7 Top Tips for Setting Your Billing Rate

There's some strange alchemy involved in setting the proper billing rate. You don't want to be so high that clients can't afford you, nor so low that you come off looking cheap. You could follow the market rate, but...

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4 Signs That It's Time to Change Careers

Thousands of lawyers leave the law every year. Corporate attorneys become yoga gurus. Prosecutors become public school teachers. Family lawyers become family counselors. And some attorneys change careers without giving up legal practice, moving from BigLaw to nonprofit work or...

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3 Tips for Choosing the Best Practice Area for Solo Attorneys

It’s a question that has dogged young lawyers for generations: How do I choose my area of practice? Some people are lucky in the sense that they knew right from a tender age that they wanted to be a lawyer...

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Do Flat Rates Attract Middle Class Clients?

The wealthiest clients can afford to pay hundreds of dollars an hour for representation. The poorest may be able to find a lawyer for free. It's those in the middle that can be the hardest to attract. For, while...

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Lawyers, Is It Okay to Curse at Work?

Legal practice is often a high-stress job. There's the trying work hours, the high-stakes outcomes, and the horrible opposing attorneys or trying clients. It's enough to cause an esquire or two to unleash a near-constant stream of unprintable profanities....

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Tips for Training Associates for Loyalty

Associate attorneys occupy a strange area in the law firm hierarchy. As far as clients are concerned, one lawyer is the same as the next: they charge too much. But there’s much more to the whole associate makeup than just...

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Top Mistakes Lawyers Make -- and How to Avoid Them

You? Make a mistake? No way. Never gonna happen. But for some other lawyers (we won't name names), mistakes are common place. And we're not just talking about a typo in a contract or court filing. There's a whole...

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BigLaw Firm Goes Nuts Expanding Parental Leave

The Chicago law firm of Winston & Strawn must be eyeing the prize for most-loved BigLaw firm in the Windy City -- perhaps even the country. Expanding its already generous parental leave program, the firm has decided to up its...

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Lawyers, Here's How to Wipe Your Hard Drive Clean

You're finally upgrading to a new P.C., or you're getting rid of those old external hard drives you found in the storage closet. Maybe you have a ton of dated USB drives you no longer need, now that you're...

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An Almost Complete History of Your Most Hated Office Jargon

Sure, lawyers have our in-speak. We talk about obscure rules, using even more obscure Latin phrases, mixed with an alphabet soup of government laws and regulations. But at least we don't talk about "crushing our quarterly goals" and "synergizing"...

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Lessons in Legal Fees: $41,000 Base + $30,000 Interest = Censure

Wyoming's highest court has publicly censured a lawyer working out of the state's capitol for charging a client $30,000 in interest fees on a bill that was originally just $41,000. So if you're considering charging your clients almost 50 percent...

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'The Cloud' Touches Every Area of Law: What Lawyers Need to Know

You've heard about "the cloud," but what is it exactly? Simply put, someone else's computer. Or rather, computer farm. The cloud allows you to store and access a virtually unlimited amount of information remotely, without having to build up...

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Top Staffing Tips for Lawyers

You can't do it all yourself. If you're running a small or solo firm, you're going to have to bring in some help sooner or later. But, even if you're a wiz at the law, you might struggle with...

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Why 'Real Lawyers' Work in Small Firms

Where do "real lawyers" practice the law? It’s not exclusively in BigLaw high-rises, managing a team of dozens of associates. It’s not in corporate conference rooms or cocktail parties, schmoozing with high-paying clients. And it’s not just grinding away at...

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Want to Take a Business to the Next Level? Follow These Leaders

You've built your own firm and want to see it grow even further. Or perhaps you've found your grove, but need to advise business clients as they expand. You can try to figure things out on your own, or...

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Tips for Writing a Legal Letter of Advice

How to write a legal letter of advice? It's an excellent question with a much hated answer: it depends. The fact of the matter is that the individual demands of the situation dictate the length and style of legal correspondence...

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Are You a Nice Boss? A Total Jerk? I Doesn't Matter Either Way.

You want to be the best boss you can be. Not only do you give your support staff a good wage and decent perks, you remember their birthdays, you promote an open office environment, you try not to make unreasonable...

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Lawyers Are Skeptical of ABA's Law Firm Biz Restructuring Proposals

A bevy of solo attorneys recently responded to the American Bar Association's invite to comment on the proposal to allow non-lawyer investing in law firms. Forty-three individuals submitted their comments: only one thought it was a good idea. Now that...

