Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot: The Best of the Guests

Last week, I published (okay: republished; yes, you got me, congratulations; but, you can’t stop history from repeating itself) the best of the best from the LOMAP Blog from the soon-to-be-Old Year of 2010 (just another rejected baby New Year).

But, after I posted that one, I felt like I was forgetting something, forgetting some . . . one, or someones. Selling somebody out, as it were. So, I’m here to set the record straight.

I neglected to mention (and maybe there was no place for it, sure), in my yearly review, the many, impressive contributions of our guest bloggers from this past year. We have been very fortunate to receive, in 2010, a number of fantastic guest blog posts, from a collective of eminent contributors, waxing pragmatic on a variety of topics.

Here are some of the best from our recent guests:

-Stephanie Kimbro authored a three-part summer series covering considerations surrounding the virtual law office. Those posts are most readily accessible by linking back through Stephanie’s final installment in that series, accessible here.

-We continue to receive consistent, quality submissions from Stephen Seckler, through his “The Solo and Small Firm Advantage” series. In one of my favorite posts from Steve this year, he talks about serendipity and referrals; that post is accessible here.

-In follow-up to an unsurprisingly mammoth post series of my own, covering social media marketing, I’ve so far received three field reports, from attorneys using social media to market their practices. Check out how Gabriel Cheong, Justin Kelsey and Leanna Hamill do it.

-Marketing and strategy consultant Dorie Clark provided her take on managing the media, in this post.

-Jack Cushman offered an in-depth, soup-to-nuts primer for the creation of a law practice website, which post is accessible here.

-Since, when it comes to technology, I’m only just a hack who writes convincingly, I figured that we had to get somebody contributing to this blog who knows what he’s talking about. To that end, we published Daryl Rinaldi, CEO of GizmoFish, earlier this month. Daryl explained the security upgrades in Windows 7; his post is available here.

-Chiara LaPlume wrote on a topic of consistent interest to our start-up clients, when she addressed considerations solos should take when choosing an entity, here.

Although these highlighted posts are representative of the quality of effort applied by our guest bloggers, these are not the only guest blog posts we’ve received this year. Review of our postings for 2010, via the drop-down function on the lower right-hand side of this page, will allow you to see our posts aggregated by month. Guest posts are identified as such, with that introductory appellation applied to each such contribution. I hate to leave any of our guest bloggers’ contributions off of the above catalogue; but, if I just provided a listing of all of our guest blog posts from the past year, it would have been too cheap an out . . . even for me. However, I’m not above recommending, even highly, that you take a look at each of our guest blog posts from this year, as each is uniquely qualified, in its way.

And, if you’re an attorney or affiliated professional, and you’d like to produce a guest post for the LOMAP Blog, feel free to reach out to me. (That is, so long as you’re not really selling male enhancement pills, or promoting some pornographic website.) Lord knows, I am more than happy to cede the mouthpiece that is this fantastic little blog that could from time to time. Not that I want to lose our unique “voice”; but, every now and then, I thoroughly enjoy taking a break from writing for the ol’ Practice Advisor. As you may imagine, the drafting of some of these posts is an effort of will, especially when you’re doing some serious digging through historical musical archives . . . I mean, researching and writing about law practice management topics. Fair warning: of course, I do edit all of our guest blog posts and add my own introduction to each such post, because I do expect that each of our guest blog posts will meet the standards of quality applied at this here blogger platform generally. If those terms be agreeable to you, you need only sign our release of liability/injury waiver, and you’re in. Kidding.

If there’s one regret I have in 2010, it has been that I discovered “Man versus Food” too early and “Man versus Toddler” too late.

See y’all in 2011, when I (and perhaps a troupe of guest bloggers along with me) promise to be back with some actually substantive posts.

. . .

Liner Notes

Anybody catch the James Taylor/Mavis Staples/Steven Tyler rendition of “Let It Be/Hey Jude” at the Kennedy Center Honors earlier this week? If not, check it out here. Now, Steven Tyler’s great, and I like Mavis Staples, too; but, after hearing JT’s intro of the song, I’m left with only great disappointment that he didn’t just do a full version on his own. (Two interesting JT facts: (1) he has already done some Beatles covers, including “With a Little Help from My Friends” and “Day Tripper”; (2) he was the first non-British artist to release an album with the Apple Records label, which released his first full-length studio album, “James Taylor”, in 1968.) I’ve covered at this blog, previously, my disturbing man love for James Taylor and his music (he’s sort of like a fingerpicking Abraham Lincoln), and his appearance at the Kennedy Center Honors has caused me to tweak my idea for this week’s Liner Notes. I had intended to do guest appearances by artists on songs (see the connection); but, then I realized that that would take far too much concentration for a short week. However, I could name a bunch of great James Taylor guest spots off the top of my head, including these accessible numbers:

“Dream Lover” by The Manhattan Transfer featuring James Taylor

“Heart of Gold” by Neil Young featuring James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt (on background vocals)

“Perfect Love” by Marc Cohn featuring James Taylor

“Mockingbird” by Carly Simon featuring James Taylor

“Sailing to Philadelphia” by Mark Knopfler (former lead singer of Dire Straits) featuring James Taylor (as surveyors Mason and Dixon)

“False Echoes (Havana 1921)” by Jimmy Buffett featuring James Taylor

“Up On the Roof” by Carole King featuring James Taylor

“Somedays You Gotta Dance” by the Dixie Chicks featuring James Taylor (from CMT’s excellent “Crossroads” series)

What a way to take 2010 home, dropping some JT knowledge.

Fin.

The (Second Annual) Posts of Christmas Past: The LOMAP Blog’s Calendar Year in Review (for 2010)

This is absolutely one of my favorite times of the year. First of all, I love Christmas. (No, not “the holidays”, Christmas.) Second of all, this is the week I get to write my (now I can say it’s) traditional Posts of Christmas Past blog. (Get it? “Posts” of Christmas past/”Ghosts” of Christmas Past. Pretty slick, I know.)

You know how when your favorite shows are just going along, being your favorite shows . . . and then, out of nowhere: a clip show. (The most egregious example being Seinfeld’s finale/clip show endovaganza. What a flaming disaster.) And, you hate clip shows. So, you’re like, “Really, show, that’s the best you can do? Why not just broadcast a rerun instead of being so obnoxious as to try to pawn a clip show off on me, like I won’t know. Like I won’t know!!” But, instead of hating all over clip shows like you do (really?), I like to think of clip shows as a glorious admission of human frailty. I know we don’t like to admit this out on the Northeast Megalopolis, and all: but, hey, (hey,) people get tired, and people get worn out. I like to think of teams of writers (or, let’s say, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, circa 1998) sitting down, and being like, “Well, I’ve got nothing. Nothing. I’m just so tired, and all I want to do is Christmasy stuff. And, the baby Jesus didn’t ride into Jerusalem so that I could work through the Christmas holiday. . . . Wait, wait. . . . I got it. Clip show. We’ll do a clip show.” Holla.

After 80 blog posts this year, I’m ready for a clip show. (I mean, 80! Really, what more do you want from me? Let me go down to the mall, for God’s sake!)

Here is the best of the Law Practice Advisor Blog for 2010 A.D., arrayed in chronological fashion, and sung in a Christmas caroly tuneway:

Iiiiiiiiiiin the first month of this year, the LOMAP Blog gave to me/
A post about starting a practice from three different budgetary perspectives:

Starting Your Practice on a Limited Budget: Hitting the Numbers

In the second month of this year, the LOMAP Blog gave to me/
An overview of records management within the law firm environment:

Garage Banned Music: Records Management and Disposition for Attorneys

In the third month of this year, the LOMAP Blog gave to me/
The rundown on referrals for Massachusetts practitioners:

Re: fer Referral Fees--Can and Do

In the fourth month of this year, the LOMAP Blog gave to me/
Meet Rachel!:

Thy Rod(s) and Thy Staff: LOMAP Grows, Hires Administrative Assistant

In the fifth month of this year, the LOMAP Blog gave to me/
Everything I ever needed to know about PDF and scanning I learned at the LOMAP Blog:

PD-F This! Scanners Too: The Ne(xt) Order

In the sixth month of this year, the LOMAP Blog gave to me/
Reasons why Facebook works for business marketing:

Like This: Facebook as a Business Marketing Utility

In the seventh month of this year, the LOMAP Blog gave to me/
Some tools and tips for securing information via email encryption:

Cypher Sell: Email Encryption, for the Security of the Well-Traveling Private Data

In the eighth month of this year, the LOMAP Blog gave to me/
Some wistful perspective on the importance of unplugging:

Picking the Grid-Lock: So Much Cooler Offline

In the ninth month of this year, the LOMAP Blog gave to me/
An admonition, to get your IOLTA reconciliation done, along with some practical how-to advice:

Don’t Be Embarrassed: Step Up to the Plate and Learn To Do Your IOLTA Trust Accounting

In the tenth month of this year, the LOMAP Blog gave to me/
An insanely long two-part series on mainstream social media marketing options for lawyers:

Platform Shoes: Social Media Marketing, Fitted for your Practice (Part the Fir£t)

In the eleventh month of this year, the LOMAP Blog gave to me/
Some good . . . nay, great, tips for client selection:

They’re Not Worthy: Tips for Client Selecting*

(*Thanks to Leanna Hamill and WANSS.)

