Productivity

I recently found myself in the company of a complainer and to my horror found that I was letting myself get sucked into it. Do you ever find yourself getting sucked in by people who like to complain but don’t really want to solve their problem? Well don’t.

Instead of joining the complaining party, use your precious time to solve your own problems or to enjoy your life as intended. Even 10 minutes given to a complainer (family, friend or colleague) is bound to sap your energy. Those are 10 precious minutes you could’ve been doing something for you and your legal nurse consulting business. Minutes you’ll never get back. Rather than waste them in a negative manner, do something fun for yourself. Take a relaxing mineral-salt bath, drink a glass of wine or go ahead – do both! You can also put those minutes into your CLNC^® business by working on a report or calling an attorney on your prospect list.

The next time you find yourself snared by a complainer, detach and interrupt the complaining. Before you give 10 precious minutes away to someone else’s soap opera, ask yourself if you’ll really be making a difference by listening or joining in. Or would those 10 minutes be better spent on you or something more positive?

For the next 30 days be a conscious observer of complainers in your life and conscientious of your own commitment to detach from them. When you do, your life and your legal nurse consulting business will soar.

Success Is Inside!

Every year we adopt a new business theme at Vickie Milazzo Institute. Some previous examples are “Let It Go” and “Move Like a Maverick.” All year long we have a lot of fun with the theme, but more important, we use the theme to challenge how we think and how we do business. The staff especially enjoys reminding me of the theme to persuade me of their position on issues. I think “Let it Go” was my staff’s all-time favorite and quickly became the catch-phrase any time something was a little bit off or I found a mistake or error. I was definitely ready to let that theme go!

This year’s theme is “Ditch Unnecessary Complexities.” Complexity in and of itself is not negative. In fact, because what we do at the Institute is complex, copycats cannot replicate the quality of what we offer to Certified Legal Nurse Consultants and CLNC^® students.

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant when you write a report and analysis for a medical-malpractice case, you expect your report to have a level of complexity that cannot be replicated by a nurse who has not been trained as a CLNC^® consultant.

But in both your business and mine, this is a good year to eliminate unnecessary complexities that creep into our CLNC^® businesses and are accepted without question or thought.

At a recent Vickie Milazzo Institute staff brainstorm, I asked the staff to help identify unnecessary complexities with the focus on being more efficient, cutting costs and eliminating a process or procedure that is no longer needed. Together they identified 48 of them for 2010. Of course we triaged the most important ones to tackle first, but many required very little effort.

You can do this for your CLNC^® business by raising your consciousness and asking yourself the following questions:

1. “Am I doing something that I no longer need to be doing?”
2. “Why exactly are we doing it this way? Is it simply because that’s the way we’ve always done it?”
3. “Am I doing something that gives me little or no payoff?”
4. “Can I simplify this process?”
5. “Does technology exist to automate or simplify this process?”
6. “Is there not just an easier way, but a better and faster way to accomplish this goal?”

In 2010, let’s commit to focus on the core purpose of our CLNC^® businesses – i.e. servicing our clients and producing the best quality product by freeing ourselves from unnecessary complexities. The time we save can be used to improve other processes or, just to improve our lives outside of our legal nurse consulting businesses. Once you’ve completed this process for your CLNC^® business, consider trying it in your home – just don’t let your family in on “let it go!”

Success Is Inside!

Read Part 1.

In Part 1 we discussed 6 Best Practices for subcontracting with Certified Legal Nurse Consultants to grow your CLNC^® business. Here are 9 more Best Practices.

1. Sign a formal contract with each subcontractor, and include a fair noncompetition clause. Use the recommended CLNC^® subcontractor contract from Vickie Milazzo Institute.

2. Have each CLNC^® subcontractor fill out a W-9 form at the time they sign their contract. Don’t pay their invoice until you receive a completed form. You can download a W-9 Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Certification form and instructions from IRS.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf.

