President's Notes

by Judd Kessler, Esq.

What makes a great paralegal? It starts with education and professional tools. Abacus has been giving AbacusLaw software and training materials to qualified educational institutions and non-profit organizations for the past 20 years.

By us supporting schools that teach law practice management, you get trained paralegals who can hit the ground running, with hands-on AbacusLaw experience even before they start working for you.

Did your paralegals come from local educational institutions that didn't train them on AbacusLaw? Why not tell us what schools your staff went to, so when you hire your next paralegal she or he can be better prepared! You can have your local paralegal schools call us directly at 800-726-3339 to get AbacusLaw software for training students free of charge. We're here to help.

Class: Forms and Documents (an Advanced E-Class)
When: Anytime after "Introduction, Names and Matters"
What You'll Learn: This class shows you how to quickly set up and easily use forms. It will save you countless hours of repeat work, and reduce the chance for errors in your office.
Class Outline:

• Create a Quick Form.
  Use a Quick Form to print a document.
• Use a Quick Form to generate a document.
• Create a Word form using an existing document.
• Create a Word Perfect form using an existing document.
• Use the Forms Generation option and a word processing form to print one document.
• Use the MailMerge option and a word processing form to print multiple documents.
• Assign a form to a What Code.
• Assign a form to an Event.
• Generate documents using Today's Documents.
• Modify the default ALF file.
• Create a Document Manager record.

In this issue

• Feature Article - Planning for Prospect Meetings
• Lawbby.com - Where Lawyers Mingle
• Support Tip - Follow Up Reminders for Phone Calls
• Training Spotlight - Automating Tasks
• Legal Stats - Amounts Borrowed for Law School

[Becky C. Dowd is Director of Sales & Marketing at KAF Financial Group, CPA's and Business Advisors, exceeding customer expectations with each interaction. ]

Pre-appointment planning is essential if you want to attract new business to your firm. The "Pitch Meeting" is your firms's make or break moment. How you prepare your "pitch" will have a direct bearing on your chance of acquiring a new client. Before representatives from your firm walk in the door, make sure they have the tools they need to position the firm ahead of the pack.

Click here to read the entire article.

Lawbby officially launched in April 2006, offers picture galleries, blogs and forums, as well as groups and interactive quizzes and other 'fun stuff' for members. Soon, Lawbby is going to offer services for organizing events for offline meetings and member gatherings.

Unlike other professional resource sites, Lawbby gives members the ability to contact each other directly, and while this may not seem anything unusual for members of 'MySpace' type websites, it's a first in the professional arena. If you have considerations that are more serious in mind, Lawbby offers its members the option to network and find referral partners utilizing a search format that allows lawyers to search for other lawyers interested in locating potential partners and associates

Click here to visit Lawbby.com

If you are at an Event window, just Enter "-14" in the Reminder field to create a follow-up two weeks later.

For phone calls, it can be faster to use the call manager to add notes. Just hit the F2 key to bring it up, put in your note; then the Remind button will add an Event. Just click in the When field and hit "w" twice to move it two weeks forward, and then save it. While in the call manager you can switch between notes and events using the drop down selector in the upper right corner. The phone manager can be brought up at any point in Abacus by hitting the F2 key.