Advocate Capital, Inc. Hiring More Great Paralegals in 2018!
As we continue the growth of our entire team in 2018, we are looking to add 2 more outstanding paralegal professionals to the Quality Assurance Group in our Metro Center (Nashville, TN) corporate headquarters.
If you are interested in the position or would like to recommend a candidate, please submit a resume for consideration. The job posting is accessible here.
To learn more about our amazing company and culture, visit www.AdvocateCapital.com for more details.
Donna A. Jones
Senior Vice President
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Buffy Escue Latest Quickbooks Certified ProAdvisor
Congratulations to Buffy Escue for obtaining the QuickBooks Certified ProAdvisor status. With this additional milestone, Buffy will be even more effective assisting our law firm clients with routine account management expertise as well as practical accounting recommendations.
Buffy now joins Senior Vice President Donna Jones, Training Specialist Billie Hardison, and Executive Client Manager Michelle Rigsby on the QuickBooks support team. If you are an Advocate Capital, Inc. client, not only do you receive discounts on user licenses and software upgrades but free Quickbooks training and support as well.
If you have questions regarding your existing Advocate Capital account related to Quickbooks, please contact your Account Manager, call our office toll-free at 1-877-894-9724, or send us a message by clicking here.
If you are not an Advocate Capital, Inc. customer, we hope you join our family of clients very soon!
Tina R. Burns
Vice President
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Loving on our hardworking employees with GOAT Bingo!
If you are a regular follower of our daily blogs, you know that we like to love on our employees at least once per month.
G.O.A.T. has come to mean many things…from the ‘greatest of all time’ to actual furred little friends who have 4 stomachs, love to be held and eat 2/3’s of their body weight per day!
For us, it was BOTH: best Bingo ever AND some baby pygmy goats for our staff to love on to get them in the mood for our annual Bingo tradition.
Goat Yoga is all the rage and Sarah Hazelwood, our Quality Assurance supervisor (and a guest) will enjoy a future goat yoga session as our grand prize winner.
Other bingo winners received goat yoga t-shirts to remind them of what a great time we had enjoying a Chicago-style pizza bar from a local hot spot called 312 Pizza Company.
The goats, t-shirts, and grand prize goat yoga sessions were brought to us by our friends at Shenanigoats Goat Yoga located right here in Nashville. If you are planning a trip to Music City, book early as classes fill up quickly!
To all of our friends and clients…RELAX, WE GOAT THIS!
Vice President of Strategic Solutions
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Make Friends Not Just Networking
Authored by: Alicia Lammers
Moving up in the white-collar world especially as a new lawyer can be a daunting task. Networking or having a law degree from an ivy league seems to be the only ways to further yourself as a lawyer. According to Justin Dillon those who want to move up in the white-collar world have two options:
- Get Fancy
- Make Friends, Not Contacts.
Dillion says “getting fancy” does not mean you need to have a law degree from Harvard. In his terms getting fancy could mean leaving a government position like Attorney General and utilizing that title and subject-matter expertise to land other higher paying jobs.
A lawyer who leaves a position like that can not necessarily coast off the success they had in that position.
These kinds of jobs are few and far between. Most lawyers will need another resource for them to gain clients.
Dillion in his article suggests being “emotionally open” to people so you can make real friends. By doing this he means to be honest with people which will lead them to be honest with you in return. Your honesty and openness will make people want to be friends with you.
Having meaningful friendships will lead to better contacts in the future. These friendships could possibly lead to client referrals, job opportunities, or even promotions. This should not be the focus of these friendships, but merely a bonus to them.
For more information on moving up in the white collar world, click here to read Justin Dillion’s blog on the subject.
Photo Credit: dolgachov
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Excel Tips & Tricks – Adding Symbols
Have you ever wondered how to add a trademark symbol or a check mark?
Click on the cell that you want to contain the symbol. From the Insert tab, select Symbol. For the trademark™, copyright©, or registered® symbol, click the Special Characters tab. Scroll down until you find the symbol, select it and click OK.
For a check mark ☑ or infinity symbol ∞, click Symbol and then the Symbols tab. Scroll through to find the symbols. Look around at all the symbols you can use. You never know when one might come in handy!
Bonus: These functions work the same in Microsoft Word.
If you are an Advocate Capital customer and need help preparing or manipulating data in the Excel application, feel free to contact me at BHardison@AdvocateCapital.com.
We love feedback from our customers and implement suggestions often. What shortcut do you use the most? If you have a question or idea for an Excel tip that you would like to see, let me know and I might write about it!
Billie Hardison
Training Specialist
Photo Credit: Galina Peshkova
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Attorney Steven Rubin Awarded for Top Labor & Employment Verdict
Our friend and client, Steven Rubin of Rubin Law Corporation was recently awarded Top Verdict for his work on the case, Mecredy v. Sonic Industries Inc. Each year, this award recognizes lawyers and law firms who have obtained high jury verdicts in their individual state and practice area. In this case, Rubin won $474,004 in compensation for his client.
