I welcome you to attend this year’s MBA Annual Conference, scheduled for March 11^th and 12^th at the Copley Westin inBoston.  Having spoken at several of these events and attended many more, I don’t kid when I tell you that this year’s conference will be the best one put on by the MBA.

The Conference will kick off Thursday at 9:00 with a three-hour plenary session on the Data Privacy Act, including discussions on “What is the Data Privacy Act,” “It’s Lost, Now What,” as well as “Key Tools to Prevent a Breach.”  This same session was attended by approximately 600 participants last month in Springfield.

There will be a lunchtime session on “Social Media For Lawyers: How to Boost Your Practice and Avoid Pitfalls,” chaired by my good friend Bob Ambrogi.

In the afternoon, Dustin Cole, President of Attorneys Master Class based out of Florida, as well as my mentor, will provide a three hour session on “Building Your Business in the Post-Crash Economy.”  If you have never heard Dustin speak, now is the time, as his advice has been the cornerstone of both my private practice as well as Law Practice Strategies since 2000.

Thursday will also feature one-hour sessions on Recent Developments in Bankruptcy Law, Real Estate Law, and Employment Law.

Friday promises to be equally exciting with two tracks, one a “Recent Developments” track featuring some of the finest attorneys in Massachusetts, as well as a full-day Law Practice Management Track. 

Allison Shields of Legal Ease Consulting, based out of New York, will be speaking on “Avoiding Lawyer Meltdown,” along with Lisa Terrizzi and Gina Walcott, Executive Director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers.

Ross Kodner, President of MicroLaw, and based out of Milwaukee, will be giving a tremendously-received discussion titled “From Paper to Pixels: The Paper LESS Office Works, Paperless Doesn’t.”  Local ABA Blog Top 100 attorneys Gabriel Cheong, Leanna Hamill and Andrea Goldman will be discussing how to get the best bang for your buck with technology.

The Law Practice Management track will conclude with the ever-popular and always enjoyable “60 Sites in Sixty Minutes,” presented by Rodney Dowell, Bob Ambrogi, Ross Kodner and myself.  Having seen the sites, I promise you that you will not want to leave the conference early.

The entire lineup of the conference can be found here.  You may register online here.

The MBA has turned up the heat on bringing Massachusetts Attorneys the best national speakers, speaking on their specific area of expertise.  At some point in my legal career, I have been influenced by each of these individuals.  The price of admission will pale in comparison to the amount of information you will receive and bring back to your practice.  I promise you that you will be changed person after this conference.

I hope to see you there.

I know its been some time since I last posted, and I apologize.   While there is no good excuse to not keep one’s blog updated, even a short paragraph to say you still exist, the past 5 months have been interesting, which is a diplomatic way of saying it’s been crazy, and not always in a good way.  I’ve taken my life experiences, both good and not-so-good, the past few months and have prepared outlines for some articles, hopefully to be published by the American Bar Association and my friends at Total Attorneys, depending on whether or not I can write about my life with a deadline looming. 

Last week, I recently hopped back on the wagon to attend some meetings at the ABA’s General Practice Small and Solo Conference in Los Angeles.  I must first confess that I don’t like Los Angeles.  Most of my paranoia is from preconceived notions about losing hubcaps within blocks after having rented your car, smog, crowd, and the Lakers.  I was pleasantly surprised when the smog lifted the day I arrived to reveal blue skies, but I still hate the Lakers. 

The 3 day conference, while filled primarily with marketing and strategy meetings, featured several tracks regarding law practice management and, while the name of the section implies the sessions were focused on small firms and solo practitioners, this was not the case.  The first session I attended featured my friends Lisa Solomon and Nicole Black discussing “Six Important Principles for Effective Participation in Social Media Platforms”  The materials may be found here.  If, however, there are a few pearls from that session which I can impart to you immediately, it is that you cannot just join a site such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook and just start posting away.  You need to first set your goals for participation, then create an identity for yourself and be consistent with your message.  This is a major reason why I do not accept a client’s friend request on my Facebook account.  My Facebook account is, and will always be, a personal social media platform for me, while you will regularly find my legal content on my Twitter and LinkedIn pages. 

