreaCan) helps law firms organize, automate and implement business process improvements to create efficient workflows and happier staff.
4 Questions to Ask About Any Database (Part 1)
Whenever you set out to use any electronic research source, be it a public web search or a specialized database, there are a few questions you should always ask – four to be exact. You may say there are really five or six important questions, or maybe you think there are only three, and that’s ok. But for me, not three but four is the magic number.
So here are my four questions you should always ask, with examples drawn from some of our favourite databases.
1. What is the SCOPE of the database?
Or what is its reach? How would you describe the collection of documents? What topics are covered? How current, how far back in time? What is the geographic extent of the database and what languages are used?
For an Internet search engine such as Google, the scope is all documents within the reach of its automated web-crawling indexer. But for most sites, the scope is limited by subject, geography, &/or time. For some, such as our Saskatchewan Cases database, the user should have a pretty good idea, based on the title, that the scope is limited by geography and subject matter. But what about time? For that we have a scope note conveniently located in the lower-right corner of the search page. For a complex system of databases like CanLII, the scope note is myriad.
For some online services, such as our Find a Lawyer search, the scope is rigorously monitored and crucial to the database’s usefulness. There is one record for every active (practicing) member of the Law Society of Saskatchewan. It is updated instantly. If a record exists, then that person is an active, licensed lawyer in Saskatchewan. If there is no record, then that individual is retired, suspended, inactive, or otherwise not a currently practicing lawyer in the province.
Stayed tuned for question #2!
[This tip by Ken Fox originally appeared on the Law Society of Saskatchewan Library’s Legal Sourcery Blog]
Colons and Semi-Colons
This week, you get a full colonic!
Sorry, couldn’t resist that.
Actually, full treatment of this subject is beyond the scope of a brief piece, but here are some basics.
The colon (:)
The colon is most frequently used to introduce a list of items, but it can often be omitted. There is no need for a colon in the following sentence:
The syndicate of lenders consists of: Bank of Montreal, Bank of Nova Scotia and TD.
The colon is correctly used after the word ‘sentence’ just before the example; it introduces what is to follow, where that doesn’t just flow naturally from the earlier part of the sentence. As H.W. Fowler put it, the colon ‘delivers the goods that have been invoiced in the preceding words.’
The colon can also be used to great effect in what Fowler calls ‘gnomic contrasts’. For example:
Man proposes: God disposes.
Do this sparingly: over-use dulls the effect.
The colon can also be used to introduce a quotation, generally where the context is not conversational (The witness stated: ‘Blah blah blah’.).
The semi-colon (;)
Also used with lists, but to separate items that have internal commas. Like so (assuming for the moment that we’re still using 1990s names and punctuation):
The following firms were represented: Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt; Stikeman, Elliott; and Blake, Cassels and Graydon.
Confusion might arise if the semi-colons were absent (and you didn’t know which names went with which). Note the effective use of a ‘serial’ or ‘Oxford’ semicolon before and; but where this isn’t necessary in the interests of clarity, I’d omit it.
The semi-colon can also be used to break up long, convoluted sentences that contain lots of subordinate clauses and commas – but it’s doubtful that you want to write in a prose style reminiscent of a nineteenth-century novelist, right?
A good use of the semi-colon is to connect two units which could be separate sentences, but which are logically linked. Using a comma would make this a run-on sentence (which is bad):
I couldn’t think of a single thing to say; situations like that leave me at a loss for words.
The bit after the semi-colon doesn’t so much complete the thought in the first part as explain or describe it. The semi-colon offers a softer and less abrupt break than a colon; it’s only half a colon, after all.
Next week: miscellaneous little things that annoy me
Find Values Quickly on a Spreadsheet
Conditional Formatting is a largely underused and undervalued feature in Excel. Very often I see people re-sort the entire spreadsheet or use the search feature to find specific values. These can be easily done instead with Conditional Formatting.
Ranking
Instead of re-sorting your spreadsheet, try selecting the data cells you wish to rank, then click “Conditional Formatting” on the command ribbon and select “Data Bars”. Hover your mouse over the fills and watch the data bars appearing on your spreadsheet where you can easily locate the high and low values.
Colour Scales
If you keep track of workflow, transactions, cashflow, etc., this trick is great for getting a quick visual of your busy/normal/slow periods. Highlight your data cells, click “Conditional Formatting” and select “Color Scales”.
Top/Bottom Values
The “Top/Bottom Rules” allow you to quickly identify the top and bottom values, top and bottom percentages, above-average and below-average values.