In the twelfth month of this year, the LOMAP Blog gave to me/
Four distinct, quick tips, thought all up at the FirmFuture Conference:

Fantastic Four: Tips from FirmFuture

I would also give you and a partridge in a pear tree, only I’ve just got turkeys in my neighborhood currently, and they’re out of season; that, and I’m not entirely convinced that pears even grow on trees.

Because that’s the sort of dude I am, never resting on my laurels (which I used to think were calf muscles), it’s time to move on to considerations of New Year’s resolutions. I think that, for Christmas 2011, I’ll figure out a way to add some jolly holly graphics to the Blogger theme here. Maybe upload a picture of myself to the post riding around on a reindeer (either red- or green-nosed variety being equally acceptable), or something crazy like that. I know, I’ll see if I can get Bernie Taupin to co-author with me, maybe get some of the little couplets to rhyme. (Yeah, you try coming up with something that rhymes with perspectives . . . Other than detectives, okay . . .) Oh, a LOMAP Blog float as the last float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, to get some advance marketing done . . .

. . .

Liner Notes

Boy, it seems like it’s been forever ago that I did a Liner Notes section. I felt like I almost forgot how to do them; but, then I remembered that I don’t have any sort of plan or system in place anyway, so I can basically do whatever I want. Whew. That was close. (Yes, I just wrote: “Whew”. Imagine me wiping fake sweat from my brow. . . . No, it’s real.)

Last year, I listed a lot of Christmas songs here, leaving myself very little wiggle room for additional Christmas songs to include for 2010. (Isn’t that just like me, stealing from 2010 to pay 2009.) So, I had, what I thought was, the brilliant idea to ask everyone what their favorite Christmas songs are, and to include those in this very edition of Liner Notes. (You know, the whole everyone-else-does-the-work thing; I kind of specialize in that.) What I didn’t realize, of course, is that “everyone” is a lot of people. So, I only asked one person: our IT guy, Chris Morse. Chris’ favorite Christmas song, in case you were wondering, is “I Saw Three Ships”, Sting’s version.

Wwhhoooooaaaa, Boy. What do I do now?

Just kidding. I know tons of Christmas songs. And, I’ll table the survey idea for next year. (Maybe.)

Let’s tag this one “Modern Christmas”. Yeah. Like, modern artists doing new Christmas songs that you may not have heard. (My apologies if you’ve heard any of these. Feel free to think of me as a poser.)

Here are some of those:

“Backdoor Santa” by JET

“Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas” by the Eels (For whatever reason, old dudes love the Eels.)

“Black and Blue Christmas” by Chris Trapper

“A Great Big Sled” by The Killers

“Forget December” by Something Corporate

“The Christmas Song” by Weezer

“Winter Song” by Sarah Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson

Don’t you feel much hipper now? Now then, Go out there and buy that Wii . . . for yourself!

(And now, if I can just avoid another Christmas stocking debacle like last year, this Christmas will be just fine . . .)

Source Material: Directed Resources for Massachusetts Data Privacy Compliance

This week's Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyers e-Journal Law Practice Management Section Featured Practice Tip comes from LOMAP. This week's Tip highlights data privacy resources available from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation.

Read the Tip here.

To track back through LOMAP's extensive postings respecting Massachusetts Data Privacy, start at this root post.

Guest Post: The Reluctant Blogger: How a Blogging Skeptic Became a Blogging Believer

A little while back, I wrote a two-part tome on social media marketing.
(Part I is accessible here. Part II is available here.) Maybe you’re still reading it. You can stop now. The short series was theoretical, but inspired by some of the very impressive uses of social media marketing that I see being made by a number of attorneys. Determining that my impressions are too white-tower, I decided that my posts were in need of a follow-up series, drawn up by practicing attorneys: men and women on the street, delivering field reports. I reached out to several attorneys, and (eventually) got a positive response from each gracious one.

