Tim Storm, chair of ISBA's General Practice, Solo & Small Firm Section, is describing his journey from brick-and-mortar to virtual office in a series of newsletter articles. Tim is an engaging writer, and his accounts are well worth your time. Here are excerpts from his second of two installments.

"[I]f some of your clients live in a different time zone—like the 1980s—and insist upon faxing things, you should use an e-fax service instead of a big old fax machine. For a monthly fee, faxes come in as PDF e-mail attachments that you receive wherever you have e-mail access. It’s convenient, paperless, and not evil."

"I have decided to use Clio, which is one of the larger and better-known cloud-based law practice management systems. Granted, I have only just started to use Clio (as of this writing, I am still within the 30-day trial period, so I haven’t even paid for it yet). But so far, my general reaction to Clio is: 'Where have you been all my life?'”

Read his article.

The race is on between Google, Microsoft, and others to position themselves for dominance in the Cloud.  Hence, Microsoft announced this week the beta release of Microsoft Office 2013 as well as Office 365 to mixed reviews. Beta versions of both products are available for free download. According to Evan Koblenz, writing for Law Technology News, Microsoft Office 2013 Bolsters E-Discovery. According to Alexandra Chang at Wired.com the subscription based Office 365 means that, Microsoft Office Finally Gets Serious About the Cloud. However, Scott M.

Michael P. Schostok, 51, a former member of the Illinois State Bar Association's Board of Governors, passed away on Sunday at his Libertyville home after a battle with brain cancer.

Mr. Schostok practiced personal injury law, specializing in medical malpractice and catastrophic injury matters as a principal in the firm of Salvi, Schostok, and Pritchard of Chicago and Waukegan. He earned his J.D. at Capital University Law School, 1986, a B.S. in 1983 from Miami University and attended Loyola Academy. He grew up in Riverwoods. Michael was an outdoorsman and naturalist all his life.

He was the beloved husband of Appellate Justice Mary Schostok (nee Seminara); and loving father of Marisa, Gina, and Michael; son of Kathleen Kapsa and the late Steven Schostok; brother of Stephen (Sheila) Schostok, Bradley Schostok; and sister, Katherine (Jonathan) Cunha; stepson of Dr. Patricia Schostok Reese; uncle of many.

Visitation will be Thursday, July 19, 3 to 8 p.m. at Kolssak Funeral Home, 189 S. Milwaukee Ave (2 Blocks South of Dundee Rd) Wheeling. Michael will lie in state Friday 10 a.m. at St. Joseph Parish; 121 E. Maple, Libertyville until time of Life Celebration Mass at 11 a.m. Interment Ascension Cemetery, Libertyville.

Asked and Answered

By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

Q. Our firm is a 34 lawyer litigation boutique based in San Antonio, Texas. We have 20 partners and 14 associates. I serve as managing partner at the will of the partnership and spend 35% of my time on firm management matters and the remainder of my time practicing law. A legal administrator and accounting manager assist me with managing the firm. While I have the general support of the partnership, maybe because no one else wants the job, I serve more as a filter and still find that I have to run most of the firm's management decisions before the full partnership. Often I feel that my staff and I are second guessed, management decisions take too long to make and are diluted and watered down, and the firm has missed out on opportunities due to our structure or lack of structure. Other law firms that we have competed against for years have passed us by and have grown while we have stagnated. Do you have any suggestions concerning our approach to managing the firm?

A. Your firm has reached a size where more structure is usually required. The democratic system of all partners being involved in virtually every management decision might have worked when you were five or six attorneys but has now outgrown this structure. Think about how some of your business clients are organized and structured. Ask around and talk with other law firms and accounting firms your size. I think that you will find that they have put in place more structure to support their business models.

I suggest that you:

The Illinois Bar Foundation will host its annual Baseball Classic on July 20 at 7:15 p.m. The game will feature the Chicago Cubs vs. the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium.

Tickets are $225 and include all food and beverages. Sponsorships are available. Contact the IBF at (312) 726-6072 for more information or click here to purchase tickets.

On August 6th and 7th the National Association of Sentencing Commissions will be convening in Chicago. The focus of this year’s conference is assessing policy and change.  

NASC is made up of the sentencing commissions from all over the country, including the Sentencing Policy Advisory Council here in Illinois. This is a group of professionals who have been involved in tracking sentencing policies and outcomes in their states. Several of the states have enacted justice reinvestment based reform bills, and one of the sessions focuses on how implementation has gone. Although the agenda posted on the website is still a draft, the last session will be on responding to the growing use of synthetic drugs and will feature a representative of AG Madigan’s office, a toxicologist and a treatment provider.  

 More details on this conference may be found at this link:

http://thenasc.org/2012conference/agenda.html

 

The Illinois Judges Foundation & the Auxiliary Committee are hosting a comedy night on Tuesday, July 24. This event starts with a reception at 6 and show at 7:15. It will be held at The Second City e.t.c. Stage, 230 W. North.

Register online at IJF Second City Event

Questions? Contact Kathy Hosty at 312-554-2008 or Christine Athanasoulis at (708) 705-4355.

The Illinois State Bar Association's Board of Governors elected a new secretary and treasurer at its meeting Friday in Chicago.

John Nisivaco (left) will serve as secretary. Nisivaco is a partner with the Chicago firm of Boudreau Nisivaco LLC. In 2011, he was elected to the Board has been elected to the Assembly three times. He has also served as chair of the ISBA Tort Law Section Council. Russell K. Scott of Belleville served as secretary for 2011-2012.

Judge Stephen Pacey (right) of Paxton was named treasurer. He is serving his sixth year on the Board and has been a Ford County circuit judge since 1996. He has served on the Assembly and a multitude of committees and sections during his 38 years as an ISBA member. He was preceded as treasurer by Karen A. Enright of Chicago.

The Board welcomed new members Charles Y. Davis of Springfield, Jean A. Kenol of Joliet and Sonni Choi Williams of Peoria. Chicago attorney Mark Karno was appointed to the Board seat vacated when Umberto S. Davi was elected 3rd Vice President.

Kevin Harris’ recent post in Attorney at Work, It’s About Time You Got Paid, reminds lawyers that they are in business to make money; and that they need to employ good management practices in order to accomplish that goal.  However, in today’s economic climate, lawyers are expected to draw up budget and staffing plans at the outset of an undertaking and stick to them using a technique called LPM, or Legal Project Management, as explained by Pam Woldow in her posting, LPM, Going for Broke and Turning up the Heat.  However,despite LPM having become the buzzword for law practice management this year, Toby Brown suggests that a better term might be BFC, or “Better, Faster, Cheaper,” in the article he posted at 3 Geeks and the Law Blog: Legal Project Management Versus Process Improvement - Which Drives BFC?.

In order to assist lawyers in their efforts to accomplish these goals, software vendors are constantly offering new products and upgrades, which bloggers then review.  Hence, Basha Systems posted a review of a Actionstep, a new legal management program imported from Australia.  Also, TL Answers, at Legal Technology Review contains reviews of new products and advice about setting up software.  Legal Technology Review is a free subscription e-mail service with several offerings from which to choose.