Speaking at ABA TechShow in Chicago

I'll be in Chicago from today until Saturday attending the ABA TechShow. I'll be speaking on Thursday at 10:30 am on "Building Interactive Pleadings and Briefs Using Adobe Acrobat." I'll also be doing a "Meet the Author" session on Thursday afternoon at 3:00 pm to talk about my book Blogging in One Hour for Lawyers. Check the conference schedule for details on all the interesting sessions and events.

On Friday night at 7 pm, Barron Henley and I will be doing a Taste of TechShow dinner at Tamarind Restaurant; the theme of the dinner will be "document assembly" but I doubt that will be the dominant topic of conversation. Typically, the dinners are a way to get to know some of the speakers better in an informat setting. Barron is a great guy, and I'm sure we'll have a wonderful time. There are still spots open as of now if you want to join us.

If you're coming to TechShow I hope to have a chance to chat. If you're not coming you'll probably get a small sense of what happens if you follow my tweets. Jeff Richardson of iPhoneJD.com has a good rundown of some of the Marquis events.

Upcoming iPad CLE Seminar in New Orleans

Lawyers are buying iPads in droves, but after the initial euphoria sometimes feeling like they aren't taking full advantage of its power. Now's your chance to find out how you can get more out of your iPad, and how you can keep it safe and avoid inadvertent disclosures of sensitive information.

In this 1 hour CLE you'll see me, and and a legal technology trainer named Adriana Linares, demostrate apps and tips straight from our iPads, so you can follow along on yours. Among the things we'll demonstrate are:

• Setting up your iPad for maximum security & mobility
• Document management: getting them on the iPad and synching them
• The power of speech on an iPad: Siri & the Google Search app
• Best apps for lawyers for calendaring, e-filing and trial display

The seminar will take place on Friday, March 29th at noon, and is accredited in Louisiana for 1 hour of CLE credit, including 'Law Practice Management'. For more information, and to sign up for the seminar (early bird pricing is in effect for a limited time!), CLICK HERE.

And use the the promocode 'ernieattorney' to get 10% off the early bird pricing. But act swiftly because the venue has very limited seating, and this is always a popular session.

Louisiana lawyers needing 'Professionalism CLE' credit, don't fret

Louisiana lawyers who still need Professionalism credit can get it online a my PaperlessChase.com site. If you need Ethics credit we have courses for those too. If you need more than 4 hours of credit come to one of our live seminars. And if you know any other lawyers who are agonizing about getting those credits let 'em know that there's an easy way to learn and get CLE credit online.

Email Efficiency Tricks & E-Discovery Tips

Do you use email and practice law? Do you wish that you had some magic ways of making your email easier to deal with? Do you fear having to deal produce or request emails in a lawsuit? Do wish someone would just demystify the tech issues and give you some straight-forward answers?

If you’re a New Orleans lawyer (or live within driving distance), you should consider coming to the next CLE seminar that we’re doing. For those who have been to our CLE seminars you know that we don’t have the usual lame presentation. People who come to our seminars pay attention and ask great questions. Our seminars are informative and fun. Crazy, I know. But true.

The 3 hour seminar we’re doing on Friday afternoon of October 19th is going to be another one of those seminars. What kinds of things might you learn? Here are some questions we plan to answer:

• How can you make it so that the only emails that show up in your inbox during the day are from people that you actually need to do work for?
• What happens to the non-essential emails, and how can you easily process them as well? (The answer to both questions is part of the same trick, and it’s a game-changer).
• If you blind carbon a bunch of people on an email can they look at the metadata and discover who else was bcc’d?
• If you’re doing E-discovery and want to get the metadata associated with email is that going to cost more money? And, if so, how much more money?
• Does it make sense for lawyers to use cloud-based email services such as the ones provided by Google (and, more recently: Microsoft)?
• What ethical pitfalls are most likely to happen when lawyers use email, and is there an easy way to avoid those problems?

These questions and many more (including any you bring to the seminar) are going to be answered. All you have to do is sign up. For more information (and to sign up), click here. In addition to great information you’ll also get 3 hours of CLE credit, including an hour of Ethics credit.

I've been quiet here; but elsewhere busy with a new book, and legal seminar stuff

Sorry I've been a little quiet on the blog here lately, but I've been busy with some good stuff. First, I just submitted the first draft of my book "Blogging in One Hour for Lawyers" to the good folks at the ABA Law Practice Management section. It'll be released in late November if all goes right, and I'll keep you posted when that happens.

I've also been busy ramping up the legal seminar business that Dane Ciolino and I started. Megan Hargroder came on board as a partner last year and has been busy working on a redesign of our blog, and a general branding makeover. We've changed the name of the website DigitalWorkflowCLE.com.

The new website name is PaperlessChase.com, and our new banner logo is awesome. We will be making some more small design tweaks in the coming days. The main thing about the change is that it's easier to market our seminars to lawyers if they have a memorable idea of what we do. The new name is easier to remember, even if it sounds like we are more limited in the scope of what we teach.

Sure, we teach lawyers about how to use lots of different kinds of technology, but a core message is: lawyers who become paperless (or at least move towards a paperless law practice) have an edge. They can be more efficient, work on the go more easily, and save time and money for themselves and their clients. Lawyers who are mostly paperless find it easier to incorporate other types of technology; their tech skills are constantly being honed by the things that they routinely do in their paperless practice.

Tomorrow, Dane and I are doing one of our three hour introductory seminars on becoming paperless for lawyers in Baton Rouge. If you're interested you can learn more about it, and sign up here. It's almost booked up completely so you should definitely sign up in advance. If people wan to sign up at the door we'll obviously try to accommodate them, but it's more disruptive (so we charge a little more), and there are no guarantees for admission if we get too many folks.

There's lots more stuff to announce, but for now that'll give you a sense of what kinds of acorns I've been gathering. Be sure to follow PaperlessChase on Twitter! And sign up for our email newsletter so you get the scoop on future seminars. We've got a 3 hour seminar on iPads for Lawyers set in mid-September in New Orleans that will be awesome!