James Mecredy, the plaintiff, was laid off from his long-time position at Sargent Aerospace LLC, Sonic Division. He was then hired by another company. Representatives from Sargent visited Mecredy’s new place of employment and shortly after their visit, Mecredy was dismissed from his new position. Mecredy claims that Sargent interfered with his employment and damaged his reputation, which led to emotional distress and a loss of income. The plaintiff was offered a $75,000 settlement by Sargent, but the jury awarded him $474,004.
Advocate Capital, Inc. would like to extend our sincerest congratulations to Steven Rubin and Rubin Law Corporation on this great accomplishment. We are proud to work alongside law firms like Rubin Law Corporation who dedicate their lives to getting justice for their clients.
Michael J. Swanson
President and CEO
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Join The Mastermind Experience
Our friend and client, John Fisher, is holding an exclusive event in Washington, D.C. called “The Mastermind Experience,” hosting special guest speaker, Michael J. Swanson, President and CEO of Advocate Capital, Inc.
This one-day experience takes place on Thursday, September 6th and brings together a collaboration of lawyers from across the country. “The Mastermind Experience” offers attendees the opportunity to share new ideas and solutions for your biggest marketing and management challenges with the best in practice. It is a special day that can change your career.
Attendance for “The Mastermind Experience” is limited to 18 lawyers. This experience is much more than a one-day event, members challenge and hold each other accountable long after, often for the rest of their careers.
There is limited availability for this event. Enroll today by clicking here!
For more information on “The Mastermind Experience,” see Michael’s interview with John Fisher below.
Advocate Capital, Inc. is proud to support the important work done by trial lawyers and in particular those like John Fisher who also work hard in the continuing education forum.
Buffy D. Escue
Executive Client Manager
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Legal Research Tips and Tricks
Authored by: Candace Whitman
Research is a crucial step in the legal process that can affect the overall outcome of a case. That is why it is so important for lawyers to have strong research skills to find all the information and documents needed to win a case. Jeff Asjes and Brock Foley of Clio provided a few tips for smarter legal research in their blog.
When researching for a case, it can often be helpful to use a variety of sources. According to Asjes and Foley, every database uses a different algorithm to populate relevant results, so using multiple different platforms can give you the opportunity to see a larger variety of results.
Your law firm most likely has a favorite database, such as WestLaw, Fastcase, or LexisNexis, but you may also want to try using Google’s free database, Google Scholar, or check with your Bar Association to see if they give their members free access to a research database.
Another research tip is to start your search broad and then get more specific. In many instances, a broad search may give you thousands of results and getting specific will be essential to narrow it down to exactly what you need. Familiarize yourself with the terms and connectors you can use to tell the database exactly what you want it to find.
For example, Asjes and Foley state that an asterisk at the end of a word acts as a “root expander” in many databases so if you add an asterisk to the end of the word “arrest” it will give you search results that contain that word as well as the words “arresting, arrested, or arrests.”
Be aware that every legal database may have a slightly different terms and connectors so go to the databases help section or search for your favorite databases’ terms and connectors to familiarize yourself with the symbols you can add to your searches to get exactly the results you want.
For more legal research tips and tricks, click here to read Jeff Asjes and Brock Foley’s blog on the subject.
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New Survey Shows Law Firm Competition is Ever Increasing
A new survey from LexisNexis seems to find an ever-tightening level of competition in the legal industry. Law firm global strategy and economics writer, Dan Packel recently published an article on Law.com, describing the results of the LexisNexis survey.
According to Packel, the 2018 Law Firm Marketing and Business Development survey was taken by 81 legal marketing and development leaders at firms in the U.S and Europe.
Packel reports professionals have adjusted to a “new normal” after several tough years. The survey results indicate strategies to win new business have changed considerably in the last two years, deepening the importance of staying on the “cutting edge and focusing on firm growth.”
Packel writes marketing and business leaders report a disconnect between marketing and normal firm operations. Nearly half the people surveyed say their biggest challenge in winning new business was getting lawyers to participate in marketing efforts.
Meghan Frank, head of Marketing for LexisNexis, says their analytics shows marketing and business development mean more than ever before.
Frank says LexisNexis has found that law firms are on board with business development, but they don’t always know what it means. She continues that some firms lack an established process, and sales is a “dirty word.” Frank says the challenge is establishing a process across the firm and also tracking and managing the firm’s activities.
To read more about the 2018 survey, click here.
Photo Credit: rawpixel
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Practical Strategies for Controlling Discovery Costs
If you’re brainstorming ways to stick to a budget and control costs, Catalyst Vice President of Enterprise Solutions, Eric Willis, Esq. has practical strategies that could be helpful. Willis recently named 5 practical strategies to keep discovery budgets on track on Law.com.
Willis says effectively managing data, standardizing around a data warehouse, using analytics to drive efficient processes and making informed decisions can all keep costs under control.
Willis’s first strategy suggestion is to “simplify legal hold and collection.” He writes that legal hold and collection can be costly since many workflows include multiple outside vendors to complete the process. Willis says there’s modern legal hold and collection technology that can allow law firms to simplify the process with a single system.
To read more about Willis’ practical strategies to keep discovery costs down, click here.
Photo Credit: dolgachov
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