The Easy Way to be Interesting, Make Networking Easier
There is a great article over at Lifehack, providing some easy tips to be more interesting. Give these a quick read and consider implementing some of them in your life. Some great benefits might be meeting new and interesting people, and also being able to converse easier with others. Your networking efforts will thank you.
[tags]legal andrew, networking[/tags]
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Increase Productivity by Doing Something Different
How often do you get stuck in a rut? Does your productivity decrease when you do the same thing every day? Here is today’s breakthrough tip: do something different.
Variation spurs the mind
Our brains are complex organs. But if they are required to do the same thing day after day, they seem to shift into neutral or auto-pilot. Creativity decreases, along with productivity.
If you require your brain to think about something else, you will likely notice a boost in creativity and productivity. Your brain will begin firing on more cylinders synapses. You will utilize more of that grey matter between your ears (no, not the yellow matter in your ears).
Try listening to music
I got into a rut over the last few weeks. I would get on the bus, open my laptop, and do some writing on my way to law school. Over the past few days, I was having trouble coming up with new things to write.
Yesterday, instead of getting out my laptop, I turned on my iPod. I listened to some music and just rode along. Several different article ideas popped into my head (along with this one).
Take a walk
This is similar to a tip suggested by a writer. Once a week, he takes an entire day to explore a new area on foot. He lives in a big city, so it is easy to find unchartered areas to explore.
Basically, this day is his time to observe different people, take in new sights, and refresh his mind. Think of it like rebooting your mind or cleaning the white board.
Mix it up!
I’m sure you can think of things you can do to mix up your routine and give your mind a change of pace. Whether it is taking a walk, listening to music, or mowing the lawn. Try something to mix up your routine and refresh your mind.
Do you have any tips to help clear the mind and increase productivity? Please post a comment or drop me a line.
[tags]legal andrew, productivity[/tags]
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The Lazy Way to Success On Exams
If you are in virtually any type of school, exams are lurking around the corner. For those of us in law school (and probably other graduate schools), the exam constitutes our entire grade for each class. How are you going to ensure a successful exam period?
What you haven’t done
If you’re like most people (including yours truly), your course outlines are far from complete. In fact, I haven’t even started mine. But that’s life as a 3L. For those of you who have an outline, I applaud your hard work!
Perhaps you haven’t read any of the assigned reading this semester. Maybe you focused on the twenty pages for the day when you were on call, but that’s it.
You might not have a commercial outline or hornbook on your shelf. Heck, you might not even own the course text book! Yes, even you can succeed on exams.
Kick it in gear
Sorry to say, but now is the time to actually work. At most schools, exams are about a month away. Thus, you have four weeks to put on the illusion that you actually know something. All is not lost, yet. That’s one glorious part of having a single exam constitute your entire grade. You can turn an entire lazy semester into a success.
Your goal right now should be to come up with decent outlines for all of your classes. Go through your lecture notes and start organizing them in a coherent fashion. If you missed a few days, ask your friends to help fill in the gaps. If you have no notes at all, ask a bunch of friends each for a day or two. (Just hope they don’t talk amongst themselves and figure it out.)
As you outline your courses, you can go to professors with specific questions for areas that are hazy. I’m sure you will have some; after all, this article is about the “lazy way,” right?
The goal is to have solid outlines for all your classes by the week before exams. You optimally need this done about 4-5 days before your first exam. Don’t fret; there’s still time.
Take a break!!!
Since you will be working (dare I say it?) hard for the next few weeks, you need some relaxation time before exams. This is why your outlines should be ready to go early.
About four days before your first exam, take at least a full day, and preferrably two days off. Don’t think about school, don’t look at school notes, don’t talk about your exams. Do something fun and relaxing. This will help detox your brain and let the information sink in subconsciously.
Go get ’em
Two days before your first exam, pull out those outlines and get studying. Personally, I study for one exam at a time, provided they are spaced at least one day apart. That way you can focus on one at a time and not get mixed up.
Your studying should pay off and you will do great on exams. Even though you didn’t work hard all semester, you should be able to get decent grades. What are you waiting for? Go get ’em!
