I know, it’s not Christmas for a few days yet. But I’m not really planning on blogging much, or even – gasp – Tweeting that much, over the next few days. I am doing work for my clients and some research for a project, but otherwise this week is about family. I’ll be enjoying my children, getting together with friends, and doing even more baking in preparation for dinner on the big day (next on the agenda is homemade pie!!)

In fact today, I actually kept my laptop off for several hours (I hate to have it off during the day, lol) and put together a gingerbread house and gingerbread Santa sleigh with my older boys. It was a wonderful afternoon and I hope you all are able to enjoy your family and friends as 2008 draws to a close.

So Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy Holidays!

p.s. I will have posts up next week – be sure to check in!!

This year is rapidly coming to a close and it’s that time when many of us business owners decide to spend some time reflecting on the year past and planning for the future.

This year was my first year in business as a virtual legal assistant and it was a great year in my opinion! I started out last January with a 6 week old baby plus two older boys and the knowledge that things really had to change. I had already been researching virtual assistance for a while and really felt it was the right choice for me.

So I spent the late winter and spring months making plans, starting very slowly to blog and hanging out at a couple of my favourite VA forums (Virtual Assistant Forums and VAnetworking) to learn all I could about starting my business. Thank goodness for all the wonderful virtual assistants on those forums – they really helped me figure out where I wanted to go with my business!

Sometime in the spring I discovered one of my favourite blogs – Home Office Warrior. Grant Griffiths (also of Blog for Profit) has so much great information on his blogs! Lots of info about technology, blogging and networking and running a homoe office (particular emphasis on lawyers since Grant is a lawyer!)

Spring turned into summer and I excitedly went and registered my business name at the local registry office. I found someone to help me customize my site/blog and I designed some business cards. August in particular was a great month – I did my first guest post, found my first client and got quite involved in my favorite networking site – Twitter!

Then it was fall. My darling oldest son went off to grade one, I went for my first getaway weekend since having baby #3 and I got another client! Slow progress in the client department, but I knew that good things were coming!

And now it is winter. Not generally my favorite season and yet, as we move into 2009, I feel a real sense of achievement in this year and so much excitement for the year to come. I’ve gotten one more client recently and hope for many more next year. In the summer of 2009 I’m going to my first blogging conference and next fall my middle child will go off to kindergarten, adding some room in my schedule. I’m going to make a big list of my goals for 2009, but that is another post!

And now, time to go do some more work and then make some Christmas cookies! Take care!

Sometimes life is so interesting. Last week I posted about my favourite Canadian law blogs and the 2008 Clawbies nominations. I received several comments in response and was told that although I referred to myself as not being a real law blogger, I was of course a law blogger. The comments were much appreciated and a reminder to myself to not disparage my place in the blogosphere. I’m not a lawyer, but I serve clients in the legal field and I (sometimes) blog about legal topics, therefore I guess I am a legal blogger!

This little situation also is a reminder to me that non-lawyers have an important place in the legal world, whether we are talking about “in real life” or online.  I follow plenty of non-lawyer law bloggers in fact in my RSS feeds and I think of them as “real” law bloggers, even though I wasn’t identifying myself that way! Some of my favourites include the blog at Stem Legal, Law Firm Blogger, and Connie Crosby’s blog! And of course two of these blogs are run by fabulous Canadians (Steve Matthews of Stem Legal and Connie Crosby). Canadian law bloggers definitely are heavily involved in the blogosphere!

Non lawyers are important and valuable assets, whether to brick and mortar law firms or virtual practices. In fact in every law firm I have worked at the non-lawyer staff members were a critical part of the success of the team. The secretaries helped manage timelines, completed dictation and often completed the first draft of pleadings.  Paralegals did the research, helped organize large files and oversaw support staff. The library staff were always so amazing, especially when a deadline was looming and the supporting caselaw for a brief had to be quickly found! Oh and let’s not forget the IT staff who made sure our information was all backed up and accessible!

I still remember when I decided to go to school to be a paralegal and a family member asked me why I would do that, instead of trying to go to law school.  It was not easy for me to explain back then, but I know why know.  I am a very nurting person and I truly enjoy being the support person. I love knowing that when I do my part right I make life easier for the people I work with.  I also have to admit that I liked the guarantee of being able to go home on time most nights! The lawyers in my firms didn’t always have that option. Of course now, being a business owner who supports other business owners, my life is pretty different. I have a far greater responsibility to my clients to complete the work and can’t have an exclusively 9-5 work life. I enjoy the overtime and late nights now though (amazing how different you feel about your own business!) I especially appreciate that I have control over how many projects I take on at one time so I can make sure that the work will fit into my timetable and be completed on time (and properly!!)

I’m not a Canadian “law” blogger per se, but I am Canadian, my blog does target the legal field and of course I  read tons of legal blogs (plenty from the fabulous Canadian Law Blogs List!), so I wanted to share a quick post on my 3 favourite Canadian law blogs. I hope they all get recognition from Clawbies!

My absolute favourite has to be Law21 by Jordan Furlong.  Jordan always shares such great information and has wonderful insight into current happenings in the legal field.  And can I say how much I love the look of his blog since his redesign – it’s a great example of how a blog should look in my opinion.

Another Canadian legal blog I really enjoy reading is Human Rights in the Workplace by Donna Seale. Donna has a great conversational tone to her blog and she shares her knowledge about human rights issues in a thoughtful and useful manner.

