Small Law Firms, Technology

ABA Legal Technology Guide: Top Tips For Solo And Small-Firm Lawyers

Here are some tips that really stood out from this year's edition of the book.

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Every month, when the recently formed Legal Technology and Law Practice Committee that I chair for my local bar association meets, we host a remote technology-related Q&A with a legal technology expert, with the end goal being to educate bar members and help them make better choices when it comes to incorporating technology into their firms. Past interviews have included Bob Ambrogi, Kevin O’Keefe, and Mitch Kowalski, and you can listen to recordings of those Q&As here.

Yesterday, during the latest monthly meeting, our guest presenter, Allison Shields, recommended a number of resources for solo and small-firm lawyers seeking to incorporate new technologies into their law practices.  After we ended the Q&A, one of the members of the Committee turned to me and asked, “What was the name of that book she mentioned?”

“The 2018 Solo and Small Firm Legal Technology Guide,” I replied. “It’s a really useful book.” As he hastily scribbled down the title, he said, “I’m buying it. It sounds like just what I need.”

There’s a reason he was so interested in this particular book. It’s because choosing the right legal technology tools for your law office isn’t easy — especially for solo and small-firm lawyers. Culling through the vast amounts of information available online and off, and then figuring out what will work best for your law firm, can be a challenging and time-consuming endeavor.

That’s where this book comes in.[1] It’s written by legal technology experts, is updated annually, and is chock-full of the information solo and small-firm lawyers need in order to make knowledgeable, informed decisions about law office technology. The authors — Attorney Sharon Nelson, Certified Information Systems Security Professional John Simek, and Digital Forensics Examiner Michael Maschke — cover a vast range of hardware and software, provide a wealth of information and tips on choosing the right tools for your firm, and offer their perspective on the impact of emerging technologies on the practice of law.

While I certainly can’t include all of their advice in this post (you’ll have to buy the book for that!), here are some tips that really stood out from this year’s edition of their book.

Multifunctional printers

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First, here’s some hardware advice for lawyers seeking to purchase new printers for their law firm. If you’re considering multifunctional printers/copiers, these are just a few of the questions the authors suggest you ask in order to determine how much functionality your firm truly needs:

  • Do you need to print in both color and black and white?
  • Do you need duplex printing?
  • Do you need to scan documents into your firm’s systems?
  • Will incoming faxes be printed or sent to email as an image?
  • How much printing capacity do you need?
  • Can you fully erase the hard drive when your lease expires?

The entire list of questions can be found at the end of Chapter 4.

Choosing law practice management software

When it comes to successfully implementing a legal practice management system into your law firm — which the authors refer to as a “must-have for today’s modern law office” — they note in Chapter 12 that firms often make two common mistakes that are important to avoid.

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The first is failing to get everyone in the firm to buy into the idea. As the authors explain, “(Y)ou will not realize the full return on your investment if only a few employees use it.”

Second, many lawyers fail to invest in training. Make sure that your employees receive training and that you take into account the time they’ll need to spend learning how to use the software, whether in-person or using training resources provided by the software company.

Mobility Tips

The authors also offer a lengthy — and very useful — list of mobility tips for the legal road warrior at the end of Chapter 18. Here are some of my favorites:

  • Pack a surge protector;
  • Purchase a lock for your laptop;
  • Back up and encrypt your data in case your laptop is stolen (unless encrypting data is illegal in the country to which you’re traveling);
  • Encrypt USB flash drives and external hard drives; and
  • Download the app GateGuru (one of my most-used travel apps!), which provides maps of major airports, including locations and ratings of restaurants and stores.
Tips for traveling abroad

The authors also provide a handy — and extensive — list of tips for lawyers who will be traveling abroad. The full list can be found at the end of Chapter 18, but here are some key pieces of advice:

  • Travel with a burner phone and a “clean” tablet and/or laptop;
  • If you do travel with your regular smartphone, disable fingerprint readers and other biometrics since U.S. law enforcement agencies can use warrants to compel you to unlock your phone with your fingerprint (and compelling you to unlock your devices using other biometric data likely isn’t far behind);
  • Use a password manager for all of your passwords, but instead of storing its software on your phone, store and access the encrypted password vault in a cloud service such as Dropbox;
  • Enable two-factor authentication on your social media accounts; and
  • No matter what device you use while traveling, assume that all electronic communication is subject to interception, so use a secure encrypted method of communication and also use a properly configured VPN.

Those are just some of the tips covered in this book designed to help solo and small-firm lawyers make the right technology choices for their law practices. There’s lots more where this advice came from, so if you’re in the market for new technology for your law firm, you know right where to start!

[1] Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.

Niki BlackNicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and the Legal Technology Evangelist at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

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