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Lawyers, Here's How to Prepare for Your Summer Interns

Law school is out, the sun is shining, and summer is around the corner. For many lawyers that means one thing: summer intern season. And while the “internship economy” can be exploitive, and sometimes illegal, if it’s done right, a...

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Economic Considerations for Law Firm Partners

If you’re a partner at a firm, you should take time to draw in a deep breath: you’re in a position that thousands of other lawyer might even kill for. Still, you’ve probably wondered what your future at your current...

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6 Best Ways for Overworked Lawyers to Stay Healthy

Summer is just around the corner and you want to slough off some of your winter weight. Or maybe you're ready to finally check out this "mindfulness" trend you've heard so much about. But you're a lawyer, which probably...

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Law Firm 'Emotional Training': New Age Music, Yoga, Scented Candles?

Are you tired of your BigLaw boss's spittle flying across the room and hitting you in the face? Are getting tired of the tension at the office that's so thick you can practically cut it with a knife? Are you...

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Personal Injury Lawyers Set Their Sights on Snapchat

Personal injury attorneys are showing a strong interest in Snapchat, the instant messaging app -- particularly in the app's filters. No, it's not because lawyers want to transform their face into a dog or use geofilters and location tags....

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Global Legal Technology Laboratory Conference 2016: Links and resources

A conference of the Global Legal Technology Laboratory was held 5-6 May 2016 at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

The event was hosted by Computational Law Research and Development at MIT.

Click here for a storify of links, images, and Twitter tweets from the event.

According to the executive summary (a Word document, .docx):

The Global Legal Technology Laboratory (GLTL) is an emerging consortium that brings together the legal education and legal technology communities from around the world to (i) establish a new form of prototyping and development capability for innovative legal technologies and (ii) connect with and draw upon various networks engaged with intersections of law, technology and public policy.

Here are resources related to the event:

• The website for the event and the laboratory is at: law.mit.edu/gltl
• The event schedule is in a document (.docx) at: http://ift.tt/21Iikfy
• Descriptions of projects discussed during the event are in a document (.docx) at: http://ift.tt/1O6tY1p
• Margaret Hagan’s post about day 1 of the event is at: http://ift.tt/1VLTbRj
• Twitter hashtags for the event include: #gltl and #gltl16

HT @margarethagan

Filed under: Conference reports, Conference resources, Uncategorized Tagged: Artificial intelligence and law, Computational Law Research and Development at MIT, Global Legal Technology Laboratory, Global Legal Technology Laboratory Conference, GLTL, GLTL16, Legal educational technology, Legal hacking events, Legal informatics conferences, Legal instructional technology, Technology for access to justice

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New Trend? Discounted Rates for Female-Led Companies

The technology startup world is known for being male-dominated. A survey by TechCrunch found that in 2014, only 18 percent of startups had a female founder, up from less than 10 percent in 2009. One law firm is trying...

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Students Are Suing Their (Private) Schools More Than Ever

Litigation against schools is nothing new. A dispute over school funding in Kansas, for example, has been going on for 27 years -- and it's currently threatening to upend the state's school system. The classic civil rights triumph, Brown...

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Do Solo Lawyers Need Malpractice Insurance?

If you're a solo attorney, the thought of malpractice insurance has no doubt crossed your mind. It's definitely not a bad idea. But before you purchase insurance from the first carrier that you find, you may want to keep your...

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6 Top Tips for Law Firms Looking to Grow

Growth is good. But how do you go about it? You could take in more clients, bring on higher-paying clients, or make more efficient use of the resources you already have. To help you out, here are our top...

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Free Webcast Shows How to Take Advantage of Clients' Snap Judgments

Practicing the law requires patience, dedication, and experience. Hiring a lawyer? Not so much. For the average legal consumer, choosing an attorney is often a quick process. Clients often start searching for lawyers just hours after a legal incident...

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Can Lawyers Name Likely Defendants in Ads?

Solo attorneys all generally know the rules of thumb when it comes to attorney advertising and solicitation. Attorney ads are good; direct solicitations are not so good. Attorney ads have operated mostly this way since the 70s. But how about...

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SCOTUS Changes the Rules of Criminal Procedure -- Why It Matters

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court announced amendments to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the procedural rules that govern criminal prosecutions in federal courts. The changes to rules governing arrest warrants, search and seizure, and computing time, have already...

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