Leanna Hamill has been kind enough to draft the third installment of this follow-up series respecting social media marketing in practice. Leanna owns an estate planning and elder law practice in Hingham. When she isn’t helping her clients to plan for and face the changes, challenges and transitions of life, she’s somewhere in the mountains of New Hampshire. (See, Leanna’s really smart.) She also enjoys helping other attorneys with practice management inspiration and consulting. For more information on Leanna and her practice, visit her firm’s website, here, with attention paid to her professional profile. Leanna writes below about her popular blog, which blog is fed through her homepage.

. . .

When Jared asked me to write this guest blog post about how I used social media in my practice, I declined. I told him that I didn’t really use it--my Facebook use is mostly personal (although I do have a business page), and I don’t really use Twitter like the experts say I should. But, then, Jared said: “What about your blog? You use that to market your practice, and to get clients. You could write about that.”

Ah, yes. My blog. (Accessible here: http://www.HamillLawOffice.com.)

I like to say that I started my blog out of spite. It was about 4 years ago, and I was on a listserv with a bunch of attorneys who were always talking about blogging. I kept deleting their messages, because I thought that blogging was useless. Surely, no one looked for an attorney on the internet; and, certainly, no one would hire an attorney based solely on reading a blog. The messages kept coming, though; and, at some point, I thought: “Well, I’ll just file these instead of deleting them, just in case, some day, blogging becomes useful.”

Then, one Saturday morning, I formed a plan: I would set up a blog, and I would prove those other attorneys wrong. I would show them that no one would read my blog, and that, moreover, no one would hire me because of it. Sufficiently motivated, I dove in. I followed the rules: keeping my posts short and informative; starting off with the basics of my practice area first; and, posting 2-3 times per week for the first few months.

Sure enough, no one called. People were reading my blog; but, no one was hiring me. . . . Until, one day, when some other listserv emails about the importance of having a photo on your website sunk in, I had a friend of mine take a photo of me, to put up on my website. That first week I had my photo up, five people called or emailed me. And, depending on my posting frequency, that pace has pretty much kept up.

When my practice was newer and my referral sources fewer, my blog brought in about 70% of my business. Now, it brings in about 50% of my business, since the percentage of referrals, and of former clients using me for new matters, has gone up. My blog, though, attracts to me more than just clients. Attorneys who don’t practice elder law find it when they are looking for an elder law attorney to assist a client. Reporters find it when they are looking for a source for an article: see me, quoted here and there. Groups find it when they are looking for a speaker.

So, that was the story of how I got started blogging.

Now, here are my tips for bloggers:

-Write about things that interest you and your potential readers. If you are just writing about what you think you should write about (or what everyone else is writing about), but it doesn’t interest you, that will come through.

-Write regularly. Or, I should say, post regularly. I sometimes write 6 posts in one sitting, and then schedule them to go up over the next 3 or 4 weeks.

-Keep it short and simple. You aren’t writing a law review article, or a treatise. You’re writing in order to give laypeople the essential information they need to either realize they can do something on their own, or decide that you are the person to help them with it.

-Repurpose your blog posts. Use them in your eNewsletter. Expand them to create article-length pieces. Compile your most popular posts, and turn them into a booklet for new clients. Piece them all together to compile a book, even if it’s self-published.

Guest Post: Remember Two Things: Expanding Your Social Networks to Create Meaningful Connections and to Build Business

A little while back, I wrote a two-part tome on social media marketing. (Part I is accessible here. Part II is available here.) Maybe you’re still reading it. You can stop now. The short series was theoretical, but inspired by some of the very impressive uses of social media marketing that I see being made by a number of attorneys. Determining that my impressions are too white-tower, I decided that my posts were in need of a follow-up series, drawn up by practicing attorneys: men and women on the street, delivering field reports. I reached out to several attorneys, and got a positive response from each gracious one.

Justin Kelsey, of Kelsey & Trask, PC, has been kind enough to draft the second installment of this follow-up series respecting social media marketing in practice. Justin is a founding partner of Kelsey & Trask, has bachelor’s degrees in the humanities and mechanical engineering (wait, what??) and concentrates his practice in divorce mediation and representation, bankruptcy, paternity, 209A and modification cases. When he was younger, he wanted to be Captain Picard from Star Trek . . . probably with hair, though. Justin is the co-creator (with Scott Stevenson) of the Stevenson-Kelsey Divorce Spousal Support Calculator. To find out more about Justin, check out his profile page at the Kelsey & Trask website. In addition to his other standout accomplishments, and having great taste in television shows, Justin, and his partner, Matt Trask, have done some really innovative things with respect to web and social media marketing. But, don’t take my word for it. I’ll just let Justin tell you . . .