3. Market to your attorney-clients that you have a network of CLNC^® subcontractors in a variety of specialties to encourage them to send you more cases.

4. Communicate your expectations, deadlines and budget for the assignment clearly. Every attorney-client is different and there’s more than one right way to design the report. Clear communication helps to ensure that the CLNC^® subcontractor provides work product that meets your attorney-client’s needs.

Dale Barnes, RN, MSN, CLNC says,

“A mistake I made in the beginning was not giving the subcontractors a deadline. I found that by leaving the deadline to them, it was often last minute, and I got nervous about getting the report to the attorney in a timely manner. Now, I always give a reasonable deadline, allowing a bit more time than the CLNC^® subcontractor may need so that it can be done expediently.

I have also learned the importance of giving the subcontractor parameters and limits for hours allowed per case. It is the same as checking with an attorney before doing too much or too little. If you do not provide a budget, you could end up paying more than is necessary for details that are not needed quite yet.”

Nikki J. Chuml, RNC, FMC, PRN, CLNC says,

“I make sure my CLNC^® subcontractor knows the deadline and I have them check in along the way. I like to see the first page of their report. I just want to make sure they are on the right track. Once I approve the first page, they continue with the case.

About halfway through the case, I have them check in again to make sure it remains what I want. If all is okay, then they complete the work. If something is not meeting my expectations, I discuss it with them before they finish the entire report. I want to save them time also. I am confident that as long as we continue to communicate with each other, the report will be what I want for my attorney-client.

When the finished product is sent to me, I review it, make any necessary changes and send them the completed one so that they can see what I like and expect for the next time. I don’t believe in wasting their time or mine, so I like to be with them throughout the process.

One thing I always make sure of is that my CLNC^® subcontractors get paid on time. I like to keep them happy so they will work again.”

Don’t cut your deadlines too close. Get your work from the CLNC^® subcontractor as far in advance of the due date as possible to allow you to assess their work product.

5. Put each new subcontractor to the test. Start with small tasks and advance to more complex projects.

6. Be sure to review the work prepared for your clients by your subcontractors (especially beginners) before submitting it. Always allow time to carefully check and edit your subcontractors’ work. Share your changes so the subcontractor can learn to model your best practices.

7. Pay your CLNC^® subcontractors 50% of your billing rate. The attorney will be invoiced at your hourly rate. It is not necessary to indicate to the attorney the number of hours you worked vs. the hours your CLNC^® subcontractor worked. Pay within 30 days of invoice date to encourage loyalty and enthusiasm for future projects.

8. Treat each CLNC^® subcontractor as an individual. Focus on and use their strengths to supplement your own strengths. One CLNC^® consultant may write great personal injury chronologies, but is not as strong at analyzing medical malpractice cases. Likewise, the CLNC^® subcontractor who is masterful at analyzing malpractice cases may be easily bored by writing personal injury summaries.

9. Acknowledge and thank your CLNC^® subcontractors. Don’t take your CLNC^® subcontractors for granted.
   
   As Larry Frace, RN, CLNC says,

“Keep in constant touch with all of your CLNC^® subcontractors by teleconferencing, emailing and at the next NACLNC^® Conference.”

Follow these Best Practices and you will master the art of sensational subcontracting to achieve sensational results for your CLNC^® business.

Success Is Inside!

Read Part 2.

The quickest way to grow your legal nurse consulting business is to expand with CLNC^® subcontractors. Check out these Best Practices and how the CLNC^® Pros are using them to expand their CLNC^® business in sensational ways.

1. Hire only Certified Legal Nurse Consultant subcontractors. This will save you time and heartache in the long run. Through the National Alliance of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, you’ll find plenty of qualified CLNC^® consultants who can help you manage your cases. Working only with other CLNC^® consultants is the key to sensational subcontracting and the strongest method for building your CLNC^® business.

