Legal Technology and Law Practice Management (Online Seminar)

MCLE Credits: 6.0
Ethics Credits Included: 1.0

MCLE Credit:	6.0 (Ethics: 1.0)
Live-Interactive Credit:	0.0
Price:	$299 (Includes a downloadable audio version.)
Viewable Through:	8/31/2020

Information
Schedule
Faculty
Locations, Dates and Fees

Information

A pre-recorded streaming VIDEO replay of the August 2018 live seminar, Legal Technology and Law Practice Management.

Featuring nationally acclaimed legal technology expert Barron K. Henley

Today’s lawyers are expected to use technology more than ever in their practice. Technology has fundamentally changed the ways lawyers gather and manage case information, draft documents, conduct research, communicate, manage their practices, and render other services. In spite of these changes, many still approach business in an outdated manner. It is time to upgrade your approach.

Barron Henley, a renowned expert in legal technology and law practice management, presents case scenarios and offers solutions for today’s busy lawyer.

Topics covered:

Learn ways to improve your practice while making it easier
Solve your office technology problems
Listen to tips that will enable you to:
- Work more efficiently
- Find things more easily
- Create better documents
- Protect client data

Schedule

COURSE TOPICS

The Devil Is in the Details: Improving Law Office Processes—A Case Study

W. Edwards Deming famously said, "When a good person meets a bad system, the system always wins." In the legal world, lawyers are rarely responsible for every step of a process. As a result, there's often a disconnect between what a lawyer thinks is happening and what is actually happening. Conversely, lawyers are sometimes involved in steps they shouldn't be involved with because they don't trust the process (or people) and fear mistakes will be made. If you know or suspect that there are some inefficiencies in your office, the first step to improvement is to map out the processes involved. In this session, we'll show you how to map your own processes and use a case study to illustrate how small adjustments can make dramatic improvements.

The Best Legal Technology Tips, Tricks, Gadgets, and Websites

The best of legal technology, practice management, electronics, and incredibly useful websites for lawyers. This rapid-fire, entertaining hour is full of great ideas you can immediately incorporate into your practice.

Champagne Legal Technology on a Beer Budget

Believe it or not, you can get great technology on a tight budget. Whether you’re ready to start a firm or overhaul your firm’s existing technology, this session will give you a complete legal technology roadmap with a focus on keeping the costs as low as possible. We will also cover the law firm technology hierarchy of needs to help you prioritize your purchases. From buying strategies to computer configurations to cloud services, from VOIP phone systems to online faxing to low-cost printing, you literally can’t afford to miss this session.

It's Time for a Change—Superior Methods for Complex Legal Documents

Most lawyers draft new documents by finding old documents and modifying them to work for the next case or client (by either direct modification or dictation/transcription). While that approach might be better than starting from a blank page, it has an unacceptably high margin of error and is slower than alternative methods. It's simply too easy to miss a required change, leave something in that should have been removed, or forget to add something missing from the original. Further, if the document one starts with was previously negotiated with opposing counsel, it's going to be full of compromised language that is difficult to spot. There are many superior alternatives to this approach. In this session, we'll show you how to find and consolidate the best of your intellectual capital in a way that increases drafting speed and accuracy while avoiding the aforementioned risks. Finally, you'll see the spectrum of automation tools from the amazing things your word processor is already capable of, to document assembly applications like HotDocs. For document-intensive and transactional areas of practice, improved drafting methods directly impact the bottom line and improve client satisfaction. Prepare to be amazed at the possibilities.

The Evolution of Speech Recognition Software—You Won’t Believe How Good It Has Become

Lawyers have to draft pleadings and documents, capture time entries in accounting software, respond to emails, and enter case-related information into a file (or case management system). All of those things typically involve a keyboard, and unfortunately, many lawyers just aren’t good typists. Years ago, it was common for support staff to handle such things. But today, a high percentage of lawyers have limited or no access to support staff simply due to the cost. As a result, today’s lawyers have to be far more self-reliant in the generation of work product. Thankfully, speech recognition technology can resolve these issues. You talk, and the software types exactly what you’re saying. This technology can be used for automatic transcription, time entries, and any drafting task without ever touching the keyboard. Speech recognition has definitely arrived, and this seminar shows you how it works and what you need to incorporate it into your practice. We’ll focus on the popular Dragon Professional software application.

Communication Breakdown—It's Always the Same (but It's Avoidable) (Ethics)

A high percentage of malpractice practice claims and practice management issues are caused by communication breakdowns. Communication problems decrease productivity, cause mistakes, and create dissatisfied clients. The growing number of communication channels only compounds the problem. Examine technologies and techniques that will help you improve internal and external communication, lower your stress, improve your service, generate happier clients, and lower your malpractice risk.

Faculty

FACULTY

Barron K. Henley, Esq., Affinity Consulting Group / Columbus, OH

Barron K. Henley, Esq., is one of the founding partners of Affinity Consulting Group, a legal technology consulting firm focused on automating and streamlining law firms and legal departments. He earned his B.S./B.A. (marketing and economics) and J.D. from The Ohio State University and is a member of the American, Ohio, and Columbus Bar Associations, and the Worthington Estate Planning Council. He is a member of both the ABA Law Practice Management and the Real Property Trust and Estate Law ("RPTE") Sections. He's a member of RPTE Futures Task Force, a Board Member for the ABA TECHSHOW, and is the former Chair of the Ohio State Bar Association Law Office Automation & Technology Committee. Mr. Henley heads Affinity’s document assembly/automation and software training departments; he is a renowned expert on Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, and HotDocs document assembly software; and has authored legal-specific manuals on HotDocs, Adobe Acrobat, and Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook. He is also an expert in launching new law firms, overhauling existing firms, and documenting and re-engineering law firm processes. Finally, Mr. Henley teaches continuing legal education (CLE) classes throughout the U.S. and Canada covering a wide variety of topics related to law practice management, technology, and ethics.