. . .

At the request of Jared Correia (who first inspired us to take the leap into social media marketing) we have agreed to share some of our thoughts and experiences in the hopes that we can help inspire others to take the same leap. This post will endeavor to answer the questions of just ‘How’ and just ‘Why’, as those relate to Kelsey & Trask’s use of web and social media marketing.

Why Do We Blog?

Reason #4 (Yes, this is a Countdown!) --Unique Ways to Engage your Audience. When potential clients come to our website, it’s because they’re looking for our firm, or it’s because they’re looking for legal information. Firm information and legal information, then, must be presented in a clear, but also very predictable, fashion. What this means is that almost all legal websites (even ones as well-written as ours) look very similar. With the addition of a blog component placed central to your website, you can be more informal, presenting information that is interesting and interactive (as well as informative), and even sometimes fun--like countdowns!

Reason #3--Dynamic Content and SEO. An important part of search engine optimization (i.e.--obtaining the holy grail of page 1 Google search results) is including “dynamic” content on your webpage. Constantly changing the content for a webpage, though, can be time-consuming and/or expensive. Instead of making constant page edits, then, we have chosen to integrate our latest blog entries (from both “Scaling the Summit: A Family Law Blog” and “Don’t Go Alone: A Bankruptcy Law Blog”) directly into the homepages of our respective websites (Family Law homepage and Bankruptcy Law homepage). Therefore, every time we update our blog, we’re updating our website. Best of all, this system is not at all complicated to set up, and any web designer worth his salt should be able to figure it out.

Reason #2--It’s Fun. An important factor in motivating yourself, and finding the time for marketing, is to market by doing things that you already enjoy doing. For example, if you like dining out for lunch, then you should schedule more networking lunches. A theme you’ll see developing in this post is that we have found ways to make blogging, tweeting, and similar, long-term projects fun, and this makes them infinitely easier to keep up with. When it comes to blogging, this means choosing to address topics that interest you. Take inspiration from everyday life, or movies, or music, or whatever you’re into. Here is an example of how a funny moment in a television show inspired one of our posts.

Reason #1--It’s FREE! Marketing is all about ROI = return on investment. And, although blogging takes time, there are many blogging platforms that are free and easy to use. Anyone who can use email can create a blog, and can update it. For a startup firm (which we were only two years ago), this is a great way to invest your time in marketing without having to dip further into the red.

Facebook & Twitter: Creating & Maintaining Connections

I recently started looking up some of my fellow Boston University School of Law alumni to see what they had been up to since we lost touch. Of course, there were many whom I could picture--but, I couldn’t remember their names. So, I went into my closet, and found the BU Law student facebook, a book of pictures and names of new BU students when we were all 1Ls--like a backwards yearbook. Then, armed with a refreshed recollection, I started Googling my former classmates, and found many of them on Facebook.

In addition to helping me to build my personal network, Facebook, and my facebook, provided me with my very own “Who’s On First” moment with my wife:

Me: “I’ve been looking up BU alums. I couldn’t remember their names, so I checked the facebook.”
Wife: “How did you find people by just their face on Facebook?”
Me: “I used the facebook first.”
Wife: “I heard you the first time; but, How do you search Facebook by faces?”
Me: “No. I’m trying to explain that I used the facebook, then I looked them up on Facebook.”

--and so on. Really.

Once I escaped that conversation, I realized that Facebook presents an excellent method for reconnecting with many people at once, and for instantly allowing them to catch up with what I’ve been doing since law school, and vice versa. In addition, any of them who “Like” our firm’s Facebook page will get regular updates on the news we’re publishing. We also post new blog entries through our Facebook page, as well, so that all my new “Friends” are exposed to those, too.

In this way, we use Facebook to turn our social connections into potential business connections. As anyone who has started a small business knows, family and friends are excellent sources of referrals, especially when you are still building your professional networks; and, Facebook is a great way to keep up with extended social networks (the people you know, but don’t see on the holidays).

Twitter, can be used in a similar way; but, I have found Twitter to be more effective at introducing me to new people that I can network with. In many ways, Twitter is really just the Facebook “News Feed”, standing alone--take a look at my Twitter feed, and at my partner, Matt Trask’s Twitter feed, to see what I mean. What we’ve found in our experience is that Twitter has led to the creation of many new connections (with people we would not have met otherwise), mostly through the use of the “Retweet” feature. Twitter is designed to allow anyone to easily repost what you have posted by giving a cite back to your username; the most common method for achieving this citation is through the use of the retweet. If you write something interesting, or useful, or funny, you will often get retweeted, and so introduced to other people’s social networks via their friends’ feeds.