This is just the beginning of all the cool things you can do with Conditional Formatting.
[This tip originally appeared on the Law Society of Saskatchewan Library’s Legal Sourcery Blog]
Did Your Client Really Just Instruct You to Release Funds? When Clients’ Emails Get Hacked
In the past year, lawyers are reporting a more sophisticated kind of cybercrime: a hacker will gain access into a client’s email account and comb through the account to discover communications with the lawyer. The hacker will watch communications between the client and the lawyer until money finds its way into the lawyer’s trust account, such as when litigation is settled, a house is sold, or a corporate transaction is complete, the hacker will then pose as the client and send an email to the lawyer with instructions to redirect the funds into the hacker’s account.
In some cases the hacker will use the client’s email account, send the email, and then promptly delete it. The client never knows the email has been sent until it is too late, as no record of the email exists in the client’s account. In other cases the hacker will use an email address that looks like the client’s email address but might be off by a character or two (such as [email protected] instead of [email protected]). If the lawyer is even slightly distracted, such as reading the email on a cell phone, or working on something else at the same time, then the discrepancy is missed. Meanwhile, if the lawyer falls for the deception and assumes that the instructions from the client are genuine, the funds are redirected to the hacker.
Take extra care when a client instructs you to release funds. Anything out of the ordinary should alert your spidey senses that something might be amiss. Double-check the email address – in some email programs only the name of the sender is displayed, but not the email address. The name is easy to spoof. But if you click on a button such as “details”, you can make sure the actual email address is corresponds to the one for your client. If the client is giving you instructions to wire the money to an account you’ve never seen or to write the cheque to someone else, call the client to confirm the instructions.
The same basic pattern can happen if the hacker breaks into the email account of an opposing lawyer, a self-represented claimant, or a third party. The hacker monitors communications until money is exchanged, at which point a request is made to redirect the funds into the hacker’s account.
As lawyers it is natural to respond quickly to a client’s instructions. It’s this very instinct that hackers prey on when they pose as the client in an email. Pay special attention to instructions to release funds, and, when appropriate, take the extra step of confirming it through another communication channel.
The best practice is to get instructions from the client at the start for how monies should be released. If this changes at any point then take extra steps. Confirm the release of monies by cheque or wire transfer using a different mode of communication than the original instructions.
Grey Literature: Our Favourite Sources and Suggestions
This article was originally published in the November 2016 edition of Wired West.
At the recent 2016 SLA conference in Philadelphia, one of the most popular sessions was Hidden Treasures: Mastering Grey Literature. This session was co-sponsored by the Science-Technology Division, the Social Science Division, and the Taxonomy Division. A panel of speakers from institutions such as Cornell University and the Canadian Library of Parliament spoke about their favourite sources for grey literature. Inspired by that presentation, we have assembled here a very Canadian primer on grey literature.
For the uninitiated, Wikipedia offers a very accessible definition for this field of literature:
Grey literature … are materials and research produced by organizations outside of the traditional commercial or academic publishing and distribution channels. Common grey literature publication types include reports (annual, research, technical, project, etc.), working papers, government documents, white papers and evaluations. Organizations that produce grey literature include government departments and agencies, civil society or non-governmental organisations, academic centres and departments, and private companies and consultants.
Grey literature may be made available to the public, or distributed privately within organizations or groups, and may lack a systematic means of distribution and collection. The standard of quality, review and production of grey literature can vary considerably. Grey literature may be difficult to discover, access and evaluate but this can be addressed through the formulation of sound search strategies. (Wikipedia)
In our own work, we have had ample opportunity to help clients dive deep into research topics through grey literature. Grey literature can be especially important when the client has budgetary constraints and limited access to specialized subscription-based databases. It can also be helpful when addressing either a very old or very new topic. New topics may not yet have been addressed by academic journals due to the long lead time required for vetting and publication. Older topics may no longer be addressed by current publications on the topic and relevant commentary may only be available through digitization of archived materials
We provide a short list of our favourite sources here:
Social Sciences Research Network
The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is an open repository “devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research.” It includes a wide range of free content, including abstracts for working papers and forthcoming papers, article preprints, and conference papers. SSRN is comprised of twenty-four research networks representing various branches of the social sciences—accounting, law, leadership, marketing, and political science, to name just a few. The Network was acquired by Elsevier in May 2016, but insists it remains committed to keeping content free to submit and download.