Another Canadian law blog I discovered some time back that I really enjoy is Rule of Law – Stan shares a lot of helpful information about estate law with just the right amount of personality thrown into the mix!
There are tons of other great Canadian Law Blogs out there to enjoy, but these are my favourites! And now it is time to get on with the weekend (and while I’m a Canadian mom, thankfully my weekend is in a warm soccer complex, not on a chilly ice rink – until next year at least!) I’ll be keeping my eye out for other blog posts about everyone’s choice for the 2008 Clawbies – should give me plenty of weekend reading!

Just a quick note to let you know I have a guest post up over at the Lemon Justice Blog, discussing virtual legal assistance! Hope you get a chance to check it out.  In the meantime, I also want to share that my blog changes are almost complete and the new look should be fully in place this week!

Take care!

I received an email a short while ago announcing the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100 for 2008. And although my blog is listed in the paralegal category of the Blawg Directory, there are no paralegal blogs in the Blawg 100, so I just wanted to share a some of my personal favorites from the top 100 list.

News Category

FP Legal Post – I have to read this – it includes Canadian legal news!

Niche Category

Taxgirl of course! I did spend my last few years as a legal assistant in tax law after all!

Technology Category

Real Lawyers Have Blogs – Kevin always has great info to share.

Careers

This is a Category that I personally find very valuable, so much of the info pertains to all business owners!

Build a Solo Practice, LLC – I love Susan’s style!

Law21 – Jordan is a great blogger, I really admire him.

My Shingle – Definitely inspirational!

the [non] billable hour – full of great information

And in reviewing some of the blogs I found a couple of new ones to add to my Google Reader! I think I better clear out some stuff from my poor Reader, or I’ll never find time to read more!

Diary of a Law School Mom

BabyBarista

And now I’d better go do some real work, instead of enjoying reading more legal blogs!!

I’m starting off this week, with my first ever guest post. Attorney Sergei Lemberg, who specializes in lemon law, kindly shared a post on using technology to boost your law practice. Here’s the post in Sergei’s words:

After I graduated from law school, I went the typical route and spent five years working for a series of major law firms. Eventually, though, I realized that I wanted to run my own shop, be my own boss, and handle my own cases. After deciding that lemon law would be my niche, I went about the process of building my practice, a process that was helped tremendously by technology and online tools.

Although I started by subleasing an office from another lawyer, my practice is largely “virtual.” I have clients from all over the country and rarely see them in person. I use VOIP for my office phone system for onsite and off-site staff, which gives the impression of everyone being under the same roof. I also take advantage of the Web-based Google Docs application for online collaboration, and share practice management software using Citrix.

But one of the most useful tools for building my practice is the Internet itself. I’m a Google AdWords advertiser, and run my AdWords ads in multiple jurisdictions to obtain a highly targeted but diverse clientele. I’ve also used that cornerstone of Web 2.0, blogging (and guest blogging!), to extend the reach of my practice. I’ve extensively optimized my website to make it more search engine friendly, and have expanded it to include genuinely useful content. As a result, I’ve seen my search engine rankings climb.

In today’s increasingly connected world, it’s easier than ever to succeed in a solo practice. By using online marketing methods and technology, office walls become much less relevant and the practice of law becomes virtually boundless.

Thanks for the guest post Sergei, much appreciated! And stay tuned to Sergei’s blog, where I’ll be sharing a guest post on virtual assistance for lawyers!

Just a quick note to share that Halo Secretarial’s feed can now be found at Alltop in the virtual assistant category!

I think that’s pretty exciting news on a Wednesday afternoon! Oh and as you can see, we are still undergoing “renovations” of the blog and site, it should be complete sometime next week!

Just an fyi, as you check in on this blog or my virtual assistant site if you see anything wonky, especially in the color scheme, it’s cause I’m having it adjusted a bit and a new logo designed. Nothing wildly different, just hopefully a little more professional and elegant. I loved the pink personally, but thought a green shade would be more suitable to my target market.

And I have to say, I think it’s great to do a site/blog review every few months to make sure that it is working for you. Nothing has to be forever and a little updating can be just the thing to attract a new client or simply inspire you to post more! I change things up fairly regularly over at my mom blog, but have hesitated to play too much with this one because I do think it’s important not to go all crazy on a business blog! Then I tried to play with the color scheme just a little and realized that while I could figure out the css a bit, I couldn’t redo my own logo too well, so thankfully I’ve hired Brianna of Mad Hatter Web Design to come to my rescue! She originally helped me with the site using an already existing logo, and I knew she was just the person for this job! And the draft of the new logo is so pretty that I feel even better about my choice.

Hope everyone had a great Friday and a wonderful weekend. I’m off to be soccer mom tomorrow for the morning and then cookie baking in the afternoon. Of course I’ll be checking my Twitter regularly throughout – take care!

It’s not even surprising anymore for me to find interesting articles about lawyers and their use of Twitter.  After the great (and still growing!) list over at JDScoop I personally gained several followers from the legal field and found several new people I wanted to follow as well.

Ever since there has been an increasing number of fabulous articles about how Twitter can benefit legal practices.  Thanks to a couple of tweets (hat tips to @StephKimbro’s retweet of a comment by @kevinokeefe!) I just read a very interesting article over at Lawyers USA about the growing number of lawyers using Twitter to network and market.

I know I only recently I was contracted by a new client who tweeted about needing a virtual assistant. I responded and the rest is history! So for anyone who is still just thinking about using Twitter, or who maybe doesn’t feel they are realizing Twitter’s potential, come on over to Twitter, sign up if you need to and follow me!

Oh and if you need a guide to using Twitter I’ve got a couple places you should check out. Darren Rowse (of Problogger fame) has a great site called TwiTip full of fabulous tips for using Twitter. Also, Grant Griffiths has a really great series called Twitter for Lawyers on his Blog for Profit site.

Hope to tweet with you soon!