I’ve essentially found the Twitter retweet to be a better implementation of LinkedIn’s connections. Through their introduction of you, via your tweet, to other users’ networks, retweeters essentially “recommend” you to their followers, every time they retweet your posts. Through these retweet-spurred connections, I have found multiple local lawyers, with whom I have ended up having coffee or lunch, thereby making additions to my personal referral network.

Though this all may sound like a lot of work, I will come back to my same point about blogging: this type of networking and advertising can be fun. It is informal enough that you can make jokes and present information that might not always be educational. And, you can keep up with the interesting and/or humorous news that others post. While I stick to the rule that I wouldn’t post anything on Facebook or Twitter that I wouldn’t want a client seeing, I certainly don’t have to be as formal (or as boring!) as I am in producing our official website content. In the areas of divorce and bankruptcy law (our main practice areas), finding ways to make otherwise heavy topics at least a little lighter can be the key to engaging social and professional connections who would not otherwise remember us.

The Professional Sites: LinkedIn, Justia, Avvo, etc.

Although LinkedIn is more like Facebook and Twitter in its design, we use it more like Justia and Avvo, i.e.--for advertising and publishing, instead of connecting. LinkedIn has some powerful tools for connecting, and we advertise our profiles (mine and Matt’s) as another way to connect. But, because of its bland design, and the failure of most users to use the news feed feature (probably because it was only recently added), LinkedIn just isn’t as dynamic as some of the other social media options.

The way to get value out of LinkedIn is to use the Groups. Groups are where you can find the discussions that the basic LinkedIn profile page is lacking. Now, you can also link your Twitter feed into your LinkedIn profile, to create some chatter there. (You can do the same thing for your Facebook status updates, incidentally.) And, for me, that means that my Twitter posts go to my LinkedIn page, as well, essentially giving me the opportunity to post and connect with two communities, or to kill two birds, as it were, using one stone.

Similarly, our Twitter feeds, LinkedIn profiles, webpages and blogs are all advertised on our Justia and Avvo profiles. These sites allow us to provide publications/legal guides, and, in the case of Avvo, to answer posted questions. In most cases, these publications, legal guides or answers are just regurgitated content from our website or blog; but, even so, this means that we are able to take advantage of the research and writing time we’ve already spent to create even more web buzz. Repurposing like this can save you lots of time, while extending the reach of your expertise.

Whether it’s through the use of these sites or others, the more you can cross-link your content on the web, the more likely it becomes that you will be able to find potential consumers, and to make meaningful connections with them. If you can find these sites, then you can bet that your potential clients will get there, too. And, once you’ve created a profile on any of these sites, you can basically copy the same information for new profiles on any of these other sites.

In the end, it all comes back to the fact that these services are easy to use, free to use and can be made fun to use (or, at least, more fun than writing press releases, or paying for a yellow pages ad). In all of our advertising and marketing we try to remember two things: (1) customers can’t hire who they can’t find; and, (2) generally, customers hire professionals that they like. If you’re not on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and you don’t have blog or profile sites other than your own website, how many customers can’t connect with you, and how many can’t find you at all?

BlackBerry Messenger: My Best Attempt at an Unbiased Review

I will begin with a full disclosure of my irrational love of the BlackBerry. I interned in the corporate legal department at a company called Nypro for seven years; Nypro is a contract manufacturer on BlackBerry for RIM. …I hope that was public information. Just kidding. So, for no reason other than undying loyalty, I will always use a BlackBerry, no matter how awesome iPhones, Droids, and all the smartphones of the future may be.

Now, although I will rave about the BlackBerry Messenger application, I will have a few negative things to say about it, later. Good stuff first. BBM offers emoticons galore! Oh, our target audience is not primarily Bieber-loving tweenage girls? Moving on to lawyerly topics, then…

The BBM application displays a chronological, dialogue-friendly chat view, with no character limit per message. The part of the network that SMS runs over has a limit of 160 characters per message, which, in my experience, is far too low; and, sending (and receiving…) multiple messages is inconvenient in more than one way. BBMs, however, use the data part of the network, which delimits the character restriction. This really could change your life. The first time you type a 2,000 character message, and it goes through all at once, you’ll be like, “It did not just do that!!”; you’ll see.