[tags]legal andrew, law school, exam[/tags]
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Using JibberJobber for Online Networking – Part 1
This is Part 1 in a series of posts on Jason Alba’s Career Toolset, JibberJobber. Check back soon for future posts in this series.
You all know that networking is key to building your law practice, finding your first law firm job, and having a more fruitful career. I won’t belabor those points here. This post, and the entire JibberJobber series, is about using this nifty online tool for managing your networking efforts.
What is it?
Basically, JibberJobber provides the tools you need to manage network contacts, employers, documents, books, articles, and other info that you need to juggle while during a job search or just building your career.
Jibber has two versions. When you signup, you get the free version, plus a 2-week trial of the premium version. Pricing for the premium version is pretty reasonable: $9.95/month, $105/year, $190/2 years.
The coolest thing about the free v. premium versions is that you can change versions at any time. For example, you can have a free account when you have a job and aren’t doing too much networking activity. When it comes time to crank up the network and find a new job, you can upgrade to a premium account for a few months. Then, you can downgrade later. ALL of your premium information is saved, and you can use it any time. For instance, the free version is limited to 75 contacts; but if you enter 200 contacts during your premium trial, you can still search and pull up those 200 contacts when your account goes back to free. Cool, right?
As I mentioned, Jason Alba gave away free 12-month premium memberships to JibberJobber, for people who participated in the Networking Carnival this month. I was a lucky winner, so this series will be from the premium standpoint.
Adding your contacts
Jibber can import your contacts from a CSV file, so I tried that. I exported my contacts from Outlook, and did Jibber’s import. It provides a great interface where you can match columns, select categories, add companies, etc. You can also select which contacts to import and even decide if you would live to invite some of your contacts to join Jibber.
With that said, the importation didn’t go so well for me. Primarily, my Outlook CSV file had the names as “Last, First”, while Jibber has separate fields for first-name and last-name. I had to open my CSV file in Excel and do some hand manipulation to get the import to work right. Maybe this is my incompetence.
Viewing contacts
I’ve got to give kudos where they are due. Jason designed this interface pretty good. Once I got my contacts imported, I spent a few minutes playing with the database. Every time I thought “I wish it could do X,” I found the feature I was wishing for!
For example, you can easily add/remove columns from the contact display grid. You can also define the number of rows to display per page. The best thing about viewing contacts, in my opinion, is the ability to see “tree view.” Basically, you can define “referrers” for your contacts. Then tree view displays how you came to know each person. This is nifty!
Contact logging
Another really neat part of the contact management system is the ability to log information about each contact. You can think of this as a mini-blog for each contact. You simply enter the date and a little text. Thus, you can pull up that log later on and remember your history or a person’s key details.
If you’re forgetful, you can also enter a “reminder” for a contact. Just enter a date, input some text, and Jibber will send you an email two days before the key date. Thus, it’s easy to remember to follow-up with people after a meeting, or you can schedule a “keep in touch” reminder a couple months away.
What next?
Jibber definitely has lots of potential, as evidenced from my first few minutes using it. However, a couple tiny suggestions might be useful.
It would be handy to have a “next/previous” contact feature. Then when you’re editing one contact, you can just click a single button to save changes and go to the next one. This would be awesome if you need to make a lot of changes at once.
Also, a “select all” button might be useful. I found a way to select all 100+ of my contacts, but it required me to set my page view number high enough to see all contacts at once. A “select all” button would be handy if you need to delete all contacts and re-import them.
Whew! I didn’t intend to write so much, but Jibber’s features just keep on pouring out. Stay tuned to Legal Andrew to see what else JibberJobber has to offer.
Do you have any thoughts on using JibberJobber for lawyers and law students? Please post a comment or drop me a line.
[tags]legal andrew, jason alba, jibberjobber[/tags]
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Must Read Blog: PDA Lawyer
Grant Griffiths, author of Home Office Lawyer just announced the launch of his new blog: PDA Lawyer. The focus will obviously be on using personal digital assistants in your law practice. According to Grant, he will narrow the focus a bit to what he uses: Palm’s Treo. However, he is looking for some BlackBerry users to perhaps do some guest posts on this little addictive beast.
