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 The purchase price of a PBX is seldom an indication of its cost.
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 The national backlog in obtaining rates clearance certificates is currently at an all-time high, something that has caused major delays in the finalisation of property sales throughout the country. Korbitec recently announced the launch of their new Payment Solutions service, designed to expedite and simplify the property transaction process for sellers and conveyancers alike.
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The "Perfect Law Firm Website" |
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 Google Co-founder Larry Page once described the "perfect search engine" as something that "understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want." We can't claim that Google delivers on that vision 100 percent today, but we're always working on new technologies aimed at bringing all of Google closer to that ideal.
Read more at Law Marketing Monitor...
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How To Book Legal Speaking Engagements Without Making Cold Calls |
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 Regular speaking engagements are a key piece of any good legal marketing strategy. The more you can get out and educate the public about your practice area and the value of your services, the more quality leads you'll see flowing into your law firm.
Read more at Legal Marketing Maven...
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 It is a little known fact, but even legal costs consultants are often shocked by the costs incurred at the expense of litigants. On occasion, the legal costs incurred towards resolving a controversy is closer to an abomination than actual relief sought, and it seems that many practitioners do not consider two basic principles of the office they hold, being:
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 A number of surprises, being unintended consequences of the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) have arisen, which will be explored in this and subsequent articles. Today I want to talk about why it is important to ensure the quality of your supplier is the best you can afford.
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 SARS has received a number of enquiries regarding the correct use of the tax fraction when completing the VAT201 declaration. The reason some confusion has arisen is that the introduction of an enhanced VAT system on 27 May 2011, as part of the modernisation of the VAT process, included a new automated process of using the tax fraction in accordance with Section 66 of the VAT Act.
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It Shouldn’t Suck to be an Associate at a Law Firm |
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 Improving the quality of associates' lives and job satisfaction enhance a law firm's profitability. A user's guide for law firms. At a recent cocktail party, I bumped in to an old friend, Murray. We exchanged pleasantries and small talk, and the conversation turned to the economy and business. Murray told me that too many of his partners were ignoring the manufacturers' guides for utilizing these assets as soon as they were acquired, demanding more production from them than could be reasonably expected and the result was that they simply collapsed after three or four years.
Read more at Kowalski & Associates Blog
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 Taking care of your customers is good business. This tenet has held true since humans first began bartering. But in the age of the Internet, those handshakes that were once the bread and butter of customer relations have been replaced by emails and social networking. Enter Customer Relationship Management.
Read more at More Clients Less Selling...
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2010: A Record Year for Cybersquatting Arbitration |
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 Arbitration cases involving allegations of cybersquatting, or improper use of trademarks in internet domain-name registrations, hit record levels last year at the two organizations that handle most of the disputes.
Read more at the LTN web site
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Paddocks, the spe cialist sectional title training company, has created an innovative online platform that employs cutting-edge technology to make learning sectional titles even easier. Paddocks Club is a fully interactive online community filled with resources and information, all made accessible through the Navigator, the advanced search tool.
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It is perhaps not a very well-known fact, but there is considerable scope to draw and argue a bill of legal costs, in South Africa. Where the bill is either assessed or taxed, there are a multitude of factors that influence the cost and price of legal services rendered, and it is often quite inappropriate to arbitrarily apply a tariff /rule on how an item presented will be dealt with by a taxing official. However, guidelines are always welcome, and any taxing official may be swayed on good argument presented.
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 Ken Strutin writes that social media is an exciting and creative way to connect, share information, and build communities. And the internet is becoming predominant as the marketplace where the daily transactions of life are conducted.
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 PRLog - Korbitec's Attorney Activity Index indicates that current South African property sector sluggishness is set to continue over the medium term. Analysis of the volume of instructions lodged by attorneys show that the South African property sector isn't due for any major changes in the near future.
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 Most law firms are missing out on one of the least expensive and most effective opportunities to promote their services. In an age where conventional advertising methods no longer work, firms need to use their existing relationships (clients) to sell their services, and promote their firm.
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Computing Needs: CRM technology for law firms |
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 Client Relationship Management (CRM)technology is acquired by law firms beginning at about 15 to 20 attorneys to improve the process of sending out e-mails, letters and publications to clients and prospective clients. However, an equally important benefit from CRM technology is how the same contact in more than one attorney's Microsoft Outlook folder is kept up to date.
Read more.....
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Like any advice columnist, I write what I know. And right now, I know what it is like to be a new partner at a firm - and pregnant. While this column applies more to my female readers, I encourage the men to read it. It may provide some perspective into the world of your pregnant colleagues.
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Cloudy Forecast in the Am Law Tech Survey 2010 |
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 With consumer-centric devices making lawyers more tech friendly, but IT operating budgets mostly flat: Is the glass half-full or half-empty? We confess: Interpreting the results of this year's survey of law firm technology departments -- our fifteenth -- was a somewhat maddening task. On one hand, it was easy to take a glass-half-full view of the results: Capital budgets are ticking back up... Read more.....
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How to kill a law firm... |
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 There's a story told about Jack Welch, former GE president - it might be from one of his books, or it might be apocryphal; quite possibly it's both. The story goes that soon after he took over the company, he called in his vice-presidents and other senior people and advised them that countless smaller companies and start-ups were out there gunning for GE, hoping to take down the top dog by finding the chinks in its armour and exploiting them. He directed his people to locate these companies, identify the disruptive innovations they were coming up with, and prepare defences against them.
