Last week, opposing counsel and I went back and forth regarding a discovery dispute about a document that I believed was subject to discovery and should have been produced. I drafted a “good faith” letter, drafted a subpoena to a third party and spent several hours researching the issue.

But counsel and I also scheduled a conference call to discuss the dispute. Within minutes, we were able to strike a compromise and the letter, subpoena and research were no longer necessary.

I learned a valuable lesson — play nice and try to work it out. Despite what people often think of lawyers, most of us are reasonable and want to avoid spending countless hours fighting over something that can be resolved.

Even if the issue ultimately is not resolved, it may establish some goodwill between the parties that at least an attempt was made to work it out.

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In an effort to become more organized and more environmentally friendly, I am attempting to make my life paperless (or at least, my work life paperless).

Throughout the course of any attorney’s day, he or she will review documents, draft pleadings, take notes and read case law. My personal method of organization would be to have case-related, binder-clipped stacks of documents on my desk with either a Post-it or letter-sized piece of paper of to-do’s for each case. I would also have a corresponding handwritten list, which was a compilation of everything that I had to accomplish for all of my cases. Finally, I would have an electronic version of the list saved in my firm’s system in the event that someone has to take over a case because I am indisposed. (What would happen to my cases if I get hit by a bus?)

I would then spend time crossing off and adding additional work from the lists. I would review pleadings and case law and documents in paper form, all the while making handwritten notes, highlighting relevant text and leaving Post-it notes to mark important sections. Then, I would have to get these notes scanned in, so I would have an electronic version of my work just in case something happened to the hard copies. (What would happen if a tornado hits my office and all of my stuff were destroyed?)

This system works for me, but it was time-consuming and took extra effort to keep organized. So began my quest to go paperless and become more efficient. My goal is simple: use as few hard copies as I can, save a couple of trees, get more done in less time and decrease office expenses for the use of the copier, ink and paper.

The first thing I did was get an iPad. (Actually, it was supposed to be an iPad my wife and I would share for family stuff, but since I take it to work with my every day, I think she has resigned herself to the fact that I have claimed it. I have promised to get her one for her birthday or if we win the $540 million Mega Millions jackpot). I then downloaded a few very helpful apps:

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Forgive me for what will be a short post. Forgive me for any lack of wit. I’m tired.

Why? I was really sick for a week in January and had to take a week off at the beginning of this month to deal with some family stuff. What does that mean, really? Working lots and lots of hours to try and close the gap in my goal numbers. And that means… I’m TIRED.

Due to the lackluster job market, people are doing whatever they need to do to keep their jobs.

“If you’re lucky enough to have a job right now, you’re probably doing everything possible to hold onto it,” Sara Robinson wrote recently on AlterNet in an article titled “Bring Back the 40-hour Work Week.” “If the boss asks you to work 50 hours, you work 55. If she asks for 60, you give up weeknights and Saturdays, and work 65.”

Studies researching the results of the 40-hour work week and overtime productivity repeatedly show industrial workers have eight reliable working hours in them. On average, you get no more widgets out of a 10-hour day than you do out of an eight-hour day. Likewise, the overall output for the work week will be exactly the same at the end of six days as it would be after five days.

So, paying hourly workers to stick around once they’ve put in their weekly 40 is basically nothing more than a stupid and abusive way to burn up profits. Let ‘em go home, rest up and come back on Monday. It’s better for everybody.

This is truly enlightening if you consider the number of hours an attorney at a big law firm puts in per day, per week, and per month. Above the Law reviewed Robinson’s story, concluding “one should work to live, not the other way around.”

However, it seems like the majority of working Americans are “the other way around.” I watch as my friends in law firms toil for 12 hours a day, only to spend their few, free waking moments drinking and venting about how they have no lives.

What do you think? Do you think American working culture will allow a return of the 40-hour work week as the norm?

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Finding a job in this economy is surely a relief to any law school grad or attorney out of work, but it is truly only the beginning. While starting a new job can be exciting — meeting new colleagues, getting acclimated to a different office environment, learning how to do your job — it can be a nerve-wracking and overwhelming experience.

