Michael E. St. George provided this great guest post about his adventure of moving his law practice to a home office after 30 years of the “downtown” office. Michael has indicated he may be interested in doing a series on this for Home Office Warrior. Take a read of Michael’s guest post and please leave your comments encouraging him to do the series. Nothing is better than getting other people’s take on the home office. And Michael, get me photos of your new home office when it is ready.
After 30 years I have decided to go home. That is, take my law office out of the office building and take it into our home. I have primarily a transaction practice with four or five pieces of litigation going at anyone time. (It helps the cash flow ).
To do this we have decided to make some additions to our home, including expanding an existing back bedroom/office into a room to serve as a fulltime office, with additional storage. French doors opening onto the pool will be a nice touch, don’t you think?
In preparation for this, all new files are scanned – everything. We are currently keeping a hard copy of the file but the goal is to eventually be fully electronic and only retain necessary originals, such as contracts that are evidential, etc. Scanning currently consists of a single page scanner and I am researching various laser multi-functional printers (“MFP”) and stand alone sheet-fed scanners, and accompanying software for purchase. (I don’t see the need, yet, why we would need to have OCR software – I never “change” anything I get – we just scan existing hard copies into PDF format – somebody tell me why a law office would need anything else?)
For back ups, each computer has a stand-alone external push-the-button backup harddrive. In addition I have a small 160 gig pocketbook hard-drive I carry with me. I am testing various on-line backup companies now.
Recently, I had occasion to go to Texas for nine days (a new grandson – mother and baby are doing well – thank you very much!) But, I had a lot of “deals” and contracts going on. So I had to work. Took my Dell laptop, my daughter has wi-fi, and we used a free internet message program call “Hello” by Picasa. I had my pocket hard-drive with me so I had my complete office with me. With this I “talked” to my secretary back at the office all day. It was like she was in the next room. We emailed and transferred scanned and typed documents back and forth all day.
When I needed to dictate something (which I don’t do often anymore) I used a Sony IC Recorder ICD-SX25 and download and email the dictation to her. She types it up and emailed the draft back. I marked it up, she corrected it.
Clients called and she put them right through to my Motorola Q. They thought I was in my office in Arizona! I also use a cam at the office and one built into my laptop. I use Skype and have talked face to face with clients I had never previously met – a CEO in New Jersey, for example.
I read Technolawyer avidly and well as Home Office Warrior. Because of Home Office Warrior I was able to direct my legal assistant to a Virtual Assistant blog so she can learn about being a legal assistant out of her house.
I am convinced this is going to work and work well. Because of the technology available. Whine! Why didn’t I do this sooner!
4 Comments
Michael-
Let me be the first to encourage you to keep going with the postings.
I’m particularly interested since I too am a grandfather closing in on 30 years of city practice and am thinking about going at least partially home office and just keeping a small meeting place for clients.
A quick question. When you say:
“For back ups, each computer has a stand-alone external push-the-button backup harddrive. In addition I have a small 160 gig pocketbook hard-drive I carry with me.”
I was wondering specifically which ones you were using.
Keep up the good work.
Ken
Congratulations on joining the Home Office Ranks!
re “why we would need to have OCR software…”
Many law offices have their docs OCR’d and digitally archived in the Discovery phase, especially if there are several thousand. Service firms that perform this service OCR docs not to make changes, but to add meta data to the digital files to make them more easily searchable in a database.
If you OCR your own docs and archive them digitally, it will cost you less when hiring a firm to house them for exchange.
However, for a small practice that works on cases with fewer than a thousand docs, it’s not crucial to OCR. Some firms can still take your PDFs and OCR those, which at least saves scanning boxes of paper.
In either case, you’re smart to go digital. More and more courts are getting on board with tech.
Hope to see your office when it’s done!
Enjoyed the article tremendously. I’m always happy to see people simplify and still provide great services. That’s one of the win-win scenarios we all love.
Sad to say that “Hello” will go away on June 11. Received an email saying that yesterday and checked the site this morning to verify.
Keep posting. Great information.
Thank you for the comments. I will do a series.
As to “which ones you (I) were (am) using” the answer is both. I want an off-site backup as well.
The comment on the OCR was very welcomed. Thank you. That answer puts the issue in good perspective.
Very sorry to hear about the loss of “Hello”. Dang!