Google or Google Scholar
Google has the ability to capture high-value commentary that may not be published elsewhere. Increasingly professionals and academics are being encouraged to blog about their topics both as a way of spreading knowledge and engaging in business development. For example, the Cornell LII blogs and Mondaq.com offer academic and lawyerly commentary on current events intersecting with the law.
The academic offshoot of Google, Google Scholar, is a rich source of grey literature from government agencies, professional societies, digital repositories, and post-secondary institutions. While access to some full text content is restricted by publisher paywalls, the “all versions” feature can help researchers locate related working papers, article pre-prints, and the like. Researchers may find Google Scholar less helpful for recently published materials, as its algorithms tend to favour older content.
Federal Government White Papers and Green Papers
White papers are official documents presented by Ministers which explain the government’s policy on a certain issue. In contrast, green papers are issued by government to invite public comment on an issue prior to policy formulation. These two terms are also used interchangeably at the provincial level. This federal repository managed by the Library of Parliament includes links to PDFs of many of the papers and fulsome indexing information at the very least. For equivalent papers issued at the provincial level, there is no one repository, however searching via GALLOP, listed below, is a good first step.
GALLOP Federated Search Portal
GALLOP is a federated search portal covering provincial legislature libraries, such as BC’s Legislative Library. The scope of coverage is detailed here. Many of these libraries include download links to PDFs of some materials in their collections. Materials held by these libraries often include reports relevant to public policy or government-authored documents about the implementation of public policy.
University Repositories, Such as cIRcle at the University of British Columbia
cIRcle is described as “an open access digital repository for published and unpublished material created by the UBC community and its partners. Its aim is to showcase and preserve UBC’s unique intellectual output by making content freely available to anyone, anywhere via the web.” You can search the repository using the search box in the middle of the homepage, or from the advanced search form, here. During the SLA conference session on this topic, Jim Del Russo of Cornell University Library also shared this link to DigitalCommons@ILR, the repository at Cornell.
The sources we’ve listed above are an excellent starting point for a Canadian librarian or researcher; however, should you need to engage in international grey literature searches, we encourage you to consult a university research guide on grey literature from the country or area in question. For example, the University of New Mexico offers a grey literature lib guide with an american health sciences emphasis, while Curtin University in Perth, Australia offers an Australia-specific guide to grey literature. Another good all-purpose American lib guide on grey literature is this one, from the University of Michigan.
— by Bronwyn Guiton & Lindsay Tripp
Is Your Website in Need of a Makeover?
While it’s not quite as superficial as wearing flare jeans when straight cuts are in, there is an aspect to web design that is simply about keeping up with the times.
That said, deciding whether your law firm’s website is ready for an update goes quite a bit deeper than fashion sense.
So, if you’re wondering, if it’s time for a makeover or even a complete overhaul, it might be helpful to familiarize yourself with some of the qualities that exemplify modern websites:
- Multi-media – Gone are the days of the static, ‘brochure’ website. Today, visitors are expecting to have choices about how they consume information. Whether your firm is targeting households, business executives or other professionals, research shows that some like to read, some like to listen and others prefer to learn through pictures. Multi-media sites leverage modern tools such as video, podcasts, whitepapers, infographics and slideshows, in order to have something for everyone.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) approach – Search Engine Optimization remains a high priority for many law firms. But the game has changed significantly from even just a few years ago. Today, SEO results are influenced by social authority, readership, quality content, website structure, page domains and so much more. If your site is applying outdated SEO rules, it may be limiting your results.
- User experience – Modern websites empower their users. They offer visitors more choices about how to navigate the site. As a result, they are much more fluid than the last generation of websites, which could best be described as being rigid in their flow.
- Design – Modern websites have a distinct, clean and fresh look to them. As well, photography, video and, even, fonts have taken on a new level of artistry. Graphics are more integrated into messaging and, whether they are aware of it or not, visitors are becoming more sophisticated in how they assess the quality and meaning of these characteristics.
- Language – Modern law firm websites speak to their markets with a modern communication style. They are client centered and, rather than trying to impress with professional jargon that tends to alienate, they are approachable and accessible.
- Social integration – Today, links and feeds simply scratch the surface in terms of social media integration. For law firms that are heavy participators on social media, there is so many shared content that the lines between a Facebook or LinkedIn company page and the firm website are starting to blur.
The list goes on, including the very real need to address functional requirements for speed, mobile and responsiveness. But that’s a good start!
Underlying all the bells and whistles that make a modern website sing, however, is the strategy that ties it to your firm’s goals and brand strategy. Get that right and you will have positioned your website to pop from the clutter and facilitate connections with referrers and clients alike.