Suzanne E. Arragg, RN, BSN, CDONA/LTC, CLNC says,

“I am a firm believer in using only CLNC^® subcontractors. In the beginning, I tried using non-Certified Legal Nurse Consultants because I thought, ‘Gee, she is a good nurse… she knows what she’s doing.’ But the reality was, I ended up reviewing the chart and writing the report all over again because it just wasn’t a product that met my standards or those of my attorney-client. Needless to say, this was exhausting, double the work, and just wasn’t worth my time, energy or money!”

Dale Barnes, RN, MSN, PHN, CLNC shares,

“Many years ago, as a new CLNC^® consultant, I learned my first lesson about subcontracting. I knew so many RNs and thought I could use them as subcontractors. I found a couple of really good nurses who wanted to learn from working with me. Though I showed them reports I had written and clearly explained what I needed from them for the work product, they still lacked the CLNC^® training I had received as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant from Vickie Milazzo Institute.

These RNs wrote their reports and gave them back to me. To my great disappointment, I found that I had to rewrite most of what they gave me. These were not billable hours. Due to their lack of formal training, they were not capable of producing the same level of work product. I wasted a lot of time and energy, and have only used Certified Legal Nurse Consultants since that time.”

Lawrence H. Frace, RN, CLNC recommends,

“Only use Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. I repeat… only use Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. I decided that since I was going to use subcontractors and had the agreement ready to go, why not start with nine CLNC^® subcontractors and cover the nine major areas of nursing. I chose CLNC^® consultants who had experience in long term care, emergency room, medical/surgical, neonatal, obstetrics, operation room, pediatrics, critical care, outpatient care and mental health. I had always feared that an attorney might offer me a case in which I lacked nursing experience. Now with nine hand-picked CLNC^® subcontractors in place, I feel confident that I can accept any case offered. No more fear for Larry, thanks to my CLNC^® subcontractors.

I had networked at prior NACLNC^® Conferences and from that networking, already had most of the names I needed to get started. I also accessed the listing of CLNC^® consultants from the National Alliance of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. The reason that I stress using only Certified Legal Nurse Consultants as subcontractors is because it’s smart to bring a team together who are all singing off the same page from the get go. We were all trained by the best – Vickie Milazzo Institute – why settle for anything less?”

2. Build your CLNC^® subcontractor network in advance of needing each one. This allows you to respond timely to the attorneys’ deadlines on cases outside of your specialty. The best way to find subcontractors is by networking at the National Alliance of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants (NACLNC^®) Annual Conference and with the NACLNC^® members on our password-protected website. The online directory is an exclusive benefit for CLNC^® consultants only.

Nikki J. Chuml, RNC, FMC, PRN, CLNC explains,

“I subcontract my cases only to other Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. I like to search from the cards that I receive at the NACLNC^® Conferences or look in the NACLNC^® Directory for someone who meets the criteria.”

3. Don’t become dependent on just one or two subcontractors. Continue to expand your CLNC^® subcontractor network. This frees you to meet tight deadlines or to let go of someone who is not the right match for you.
4. Hire CLNC^® subcontractors who live outside your geographical area. This will help to avoid any competitive attitude between you and your CLNC^® subcontractors. Avoid networking with local groups who may mean well, but are more interested in competing with you than helping you.
5. Look for a CLNC^® subcontractor who has three to five years of experience in the nursing specialty of the case and who is still connected to the healthcare system. This assures you’re subcontracting with a true expert on the issues.

Nikki J. Chuml says,

“I will contact the CLNC^® consultant and do a phone interview. Once I like how the telephone interview goes, then I will tell them a little about the case and see if their experience fits the case. After the agreement has been made, I will send the CLNC^® subcontractor an agreement to sign.”

6. Require all subcontractors to provide a resume and to produce some sample work product before you hire them. Assess the samples to be sure all work product is consistent and represents the same level of quality you provide to your attorney-clients.

Success Is Inside!

I frequently mentor Certified Legal Nurse Consultants who are challenged by the demands that go with their having created successful CLNC^® businesses with lots of cases and lots of attorney-clients.

