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Category Archives: Did You Know?

The Mac Lawyer Interviewed on The Law Entrepreneur

Posted on April 25, 2016 by Ben Stevens Posted in Did You Know?, Office Management, This Blog Leave a comment
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Ben Stevens a/k/a The Mac LawyerMy readers probably know a good bit about the “tech side” of my life, but they might not know much about my “real job”. I am the Senior Partner in a boutique law firm in Spartanburg, SC that exclusively handles family law cases. My practice areas  include high asset divorces, contested child custody cases, and other complex family law issues. As I like to describe it, I solve puzzles for a living.

If you’re curious how I ended up doing this and what led me to this point in my career, you may want to listen to Neil Tyra’s interview with me. As you may recall, I blogged a few weeks ago about Neil’s podcast, The Law Entrepreneur with Neil Tyra, and he was kind enough to have me as the featured guest on this week’s episode, Ben Stevens – The Evolution Of A Southern Family Law Attorney (Episode # 13).

I enjoyed being a guest on his podcast, and Neil does a great job interviewing his guests while making them feel comfortable during the process. This podcast has become one of my favorites, and I hope that you’ll consider checking it out and subscribing to it. Many thanks to Neil for having me on, and I look forward to talking with him more in the future. To find out more about The Law Entrepreneur click here, or to subscribe via iTunes click here.

The Impact of Social Media on Divorce & Child Custody Cases

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Ben Stevens Posted in Did You Know?, Social Media, Technology 9 Comments
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social media evidence in divorce casesSeveral weeks ago, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers released the results of its recent survey of its Fellows, which includes The Stevens Firm‘s Senior Partner, Ben Stevens, about the impact of social media and technology in divorce cases.

This survey interestingly, but not surprisingly, found that:

  • 99% of its Fellows cited a rising number of text messages used in cases;
  • 97% of its Fellows had seen an increase in evidence from smart phones and other wireless devices in divorce cases over the last three years; and
  • 70% percent used more evidence from applications (Apps), including Facebook and Twitter.

A few weeks ago, the Spartanburg Herald-Journal interviewed several attorneys, including AAML National President James T. McLaren from Columbia and me, about this survey and our experiences in dealing with these types of issues. I have seen very few contested divorce or child custody cases in recent years in which there was no electronic component, such as texts, emails, and social media posts.

Our firm requires our clients to complete a social media worksheet that details their social media presence as well as that of the opposing party. Our experience has shown that this approach helps identify potential problem areas early in the case (on either side) and helps minimize the chances of unpleasant (and potentially damaging) surprises later in the case. In discussing the numerous social media sites today, I said

“There’s Facebook and then there’s everything else. …Facebook by and large is the 300-pound gorilla in the room. Most of the evidence that we find and use in family court is from Facebook.”

President McLaren pointed out that “As people become more tech savvy, the more and more it’s used in divorce and child custody cases.” I also explained that technology has unfortunately made it easier for unfaithful spouses to cover their tracks today, which makes it all the more important that wronged party has a “tech-savvy attorney” on their side with the knowledge and experience to know where to look and how to find potentially damaging evidence. Sometimes, this may require the involvement of a forensic examiner to locate and review deleted data from computers and cellphones, which can then later be used in court.

Most people don’t realize that once they post information on social media, it is possible for it to be located and used against them in Family Court, and there’s nothing that attorneys can do to protect their clients from what they already have posted. Lawyers cannot advise their clients to change or destroy information once it’s been posted, which is called “spoliation of evidence”, as there can be serious consequences when this occurs. Illegal spyware is another problem, as it’s illegal and a felony in most states.

The law in these areas changes fast, and clients should make sure their attorney understands the impact of social media on divorce and child custody cases, especially what is and is not permissible, as the consequences can be dire and could affect the case’s outcome. Ben Stevens currently serves as the Vice-Chair of the AAML’s national Electronically Stored Evidence and Technology Committees and is the Co-Chair of its Technology Coordination Committee.

Source: “Lawyers say dumb moments on social media paving way to divorce court” by Kim Kimzey, published in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal.

Do You Know “The Cost of Slow”?

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Ben Stevens Posted in Did You Know?, Guest Posts, Office Management, Other Operating Systems, Software, Technology Leave a comment
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The Cost of Slow

“Time is money.” We’ve all heard that old adage, but have you ever thought about it from the perspective of how moving slowly can actually hurt your practice? The following Guest Post from Tom Lambotte addresses some of the ways that lawyers and law firms lose time and money without even knowing it:

The Cost of Slow

A very strange thing occurred to us in October 2014. A prospective client signed up for our services, wrote us a big check (which we cashed), then disappeared. When he came to us, he had been reading our materials for some time and was ready to move forward. He definitely had a need and was keenly aware that his IT situation was out of whack. Being a Mac guy himself, he had been trying to make the move from PCs to Macs for some time. He had accepted that he wouldn’t be able to do it himself, saw the value in our services and we had a signed agreement overnight. We charged his card and started our in-depth onboarding process. Then…he disappeared. Completely. Not a peep. We couldn’t get a call back and were unable to connect via calls or email. We eventually gave up, and were left scratching our heads as to what happened.