I then attended back-to-back presentations from friend and baseball purist Ross Kodner.  Other than having an affinity for some of the finer foods containing chili and carbohydrates, Ross is one of the finest legal tech minds I know.  He is generous with his time and knowledge (he shares his CLE powerpoints here)  Ross’ first presentation dealt specifically with top Word, WordPerfect, Outlook and Acrobat tips, my favorite for Acrobat being the Ctrl-B shortcut to create a bookmark, as well as creating Auto Text entries in Word.  His second presentation focused on creating proper “naming conventions” for your firm (isn’t it easier to find a document titled “2009.10.14 letter to Bill Clinton re: TRO,” rather than “ltr to Bill Clinton?”)  He also discussed document management systems, Worldox specifically, and their benefits for a legal practice of any size. 

My friend and Acrobat guru and mentor David Masters discussed Acrobat tips and how to get the most out of it.  David discussed how all attorneys should be doing their document management in Acrobat because of its sheer power, from processes as easy as converting a Word file to Acrobat by just hitting the Adobe PDF button on the top of Word, to combining files of any type by just hitting the “Combine” button on Acrobat, to more advanced functions such as Bates Stamping, which is essentially a three-keystroke process (Advanced-Document Processing-Bates Stamping) 

While I am a contingency attorney, many of my clients are not, so my last session was “Fees, Finance & Frugality), presented by Allison Shields of Legal Ease Consulting and Kevin Chern, President of Total Attorneys.  Allison and Kevin presented a smart and informative session on how to 1) discuss billing issues with your clients, and 2) how to bill your clients.  For the former, the two noted that many attorneys they speak to are apprehensive about discussing billing with their clients.  Allison and Kevin stated that discussing fees as early as possible in the relationship not only gets it out of the way, but it 1) establishes boundaries in the attorney-client relationship and 2) sets out goals by discussing billing levels for certain aspects of the scope of later work potentially contracted.  Kevin also mentioned that a client whose first question is “how much do you charge” is most likely a tire kicker and will be speaking with other attorneys as well.  With respect to how to bill your clients, the two agreed that it is imperative to bill often and regularly.  A client is more likely to pay a $500.00 bill every two weeks than a $2,000.00 bill received every two months.  Lastly, the two mentioned that it is beneficial to bill soon after a good result or good news, an obvious yet rarely-considered point.  In my opinion, this panel was one of the highlights of the weekend and I strongly urge that you download the materials.

Prior to my departing for the flight from LAX to Boston, I stopped by the Staples Center to give the Lakers another chance.  While it didn’t, I left Los Angeles with some solid morsels which I am passing on to you as well as my clients.  If you are not a member of the ABA, I suggest you do, as this conference was excellent, and I presume all future ones will be as well.  As stated before, as an added feature, you can download all the materials from the GP Solo and Small Firm Conference here.  While still not a fan of LA, I have become a bigger fan of the ABA General Practice Solo and Small Firm Section, its leaders and volunteers, and hope to provide you with additional law practice management tips and tricks in the months ahead.  Until then, look for me at www.twitter.com/AlanKlevan, where I will be spreading the gospel in 140 characters or less.

First I would like to thank the Law Education Institute and the Colorado Bar Association for allowing me to speak at their annual conference last week.  It was a refreshing experience to get out to Vail and speak to a wonderful and enthusiastic group of attorneys.

It seems as if attorneys are yearning for more knowledge on how to use Acrobat and discover the power of PDF.  To that end, my friends Rick Borstein and Mark Middleton have been doing legal eSeminars on various subjects.  The next four are as follows:

Save Time, Meet Deadlines – January 15, 2009 1:00 P.M. ET

Legal Redaction and Metadata Removal – February 12, 2009 1:00 P.M. ET

Creating and Working with PDF Forms for the Legal Market – February 19, 2009 1:00 P.M. ET

Creating Electronic Closing Binders using Adobe Acrobat 9 - February 26th, 1:00 P.M. ET

For more information, click here.

These are worthwhile seminars for anyone interested in using PDFs for your practice.