Research, reading and well some writing – just no blog postings.  Last month, I prepared my article for the newsletter, TLOMA Today, but wasn’t particularly happy with it so I didn’t submit it.  You just know when it can be better.  Researching and reading materials for a book and ebook I plan on writing and reviewing other topics I’m interested in.

Collaboration – there’s that buzz word. Anyway, it appears the articles I write for TLOMA Today have caught the eye of someone.  As a reminder, TLOMA Today is a newsletter of The Law Office Management Association.  These articles include the following:

1. Work With A Virtual Assistant (Dec. 2009, p. 13);
2. Start the New Year Off On the Right Track:  Go Paperless (Jan. 2010, p. 3);
3. Getting with 2007 Microsoft Office:  The Ribbon – A Glimpse at Word 2007 (Mar. 2010, p. 8); and
4. Knowledge Management:  Collaborative Work Systems (April 2010, p. 13).

Late one night on April 27 (my last post date), I received an e-mail from the president of a Canadian company who has been following my articles as well as reading the information on my Knowledge Management: Collaborative Work Systems website. Anyway, in a nutshell, the company develops applications - information and knowledge management solutions (i.e., portals for collaboration) - for Microsoft SharePoint for legal and non-legal environments.  He was interested in making a connection, and, in fact, we had a web meeting earlier this month.

Interested in reading the articles, visit my website, Virtual Legal Corner.  The articles can also be found online in the newsletter, TLOMA Today.

Participating in Phone Meetings - for the development of the PMI Legal Project Management CoP and reviewing and writing some materials for the business plan.

Volunteering – working on the web pages of the website – Woman 2 Woman Community Services, Inc. - making them consistent across the site, including changing the navigation links, removing outdated and erroneous content; editing content and updating content.

Updating my website – Virtual Legal Corner.

Job Searching, sending out cover letter and resumes - yes, I’m still doing that.

Is God trying to tell me something?

Ok, that’s a rap for now.  It’s time for my nap. The sleep hasn’t come all the way upon me yet so a movie in the laptop and next thing you know I’ll be out of it.  I’ll catch the errors in this post after I wake up.  So don’t hold any errors against me.

Virtual Assistants Can Provide Valuable Legal Support Services to Law Firms

Every business should be interested in lowering costs and increasing productivity and revenue. Right? Right. A virtual assistant is your answer.

Over the last two years law firms cut costs by laying off support staff. The firms did so to reduce costs as a result of an economic downturn or slow and declining business that resulted in decreased revenue. (Read more …)

Fun Things to Do with Family and Friends That Won’t Break Your Budget
Tired of sitting around the house watching tv? Even though a good movie or a sports event on the boob tube can be entertaining and is cheap, every now and then there’s the need to get out of the house. (Read more …)

My Experience Earning A Master’ Degree From The John Marshall Law School
When I tell people I earned a Master of Science (MS) degree from The John Marshall Law School (JMLS), Chicago, IL, they look confused and question me (as if somehow I might not know where I earned my degree).

Yes, JMLS offers master degree programs. In fact, the school offers MS degrees in tax law, real estate law, employee benefits law, intellectual property law, and information technology (IT) & privacy law (ITPL). The ITPL degree is offered through the Center for ITPL (Center). The Center offers a joint Juris Doctor (JD) and Master of Laws (LLM) degree for law students, a LLM degree for practicing attorneys, and a MS degree for non-lawyers. I earned a MS degree (with honors) in ITPL in 2005.  (Read more …)

That makes 3 published on Associated Content.  Looking forward to writing more.  In fact, I have one in the works so stay tuned.

I want to write more so I am committing myself to at least 3 or more articles a week.  Later today I have to finalize my article topic for the newsletter.  It’s due by the 1st now.  Initially I planned (and I wrote it in an earlier post) to do another article keeping with the topic of knowledge management.  That may or may not happen now, but we’ll see.  The article has to be an educational piece or at least something that benefits the legal community so I could continue to write on the subject of knowledge management. 

A few months back I wrote down several topics that I want to begin writing on, and I’m also coming up with new ones so my writing should definitely pick up.  There is always the matter of time which is a big factor in how much I will be able to accomplish though considering everything else – you know, this, that and this and that.  Read the other posts and you’ll get it.

Getting the Most Out Of Your Legal Secretary 

As law firms downsized, not only were attorneys let go, but support staff were given their walking papers also.  The elimination of support staff meant many legal secretaries found themselves out of a job.

Legal secretaries are still a valuable resource, but as more and more technically skilled lawyers enter the workforce are legal secretaries becoming obsolete?  (Continue reading here.)

