Career Success Resources Guide: Improving Professional Skills

The lost art of rhetoric and how to find it -- Where does improvement begin? -- Write to speak -- Voice/speech basics-posture, breath, sound, and quality -- Body language -- Acting for attorneys -- Setting goals and steps to improvement -- Nonlitigator track -- Litigator track -- Parting advice.

LPM 101 -- Objectives and scope -- Project planning -- Executing the plan : doing the legal work -- Monitoring and measuring progress -- Post-project review -- Implementing LPM in your firm.

Your organizational type -- Office layouts -- Desk arrangements -- Paper and electronic files -- Financial recordkeeping -- Planners and electronic organizers -- Organizing your home office -- Your portable office -- Home and office libraries -- Marketing and social media -- Looking the part -- Just the beginning.

Current trends driving project management -- A short history of hourly billing by lawyers -- Introduction to legal project management -- Engaging with the client -- Planning the matter -- Budgeting for the matter -- From budgeting to pricing the matter -- Executing the matter -- Communication management -- Evaluating and closing the matter -- Satisfying ethical considerations and obligations through legal project management -- Lawyer personality traits and legal project management roles -- Using legal project management for competitive advantage -- The relationship between process improvement and legal project management -- The role of knowledge management in legal project management -- Aligning compensation to support legal project management -- Establishing a project management function in your legal organization -- Introduction to traditional and alternative project management methods -- Conclusion.

Lawyers as leaders in the 21st century -- Individual groundwork for working in teams -- Group and team dynamics -- Conflict management in legal teams -- Making decisions in groups and teams -- The logistics of working together -- Working together, now and beyond.

BASIC SKILLS: Setting preferences -- Viewing PDFs -- Navigating PDFs -- The interface : menus and toolbars -- Creating PDFs -- Examining PDFs -- Pages -- INTERMEDIATE SKILLS: Bookmarks -- Comments -- General text editing -- Recognize text function (OCR) -- Stamps -- Digital signatures -- Bates numbering -- Redaction -- Metadata removal -- Find and advanced search -- PDF security -- PDF/A --

An introduction to Evernote -- Core features -- Creating and managing content -- Evernote on the go -- Evernote in your law practice -- Evernote security -- Beyond the lessons : real-life examples of Evernote in law practice.

The Facebook phenomenon and why lawyers are using Facebook -- Getting started : setting up your Facebook account and a quick orientation -- Optimizing your privacy and other settings -- Creating your profile and managing your timeline -- Establishing a page for your firm or practice -- Friending effectively -- Organizing friends with friend lists -- Participating by updates, comments, likes and sharing -- Participating through messages, groups and subscriptions -- Monitoring your Facebook network -- Learning about some other features you should know -- Conclusion : developing a strategic approach and three easy action steps -- Ethics -- Separating your personal from your professional presence -- Facebook apps -- Litigation and discovery -- Tips -- Resources.

Navigating your ipad and browsing the web -- Setting up mail, calendars, and contacts -- Managing your iPad : multi-tasking and folders -- Adding files to your iPad and syncing them -- Being productive on the iPad -- Doing lawyer things on your iPad's legal apps.

A quick tour -- Creating a basic document -- Formatting -- Stuff lawyers use -- Collaboration -- Working with other programs -- Automating word -- Managing and maintaining word 2013 -- Troubleshooting -- Mistakes lawyers make with Microsoft Word -- Tricks to impress your law school classmates -- Keyboard shortcuts.

Blogging and the First amendment -- Copyright basics -- Integrating others' work into your blog -- Copyright registration -- Protecting your copyrights -- Blogging for others -- Protecting confidential sources -- Legal risks with allowing comments and guest posts on your blog -- Defamation -- Invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress -- Blogging and trademark law -- Jurisdictional issues -- Getting fired because of your blog -- Getting arrested because of your blog -- Death by blogging -- Benefits of being a legal blogger -- Ethical issues with having a legal blog -- Promoting your blog -- Final thoughts -- Afterword: from the blogging trenches.

Current developments affecting law firm information security -- Real-life law firm data breach nightmares -- Lawyers' duty to safeguard information -- Physical security -- Information security overview -- Law firm security policies and plans -- Authentication and authorization -- Encryption : its time is here -- Security tools and services -- Desktops, laptops and servers -- Mobile devices : smartphones and tablets -- Portable storage devices -- The internet of everything -- Secure disposal -- Digital copiers -- Networks : wired and wireless -- Remote access -- E-mail security -- Voice communications -- Backup and business continuity -- Outsourcing and service providers -- Cloud computing -- Social media -- Securing documents -- Cyberinsurance -- The future of information security -- Additional information resources.

Getting started -- Taking notes -- Using OneNote for research -- Sharing notebooks -- Working with other apps

LESSONS: The slide story : storyboarding made easy -- Tips for effective use of PowerPoint -- PowerPoint 101 -- Creating a title slide -- Inserting custom graphic as background -- Animated bullet points -- Inserting clip art -- Inserting and working with photographs -- Inserting multiple photographs at once -- Inserting a PDF into PowerPoint -- Text boxes -- Inserting shapes and lines -- Using color and animation to fill objects -- Document callouts -- The "Ken Burns" effect -- Inserting video -- Inserting an audio file or sound -- Inserting Excel spreadsheets and charts -- Creating time lines -- Using slide transitions -- Reording slides -- Dual monitors and presenter view -- Slide show delivery -- Presenting PowerPoint on iPads -- Themes, master slides, and templates.

Hardware and equipment -- Software -- Security and ethics -- Travel tips -- Miscellaneous tips.