Legal Practice Management Software (LPMS) accumulates and aggregates all the relevant information about a case or matter – litigation or transaction – so that it can be easily accessed and used by lawyers and their staff. It is, in essence, an electronic case/matter file. While there is no set rule, basic practice management programs have four primary components: calendaring, task management, people management, and case/matter management.
[Read more…]
What’s Up (or Down) with Bankruptcy Filings?
The newest data indicate that bankruptcy filings continue to decline. Bob Lawless over at Credit Slips reports that the February 2015 filing data show a 10.1% year-over-year decline. This is the 52nd straight month of year over year decline.
If we are looking for a silver lining from the consumer bankruptcy attorney perspective (with which we are obviously aligned), the data charted in the blog post clearly show that the decline has flattened out considerably from the steep 2008 – 2011 decline. Coupled with the departure from the practice area of a substantial number of the attorneys who jumped into consumer bankruptcy around 2008 – 2009, established bankruptcy attorneys have reason to be cautiously optimistic that this trend has bottomed out. I always find it a little uncomfortable to hope that more people will have to file bankruptcy, but based on general economic data and news, as well as the filing data, it would seem that that filings will continue to flatten out with an eventual increase – it’s just a matter of when.
Not all the news is bad, unless you practice in Alaska. While the general filing trend is flattening out, it really depends on where you are located. In another post and in the comments, Bob Lawless and Credit Slips readers discuss the trends for each district. The deep south, good. Alaska, not so much.
Having reviewed this graph with our BKexpress clients in mind, I think one should dig a little deeper into this graph before taking it as good or bad news. For example, Nevada appears as a red state meaning that the per capita filing is high. Yet, the District of Nevada has suffered a wild roller coaster ride with one of the most precipitous declines in bankruptcy filings going from 11,000 filings in 2007, to 30,000 in 2010, 17,000 in 2012, and then dropping to 9,000 in 2014.
Backing up your SQL Data – SQLBackupAndFTP
While this post may be helpful to any user of software that stores its data in a Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL), it will be most applicable to OTB’s Time Matters users.
When you store your data in MS SQL, you obviously have to make sure it gets backed up. For many years, Time Matters did a fairly poor job at providing a robust backup solution. Most Time Matters consultants looked for alternatives outside the program, and many of us were pleased to find SQLBackupAndFTP. Even as the internal backup capabilities improved in recent versions of Time Matters, it doesn’t come close to what you can do with SQLBackupAndFTP and there is still no reason to use the internal backup solution when such a robust solution exists and is free.
There are a number of reasons this is a great piece of software, but toward the top of the list is that they provide a free version that will likely be sufficient for most time Matters users. At OTB we use their paid-for version as we need to backup more than 2 databases, want the expanded online storage alternatives, and want to encrypt our backups. But, if all you need to is to backup Time Matters, and perhaps one other database, it is free of charge.
Join Us at the NC Bar Association Annual Meeting June 19-22
Stop by and talk with us at the upcoming North Carolina Annual Bar Association Annual Meeting in beautiful Wilmington.
Let us help your firm navigate the tides of radidly changing technology.
Join the conversation!
OTB’s Tom Rowe to speak at ABA TechShow 2014
Senior Managing Director, Tom Rowe, takes the stage again this year at ABA TechShow 2014.
ABA TechShow includes more than 50 continuing legal education sessions to help attorneys and staff learn about the most useful and practical legal technologies available.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 4
- 5
- 6