Many CLNC^® consultants try to do everything themselves because they feel no one can provide the CLNC^® services to their attorney-clients the way they do. That’s what I thought when I first started my legal nurse consulting business and, it’s true. However, I quickly learned that if I hire the right CLNC^® subcontractor, that person might do some things better. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the many CLNC^® consultants who bring their unique expertise to my legal nurse consulting business.

From the beginning, you want to build a network of CLNC^® subcontractors who will help you offer a wider range of expertise to your attorney-clients. This is the smart way to increase your client list, your caseload and your CLNC^® business revenue.

Subcontracting ensures that as you take on more cases in different specialties, and add more attorney-clients, that you will continue to bring accurate and cost-effective opinions to the table. As you continue to promote your business more aggressively, you will still have time for yourself, which is why you got into business for yourself in the first place.

According to the LA Daily Journal, “On average, a nurse working at a hospital makes $40,000 annually, according to the American Nursing Association, while legal nurse consultants can make $200,000 a year or more if they consult full time….$400,000 a year for an established legal nurse consulting firm is not unheard of.”

There is only one way you can possibly earn $400,000 a year for your legal nurse consulting business: by leveraging time through other CLNC^® consultants.

Leveraging is the principle of using other people’s time, energy, talents, money, knowledge and effort to achieve your desired goals faster than you could on your own. Time and brain power are your two major assets. You can’t control time and can only work so many hours a day no matter how energetic you are. You have to leverage time with CLNC^® subcontractors.

Billionaire oil tycoon J. Paul Getty once said, “I would rather earn one percent of 100 people’s efforts than 100 percent of my own.” That’s leveraging in a nutshell. Subcontracting is a way of leveraging your time, knowledge and efforts.

Larry Frace, RN, CLNC shared this with me about subcontracting.

“I cannot believe that I have been a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant for nine years and it took me eight of those years before I started using Certified Legal Nurse Consultant subcontractors. I must be a slow learner because I vividly remember Vickie saying in the CLNC^® Certification Program nine long years ago, that we all should consider utilizing CLNC^® subcontractors in our business. All I can say at this point is better late than never. I wanted to take my CLNC^® business to the next level and wanted to create my dream team by using CLNC^® subcontractors. Looking back now it was really quite simple to do.

I wanted my utilization of subcontractors to be something special and different. I wanted a dream team. Enter my PEA-POD Concept – I wanted all my CLNC^® subcontractors to feel that they were a part of a team, like Peas in a Pod. The POD would be my company acting as the Point Of Distribution of cases that I would obtain from marketing to attorneys; however, now my marketing focus would be showcasing the combined experience of ten CLNC^® consultants with well over 240 years of nursing experience!

My marketing package turned into a 25-page portfolio that I now send out along with Ghirardelli chocolates, educating attorneys how they will obtain ‘Sweet Results’ if they choose to use my company’s ‘Dream Team!’ I keep in contact with my CLNC^® subcontractors by group teleconferencing once a month and emailing them weekly at first and now as needed. You guessed it…the title of my emailing is PEA-POD PONDERINGS. What makes this concept dear to me however are the PEAS and how we connect with each other.

Professional and passionate CLNC^® consultants

Encouraging each other to take,

Action steps each day to achieve,

Success with spectacular results!

Avoid your fear of subcontracting. Get rid of your own stinking thinking! As I stated above, utilizing CLNC^® subcontractors is a simple way to expand your business by taking it to the next level. Once you decide to use CLNC^® subcontractors, plant that idea firmly in your mind and take action in order to cultivate your decision to grow your own PEA POD!”

This is the smart way to expand your CLNC^® business. Start building your network of CLNC^® subcontractors today.

Success Is Inside!

I’m a guy. Guys are naturally adept at multitasking perhaps even better than women, as long as we only do one task at a time. That being said, I love email as much as any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant out there. I think it’s a great way to communicate everything from the trivial and the routine to the important. I also love being able to sit down and concentrate on the project at hand (guy-multitasking) without interruption. I’ve read varying statistics on how long it takes the average person to refocus on a project after an interruption. These run anywhere from seven minutes (small interruption) to two days (earthshaking event like Oprah going off the air).