Here are a few quick tips to make the transition smoother:

Look good, feel good, do good. Consider adding a little something to your wardrobe and take care to always “look the part.” First impressions are everything, and you never know when you’ll be making that first impression on a new client or working with someone unexpected.

Bring something sweet to the office. Most people love at least a little something sweet to eat, and bringing in some doughnuts one morning or having a bowl of candy on your desk is a nice way of meeting your new colleagues because they’ll come to you.

Find mentors. If you don’t have one already, find someone at the workplace who has been there for a while and knows “the ropes.” Someone’s been through what you’re going through, so find them and learn how to avoid mistakes and be successful. If you already have a mentor, why not find another and have two?

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I read an article in the New York Times last summer about a concept called “Decision Fatigue.” The article focused on the hundreds of decisions that we make every day and answered the age-old question, “Why do I make all of my bad decisions at the end of the day?”

The article points to studies that found that willpower fluctuates throughout the day with glucose levels, that, after a certain point of consistently exercising strong willpower in our decision-making, we are unable to continue making ”good decisions,” and that people who demonstrate the best self control structure their lives to conserve willpower.

By the end of the day, we’ve made countless decisions — which webpage to view next, what to order for lunch, what task to do next, what email to read, etc. That doesn’t even  include the big decisions we make every day as lawyers on behalf of our clients. And, if only we could be so lucky to make on decision at a time! Often, we are so inundated with decisions that we jump in what feels like a million different directions all at once.

Fast forward five months later and, while I’ve identified my own day-to-day struggle with decision fatigue, I still haven’t found a way to structure my life to “conserve willpower.” The past few months have been particularly brutal in terms of my workload.

When my workload is high, I find that I eat worse, drink more, don’t make time for the gym, and, overall, I’m just not my usual, easygoing, happy self. I find my head is spinning at the end of the day between phone calls, emails and questions from my staff. I feel like I haven’t completed one task but stopped and started different tasks all day. All of the “to-do’s” that I have yet to get to, again, linger in the back of my mind and I feel like I’m not doing anything particularly well.

I discussed my frustrations with a friend of mine who is in sales for a prominent bank in Maryland. She told me that her company precludes its employees from checking email, except for certain designated times, which are chosen by the employee ahead of time. She also suggested that I compartmentalize my day.

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Why some people take pride in the fact their Facebook profile emulates an episode of Tosh.0 is beyond me. (I am not saying that I don’t watch the show and laugh hysterically. But, simultaneously, I do wonder why people put some of this stuff up on the Internet for the entire world to see.)

While Facebook has been in the news recently for its upcoming IPO, another story, about Facebook privacy, caught my attention on the radio as I was brushing my teeth this morning. Apparently, Facebook is still working on deleting photos from its servers in a timely manner nearly three years after the issue was brought to Facebook’s attention.

Have you ever deleted a horrific photo on Facebook that was posted by a “friend?” Well, you may not have really deleted it. Photos “deleted” from Facebook seemingly never go away if you have a direct link to the image file on Facebook’s servers. Just imagine the joy felt by those individuals who had the common sense or foresight to delete photos because they didn’t want retaliation from an employer, wanted to avoid family drama or uploaded a photo of a friend without permission, to name a few reasons, when they discovered the photo would remain accessible for an indefinite amount of time as long as someone had a direct link to the .jpg file in question.

A few months ago, I had to research the discoverability of information and data on a Facebook (or other social media) account and profile. From the limited guidance published by a few jurisdictions, it seems that a party would likely succeed in requesting Facebook information and data during the discovery process. The court’s interpretation of federal Rule 26(b)(2)(c) allows for an extremely broad scope of relevancy.

While Maryland courts have not ruled on this broad scope of relevancy as it pertains to social media discoverability pursuant to Rule 26(b)(2)(c), it has ruled on its reliability and authentication. In April 2011, the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed the conviction of Antoine Griffin, which was based on evidence gathered from a MySpace profile of Griffin’s girlfriend. The Court of Special Appeals had ruled the police officer proffered by the state as an authenticating witness was sufficient to authenticate the MySpace profile printout. (A law professor from Chicago gave a great summary of this case on his blog and I will highlight some points here.)

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