Well, I’ve done it! One week down with a post each and every day for Blawger Survivor. And that means I made it even longer than the host of the contest, lol.

So far it has been a great reminder of how useful and interesting blogging can be. And I have read some wonderful posts from the other entrants in the contest. A couple of my faves:

• The Haiku post at Leadership, Women, Lawyers (short and sweet)
• Orientate Me at No Reins Girl (love the attitude!)
• D. Jill Pugh’s post about privacy and social networks (makes great points)
• And best for last? I think so! The Nutmeg Lawyer’s post Canada is Trying to Kill Us is hilarious (especially to me as a Canadian!!)

Do take the time to enjoy some of these posts this weekend and see you Monday (I won’t forget to post of course, I’m organized, so it’s in my calendar!)

Keeping organized and on top of projects is how I keep up with my growing virtual legal assistant business, three boys, a house, a dog and general life, especially with my husband regularly working out of town for weeks at a time.

I stay organized with a number of tools, each with its own purpose. I use Google Calendar a lot, because not only does it help me stay on top of meetings and appointments, but it also lets me share calendars with some clients, which allows us to plan and work together easily. I can access my Google calendar on any computer and even a mobile version on my phone’s web browser – perfect! If you are a student like, Izzie, 1L Poet or No Reins Girl, you may want to have a shared calendar with your study group even!

For keeping track of personal appointments I use both my Google Calendar and a family wall calendar. I used to only use the wall calendar for this, but learned the necessity of having personal appointments in my work calendar thanks to one incredibly frustrating double-booking experience.

In addition to my calendars, I use task lists to help me stay organized and on my game. I use the task list in my email system for a simple daily to-do list and I use the milestones and tasks within my project management system to stay on top of project deadlines. I also use a wall chalkboard for personal to-dos (yup, I like lists!!)

In general, I personally like cloud applications for organization and business management, but having a physical reminder in front of me (like a to-do list on the back of some scrap paper, or my wall chalkboard) is also very helpful.

The war over Microsoft Word that is. I was fascinated to see that Canadian firm i4i Inc. has won a permanent injunction against Microsoft in relation to a patent infringement issue dealing with custom xml translations.

I4i sued Microsoft in March, 2007, claiming the Redmond, Wash., company had infringed on a patent awarded in 1998 for manipulating complex data in electronic documents. The jury verdict had initially recommended damages in the amount of $200-million.

I’ll certainly be watching to see what happens, as it’s been indicated that Microsoft will appeal the verdict. Of course they will, right? Big money even for such a big company. For a little more on the topic have a look over at Jeff Krause’s Practice Management blog.

And on the topic of Word, can someone please tell the version on my laptop to stop causing Vista to freeze? Thanks!

Last week I participated in a really interesting call with Laura Lee Sparks about outsourcing. Obviously I’m a fan of lawyers outsourcing work to a virtual legal assistant, but there are so many other ways to outsource and thus streamline your business and hopefully increase your revenue. In fact, as a virtual assistant there are tasks I should be outsourcing!!

Some great examples:

• Bookkeeping/billing
• Web site design
• Client intake
• Document drafting
• PR
• Call answering
• Court filings

I already do outsource some of my web design needs; I had neither the ability nor the desire to spend hours and hours trying to design a pretty logo for example! I also use an accountant to help me with my taxes and am working on training someone to assist me with transcription eventually. What tasks are you outsourcing and which ones do you think you *should* be outsourcing, but currently you are muddling along with?

Another point of the discussion on outsourcing addressed where to find good people to outsource to. You don’t want to waste time on in effective outsourcing after all! I realized I had never really considered it but even some tools are a way of outsourcing, like using Ruby Receptionist for call answering. And the best way to find help is of course to go to your network and ask for reliable references! Just yesterday I went to my Twitter peeps and asked for suggestions for one of my client’s needs and quickly hooked her up.

Speaking of Twitter, I have noticed in checking out my Blawger Survivor companions and many of them have Twitter feeds in their sidebars – love it! Check the feeds out at  Two Lawyers in a Pod[Cast], The Connecticut Employment Law Blog,  Leadership, Women, Lawyers, No Reins Girl.   Twitter is my biggest online network and I love how involved so many lawyers seem to be getting in it. Okay, and I love that clients have found me on Twitter too!!

I have not been great about posting on this blog lately! It’s good in a sense, because I’ve been busy actually being a virtual legal assistant, not posting about it!! Still this blog was one of the first things I did for my business and it is a valuable tool well worth spending my time on, so I’m taking up the Blawger Survivor Challenge for the next three weeks and hopefully I’ll be able to post every weekday during the challenge.

One of the best aspects of this challenge is that it includes a component to link to the other competitors. What a great reminder that really, we aren’t competitors in the blawgosphere, but rather a community where interaction and inspiration come together to create a whole that is better than the individual parts.

So check out the other competitors (like Only 3 Years, TaxGirl or Hope and Change or any others listed over at Sean Carter’s blog in the right sidebar), then come back here every weekday for my posts about the law, virtual legal assistance, community and working from home (plus whatever else I can come up with to write about, lol!)