I’m sure that those of you running Outlook 2007 as part of your legal nurse consulting business are enjoying all the improvements and benefits over the “old” Outlook. One of the ones I originally liked but now loathe (well, maybe detest), is the “Desktop Notification.” This cute little pop-up, if enabled, shows up in the lower right corner of your main monitor for just a couple of seconds, every time you receive a new email. It’s designed to let you know “you’ve got mail” and to let you decide whether you want to act on it or not.

That decision, my CLNC^® amigos, is the kicker. Say you’re slaving away over a hot keyboard, feverously working on a legal nurse consulting report for that important attorney-client. Suddenly that little email notice pops up and you know you’ve got a new LOLCat or news from a CLNC^® subcontractor about who just won the Biggest Loser. You can either play Whack-a-Mole and quickly hit the [X] to close it or just read it as it fades away. Either way your attention was drawn away as you mentally processed that email and its possible importance. You’ve just been interrupted and now you’ve got to refocus your attention back on the project at hand.

Depending upon your ability to refocus, it’s going to take time to get your full attention and thought process back into analyzing those complicated medical records. You may even lose that case-winning breakthrough that was just about to rise to the top of your cognitive thinking.

So what’s a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant to do? Turn off the Desktop Notifications (and the little chime too). How? Easy, while Outlook 2007 is open, click Tools, then Options, then on the Preferences tab click E-mail Options. Next on the E-mail Options screen, click Advanced E-mail Options. Then on the Advanced E-Mail Options screen, uncheck the boxes next to Play a sound and Display a New Mail Desktop Alert. These simple steps will put an end to those annoying pop-up notifications.

For those of you who like the notifications you can click Desktop Alert Settings to display the Desktop Alert Settings screen. Then adjust how long and how transparent the notifications appear. Take a look at the image above to follow the pathway. When you’re done, just keep clicking OK until you get back to the main Outlook inbox.

Whichever way you choose to run your legal nurse consulting business – notifications or not, I’ve given you the tools you need to control your destiny, or at least your email notifications. Now excuse me, I’ve got to go multitask on something else before I get interrupted (again).

Keep on techin’,

Tom

The other day, an Institute staff member came into my office and complained that her computer was running slowly. I asked her if it was slower than normal and she looked at me sort of funny, then said yes. We went back to her desk to assess things. She had her usual 30 programs running with more open windows than a New Orleans nunnery in the summer.

I then asked when she had last turned off her computer. This was a trick question because policy at the Institute is to let computers run overnight (to download updates, etc. that our techies shove out) and then restart them every Friday at the end of the day. That way when staff members log in on Monday, the installation process is either complete or it goes pretty quickly. She told me it had been two to three weeks since the last shut-down. Hearing that, I immediately told her that both she and her computer had memory leaks and she needed to shut the computer down for at least two minutes, then restart it.

Next, I went back to my office to sit on my laurels and wait for her call. A few minutes later she called to let me know it was running as fast as it used to with no hint of residual slowness. My memory-leak diagnosis was right.

One of the issues that legal nurse consultants will run into are memory leaks (both with themselves and their computers). The brief and overly simple explanation is that the longer a computer runs without being restarted and also the more programs you have open at the same time, the better the chance that some program, driver or piece of hardware won’t let go of its allocated memory when you’re done with it. You will not be aware this is happening, but your available memory can be eaten up by programs or devices that technically aren’t in use, causing your computer to run more slowly.

The way that a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant cures this leak is to first, make sure to have the most current versions of all software and second, to restart your computer on a regular basis. Whether you have a desktop or laptop for your legal nurse consulting business, my advice remains the same. Shut it down at least once a week or whenever it starts to run slower than a teenager mowing the lawn. I know a lot of laptop users who simply put their computer into sleep mode or hibernation. That won’t solve the memory leak issue. You need to shut it down and let everything clear out of the system.