Fast-forward three months later, and out of the blue, I received an email from him saying he was ready to get started. We were happy to have his business, but I was more concerned about what had happened in the first place. I had to clear the air and be confident he would prove to be a good, responsive client for us to work with. Our service depends on having a quality two-way relationship with our clients.

He explained to me that after we spoke his father had convinced him that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ and that since the computers were still running, why upgrade them? These were old PCs running Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server. Well, after that decision, two systems went down, one of them actually went down twice, and one never came back up at all. This left their users unable to work for multiple days at a time and one of his employees was literally left without a computer to work on. So he was now more ready to move forward than ever before, especially since they were tax attorneys heading into the busiest season of the year. We picked things up and since then have switched his office to Macs and everyone is now thrilled.

In terms of technology, the old adage, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is a completely flawed belief system. There exists a perception that the longer you keep computers, the better ‘bang for your buck’ you are getting. Technically that is true, however, the unrealized cost of this is massive. Today, I’m going to dive into this topic through 2 primary arguments. First, I am going to challenge the ‘perception of savings,’ helping you see the real cost of slowness. Second, we’re going to dive into the value of your time.

Cost of slow

Based upon a 2007 survey, the U.S. Census Bureau report shows that the legal services industry has the 3rd highest payroll costs, coming in at 45.03%. If you can increase your firm’s productivity, you can increase your profitability. That sounds like my money in your pocket. Ok, so how do we impact productivity using technology?

In its most basic method, I always start by first looking at bottlenecks that can be removed and then determine ways to increase productivity through training and having the proper tools and solutions in place. Without getting too geeky (this is not the place), today’s fastest consumer CPU (processor) is over 3x as fast as the fastest consumer CPU that was available 5 years ago. In the mean time, we also moved from DDR2 to DDR3 memory, and SSDs are slowly becoming the norm over HDDs. The experience of a new high-end PC today is definitely a whole lot different than five years ago.

That time spent waiting for Internet Explorer to startup, or the time it takes for a computer to startup and log in? You’re paying for that. A lot more than you realize. If a modern computer saves someone just 10 minutes a day, that comes out to 2,400 minutes per year, or 40 hours. On average, what is the fully burdened cost of one week of payroll? Let’s take $40/hr as a very conservative example, which adds up to $1,600 per year, per computer. This isn’t even taking anything else into account, such as having an easier User Interface, to work with, as you get with a Mac, additional training that can be provided to your staff, or rolling out solutions that make it easier for your staff to achieve the things they do dozens of time every day.

You see, slow is expensive and in most cases our computers are the bottlenecks in our workflow, when we are waiting on them to finish. Waiting for programs to open, for large PDFs to be OCR’d after they are scanned (you do scan all your files, right?), or waiting for a file to be saved. When working on a slow machine, most people don’t notice it, since it’s all they know and they have become accustomed to it. Your role is to make sure your staff has the best tools available to them so they can be as productive as possible. Their job is not to tell you their computers are old and slow and need to be replaced.

Spend money where you spend your time

Once you’ve saved money, where should you spend it in order to maximize the usefulness of your money spent—or even your happiness? To answer that, just look at what you spend your day doing, proportionally, and allocate money accordingly. Let’s call this the comfort principle.

Simply calculate how much of your day is spent using a certain item. Let’s say we get our recommended 8 hours of sleep per night, leaving us with 16 hours. If we spend 8 hours of our day on or at our computers, we’ve spent 50% of our days on our computers. Let’s get some actual numbers instead of abstract numbers, as this tends to be easier to grasp. In being (very) conservative I am going to use a 40 hour work week, and we’ll say an attorney spends 30 hours of that time on their computers. Over 52 weeks, this comes out to 1,560 hours. Our company cycles all of our clients’ hardware on a 3 year cycle, as we have found this to be the optimal schedule. Going with that, you will spend 4,680 hours on your computer over 3 years. Wouldn’t it make sense to invest a few extra dollars there? Can you see how working on an old machine, simply because it still runs, is not a good idea?

