how to excel as a new attorney

Which Microsoft Office software should a lawyer use?

Nov 01, 2014 · Darin Mackender was a guest speaker at the "Getting Your House in Order" Boot Camp sponsored by University of Colorado Law School and University of Denver Sturm College of Law in November 2014. He presented on "What You Need to Know to Excel as a New Lawyer and Great Legal Writing (beyond what you learn in law school)."

How can excel help in litigation?

Apr 18, 2012 · First, ask your client to give you every document they have, and to explain what they are. Second, serve the opposing party with custom-tailored interrogatories and requests for documents asking for everything. You won’t get everything so, third, serve requests for admission demanding they admit those documents are all the responsive documents.

Is MS Word necessary for a modern lawyer?

Define success with your mentor during the first few weeks. This includes understanding how you will work together, how you will get the resources you need to do your job well, and how your job performance will be assessed. 2. Set boundaries. It may be tempting to think that you’ll compromise your boundaries at the start of a new job and then ...

Do you need a lawyer timesheet template?

Excel Applications for Law Firm Budgeting. A large law firm uses one of our tools to develop, consolidate and manage budgets from multiple departments. This tool is used in conjunction with the database of a larger accounting system and provides reports that are more useful to managers than the reports generated by the accounting system. With ...

How To Research A Law Firm For An Interview?

Securing a fantastic legal career requires several criteria that you have little or no control over. You cannot control the economy, competition, o...

How To Dress For A Law Firm Interview?

If you want to fit in as a rookie lawyer, it is time for some law firm attire. But first...What Not To Wear? Do not wear anything too flashy or ost...

How To Prepare For A Law Firm Interview?

Many law students and non-law students need to know the right way of interviewing for a job. It is so frustrating talking to one lawyer after anoth...

When Do I Need To Start Preparing For A Law Firm Job Interview?

Immediately! The earlier you start preparing for your first law firm job interview, the more options you will have. Waiting until the last minute t...

Where Do I Begin My Law Firm Interview Preparation?

Start with yourself and who you are as a person. A law firm interview is not just a chance for you to sell yourself but a time for a lawyer to lear...

What Are Some Ways Of Knowing Who I Am And How To Sell Myself For A Law Job?

The key way of knowing who you are is by using an interview preparation guide. The best way to prepare yourself for a law job is to understand what...

What Is A Plan Of Action And How Does It Help Me To Get Into A Law Firm?

A plan of action is basically a summary of yourself and your practice or area of law that you can memorize. It is also important for job applicants...

How Do I Prepare For An Attorney Interview?

The most common ways students and fresh grads usually prepare for attorney interviews are:Step 1: Practice your answers with a friend or classmate....

What Is The Best Law School Interview?

The best law school interview is one that puts you at ease, allows you to show your best side, and leaves the interviewer impressed enough with you...

Who said "every battle is won before it is ever fought"?

It was a great line, but I think Gordon Gekko misquoted Sun Tzu on “every battle is won before it is ever fought.” The closest Sun Tzu said was: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”

Where is the Johnson Library?

He has spent literally several years at the Johnson Library, in Austin, Tex., painstakingly going through the red buckram boxes that contain Johnson’s papers, and he has been the first researcher to open some of the most revealing files there.

Excel VBA Applications for Data Intensive Cases

In today’s data-driven world, even lawyers are inundated with more information than they know what to do with. When cases are data-intensive, a whole different set of skills is needed to shed light on the facts.

Excel Applications for Case Evaluation and Management

Some law firms just need help with managing their own business affairs. We have helped firms automate a wide variety of tasks including case tracking, mail merge, budgeting and more.

Excel Applications for Law Firm Budgeting

A large law firm uses one of our tools to develop, consolidate and manage budgets from multiple departments. This tool is used in conjunction with the database of a larger accounting system and provides reports that are more useful to managers than the reports generated by the accounting system.

MS SharePoint for Document and Workflow Management

Our parent company, eSoftware Associates provides SharePoint solutions for law firms. SharePoint is a great option for managing workflows and documents.

Contact ExcelHelp.com for A Free Consultation

Let us help you design and develop a Rock-Solid solution for your law firm. Contact our team to schedule a free consultation by calling 1-800-682-0882 or visit our website at ExcelHelp.com to submit an inquiry online.