Why don’t you mozy on over and enjoy his debut?
[tags]legal andrew, grant griffiths, home office lawyer, pda lawyer, treo, blackberry[/tags]
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Networking Carnival
For those of you interested in job search tips, you should definitely check out today’s edition of the Networking Carnival, hosted over at Jason Alba’s JibberJobber Blog.
Legal Andrew was lucky enough to be included in this edition, featuring my post on business cards for students.
One of my favorite posts is by George Blomgren, who writes on what to do if you just lost your job.
The coolest part of being included in the Networking Carnival is that Jason is giving us all a free 12-month premium membership to his networking website, JibberJobber. This is GREAT, since I didn’t get a chance to use the free 2-week premium membership that you get when you register. Thus, I can now check out all the cool features and report back to you. Let the jibbering begin!
[tags]legal andrew, jibberjobber, jason alba, george blomgren[/tags]
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Easy Content Management for Lawyer Websites
Do you have a website? How easy is it for you to update it? Do you have to email a webmaster to make updates for you? If you would like to make updates yourself, you should definitely check out Micro CMS.
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In a nutshell, Micro CMS (which stands for “content management system”) provides editable regions on your website. To change the content of one of these regions, simply click on the small “e” icon above the region, and you can easily make changes in the WYSIWYG editor. When you’re changes are done, simply click the “save” icon, and your page is updated. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can use Micro CMS.
One of the neat features about this system is that it also provides version control for your content. If you make changes, and would like to go to another version of the content, simply click the green arrows above the region. In this way, you can move back and forward through your content’s different versions (by default, 15 versions!).
The benefits of this nifty program should be obvious. Anyone in your law firm can update content. Essentially, this means that your website will always be up-to-date.
Do you have any quick tips to help lawyers manage their websites? Please post a comment or drop me a line.
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Tips for Writing Effective Law Firm Cover Letters
If you are a first year law student, the summer job search is just gearing up. Fortunately for you, there are plenty of articles with helpful suggestions all around the web. I wrote an article with cover letter tips a few days ago. Today, Tracks to Success posted a great article providing tips for business letter writing. You should wander over and check it out, since all of the advice applies to cover letters as well (after all, isn’t that just another business letter?).
[tags]legal andrew, tracks to success, cover letter, law firm, business letter[/tags]
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Online File Conversion Service, Perhaps Useful for Lawyers
Have you ever needed to convert a file from one type to another? Maybe you need to turn your Word document into a PDF. Perhaps you were trying to convert some type of media file.
Zamzar could be your solution. You simply upload the file to be converted, select the type of file you want to turn it into, enter your email address, and submit. Zamzar then does the work and emails your file back to you. Cool, right?
The downside I see to Zamzar, at least currently, is that it doesn’t provide for several common document file types like Word Perfect. It seems more media-focused, providing lots of image, audio, and video file types. Perhaps they will expand the file type offering in time.
With that said, TechCrunch speaks well of it, explaining:
Up to five files can be converted simultaneously. The process takes a few minutes – Zamzar emails a link to the converted file when it is done. It worked well in our testing.
In the end, Zamzar could be a really useful tool for the lawyer on the go, needing to convert a file without the appropriate software. If you’re using the hotel’s business center and need to send a document to someone as a PDF, point the browser to Zamzar, and you’re off!
[tags]legal andrew, zamzar, techcrunch, file conversion[/tags]
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Word Tips to Make Your Life Easier
How often to you have trouble with Microsoft Word? If you’re like most of us, it’s “helping” features often annoy.
Fortunately for all of us, Mary Whisner (author of Trial Ad Notes, librarian at U. of Washington School of Law), compiled a great list of
Word tips. You definitely need to check this page out. Mary has everything from how to better organize your files to easy ways to control formatting when you paste into Word. This is definitely a good refresher as you begin to prepare your outlines for exams.
[tags]legal andrew, microsoft word, word, mary whisner[/tags]
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About Andrew Flusche
Lawyer, bicyclist, husband.
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