If your computer is still slow, follow the steps in my earlier Tech Tip on cleaning up your computer system. In fact, this should be one of the first things you do in this new year (even before you get around to breaking your resolutions).

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Legal nurse consultants live in a Word, Word, Word, Word world. There are other word-processing programs, there are open-source programs and there’s even Google Docs for those of you who live in the cloud (and Word for Mac for those who can’t use real computers). But for main stream, main street, main line Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, there’s Word. If it doesn’t come preloaded on our computer we rush out to buy it. Why? Not because we want it, but because we need it.

In my all-too-many years of personal (and impersonal) computer use, I’ve had love affairs with Multi-Mate^®, WordStar^®, WordPerfect^® and a few other not-so-worthy predecessors to Word. But today, I’m a one word-processor man. It truly is a Word, Word, Word, Word world. That being said, we’ve got to make the best of our relationship with Word. Like any relationship, Word can be sweet at times, infuriating at other times but in the end, it’s still there for us – at home and at work. In fact, Word is probably the only word-processing program you need for your legal nurse consulting business.

This Tuesday Tech Tip is dedicated to the word-processor CLNC^® consultants love to hate and hate to love.

Tech Tip #1

Do you ever wish you could change that darn default file save location? You know, the place on your computer where Word wants to put all your documents whenever you hit the Save button? Well, my CLNC^® amigos, with just a few quick clicks of your mouse you can. Here’s how (this works in all Office 2007 programs as well): start by clicking that beautiful Pearl or Office button in the top left of your screen. Next, click Word Options, then Save. You’ll get a screen with a variety of options (including a choice of the Word document formats you can use to save your documents). Look for the “browse” selection next to “Default file location.” By clicking browse, you can navigate to the initial folder where you want to save your Word documents.

I have a directory called WordDocs under which I have all my other subdirectories such as TechTips, LegalDocs, Letterhead, etc. in which I store those relevant documents. Whenever I hit the Save button, up pops a screen asking me for a document name and giving me a list of subdirectories in which I can stash the newly created document. Whenever I click Open, it automatically opens to my WordDocs directory and I can choose where I want to go. You can do this in the other Office 2007 applications too, but in Excel and PowerPoint the programmers went on break and never put in the browse button so you have to cut and paste your new default file path after navigating to it in Windows Explorer (or you could just type it in).

Tech Tip #2

Not every legal nurse consultant or attorney rushed out and bought new software or a new computer loaded with Office 2007 when it first came out. Believe it or not, more than a few schlubs out there are still using Word 2003 and this includes major law offices! If all your attorney-clients haven’t yet ponied up for the latest and greatest, you can still create your way-cool Word 2007 .docx documents and then save them in earlier versions of Word with a few clicks of your magic mouse!

If you don’t want to use the new .docx format with all its imbedded wizardry simply repeat the steps above, but instead of picking the browse button, click the dropdown next to “Save files in this format” and pick Word 97-2003. This will make your version of Word automatically save any and all your documents in the earlier version (until you change it back).

Tech Tip #3

If you have just one attorney-client who’s still typing it old school with Word 97-2003 and want to save documents (especially after you’ve created and formatted them for that particular, schlemiel in the older format), then after you’ve saved your document as a .docx and are sure it’s final, you can “save it down.” Start with the document open in Word 2007, then click on the Pearl, Save As and click on the dropdown next to Save as Type and pick the format you want to use. It will create a duplicate document in the format you select. For those law firms still using WordPerfect^® you can save as rich text format (.rtf) which will open easily in WordPerfect. Remember, you’ll now have two documents in your files – one ending in .docx and another by the same name ending in .doc or .rtf. Having multiple copies of the same document may cause some confusion later so be prepared to store them in subfolders and always, always make sure you keep track of both. Remember too that if you edit one document, you need to save it in both formats.

