Popular Articles from the CPM ICYMI Newsletter (August – October 2024)
Every week subscribers receive the ICYMI enewsletter from the NCBA Center for Practice Management. The newsletter highlights tips, tools, trends, and techniques to help your law practice. The following are a few popular links from the past issues of the newsletter.
4 AI Search Engines I Use Every Day (July 26, 2024)
Search engines and Generative Artificial Intelligence tools are not the same – until they are. A few GAI tools can be used to search the web, and the results are often enhanced with links to sources which can help you fact check for hallucinations. This article includes a list of four GAI search engines, and recently OpenAI announced its own search engine, SearchGPT.
9 Quickest Ways to Improve Your Cyber Security (So Do Them Now) (August 2, 2024)
You may already have a password manager and use an authenticator for multi-factor authentication. But have you set up login alerts? Set up a secure DNS server? This article adds a few easy to implement options for your security toolbelt
8 Ways to Improve Your Phone’s Signal Strength (August 9, 2024)
Nothing is worse than dropping a call or having poor reception. PC Magazine provides some tips and tactics to help boost your phone’s signal for your urgent or important calls while on the go.
Is Your SSN in the National Public Data Breach? Here’s How to Find Out (August 23, 2024)
The National Public Data breach exposed millions of American’s Social Security numbers, along with names and addresses, to bad actors. Two cybersecurity companies have created websites that let you check to see if your information was exposed because of the breach. Check both and don’t forget to search for other states you may have lived in. Even if you don’t find anything, it doesn’t take long to freeze your credit reports.
Social Awareness as a Lawyer | Learning to Read the Room (August 30, 2024)
Social awareness and EQ (emotional intelligence) can be improved. For some it comes naturally, but for others it is something that needs to be learned and practiced. This article provides some pointers for sharpening your skills for “reading the room”.
Lawyers For Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Make Embarrassing Mistake in Bail Letter to Judge (September 20, 2024)
Metadata (sort of) strikes again. Technically metadata is system information about an electronic file. However, in ethics opinions, track changes and comments are included as potentially harmful metadata. The comment included in the filing isn’t damaging, just embarrassing. To note, the filing was a PDF, but if you don’t remove comments and track changes from a Word document before you save it to PDF then those annotations will simply be converted and available in the PDF document.
Email Management for Legal Professionals (September 27, 2024)
Thanks to ICYMI reader attorney Michael Dew for sharing this article on email management. His primary points are to keep your inbox “minimal”, have a secondary reminder system so you are not relying on your inbox as your task management system, use email subfolders, and get an email filing tool. Good information here! Of note, email filing tool SimplyFile is not (yet) compatible with browser-based versions of Outlook or the new Outlook.
AI and Legal Billing Practices: Be Reasonable, People! (October 4, 2024)
Mark Palmer writing for Attorney at Work tackles ethics questions surrounding AI and legal billing practices, informed by opinions from the ABA, Florida Bar, and DC Bar opinions. NC Lawyers be aware that Proposed 2024 FEO 1: Use of Artificial Intelligence in a Law Practice has been updated based on feedback. If you missed it the first time, please take a look. The primary changes to the proposed opinion are in Inquiry #6 – “Lawyer has an estate planning practice and bills at the rate of $300 per hour. Lawyer has integrated an AI program into the provision of legal services, resulting in increased efficiency and work output. For example, Lawyer previously spent approximately three hours drafting standard estate planning documents for a client; with the use of AI, Lawyer now spends only one hour preparing those same documents for a client. May Lawyer bill the client for the three hours of work that the prepared estate documents represent?”
Law Firm Financial Management: A Checklist to Close Out the Year (October 11, 2024)
Peggy Gruenke offers an excellent checklist of things to remember as we draw closer to year end. Additionally, review whether the Corporate Transparency Act rules apply to your business entity and be aware that to be compliant you will need to file a report with FinCen. Check your deadlines and if you need more information check out some NCBA CLE programs that address this topic.
Lessons from A Cautionary Tale in the Era of Efiling (October 18, 2024)
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate a lawsuit tossed after the plaintiff’s attorney didn’t respond to a motion for summary judgment because the attorney missed an email. The lawyer didn’t see the emailed notice because the email landed in a different folder, despite all the others finding their way into the main email box. What can you do to avoid this scenario?