The foundation of any business begins with its identity as an organization. Who are we? What do we stand for? What are our values as a group? It is our values that define our culture, and it is our culture that drives our identity.

As lawyers and administrators, one of our biggest challenges is instituting change so that our firm culture accurately represents our values as an organization. Often times, employees prefer to remain entrenched. They do things simply because "that's the way it's always been done." It's no secret. For most, change is a scary notion. So, how do we create a positive cultural shift? Hopefully, the following tips will help you to get your staff to embrace change with a positive attitude.

As managers, we spend a large amount of time thinking of different ways we can motivate our staff to give us more and to do a better job.  We are taught that by motivating our staff, we can improve performance and increase our bottom line. 

Motivation is one of the most misunderstood concepts in management today. 

This past weekend, eleven women from Affinity offices around the country came together to share in the experience of running the 2012 Disney Princess Half Marathon.

We are thrilled to share with everyone an exciting project that one of our team members is taking on called LawWithoutWalls.

Many times we get calls from people who are finally calling us “after trying everything else”. Look, we get it – like you, we try to be conscious of the money we spend and when we spend it – and when faced with having to pay for technical support, all of us want to think that we can fix something on our own. But, recently we’ve noticed an uptick in these types of calls and without question, we’ve seen that the fix that we ultimately have to put in place often costs more than if we have been called for support in the first place. So what is this post all about? This is not just a shameless plug to call Affinity Consulting for technical support, it hopefully contains some points that will help you find a trusted partner who can make your life easier and help your business to run more smoothly. In order to feel comfortable calling support the minute you encounter a technology-based issue, the first step should be to find a vendor you can trust. Research an IT company's expertise and experience. Talk with the team who you will be working with: determine if you communicate well, have a good rapport with their team and understand their style to problem solving. And of course, consider price. Many companies that provide technical support will offer some sort of premium package for service and support. At Affinity, we provide you with an option to implement our Managed Services product. Based on the technology that you wish to support, we charge a monthly fee and in return we proactively monitor your technology for failure or need of maintenance. Managed Services at Affinity also includes unlimited support for the hardware and the applications you use. Whether you can’t get your printer to work or aren’t sure how to produce a bill from your legal time/billing and accounting software – it’s covered. Many companies will have different “flavors” of support – if you want to have unlimited support, or simply not worry about the charge for every single call, look into more comprehensive packages. Once you have a vendor – the rest is easy – use them. You may feel silly calling about how to get your fax machine operational but that is what technical support groups are for – to help you figure out the right way to solve a problem quickly. Ultimately, when you are willing to rely on technical experts to help you when you encounter a problem, this saves you time, frustration and ultimately money. It may seem daunting to pay for a support call, but when you consider the lost billable time spent when you or your team tries to fix a problem, it’s worth it. We also have found that your tech support charge will be less when we are able to catch the problem the minute it starts versus trying to unravel a series of unsuccessful actions.

As posted in Robert Ambrogi's LawSites blog, Google enhanced its case law search function by allowing Google Scholar searches based jurisdiction. The ability to select jurisdictions is on the advanced search page under Collections. Simply select one (or more) federal or state courts. Selecting multiple courts is easy using the select specific courts to search link. The debate will rage on about whether free and low-cost alternatives to Lexis and WestLaw are viable. But you owe it to yourself to at least try Google Scholar to see if it can enhance your legal research options.