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For more website tips, see the following previous posts on SlawTips:
- Mobilegeddon: Is Your Law Firm Website Ready to Pass Google’s New Mobile-Friendliness Test?
- 11 Tips on Building a Law Firm Website
Also, see Sandra Bekhor’s previous posts on her LinkedIn Blog:
- Marketing playing vital role in a growing online world
- The single biggest web marketing mistake everyone (almost) is making…
Comma Conundrums
The humble comma seems to baffle many. Space doesn’t permit full discussion of the subject (you may be relieved to hear), but here are some pointers.
Pauses
If you’ve ever read a contract or a will drafted by an English solicitor, you’ll have noticed the complete lack of commas (omitted because they can be the source of ambiguity or error, as the cases attest*). Read that English document aloud, and you’ll be left breathless: no pauses.
The basic rule is that a comma should be inserted wherever there is a natural pause for the reader. Don’t overdo it, though: too many commas make things choppy. Lawyerly writing definitely suffers from excessive use of commas.
Clauses
Use a comma to separate independent clauses joined by a conjunction (and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet): The plaintiff was severely injured in the accident, but the limitation period has now expired.
Bracketing
Use a comma to set off information that is useful but non-essential or in some way extra (it could be removed and the sentence would still make sense): The comma is, of course, a useful thing or The plaintiff, who has suffered multiple injuries, is unable to perform basic tasks.
Lists
Separate items in a list with a comma (or a semi-colon, if individual items within the list contain internal commas).
But, you ask, is there a comma (sometimes called a ‘serial’ or ‘Oxford’ comma) before the ‘and’ (or ‘or’) preceding the final item in the list? In the USA, generally; in the UK, generally not. Take your pick, but I tend (as in most things) to go with the Brits. That final comma looks fussy and a bit cluttered.
Sometimes it’s useful, though. This sentence could use a second comma, methinks: This book is dedicated to my parents, Margaret Thatcher and God. Ambiguities could also arise where a list is longer and more complicated.
Descriptions
The comma defines and limits. I asked my brother Ed for help and I asked my brother, Ed, for help mean different things. The first means I have brothers other than Ed; the second, only one brother, and he’s called Ed.
Commas are also used to separate multiple adjectives describing a noun: She drove a little, red Corvette. The comma drops out, however, if the final adjective is an integral part of the noun that follows: The birdwatcher spotted a beautiful bald eagle (unless it was lovely and had no feathers on its head).
Inseparables
Don’t separate what should not be separated – like subject and verb, or verb and object/complement. This is wrong: The thing is, that … [worse: adding another is before that]. And so is this: Many Somalis have termed the 2015 election, historic (from qz.com, 25 October 2015; the comma must go).
Connector
The comma does connect, but beware the run-on sentence, which (incorrectly) splices two independent sentences with a comma. Don’t do this: I am sending you this article, I thought you would find it interesting. Instead of that comma, you need a semi-colon, a period or a word like ‘because’.
Quotations
This is correct: He said, “I disagree”, and then went on to add, “but I won’t argue the point with you.” Use a comma before quoted speech (or a colon, although that wouldn’t work in the example just given because of the structure of the remaining part of the sentence). Put punctuation outside the quotation marks unless it’s actually part of the quotation (the final period is, the comma after ‘disagree’ may or may not be). In the USA, it’s usual to put all punctuation inside the quotation marks, but this is not desirable.
Next: colons and semi-colons
*Some expensive comma cases:
Osmium Shipping Corp v Cargill International SA, [2012] EWHC 571 (Comm)
AMJ Campbell Inc v Kord Products Inc (2003) 63 OR (3d) 375
Coyote Portable Storage LLC v PODS Enterprises Inc (2011) 85 Fed R Ev Serv 459, 2011 WL 1870593
Passwords – as Painless as Possible
Passwords are a necessary evil if you use a computer and the Internet for almost anything these days. A typical user has to remember 19 passwords on average, and a whopping 80% of us use the same password for multiple online accounts. Password-cracking technology has changed over the years and the definition of a “strong password” evolves over time. Some years ago, a strong password required about 8 characters, with mixed cases, at least one number and one special character, and could not contain words found in the dictionary – something like this: j6tLwFJ!.
Here’s the good news. Security experts are now saying that a very long password, even if it is made up of words found in the dictionary, is more secure than a short, complex password.