My skills are good; however, throughout my career I never considered myself an expert in any particular thing.  With a strong background in the legal field and in information technology (even though my IT skills are not as strong as they once were), I always wanted to marry the two in a challenging and rewarding legal career. 

Litigation support seemed the perfect arena for doing just that.  Knowledge management, project management and more specifically legal project management, and legal administration all seem viable arenas also.  With that being said, my business, Virtual Legal Corner (VLC), can definitely tie it all together.  My professional background and educational training are perfect – there was a reason I did all that.   

Now, if I can just get VLC off the ground and catapulted to the point where I am happily over worked and booming with business.  Imagine that.  I do.

So I have been thinking a great deal more about the marketing aspect and thinking about perhaps public speaking, speeches and definitely writing an e-book(s) and a book.  I have several articles from my legal studies that I could use to begin an e-book or even a book, and I enjoy research.  It just doesn’t seem like there’s enough time in the day to accomplish much of anything. I’m up early and down late (way late or early, however, you look at it). The job search, reading, writing, and arithmetic … (not exactly) can seem like it’s going nowhere and completely pointless.

Really all of this – the blogs, the writings, the research, etc., etc., is about marketing.  It is interesting that as I have been thinking about so much and trying to accomplish something, God finds a way to put at your fingertips something that you need.  I opened my aol mail this morning around 6:00 a.m. and came  across a piece of mail that I would normally have just deleted.  This morning, however, I opened it and launched a website or two associated with the message reading materials and listening to video material. I downloaded a pdf file, read it and printed out the last page – My CORE Marketing Plan.  The gist of it is about how to use article writings as a backlink to your business website and using that article for a video, a podcast, a press release, if newsworthy, and then distributing all forms of the article to as many websites as possible.  For this method to work you have to write at least one article per week and post it every where (be sure to include your business website on each medium).  For each site that you post the article to, it has to be revised and/or a different version so that the exact same article isn’t posted to different website - those usually get deleted.  Next you take your articles and turn them into reports and the reports into e-books and the e—books into books. 

Isn’t that just what I’ve been thinking.

I signed up with ezinearticles.com, and wrote 2 articles for review.  In addition, I posted  2 different articles for review on Associated Content (AC). I hadn’t had the time since signing up on AC to write much, but I plan to get much more writings done.

I still have not gotten my article pitch off to ILTA, and I haven’t heard back from Litigation Support Today (LST).  I’m going to follow up with LST.

My first phone meeting on the steering committee of the legal project management community of practice (CoP) took place earlier this week. I am looking forward to all that will be happening with the CoP.

I really need to get some serious marketing going for my business – Virtual Legal Corner. Kinda hard being on a shoe string budget, but I think being involved in activities – even if they aren’t paid ones – will eventually pay off.  I just wish eventually got here sooner than later.

The deadline for articles for the newsletter – TLOMA Today – was moved to the 1st of the month. I have to work on getting my article done. I think I’ll stay focused on knowledge management and cover another focal point. The article - Knowledge Management: Collaborative Work Systems - I wrote for this month can be read here (Apr. 2010 issue,  page 13). All of the articles I’ve written for TLOMA Today can also be found on my website here. 

Also this week, in my volunteer role with Woman 2 Woman Community Services, Inc., I was able to clean up the organization’s existing website.  I worked on making the page layout uniform across the website, deleting broken links and/or fixing them, removing outdated content (as much as I could based on the information I had) and cleaning up some of the code.

It’s been a busy week even if I didn’t get paid.

You gotta wonder. When do efforts or hard work pay off? Is it all for nothing? All in all, I have been doing a good or even great job of staying positive and being focused. As each day slips by now, it gets just a wee bit harder. It definitely makes you wonder.

I’m still here and the days keep rolling along.  The journey continues.

Later as I thought about it, I was like I should just take the PMP and not worry about the CAPM since my studies cover the PMP exam.  Well, but then there’s filling out all those hours for project assignments which I really dread, and, of course, there is the money issue since I’m not working.

My books, my index cards and other materials are always close at hand. However, just because its close doesn’t mean it is going to transfer into my brain so I gotta get back on it.

Thanks to project manager group on linked in, here is another website where you can take practice exams – http://www.pmpinstitute.com/project_management_courses.shtml.

I also submitted an inquiry to a legal publication for a freelance writing opportunity last week. I hope that I hear some positive news back.  I have to get around to editing and making some web pages consistent for this company that I volunteered my services. The kickoff meeting for the PMI Legal Project Management Community of Practice is coming up on the Monday, 19th.