The IRS has announced that the mileage rate for 2011 is 51 cents per mile for business miles driven. This is a slight increase over 50 cents last year and perhaps not as easy to calculate in your head.

Your law practice tip today is that you should get a mileage log book now to record your business mileage if you haven't been doing so. I am told you cannot deduct your commute from  home to work, but other miles driven for business reasons can be deductable. I am sure most lawyers record and deduct out-of-town trips, but small trips like going to the local courthouse, dropping off the deposit at the bank, going by the post office or going to the office supply store can add up over a year. You need contemporaneous records of those miles so you do not miss these shorter trips. In addition the CPA types tell me that if you are ever audited and deducted any business mileage, one of first things the auditor will do is to request your log book and, if you do not have contemporaneous records, the deduction can be disallowed, which would also generate penalities and interest.

As I was considering the concept of the paper mileage log book, I searched and learned that, yes, there is an app for that. The Tap2Track Mileage is from Intuit, the makers of TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Quicken. It can be used three ways:

  • Automatic – Calculate your mileage automatically using GPS
  • Manual – Enter or adjust trip mileage manually
  • Copy – Duplicate frequent trips and recent locations

It is not the cheapest app at $3.99, but I like the idea of using one from the makers of TurboTax. Searching will locate other apps, like MileBug at $1.99 or this free one for the Motorola Droid. I think most lawyers would appreciate one with the GPS automatic feature option. But whether you use a paper log book or an app, start the new year off right by recording your business mileage every working day this year.

I want to direct your attention to an extremely useful article, 10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Technology from the New York Times. These ten things are more related to personal and home use of technology. I wish I had written this article because I really like the way it gives one specific example of one of the best ways to implement each suggestion. You really should forward this link to several people you know. (Note: The NTY sometimes requires free registration and may move things behind the firewall in the future so be sure and print this one to a PDF or print to paper if you don't have a PDF printer.)

Check out this nice feature in the ABA's Law Practice magazine, Finance Tips: 25 Quick Tips for a Healthier Bottom Line  by Janis Alexander, Ed Poll and Mark Robertson. Janis Alexander is Chief Operations Officer at Ambrose Law Group in Portland, OR, and a frequent speaker on law firm finance, technology and operations issues. Edward Poll is principal of LawBiz Management Company, a certified management consultant and coach to lawyers and law firms, and author of Growing Your Law Practice Through Tough Times (West). Mark A. Robertson is a partner in Robertson & Williams in Oklahoma City and co-author (with me) of Winning Alternatives to the Billable Hour: Strategies that Work, 3rd Edition. It is always a good time to think about increasing law firm profitability.

I resolve to blog a lot more about the iPad next year.

I think the iPad is a bit over-hyped, but still has many uses for lawyers, both personal and professional.

I see trial lawyers carrying iPads in courts in front of juries where that just wouldn't be done with even a small notebook.

On our Tech Toys for the Holidays Digital Edge podcast , we mentioned iJuror, a $9.99 app for the iPad that helps lawyers in jury selection. This is one example of a new type of tool that works for the iPad and upcoming similar devices. Scott Falbo was so pleased that we mentioned his creation, he gave us a few codes that will let one download and install iJuror for free.

This offer is only open to lawyers who presently own an iPad. But if you would like a free copy of iJuror for the iPad, e-mail my assistant at amyk@okbar.org. There are a limited number avaiable and when they are gone, they are gone. This offer expires at 4:45 CST 12/22/2010 in any event.

Websites for the New Year was the theme that Courtney Kennaday and I picked for our Sites for Sore Eyes Column in the December, 2010 GPSolo Magazine. The format is "I resolve to…" and we featured some sites and safe surfing practices that take a little investment of time to set up. But there are some valuable sites and services here–if you take the time to set them up. As noted in the article, "[w]e are not going to tell you which of these sites we finally started using after much delay and which of us still needs to try a particular site. This is New Year’s Resolutions, after all, not True Confessions." We do hope that you try at least one or two of our resolutions in 2011.

While doing my annual review of the year in law office management and technology, my focus kept returning to the numerous predictions of challenging change ahead for lawyers. Some of these trends are already apparent and others are coming into focus. For my column in the December 2010 Oklahoma Bar Journal, I decided to discuss some of these trends and provide some resources to lawyers as they contemplate the future. I hope you appreciate my column titled Reviewing 2010 Should Make Lawyers Think About the Future. Download Calloway Reviewing 2010 and the Future

Conference calls (or teleconferencing, to be more modern) are a part of the lives of most business people and most lawyers. It is often easier to work something out with three or four people on one call than to use e-mails or individual calls. I think conference calls will be with us for some time.