Tech Tip #4

Did you know you can encrypt and password protect your Word documents? If you haven’t yet purchased or obtained Zip or StuffIt software, you can use Word 2007’s built-in encryption tools. When your file is final, save it one last time then click the Pearl, next click Prepare, then Encrypt Document. You’ll need to type in a password that’s at least 8-10 characters long (and use my password tips). Click on OK and reenter the password (if you can remember it). Now you can feel free to attach and email that legal nurse consulting work product document to anyone of your choosing and Word’s 128-bit AES (advanced encryption standard) will protect that document from pretty much everybody. Now, when you give each attorney-client you work with their own password, you can safely transmit documents back and forth (just keep a paper logbook of passwords in case you forget them).

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Windows^® 7 came out last week and the Windows world is buzzing about its cool new features. Some of these features are familiar to Windows Vista^® users and are slightly upgraded. Other features are new and will be useful to legal nurse consultants while some are just cool. The new Win7 delivers a lot of highly technical upgrades and security upgrades plus one really cool upgrade – the ability to create “Libraries” which are collections of files of the same type, no matter what directories they’re stored in on your hard drive (it shows all your photos – no matter where stored). Let’s take a quick look at the coolest upgrades I’m excited about and how the average Windows XP^® or Windows Vista user can get them without suffering through the upgrade to Win7.

First, give yourself some CLNC^® “Snap.” If you’re a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant with a wide-screen monitor, Win7 has a feature called “Snap” which allows you to anchor an open window against the right or left side of the screen either by dragging it or hitting a combination of Windows keys and right or left arrows. The selected window will fill half the screen and leave room to open another window.

Anchor window to left with “Snap”

OldWin (Vista and XP) users can get a beta (meaning use at your own risk, unsupported, third-party program) version of this from AeroSnap. I love this because it eliminates the tedious process of resizing a window by hand (plus it’s neat). It works on my dual screens just as well as wide screens and is really handy on my laptop while I’m traveling. You’ll like it too. Remember to right click on the AeroSnap icon and click in the box next to Start with Windows. That way it’ll always be there for you.

Next, since CLNC^® consultants like to shake things up, you can bring this concept to your screen. In Win7 you can grab an active window by the blue bar (with your left mouse button), double click it, then shake it back and forth to make all the other open windows minimize themselves to the taskbar. Repeating the motion will restore all the windows. We all know we can click the little “Show Desktop” button to minimize all our windows, but then we’ve got to fish around and restore the one we want. Aero Shake from lifehacker allows those of us using the OldWin to have Win7 convenience. Way cool.

You can clear up the system tray in the bottom right side of your taskbar by hiding inactive icons. Between my Quick Launch bar, the list of open windows and system tray icons, the taskbar at the bottom of my screen gets pretty cluttered. Win7 allows you to selectively hide your unused system tray icons – OldWin users can do this too. Right click on any clear part of your taskbar. In the first pop-up make sure Hide Inactive Icons is checked, then click Customize to get the Customize Notifications pop-up (in Vista you have to go to the Customize Notifications pop-up to see the “Hide” checkbox).

XP Start Menu Properties Screens

On the Customize Notifications pop-up you can select the behavior for different current icons (Hide when inactive, Always hide or Always show). Pick the behavior you want for each icon then hit OK on each pop-up to save your settings. Your taskbar will appear cleaner and you’ll have more room for active windows.

Finally legal nurse consultants can stop the fishing expeditions (between open window icons) by allowing preview thumbnails of your open windows in your taskbar. This one is for XP users only and emulates the Vista/Win7 rollover Thumbnails or pop-up Previews that allow you to see the contents of your open windows if you mouse over your taskbar icons.

Preview thumbnail

To get it, visit the “How-To Geek” site and look for the “Download Visual Tooltip 2.1” link. Follow that link, fish around a bit and you’ll find the link to download the zip file for Visual Tooltip. Download it, unzip it, double-click on the VisualToolTip.exe file to install it. You’ll find a little icon installed in your system tray that tells you it’s running. Go back to How-To Geek and follow the instructions to resize the previews (and make sure you check the “start with Windows” box).