Seeing how much time you actually spend working on your computer, wouldn’t it be worth it to spend a little more up front to make sure you have a great computer? If your computer takes 10 seconds to open an app and you can shave it down to 2 by upgrading to a newer computer, that’s a worthwhile purchase when you factor in frustration and time saved. If your computer locks up frequently because you don’t have enough RAM or if it’s just too slow, it’s in your own interest to upgrade or get a new computer. If you and your staff can get through your day with as little aggravation, frustration and discomfort as possible, everyone will be much more relaxed, which benefits you and everyone around you. And preventing stress is much better than having to spend money later on to alleviate stress. A new client recently told us they had lost an Office Manager the year prior due to issues with her slow computer that were never addressed.

The sad truth is that most people don’t ‘get’ this concept. Time and time again, I have found myself talking to some clients with older systems, quite often the managing partner, trying to convince them to upgrade to a newer one. When the day comes and they finally upgrade, I ALWAYS get raving “thank yous” and “I wish I had done this sooner.” The same goes for laptop users finally getting a big monitor to work on, but that’s a topic for another month.

I challenge you to look at the hardware that you and your staff are working on. Do they have the right tools to complete their work done in an efficient manner or are their systems acting as bottlenecks in their workflow? Is your firms’ hardware over 3 years old? If so, while it may feel good to not be writing a check for the computer hardware, you are, in fact, writing the check, it’s just going to another line item, your payroll. I challenge you to question the way you look towards IT. Is it an expense you dread putting any money towards? Or is it a measurable investment you should be making into smart investments into. Remember, the legal services industry has the 3rd highest payroll cost, 45.03%! Every boost in productivity for your staff raises your revenue and your overall profitability.

About the Author: Tom Lambotte is CEO of GlobalMac IT, the only company in the world that specializes in providing IT support to Mac-based law firms. His methods are based on close to a decade of research, testing and real-world refinement of Best Practices, working directly with Mac-based law firms and firms switching from PC to Mac, across the country and around the world. Tom is the author of Hassle Free Mac IT Support for Law Firms and a highly sought after speaker at national events such as the ABA Techshow and MILOfest, a Mac Lovin’ Lawyers Event. Learn more about Tom and GlobalMac IT at www.globalmacit.com, and readers of The Mac Lawyer can obtain a free copy of Tom’s book, Hassle Free Mac IT Support for Law Firms, at this link.

Key Takeaways for Lawyers from Apple’s WWDC Keynote 2015

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Ben Stevens Posted in Did You Know?, iOS, Mac OS X, Siri, Software, Technology Leave a comment
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wwdc 2015At Apple’s keynote presentation kicking off its World Wide Developer Conference last week, it unveiled some major improvements to its Watch OS, iOS and Mac OS platforms. Many of these changes are great legal technology that will benefit law practices. Here are a few key takeaways from Apple’s WWDC keynote 2015 address that attorneys have to look forward to:

OS X 10.11: El Capitan

The most beneficial feature of El Capitan, the new OS X for Mac computers, is that it will give people the ability to multi-task by splitting their screen. This will allow attorneys and other professionals to do two things at once, such as scan a new case and perform research at the same time.

iOS 9

Apple has added intelligence to its operating system with iOS 9 by giving it context sensitive features. For instance, if someone asks Siri, “remind me I have this” it will know that they’re talking about the meeting currently pulled up on their screen. Additionally, if an unknown number calls them, they may ask Siri to search their email for any matches.

Apple Watch 

Attorneys can now make the Apple Watch work for them in Watch OS 2 with the ability to make Face Time audio calls and respond to emails.

News

Attorneys can easily remain updated on law-related news stories with an app for the Mac called News. It will allow them to personalize their news stream and to automatically update whenever they open it. The app also includes graphics that will allow it to adapt to the news source’s aesthetics.

Free Webinar: IT Security Protections Every Law Firm Must Have in Place Now

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Ben Stevens Posted in Did You Know?, Online Resources, Security 1 Comment
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it securityThis Thursday, June 18th at 1:00 p.m. Eastern, my friend and colleague Tom Lambotte, CEO of GlobalMac IT, is presenting an invitation-only, executive webinar, during which he will share some alarming news about new cybersecurity threats that you should protect your firm against – and the best ways to protect yourself and your practice.

Chances are that you are not aware of these new threats and therefore may be a “sitting duck” and at risk of losing everything in your bank account in an instant – not to mention the potential added insult to injury of government fines and penalties for non-compliance to data breach laws.

Although Tom has limited attendance to only 50 people, I have made arrangements to reserve a block for my readers and followers readers to get a VIP seat. You can get the full details (and register) for “7 Critical IT Security Protections EVERY Law Firm Must Have In Place NOW To Avoid Cyber-Attacks, Data Breach Lawsuits, Bank Fraud and Compliance Penalties” here.

