How do solo and small-firm lawyers use technology in their practices? Hoping to provide some small insight into this, I recorded a series of 18 interviews with lawyers, asking them about the technologies and products they use in their work.

All of these interviews were recorded over the course of a single day at the Law Firm 500 conference, held in Lake Las Vegas, Nev., in October 2018. Lawyers attending the conference volunteered to be interviewed. The videos were completely unscripted and I knew virtually nothing about the lawyer before we turned on the cameras.

For an introduction to the series, see this post. A special thanks to Law Firm 500 for hosting us to record these videos, and to Ben Ambrogi for the videography and editing.

In this episode, I speak with solo Joseph Peiffer, Esq., of Ag & Business Legal Strategies, Hiawatha, Iowa. He specializes in farm bankruptcy and restructuring. Eighty-five percent of his clients are farmers. “I help farmers get creditors off their backs, preserve assets and minimize taxes,” Peiffer says of his practice.

Among the products Peiffer talks about are: Best Case bankruptcy software, Clio for practice management, NetDocuments for document management, Lexicata for client intake, and QuickBooks for accounting,

“Part of my goal here was to find products that were designed to work together, so that we could input data or information one time and not have to input it a number of times,” Peiffer says.

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.