Read more....
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 All too often we follow the pattern of what others have done when designing our own website. One needs to think about what your prospective client will want from your website. I very much doubt that they will be interested in the number of awards you have accumulated over the years; they will be more interested in finding out your hourly rate.
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 Tech4Law visited Andrew Johnston from ProDial in Port Elizabeth to find out from him what made the new ProDial Professional Call Billing Network so unique and also beneficial to attorneys and legal advice seekers.
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 It's back with some old and many new questions, the almost annual GhostDigest survey in which we find out how legal firms have adapted to the "new normal" vis-a-vis their relationship with estate agents, financial institutions and clients.
Link to the online survey setup by GhostDigest...
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 Currently we have 280 responses to the survey, which is a long way off the 690 responses we got in the secretary/paralegal survey we did last month. Our current stats tell us that 25% of practicing conveyancers earn less than R10 000 per month - rather an alarming fact.
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A Foolproof 5-Step System to Attract Perfect Clients |
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 Are you attracting the type of clients you want? - I'm surprised at how many lawyers and non-lawyers answer "no" because it's really not that hard to do. It seems that not a week goes by when I'm not asked how I've been successful in attracting the clients I love to work with - entrepreneurs.
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High Tech without the Cheque |
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 Until recently, medium and large firms were the primary adopters of sophisticated practice management software, such as Time Matters produced by LexisNexis, and other "high" technology. This was due to the high cost of adopting cutting-edge technology, such as the need to have an in-house IT department.
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Tech turbulence: 10 Questions to Just Ask your IT director |
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 During this economic downturn, here are 10 questions law firm managers should ask IT directors, in order to best exploit existing technology.
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Law Firm Cost Recovery Is Here to Stay |
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 Cost recovery has always been a controversial area of law firm billing. Law firms incur substantial administrative costs in servicing their clients, and yet clients are generally resistant, even hostile to the idea of these costs being billed back to them. Given the current economic crisis, law firms are having to justify their fees and costs more than ever before, so they need tools and data to help them demonstrate that their rates are fair and competitive.
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Cuts, freezes and sabbaticals mooted |
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 Sweet & Maxwell asked 25 top-100 law firms what measures they have implemented to cut costs while avoiding staff redundancies. According to the results, only one firm has gone ahead with pay cuts, but 36% said they are considering them. A quarter (24%) of firms have put salary freezes in place, with 60% considering this as an option.
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 So the recession is really starting to bite now, and we're starting to see law firms closing down and partners getting out of the profession. It's OK though: Most bank economists agree that we'll see an upturn in 2010 - so perhaps you can still outride the storm. But what if they are wrong? And even if we do see an "upturn", will that be enough to save your practice? And for those firms who haven't been saving for the proverbial "rainy day", how do you hang in there?
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Will your firm survive a lethargic economy? |
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 Here are ten things that we can do now to prepare for the upcoming growth cycles of the economy from both a business and technology perspective. By Steven Best.
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Tough times mean tighter IT budgets (Dec'08) |
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 Tough economic times lie ahead for law firms. A recession means re-evaluating the budget and tightening the proverbial belt. It means thinking strategically about how best to spend-and save-money. See the full article
Tough times mean tighter IT budgets - Heinan Landa, Legal Times
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How to Prevent 'The End of Lawyers' |
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 In his book "The End of Lawyers," Richard Susskind paints a picture of a changing marketplace for legal services, where the traditional approach to delivering legal advice, one client and matter at a time through direct personal contact between partners and clients, is being augmented and, in some cases, supplanted by packaged legal services. Susskind, a UK-based legal industry observer, argues that legal IT will play a crucial role in enabling future methods of legal services delivery.
Read the full article in Law.Com
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 Over the past few years, social media has ballooned from a small, emerging market into a major force in the online marketing and advertising space. However, those who lived through the dotcom boom-and-bust cycle can't help asking whether we are about to see another bubble burst.
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 It is somewhat strange that despite hundreds of years of formal legal development, there is still much uncertainty around the rather complex relationship between counsel, attorney and their mutual client; the litigator. Rather more pertinent is the question: "who is ultimately responsible for counsel's fee: is it the instructing attorney, the litigator, or both"?
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Your Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words |
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 We talked here before about what you should do with your biography on your website. I have strong opinions about what generates business and what doesn't. Is it possible that your website picture matters more than your bio?
Read more at Divorce Discourse
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An experienced hand-at-law once told me that it was his experience over the years that when a lawyer's services are needed, almost anything will be promised in exchange for that service required. Author of "The Legal Practitioner's Handbook on Costs", Albert Reinecke shares some of his views on billing and also offers a copy of the book to a lucky winner who answers the question correctly at the bottom of the article.
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 There was a time when the phrase "works well with others" belonged primarily in school report cards. But today, working together is at the heart of productivity in business.
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 It is called "Leaving Money on the Table", when you could charge more for your services, but you don't for whatever reason. The extra revenue which you could generate without doing anything extra, with very little resistance from your clients, is "money left on the table."
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 Aim to win more business and learn how to make your business work so that you don't have to!
• Do you want I grow your business profitably?
• Do you want control of your time?
• Do you want to stay with your top clients?
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 In our previous issue we gathered information from attorneys and worked out the average salaries for the country. We thought that a natural progression of the salary review would be to determine the average hourly rate per area of practice for every region in South Africa.
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