Become a free BCG Attorney Search Subscriber

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About Harrison Barnes

Harrison is the founder of BCG Attorney Search and several companies in the legal employment space that collectively gets thousands of attorneys jobs each year. Harrison is widely considered the most successful recruiter in the United States and personally places multiple attorneys most weeks.

May your 2015 be full of many months where you need to add more rows to your time entries on your bills

I previously showed you how to use Excel to do a lot of neat tricks in your office. Here, I want to show some stuff that is a little more advanced. By way of background, I used to work at an insurance defense firm that split up. All of the attorneys went out and started their own firms.

Looking For Litigation CLE Programs? PLI Has You Covered

PLI’s litigation programs help you keep up with the law and grow your skills while earning CLE. From white collar crime to class actions to…

This Strategic Info Will Help You Win Business And Cases

Lex Machina’s Outcome Analytics stand apart in enabling you to make confident, data-driven decisions in varied areas of your practice. Here’s how.

What is Excel used for?

For example, Excel is perfect in a multi-plaintiff case or a class cases where there are numerous line items that go into the final calculations, or where the amount of damages is likely to change based on factors such as the accrual of attorney's fees, the passage of time, or interest rates .

Can you use Excel in litigation?

The only limit with using Excel in litigation is your imagination. I've used it to create demonstrative exhibits for use in depositions, to make data "speak" with the help of conditional formatting and charts, and much more.

Is Excel good for calculating dates?

Excel is incredibly powerful when you're dealing with dates, particularly when you need to count them accurate ly. Obviously, this comes up all the time in litigation, and the rules for calculating dates can be rather complex which makes visual timelines and case management software important to use.

Is Excel easy to use?

Excel is also a lot easier to use than many people think it is. Indeed, the foundation of all my later adventures with Excel was a 15-minute online tutorial that I had to take as a prerequisite for a temp job that I had (for 2 days!) in my early 20s.

What is the most underused application in Office?

One of the most underused applications in the Office suite is the Planner app. This is Microsoft’s answer to Trello, Monday, Asana, and other Kanban style project management applications. Here, lawyers should be utilizing the shared workspace to keep track of team members’ tasks, and to create workflows for common tasks.

What is the work horse of the Office suite?

Word is a processing, editing, publishing, and reviewing platform that is by far the industry standard. Lawyers should be using this to red-line documents, create standard files from templates, and automate files that are reused frequently. They should understand what meta-data is being stored, how to use version control (and document compare), and how to use Quick Styles to make their document formatting easier.

How does Quick Styles work?

Quick Styles allows you to save formatting settings as an easy to use button in the Home ribbon. This means that you can easily switch from your formal Court Filing style with all the necessary formatting rules, to your office’s correspondence style with the click of a button. It’s as easy as setting up the styles in your document once and then saving them.

What is SharePoint in Microsoft Office?

Sharepoint is Microsoft Office’s network drive. Lawyers and law firms would use this instead of on-premises office network storage. It’s more like your local Server. Here, you can store common files that can be shared with the entire office with ease (or you can limit access as necessary). This storage location integrates directly with the Planner app, Teams, and Office to help you manage your information broadly.

Can lawyers use Outlook?

Other than scheduling, however, attorneys should also be using Outlook to make their communications more secure.

Is OneDrive a network drive?

OneDrive is like personal storage in the Cloud. It’s your own little remote drive. Although it can be used as an office network drive, that is not its best and highest use. Unfortunately, many LPMS systems only integrate with OneDrive, so you may have to use it by default.

What is teams in Slack?

Teams is more than just Microsoft’s answer to #Slack. If used correctly, it can be a hub for your day-to-day tasks, and a place where your office collaborates. It can combine your Planner, Sharepoint, Tasks, Calendar, and loads of other applications, all within a specified communication channel. Additionally, it has replaced Skype for Business, so you can run your phones and your video conferencing through it.

Can you pay attorneys with Time Doctor?

With Time Doctor, you’ll finally have accurate information on the hours worked to generate a precise payroll invoice. What’s even better is that you can directly pay your attorneys inside Time Doctor as it has a built-in payroll feature.

Is Time Doctor accurate?

Not only that, Time Doctor’s records are also accurate to the second, so you can rest assured that all the data collected is as accurate as possible!

Do attorneys need timesheets?

It’s one of the reasons why it’s absolutely necessary to have some way to track the hours you put in. However, most attorney timesheet templates aren’ t as useful as you need them to be. Often, your attorneys have to manually fill out the information and might even insert inaccurate data or forget to write down a task entry.