The Lawyer’s Guide to Office Automation
Tools and Strategies to Improve Your Firm and Your Life
When entering the legal profession, lawyers dream of advocacy, writing, and advice as daily tasks. Claim that dream by using automation to ease tasks on the business side. From intake, scheduling, invoicing, writing, and proofreading, this book gives you possibilities to start designing your dream.
Clients value lawyers for their advice, advocacy, and written products. However, lawyers or their staff end up devoting time to manually creating invoices and welcome letters, negotiating calendars, inputting client data from intake forms, and typing and retyping basic client data into filings and correspondence. Between the possible mistakes and the probable burnout, manual work at the law office has its hazards.
Automation has transformed the way we work and relate to one another. You deserve the freedom to not manually fill out order forms, write the same letters word for word, or recall basic client details before preparing for a meeting or hearing. Your clients, your employees, and your health will thank you.
The Lawyer's Guide to Office Automation: Tools and Strategies to Improve Your Firm and Your Life outlines solutions to operational challenges such as drafting and revising common documents, creating invoices, and scheduling appointments. Create an intake system that supports you and your office, freeing you to deal with the reason you get paid, your advice, documents, and advocacy. The book also covers the ethical and cybersecurity concerns that automated law firms encounter. See the possibilities and jump start your plan to make your law office work smarter for you!
Chris Fortier is an attorney-adviser with the Social Security Administration’s Office of Hearings Operations in Falls Church, Virginia. He supports the national hearing operation through working with forms, templates, and applications (of course, the views he expresses do not reflect those of SSA or the federal government) amongst other projects.
Chris serves as co-chair for the Virginia State Bar TechShow and was the President of the Virginia State Bar Young Lawyers Conference (YLC). He expanded the YLC’s social media and web footprint. He also established a weekly video series dedicated to training new lawyers, and added automated features such as forms and directory lists to the YLC’s website. He also won the Edwin Burnett Young Lawyer of the Year Award in 2013 and is currently a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the ABA Young Lawyers Division.
Chris also serves on the board for the Virginia State Bar’s Diversity Conference, where he (and a few dedicated individuals) established the Conference publication, Invictus, along with its social media presence. He has served on the VSB's
He has served in various roles for the American Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division including as a delegate representing Virginia to the YLD Assembly and as a director in the executive cabinet.
He graduated from the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia where he served as its Alumni Association President (and starting its social media presence). He is also a proud graduate of James Madison University. He is the husband of Brittany Fortier and father of Ansley Fortier. He currently lives in Oakton, VA.
