Chuck Newton

STARTING YOUR OWN PRACTICE, THERE IS NO BETTER PLACE TO START THAN THE TEXAS BAR WEBSITE

In the early stages of thing through a practice start up, there is no better place to begin than State Bar of Texas website.  With specialized readings on practice resources, ethics, where to practice, handling administrative and financial headaches, technology, marketing and more, it is a go to site.

THANK GOD WE ARE TURNING INTO A YOUTUBE WORLD

Although it concerns itself with politics more than the practice of law or business, The The Christian Science Monitor  reminds us that we are living in a World increasingly benefiting by YouTube.Com.  As demonstrated by the American Bar Association YouTube.Com is becoming a dominate and cheap force and source for advancing lawyer marketing, among other things.  See for example the criminal defense introduction placed on YouTube.Com by Allison Margolin, which is also embedded in her blog and website.  Google Video is also on YouTube's trail and offers the same cheap, cheap features and benefits.

GOOGLE HAS JUST RE-LAUNCHED WRITELY WHICH COULD BE A THIRD WAVER'S NEW BEST FRIEND

Google has re-lauched Writely , the online word-processor they recently bought, in public beta. Writely does everything Word does, for free -- and saves its output as PDFs and even RSS feeds (subscribe to a word-processor doc!). It features collaborative editing -- multiple editors on the same doc at once -- and can be used as the editor for writing your blog, saving out to a post instead of a file on your machine. This is a great-looking program for people who have always-on Internet, and for so long as you don't worry about the NSA demanding that Google turn over its Writely files as part of some "security" procedure. Also: if I were a Google China user, I'd have some doubts about this, given that Google has shown that when it comes to China, keeping the government happy is more important than delivering the best product it can.

CONCERNING THE LEGAL BEAGLE

JAPAN JOURNAL--MARY NEWTON BEGINS HER YEAR LONG JOURNEY IN JAPAN BEFORE BEGINNING LAW SCHOOL AT UH

On a personal level, some have inquired about my oldest daughter, Mary, and her Japan Internship.  She has now landed in Tokyo and is headed for Nagasaki where she will be based.  Having graduated from The University of Texas in Austin in May with highest honors in Japanese, the University of Houston Law Center gave her a deferment for a year so she could accept a position with the JET program in Japan.  UH also deferred her scholarship.  We miss her here in Texas, but she should be back next summer.  In the meantime, Mary is blogging about her adventure at her Japan Journal, which you can access by clicking here.  I know what most of you are saying.  She is bright, an over achiever and beautiful.  She must take after her mother.  Maybe that is true, but give me credit for convincing a bright, beautiful, college cheerleader into marrying me 25 short years ago.