Also, BBM’s Group Chat function is incredibly simple to use, and, in theory, extraordinarily useful. It’s basically SMS conferencing, with all the benefits of BBM mentioned herein. Unfortunately, in our Droid-and-iPhone-loving society, the odds of using this in any important business-related situation are low. So sad.

The security of using BBM should be of considerable importance to anyone in the legal field, and this issue falls heavily in the application’s favor. BBM messages are encrypted and more secure than SMS. BBM chat files are stored exclusively on RIM’s servers, so, only RIM can access them-- networks, governments, and every other entity cannot, without RIM’s permission (and, from what I gather, if your data were Tom Brady, RIM would be Matt Light). That level of security, in my understanding, is totally unique to BBM. All other instant messaging programs are not hardware-based, so networks constantly access their messages.

BBM offers time-saving advantages, too, particularly in the form of messaging files. It’s faster. Realistically, it probably saves only a few seconds each time. But, consider the circumstances in which you are most likely to be depending on your mobile device to transfer a file. You’re multitasking, right? Maybe you’re running late to the train, and are approaching a dicey intersection, about to take your life in your hands, in a real-life game of Frogger. In these situations, seconds are more like hours.

Then, there’s pinging. If you’re familiar with Facebook, and have wondered what the purpose of “poking” is, you may find yourself similarly confused by the ability to ping via BBM. But, unlike Facebook’s poking, there is utility here. Because BBM runs in real-time (much more so than a Facebook app), pinging a fellow BBM-er is a quicker way of providing an alert. For example, if my silly friend Jessica would forego her stupid Android Motorola Cliq in favor of a BlackBerry, I wouldn’t have to text her every time I was on my way to pick her up for our weekly Sunday morning Whole Foods trips. I could just ping her. I could accomplish that in one second. Enough with the full five seconds it takes to text “OMW”. Over the course of a year, that would save me THREE MINUTES AND TWENTY-EIGHT SECONDS. Okay, maybe I’m overselling pinging; but, honestly, I feel like it makes a difference, and I think you would, too.

Next, there are a couple seemingly dispensable features that should prove rather useful. First, the ability to update your status allows you to alert all of your contacts, at once, that you are not available to respond to messages, for example. A second feature, the inclusion of an avatar, provides a less noticeable benefit: It invokes your (hopefully professional) personality. There is a reason we associate our (again, hopefully professional) images with our Twitter profiles, Facebook pages, blogs, and websites, right?

More, record-keeping could not be any simpler. Saving a full chat history involves the following: click, scroll, click, done. And, you can choose whether the conversation saves to your device or to your memory card. And, as it is occurring, each dialogue stores as one chat, rather than individual messages, which means less inbox clutter, or continual, repetitive deleting.

Finally, BBM provides Delivery Notifications. It is often useful to have confirmation when your messages are sent, particularly when such is indicated with an unassuming little “D”. It also provides a “Read Notification”; but, since I could do without that function…

I suppose it’s time to be unbiased.

BBM’s “Read Notification” is often touted as a benefit unique to BBM. But, I think this is subject to personal preference, and since I’m not particularly fond of it, I’m labeling it as a mild disadvantage. Mild, because I really only dislike it in theory. I don’t care if people read my messages and don’t respond immediately. I can’t imagine why it would be particularly useful to know this information. However, I can imagine somewhat less laid-back individuals feeling slighted by a lack of immediate response. Fortunately, none of said individuals are among my contacts. If they are among yours, my advice here would be to make sure you update your status to “Busy”, if you plan to read messages without following through with a response, so that you’re still cool with all your contacts.

More substantively, as a PIN-to-PIN form of instant messaging, BBM is linked to the hardware. So, when any of your BBM contacts upgrades his or her device, you will need to add the new PIN to your BBM contacts. For example, my sister supplemented her dinosaur, Army-issued, BlackBerry (PIN #1) with a personal BlackBerry (PIN #2), and then switched her service provider, and thus her device (PIN #3), only to have said device eaten (yes, eaten) by one of her Boston Terriers (nice work, Murphy), and had to replace it (PIN #4). BlackBerry users will understand that the real hassle with all of this is that one of the two people engaged in adding contacts has to find his or her PIN, so that the other one can initiate the “Add Contact” request. And, we never remember our PINs, and we often forget where to find them. Though, current versions of BBM actually make it pretty easy to locate, and a quick tip to find out what your device’s PIN: in an SMS or email message, type MYPIN and hit the space key. Go ahead, try it. Yup: magic. Even better, may I suggest that if you are the one getting a new device, avoid causing your sister continual frustration by backing up your contacts’ PINs on your media card, or remotely. Muuuuch easier.

