When I first decided to embark on the path of running a virtual legal assistant business I knew there were some areas I needed to improve in. I self-taught myself a lot about blogging, learning how to manipulate my css a bit, learning how to work with html, even if only slightly, because learning things helped me save money in the long run and also added to my ability to serve my clients. I also had to learn, and continue to learn, about what it means to run a business – to track expenses and budget for marketing, to analyze cost and effectiveness when purchasing items for my office, and so much more. I feel like in the last two years I have been learning non-stop – and I love it!

Recently I decided that I was going to more formally continue my education. While I have an honours paralegal diploma, I never attended University and getting a degree is something I know will have immense value for me, even if only psychologically. It also adds value to my family, as getting a degree will hopefully help my children see that I value education for myself as well as for them-when the time comes in 10 or 12 years!

So as of this week, in addition to running my business and caring for my children and occasionally cooking dinner, I will be working on a Bachelor of Arts (Sociology) through Athabasca University. Wish me luck!

I’m glad to be back on track, well, mostly. I did enjoy the quieter routine for the holiday season, it was so good to have the time to be with my family and to reflect on the past year. I did a fair bit of reading (novels and blogs – a good mix!) and feel full of ideas for my business this year.

Are you ready for this year? Did you get a chance to review the progress and projects you were involved with in 2009? I’ve taken a look back over last year and I feel good about how far I’ve come. My business is growing, clients send me referrals (incredibly rewarding!), my local network is really booming and my kids are beautiful and happy and I get to be here for them every day.

My plan for 2010 is to just keep moving in this same positive direction. I’m going to work even harder for my clients and try to make their lives even a little bit less busy. I’m going to expand my local marketing campaign and try to find more clients who like to work with digital dictation, as that is an area I’m loving so much! I’m also planning to add a team member who can cover for me during any vacation or illness and who can take on overflow work, as I’m finding that while overall I have plenty of time to assist my clients and even have time to take on more, occasionally I end up with so much work on one particular day that I work a bit too late into the night.

Happy 2010 to you all!

I’ve personally looked at a variety of options for a mastermind group, ideally with other virtual legal assistants. There are some paid options, but my personal preference is for a small group with no fee, where everyone in the group would be treated as equals, although some members are likely to be more experienced than others.  I think a better group dynamic will be achieved without paying a fee. But I could be wrong and some people may not take it seriously without paying. Any thoughts from my wonderful readers on this topic?

I am definitely going to include this in my development plan – to help grow Halo Secretarial into my vision of what a virtual legal assistant business can be, a mastermind group surely can only help! Now, to figure out exactly how to get started…

For example, one of the big pieces of advice was about positive affirmations. I know affirmations can be powerful. I’ve read about it before, but have not ever gone really far in implementing what I’ve read. Silly, huh? I work hard on growing my business, I believe in myself, but I need to go one step further. I’m adding some great affirmation blogs to my reader right now, and I’m going to have the right affirmations for me, and for Halo Secretarial, set by the end of this week.

This is going to be great!

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!)

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!!

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!)

I bought some cool wall rub-ons that are inspirational and this is the one in my office (I love that it is huge-makes you really notice it!):

Perfect for a day when the kids are running a little crazy and you haven’t been outside in days even though it’s sunny and you stayed up late one too many times this week! Not that I’m saying my week was like that or anything

Hope my little inspiration makes you smile or motivates you to do something similar!

Tonight I came across so many interesting posts, for example, loved the idea for a regular Twitter Column from Donna Seale’s Human Rights in the Workplace Blog. I definitely post more frequently on Twitter than I do on my blog! Might as well make sure those tweets are “duly recorded”! I was inspired by the most recent post on Scylla’s Law & Motherhood Blog – a good reminder to those of us who are self employed!

I actually saw, and posted, about this amazing post on Twitter a few days ago, but it caught my attention in my reader tonight nonetheless and is well worth sharing today: The best and the brightest comes from Jordan Furlong at Law 21 and is in my mind a truly thought-provoking post that I wish could be required reading for anyone thinking about applying to a law school – ever. Yes, I liked it that much.

Linsey Krolik had a post from earlier in June  on her Me Too You blog that I only just managed to catch up on. School isn’t out here for a little bit yet (7 days of school left actually!) and I totally can’t wait. Just found out about yet another school activity for the very last week, a grade one garage sale. I need to send both items and money, fun, fun!

Loved PHAT Mommy’s blog post about her Life/Blog Happiness Project. What a great idea!!

You can see why I find so much inspiration in my reader now, right?! I have a huge variety of blogs that I subscribe to, although many have a legal slant, I also of course follow tons of interesting mom bloggers, general business or entrepreneurial blogs and blogs that just fascinate me regardless of their “niche”.

So what’s in your reader that you feel like sharing?

I not only enjoyed reading what Sam uses for his legal practice, but also the different choices made by the commentors. So I decided to put together a quick post outlining the various applications/software I use to run my virtual legal assistant practice.

• Calendar: Google calendar/wall calendar combo
• Tasks/to-dos: Teamwork PM
• Contacts: Gmail
• Email: Gmail/mobile Gmail from smartphone while on the go
• Word processing/documents: Word 2007, Open Office, PaperPort
• PDF Creation: Adobe/CutePDF
• Timekeeping/billing: Quickbooks
• Bookkeeping/accounting: Quickbooks/accountant
• Backup: External hardrive and SugarSync (love how SugarSync securely lets me access all from laptop/desktop/mobile phone)
• Client/Project Management: TeamWork PM (256 bit SSL)
• Blogging/Website: WordPress self-hosted

Like Sam and several of his commentors I’m a big fan of cloud computing. I like to be able to access my work from anywhere – my main computer is a laptop for that very reason! And while I know not everyone trusts “the cloud”, I research applications quite carefully before choosing them and feel pretty confident that I’ve made choices that will protect my clients information and my own.

So how does your office run? Does your work live in the cloud at all?!