Avoid Waiting on Hold via FastCustomer

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Did You Know?, Office Management, Online Resources, Product Reviews Leave a comment
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fastcustomerDo you enjoy wasting time on hold while listening to elevator music? Me neither. FastCustomer can (thankfully) make that experience a distant memory.

Simply let them know the name of the company that you would like to talk with (via call, text, or search), and they will have a customer service agent from that company call you. Voila! No time wasted and no elevator music.

FastCustomer is available via website or its iOS and Android apps. Among the thousands of companies that participate in this service are Apple, Verizon, AT&T, Bank of America, Southwest, Citibank, Mastercard, Visa, Discover, Sirius/XM, USPS, Walmart, Costco, etc.

Put Items in Pocket and View When You’re Ready

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Apps, Did You Know?, Offline Resources, Online Resources, Technology Leave a comment
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pocketPocket (formerly Read It Later) enables you to save things that you find online to review later. The most common use is to save articles, videos, recipes, and other items of interest to read when it’s convenient for you, even if you don’t have internet access (like when you’re on an airplane). You can send items to Pocket through plug-ins for most web browsers, numerous apps, or even via email. Follow the lead of the over 12 million users who have saved over 1 billion items to Pocket.

How to Dictate to Your Mac (for free)

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Did You Know?, How Do I ...?, Mac OS X 2 Comments
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dictation-iconMost lawyers, particularly older ones, dictate as part of their daily life. Did you know that your Mac will allow you to dictate to it? Well, it’s true. Even better, it’s super easy and highly accurate (and free).

The ability to dictate to your Mac is built directly into OS X, and when enabled, you can dictate directly into any app that you can type in, which covers most programs, including Word, Pages, Mail, Chrome, Safari, etc. By default, dictation requires an internet connection, because it sends your spoken words to Apple’s servers to be translated into text.

To enable dictation, simply go to  > System Preferences > Dictation & Speech and make sure Dictation is turned “On”. You have the option here to use “enhanced dictation”, which enables you to dictate when you are offline, though it is not as accurate.

You can also select a shortcut key to turn the dictation on. By default, it’s Function + Function, but you have other options or can customize your own if you prefer. The internal microphone is the default input, but you can specify an external microphone at System Preferences > Sound > Input, which may come in handy if you work in a noisy environment.

So, if you want to dictate with your word processing program, you can either (a) go to Edit > Start Dictation or (b) press fn + fn and start talking. When you are finished, click “Done” (or press Return) and your words will appear on screen. Of course, you can include punctuation by saying “comma”, “period”, etc. as you go.

Dictation will highlight any words that it unsure whether it deciphered correctly, and you can then right-click on those words for alternatives and options or you can edit them yourself. You can learn more about dictation here.

Facts About Cloud Computing for Attorneys

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Did You Know?, Office Management, Online Resources, Security, Technology Leave a comment
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cloud computingCloud computing can, without a doubt, help attorneys be more efficient, productive, and profitable. The software that my firm uses is almost entirely cloud-based, with the “big three” being Rocket Matter for case management / time & billing; Google Apps for Business for email; and Quickbooks Online for accounting.

I have given presentations all across the country about the benefits of cloud computing for attorneys, but despite my advocacy for this technology, some lawyers are still skeptical, suspicious, or fearful of implementing cloud computing in their law practices. I found the following statistics, which may help ease some of those lingering concerns that have prevented them from taking the plunge:

• A survey of over 3,500 IT decision makers from a variety of enterprises revealed that 82% of the companies saved money and cut costs, with 80% seeing improvements within the first 6 months of adopting the cloud.

• 90% of IT decision makers found improvement in at least one of the following areas of their IT department: efficiency, quality, and security.

• Banking has the most activity in the cloud (64%), which is even more than social media (58%), photos (29%), and file sharing (19%). In fact, cloud demand for banking almost doubled in 2013 with the introduction of mobile banking.

• Over 50% of the United States government is in the cloud, and experts say it is the biggest cloud user in the world.

Source: “7 Statistics You Didn’t Know About Cloud Computing” by Maria Santacaterina.

How to Print Documents Without Opening Them

Posted on May 13, 2014 by Ben Stevens Posted in Did You Know?, How Do I ...?, Mac OS X Leave a comment
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printerDid you know that Mac OS X will allow you to print documents without opening them? It’s really easy, and (as with most things on a Mac) it works exactly the way that you would expect.

To print a document, select it in the Finder, and then press Command + P and it will print to your default printer using your default settings. You don’t have to do anything else except get your document off the printer.

If you want or need to print multiple documents, just hold down the command key and select on the desired documents before clicking Command + P. All of your desired documents will then print to your default printer easy as pie.

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