In an offline attack scenario (100 billion guesses per second) it will take only three days to crack j6tLwFJ! but 203 billion years to crack Pop!GoesTheWeasel. Which of these two passwords would you rather memorize? This is not to say we should use passwordpassword as a password. The calculation above is based on the time required to mathematically run through the permutations of the characters used. In practice, no hacker will attempt to break a password this way. Hacking programs will first try the most popular words used as a password, such as password, iloveyou, monkey, football, baseball, dragon, abc123, 12345 (up to 9), qwerty, letmein, superman, batman, and common names such as Michael, Thomas, Jennifer, Jordan, and Charlie.
My favourite way to pick a password is to use the first character of each word in a sentence of about 14 words and add a special character or two:
MhgfpiMM90Y!49 = My holy grail fountain pen is MontBlanc Meisterstuck 90 Years 149
The time required to crack this password in an offline attack scenario is two billion years.
If you are not sure whether your password is strong enough, there are online password strength checkers you can use. Here are a few examples:
So now you have a super secure password. You have a perfect sentence that you can remember well and you can fit in numbers and special characters nicely. It is tempting to reuse this on all your online accounts. You may argue that you only go to reputable websites of big companies. It should be safe, shouldn’t it? Remember the Heartbleed bug in 2014? This bug exploits the OpenSSL cryptography library which is used by two-thirds of the websites on the Internet. The compromised or vulnerable websites include Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Amazon Web Services, Tumblr, Google, Yahoo, Etsy, GoDaddy, Flickr, Netflix, SoundCloud, YouTube, and Dropbox. Still not convinced? Have a look at this interactive infographic.
Even if you have a very good memory, remembering 19 sentences (and which one is for which online account) is still quite challenging. This is where password managers come in handy. For a nominal annual fee, password managers keep track of all your passwords in encrypted format so you need to remember just one master password to unlock your password manager. Most of them allow you to sync across multiple devices so you will always have access. You can also use a password manager to generate strong, difficult-to-break passwords.
You might ask whether password managers are safe. After all, two well-known password managers, Dashlane and LastPass, were both affected by the Heartbleed bug. Password managers keep track of all your passwords and “safe notes” such as credit cards and bank accounts. You have a lot riding on the password manager’s integrity as a strong gatekeeper. There have been debates and studies detailing web flaws, authorization flaws, user interface flaws, and, last but not least, the bookmarklet flaw. There is a calculated risk in everything, and security is often a trade-off with convenience. Password managers automatically fill in your user name and password for you to save you the trouble of manually entering a random string of characters, and it turns out that this is something not easy to do securely. That said, it is still better to use difficult-to-guess passwords and password managers than using an easy-to-guess password over multiple websites, and until wearable authentication technology matures, this is as painless as it gets.
[This tip originally appeared on the Law Society of Saskatchewan Library’s Legal Sourcery Blog]
Why Public Wi-Fi Can Be Dangerous (& Why You Should Use Your Mobile Phone as a Hotspot)
You’re sitting at an airport terminal and want to do some quick law firm work. You whip out the laptop, scan the wireless networks and bingo! there’s a wi-fi network available called “Airport Terminal Free Public Wifi”. But before you connect, consider that you may be walking into a hacker’s trap.
A hacker sitting in the same area can be operating the wi-fi network with an inexpensive hotspot device. If you connect to the hacker’s wi-fi network, the hacker may be able to snoop in and see what you’re doing online. It doesn’t matter if you’re at a coffee shop, hotel, airport, or office building. There’s nothing to stop the hacker from naming the network to something legitimate-sounding, such as “Starbucks – Free Wifi” or “Pearson Terminal 1 – Public” or “Hilton Hotel – Free” to lure you in. It’s all part of the deception.
Even if you actually connect to a public wi-fi network, you still run the risk of hackers snooping into unencrypted network traffic, especially if the network does not require a password from you to connect to it. The unencrypted communications pipe can be leaky, and a hacker can potentially see communication between you and a website or you and an app (such as practice management software) that connects to the internet. Using encrypted websites with an address that starts with “https” (the “s” at the end stands for secure) adds an extra layer of security. A virtual private network (VPN) is typically encrypted from end to end and considered even more secure. It also helps to learn about the cloud service or app you are using – the user agreement should inform you about the extent to which the service is encrypted.
What should you do if you need to do law firm work over the internet and you can’t use public wi-fi? A safer alternative is to use your cell phone as a wi-fi hotspot and connect your laptop to it. You’ll have to pay for the data usage but at least you know the provenance of the connection.