This month my Lawyers USA column is Super-charge your Conference Calls. We've all seen breaches of conference calling etiquette, but where were the rules for calls ever written down? Many lawyers apparently do not know the distinction between the two types of muting and when to use each or even both. This column has a special bonus use. If you know a person who regularly is on conference calls with you and does some of these annoying things, you can send him a link to this article and innocently suggest he might be interested in the conference call scheduling services, while you are hoping he figures out something else. Or just send the link to your entire firm to provide cover.

This month's Law Practice magazine brings an interesting feature from Sharon Nelson and John Simek titled Creating Secure Passwords: The Rules Have Changes (Again). They cite some researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology who put together some fast CPU's with clusters of graphics cards to crack eight-character passwords in less than two hours. So that makes it pretty clear that eight-character passwords need to be "upgraded." The researchers suggest a 12 character password. According to their theory, an 11 digit password might be cracked within 180 years while a 12 digit password would take 17,134 years. What a difference a digit makes!

You might think either combination would be fine as you do not plan to live 180 years anyway, but Moore's law tells us that computing power will continue to increase. They cover some good tips on creating strong passwords and highlight a couple of products that are useful. As we all know, stronger passwords are much harder to remember. In fact, if you want a laugh, go to this Microsoft resource on how to create a password you can remember. They have a nice little table with an example. While their points are valid, the example they end up with at the end of the table is impossible for most of us to remember.

There are several things people do that could compromise their passwords without the need for a high speed CPU with clusters of graphics cards. Ever leave your mobile phone somewhere? Ever forget a password and have to recover it? Now put those two thoughts together. If you leave your phone somewhere and your receive e-mail on your phone, someone at the friend's house where you left it could do a few password recovery routines and get your passwords. Then they could delete the e-mails and you'd never know–at least until you got your bank statement or information about your other valuable online accounts. So an important rule on protecting your passwords is to put a security code on your mobile phone. The same logic applies to always hitting the Windows key and letter L to lock you computer when you leave your office. It is certainly unlikely that someone will sneak into your office. but not impossible. And if they see you going to lunch and they go in and close the door, they have a nice window of opportunity.

There are other issues with security of your e-mail account. Maybe you don't set up to get e-mail on your iPad if you let all of the teenagers play with it when you have it at home. Or maybe you set up an a-mail account just for password recoveries. Standard operating procedure is that IT Departments often force you to change your password every 60 days or so. I understand the logic, but doesn't that make it more likely that employees will write down their passwords and keep the paper somewhere in their desk? Security guru Bruce Schneier acknowledges that most people write them down and says if you do, it is probably better to keep them in your wallet. This makes sense to me as long as long as you do not put the service or account name next to the password. It won't be near your desk where the password could be used to log into the network. And, most importantly, if you lose your wallet and a bad guy finds it, he'll be too busy with your credit cards to worry about cryptic writing on scraps of paper.

Lots of banks and other important online services only require an eight character password. But they often have another line of protection. A few bad logins and you get locked out of the system, for a while at first, but then permanently until you contact the institution. They could be annoying, but not as annoying as your funds all being transferred out of your stock brokerage account.

This is not to say that that I disagree with Sharon, John or the researchers they cited. I think 12 characters is the new standard. Just remember that you and your habits are a weaker link than whether  you have 10 or 12 character passwords. For many of us, the habit during the holiday season may be spending the money as soon as it comes into the bank account so no bad guys can touch it. But if you haven't set a security code or PIN on that mobile phone in your pocket or purse, why not do so right now?

I had slowly phased out the Websites of the Week, but have decided to revive it until at least the end of the year because I was inspired by WooWooMac.com. The site's motto is to "learn something new, useful and fun about your Mac, iPhone and iPad." It has many great tips, like Top Ten Useful iPad Tips.

Think the iPad is a cool toy? Well, it is, but check out 20 iPad Productivity Apps to see about getting real work done on your iPad. No games like Angry Birds in this list!

Got a lot of apps on your iPad? Here's how to quickly Launch iPad Apps Using Spotlight.

We all like free, so how about 50 Free iPhone and iPad Apps for College Students? There are many more, but I think you get the idea. Cool site. Woo woo!

The 37th edition of the Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology podcast features Tech Toys for the Holidays, our annual roundup of interesting, wild and off-beat technology tools and toys that might interest the practicing lawyer, or at least someone on his or her shopping list. From not-so-boring surge protectors to the ultimate in headphones to the wild DTV Shredder, there's something to fit every teckie's taste, if not their budgets.