Those were easy weren’t they? You’ve just previewed some of the cool new features in Win7 and found ways to add these to your current Windows version. Remember that you’re using these at your own risk. They are beta or unsupported products, but they sure are fun.

Win7 will be a darn good version of Windows once the second service pack comes out. Until then, or at least until you choose to upgrade from XP or Vista, any legal nurse consultant can add the cool new features of Win7 to her legal nurse consulting business by emulating some of its best tools and tricks.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Tom likes to kid me about my memory. He tells me I have the memory of an elephant (I’m just glad he didn’t say feet). I still remember what he wore on our first date (that shirt is long gone – trust me), our wedding anniversary date, how long to broil the salmon and my grandma’s gumbo recipe. But, as hard as I try, I have trouble remembering Tom’s cell phone number. Why? Because it’s on a programmed speed dial on my Blackberry^®. My other important phone numbers are speed dialed into the Blackberry and into my office phone, plus I have a directory I can scroll through to dial the numbers I want without needing to memorize them.

The email addresses in my Outlook auto-complete so all I have to do is type the name of the person I want to email. Addresses are in the address book so all I do is click and print an envelope. I really have to remember very little (Outlook does it for me).

In short, like probably every other Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, I’ve developed a dependency on external memory devices. The point here is that digital memory, absent a system crash or power failure, is forever. Flesh and blood memory has a time limit. If someone has ever told you “use it or lose it” they’re 100% correct. Sometimes that can be a good thing.

As a legal nurse consulting business owner, I think digital memory is a good thing. I’ve got copies of every report I’ve ever written for attorney-clients stashed somewhere on a server at the office. They’re in Word or WordPerfect, but all are there for my reference. Even those that were typed on a typewriter (Yes, Virginia there really were typewriters and some weren’t even electric!) can be scanned into a Word document using optical character recognition (OCR) – thanks Tom – and then make it into searchable PDF files for later retrieval if I choose. Photographs from my CLNC^® Certification Seminars and the NACLNC^® Annual Conferences are stored where I can easily access them whenever I want. Plus the photo frame in my office keeps my memories fresh. If I were one to watch TV, I could even TiVo my shows or burn them to a DVR to watch later. Instead, Tom and I watch movies on Blu-Ray DVD when we can’t catch them in a theatre.

In short, electronic and optical, external memory has made our lives easier. But at the same time, I need to ask whether permanent memory is such a good thing. I’ve already blogged about the discoverability of social media and the dangers of photos posted on the Internet and comments made in email. We’re all aware that permanent memory lives forever.

But let’s say you need to post something on the Internet and don’t want to worry about remembering to take it down, what to do? Tom introduced me to a website called Drop.io. On this website, I can put up photos from a vacation or gathering of friends, documents for an attorney-client, demonstrative evidence draft or even a video demo. I simply create the “drop,” name it and email a link to the people I want to access it. If I need to limit access and keep someone from accidentally finding my site, I can email a link with a guest password. What I like is that you can also set an expiration date for the “drop.” This not only creates urgency (such as, “I need your comments on this document by Friday.”) but takes away the need to go back and find the files to delete them later. You can even customize your “drop” page with a few short clicks. I found it very intuitive to use. You get 100MB of storage per drop and you can upgrade to the paid version if you need more space.

Take a look at my demo site at http://drop.io/VickiesDemo, you’ll need to use the password “trydropio.” I’ve uploaded a video and some photos from the CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Seminar in Philadelphia. Bookmark the drop.io homepage. You’ll find plenty of use for this site in your legal nurse consulting business. Just be sure to visit the demo before October 7. I’ve set it to expire on that date. (My original drop has expired but you can still view the content here at http://drop.io/VickiesDemo2.)

Now, if only we could select some memories to delete the same way we’d all be happy.

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