Welcome to the 2022 Well-Being Week in Law! The OAAP is excited to celebrate this event and provide support for the well-being of members of the Oregon legal community. Each of the five days in Well-Being Week will focus on one dimension of well-being, and our daily blog post will include activity suggestions to “watch,” “read,” and “do” to enhance your well-being in that area.
In addition, the OAAP attorney counselors will hold a 45-minute chat on Thursday, May 5, 2022, at 12 p.m. to discuss social well-being and opportunities to increase engagement. No sign-up required – just come as you are.
Let's start the week off strong with Physical Well-Being!
Featured Posts
Imputed Conflicts? Talk to the Wall!
Conflicts may arise from an associate’s prior legal work, which can be imputed to the new firm. In such cases, the new firm must implement an effective ethical screen or “wall” to exclude the associate from involvement in the matter. The sheer volume of information can make it difficult to establish a consistent and effective ethical wall. To improve the screening process, firms should develop clear, detailed procedures for managing each type of storage.
Email Management: Savvy Saving Strategies
Legal professionals spend an average of 66% of their day on email, according to Dashboard Legal. With the daily flood of emails, saving them to client files often gets overlooked. To prevent pitfalls, it's crucial to understand your ethical obligations and establish a system for organizing and saving emails efficiently.
Shoulder Surfing Sabotage: Protect Your Smartphone
In today’s connected world, attorneys can work virtually anywhere. Smartphones in particular have transformed the way lawyers operate, essentially allowing them to carry their entire office in their pocket. However, this convenience also comes with significant responsibility: protecting the confidential client information now stored on your phone.
Call Me Maybe: Improving Client Communication to Reduce Malpractice Risk
Poor client communication is one of the most common factors in malpractice claims and bar complaints. To avoid these issues and enhance your legal services, consider the following tips.
Efficiency Unleashed: Mastering Outlook
Calendaring is a fundamental task for legal professionals, yet calendaring errors remain a leading cause of malpractice claims. In this post, we discuss Microsoft Outlook, a popular option to enhance productivity and organization, and lessen your chances of committing malpractice.
Fueling the Fire: Motivating Yourself and Staff
As a leader, it's essential to keep the team running smoothly by providing resources and support to proactively address morale issues, burnout, or other de-motivating conditions.
Elevate Mental Health and Well-Being Month | Week 5
Healthy awareness and regulation of our emotions is the sine qua non of well- being. Simply put, the degree to which we can fully experience all aspects of our personal and professional well-being is largely correlated with our ability to recognize and regulate our own emotions.
Harnessing Digital Marketing to Grow Your Practice
In today's legal market, digital marketing is essential for attracting new clients and growing your practice. Consider the following tools, technology, and techniques to expand your digital presence and track the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.
Elevate Mental Health and Well-Being Month | Week 4
For many of us, learning to form professional and personal connections as adults is an area with room for growth.
Elevate Mental Health and Well-Being Month | Week 3
Workplaces and leadership can take proactive steps to create environments where wellness thrives, by prioritizing employee flexibility, autonomy, input, and the ability to align with personal values. Space for creativity, curiosity, learning, and problem-solving can increase collective satisfaction and intellectual growth.
Elevate Mental Health and Well-Being Month | Week 2
This week we’ll explore the concept of finding joy as legal professionals.
ELEVATE MENTAL HEALTH AND WELL-BEING MONTH | Week 1
Attending to our physical well-being is an important aspect of taking care of ourselves, and keeping our bodies strong involves much more than pumping iron at the gym.
The American Bar Association: A Wealth of Knowledge for a Reasonable Price
As any legal professional can tell you, there’s a lot to know when it comes to practicing law. Thankfully, organizations like the American Bar Association exist to help. With a long history and plethora of information, “[t]he ABA works to promote the best quality legal education, competence, ethical conduct and professionalism, and pro bono and public service work in the legal profession.” Consider joining and take advantage of all that a legal-specific national organization has to offer.
Peer-to-Peer Pressure: Interview with a Bookkeeper
Venmo, Zelle, and Cash App are peer-to-peer smartphone applications (P2P) that streamline money transfers by linking user credit cards or bank accounts to rapidly move funds between users. In the legal field, client interest in P2P apps is rising. While undoubtedly convenient, lawyers must assess their security and suitability for their practice.
Artificial Intelligence: Entering a "New" World
To lessen the risk of malpractice and ethical violations, legal professionals need to understand the different types of AI so they can make intelligent decisions about which programs they may want to integrate into their practice.
File Management: Tips for Managing the Chaos
No two firms will likely have the exact same file management procedures, but file management best practices apply to everyone. Understand your storage options and best practice tips to ensure that your client files are being managed properly.
Turning the Page: Three Key Questions to Plan Your Exit
Whether anticipating retirement, making a career change, or just looking to leave private practice, law firm owners must decide how they want to transition. As you begin this process, review your options by asking yourself these three key questions.
Google Business Profiles: Take Advantage of Free Marketing
There is no one marketing algorithm that works for all legal professions, because each firm is unique. There is, however, one free and easy tool that everyone can use.
Check Washing: Don't Get Hung Out To Dry by This Reemerging Scam
Check fraud, particularly “check washing,” has increased significantly over the past year. Here are some tips to protect yourself from this scam.
SLAY THE EMAIL DRAGON WITH HELP FROM MERLIN
How many hundreds— or thousands — of emails are in your inbox right now? At what pace is that number growing? Are you confident that an urgent message isn’t lurking in your queue? Does your computer constantly ping and pop up notifications? If these questions speak to the current state of your email account, you may have a problem. These are all telltale signs that a destructive dragon is living in your inbox.
Changing the Conversation Around Eating Disorders
Food is a necessity in our lives. Our society, however, has some very unhealthy pressures around disordered eating and distorted views of body image. It would make sense that a group of people facing heightened stress levels would find themselves in food-related challenges as a way to cope.
Can We Talk? Audio Conferencing Options and Tips
These days, video and audio calls are the new standard. Consider incorporating audioconferencing into your practice if you haven’t already done so.
Advance Planning Can Go a Long Way to Prevent Overload
Lawyers often take on too much. Regardless of how much we want to help, there are only so many hours in the day that we can dedicate to our jobs. Try some of these ways to better manage your calendar before things get out of control.
Welcome, New Lawyers: A Conversation with PLF Claims Attorney Bradley Tompkins About Avoiding Malpractice
A brief conversation with PLF Claims Attorney Bradley Tompkins about common malpractice risks and how to handle them