There is another way to add contacts, which may be slightly more user-friendly: barcodes. I hadn’t used this feature before, and although I couldn’t test it here with Rodney “iPhone” Dowell and Jared “Droid” Correia, I did try it out quickly with a fellow BBM-er. It’s very easy to do; but, of course, its convenience is limited to adding contacts when they are in your physical presence.

Finally, there is an easily addressed security issue: PINs are permanent. When you upgrade your device, BBM messages intended for you may be sent accidentally to an old device. Inform your contacts of your updated PIN. Don’t sell your used BlackBerry. Maybe even destroy it.

One last note. I've spent at least ten minutes trying to find a witty way of incorporating a reference to the most classic Christmas movie scene ever with the "BB" part of "BBM". That's too much time wasted already; so, there you have the link.

Fantastic Four: Tips from FirmFuture

This week's Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyers e-Journal Law Practice Management Section Featured Practice Tip comes from LOMAP. This week's Tip offers four diverse suggestions drawn from sessions of the recent FirmFuture Conference. (I would say "four for the price of one"; but, these tips are free. Apparently, making money is antithetical to my nature.)

Read the Tip here.

(Shortest blog post ever!! Take that, haters!)

Guest Post: Starting Five: Windows 7 Security Upgrades

Since I have spent far too much time blathering on at this blog about technology that I know very little about, I’d say it’s high time we provide an expert opinion. To that end, we are very pleased to have the following guest post, on security upgrades for Windows 7, from Daryl Rinaldi. Daryl is the Owner of GizmoFish, LLC, an IT support company serving the greater Boston area, and handling the IT needs of several law firms. To learn more about GizmoFish’s services, click here. For useful tips and tricks respecting technology, visit GizmoFish’s GizmoBlog. For questions respecting Daryl’s below post, he has been crazy (like a fox?) enough to provide his direct contact information, for follow-up questions, and as follows:

Email: drinaldi@gizmofish.com/Phone: (866) MY-GIZMO ext. 4

. . .

You may have heard of, and may have some vague notions about, improved security within Microsoft Windows 7. From the perspective of the owner of an IT support company, which is responsible for the security of clients’ networks, the question is an important one, and one that I am asked frequently. Fortunately, the short answer is that, ’yes’, there are significant security improvements that have accompanied Windows 7; the long answer requires the addressing of a few more details, so that you may understand exactly what Windows 7 brings to the table in the form of security improvements:

More Secure, More Easily

Windows 7 has many security enhancements that not only improve security, but also make enhanced security easier to manage, and so, easier to live with:

(1) Internet Explorer 8, in Windows 7 (and also available in XP and above; Internet Explorer 9 has been released in beta), has several new features to make web browsing safer, as follows:

-InPrivate Browsing allows you to surf the web without leaving a trail in Internet Explorer, so that others can’t see where you’ve been surfing;

-The SmartScreen filter protects users against evolving web and social engineering threats by automatically blocking access to malicious websites;

-XSS Filter is IE8’s cross-site scripting filter, and protects you against a certain type of malicious website content that has become one of the leading online threats; and,

-Domain Highlighting clearly shows the root domain of any website that you are visiting, so you can quickly and easily tell whether you are on a phony phishing site set up to look like a legitimate site, like PayPal’s, or eBay’s, or Bank of America’s.

(2) Windows Vista introduced BitLocker Drive Encryption. Some versions of Windows 7 have an enhanced version of BitLocker that enables you to easily encrypt portable storage devices like USB flash drives and external harddrives.

(3) Windows Defender protects against spyware, and is now built in to Windows 7. Plus, Microsoft Security Essentials, which is a full-featured anti-malware program that protects against viruses, spyware, worms, Trojan horses, and etc., is available as a free download. Windows 7 also features an improved Windows Firewall.

(4) Windows 7 offers better User Access Controls over security. You can, for example, adjust how often your computer interrupts you to warn of changes to the system. Windows 7 also makes it easier for users to run security-related tasks as non-administrators without hindering their ability to accomplish tasks on the PC.

(5) Windows 7 has improved Backup and Restore Capabilities. In addition to a user-friendly interface, the Windows 7 backup and restore tool allows you to create complete system image backups, so that you can restore your entire PC in the event of a catastrophic system crash.

There are other security enhancements in Windows 7 that help to justify an upgrade; but, for now, I'll leave you with these. I think you'll agree that Microsoft Windows 7 really does provide better security, while being less intrusive about it than previous versions of Windows.