Solo and Small Firm Conference New Jersey State Bar Association May 16, 2012

About Us Steven Ferman President, Compunite Computers, Inc., Pine Brook NJ NJSBA Affinity Partner William Mack, Esq. Solo Practitioner-Business Law, Energy Law, Real Estate Vice-Chair, Solo and Small Firm Section Carol L. Schlein, Esq. President, Law Office Systems, Inc., Montclair NJ Member of Lawtopia LLC (national consulting firm)

What are you using? Desktop or Laptop Desktop- in-office practice, better ergonomics Laptop- mobile and travel-heavy practice Tablets, Pads & Mobile Devices Great for consumption but poor creation devices Good communication tool Emerging and changing quickly

How are you connecting? On premises, firm owned traditional remote access Cloud Applications (SaaS) hosted applications only Private Cloud you own and manage Public Cloud you share space Hybrid Cloud mixture of above

How are you using it? Word Processing Document Assembly Timekeeping & Billing Practice Management Practice Specific Apps Accounting Client Portal (Extranet) Other Digital Dictation Speech Recognition Video Collaboration

What are you running on it? Office productivity suite Server-based: MS Office, Open Office Cloud-based: Office 365, Google Apps Practice Management Server-based: Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, Pro Law Cloud-based: Advologix, Clio, Firm Manager, GoMatters Billing and Accounting QuickBooks, Timeslips, Tabs3, PC Law, Billing Matters

What are you running on it? Substantive Apps Real estate, family law, workers comp… Document management Digital meeting apps Skype Backup Social apps Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+

Where are you working? As a subtenant In shared space Bona Fide Office Rule RPC 1:21-1(a) Home office Where is your data stored? Can others access it? Who else knows your passwords?

Security & Confidentiality Physical Location of your Data Ownership of Data Venue and Jurisdiction Disaster Recovery Data Breach Trade Secret and Privilege Protection Third Party Access to Data RPC 1.6 and RPC 5.3 are relevant rules

Fit Technology to Your Practice Solo or small firm? One office or more (or less!)? In-office or out-of-office practice? Real or Virtual assistant? No assistant? Lots of travel or little travel? Paperless? Paper lite? Paper heavy? Federal court? State court? No court? Tech-savvy or tech-phobic? Bookkeeper? Accountant? How are you creating awareness? (social media?)

Does your technology do this? If properly selected, deployed and used, it can… Improve efficiency Maintain client communication Manage information to support effective workflow Reduce time-to-execute and promote execution from anywhere/anytime Distribute critical information automatically Reduce overhead Allow for scalability Secure your firms data Secure your clients confidential information

Wrap-up Study your practice and its need for technology Expect to invest money AND time getting the right tech and making sure your colleagues can/will use it Review and adjust New stuff comes along all the time Upgrades Changes in practice WHAT are you using? HOW are you using it? WHY? Rinse and repeat