The thought of being an entrepreneur is appealing to many people, but how do you know if you can be a home based business entrepreneur? Good planning and evaluation of your strengths can be a starting point for first determining if you will be a good at running your own business. However, a good business owner also knows that eliminating all the risks of business is virtually impossible. So, first see if you can reduce the risk by determining if you will first make a good home based business entrepreneur.One trait a good home based business entrepreneur has is being a self-starter. Running your own business means following through on all the details and organizing your own time. Being a home based business entrepreneur means you run the whole show, and there is no relying on a boss to keep you in line.Another important quality in a home based business entrepreneur is getting along with a lot of different personalities. In running your own business, you will be faced with everything from demanding clients, unreliable staff, and even moody vendors. Balancing the variety of people you will be working with and their different quirks is important to being a good home based business entrepreneur.Being a good decision maker is also important to being a good home based business entrepreneur. A good business owner will be able to make quick, but effective, decisions in almost any situation, including pressure filled circumstances. Also, a home based business entrepreneur will need to be able to make decisions on his or her own. Sometimes, there is no one else to rely on or to ask about business issues that come up.A good work ethic and a lot of energy is needed to be an effective home based business entrepreneur. Sometimes the pressure will be on to do a big job or a number of tasks, and so a home based business entrepreneur will sometimes need to put in long hours and work six or seven days a week.If you are organized and know how to plan well, then you are one step ahead toward being a good home based business entrepreneur. There is a significant amount of research that shows exactly how essential organization is to having a successful home based business. Keeping track of tasks, finances, inventory, schedules, and more is essential to running a successful business.Read the rest of the article here: Are You a Home Based Business Entrepreneur? [http://www.charlesfuchs.com/articles2/are-you-a-home-based-business-entrepreneur.htm]Download the Free Quick Start Workbook [http://www.charlesfuchs.com/QuickStartWorkBook.pdf] (Value $97!) and receive valuable tips, strategies and techniques designed to grow a very successful Home Based Business.

Having the ability to build a home based business is one thing, not have the ability or the expertise to build a home based business is quite another. Building an online business is no different from building a brick and mortar business.If your desire is to build a business you can work from home, you must ask yourself, what is the motivation and reason for your desire to start as online business. You must weigh the advantages and the disadvantages of starting your own home based business.Anybody that starts a business is going to pay a price in their time they spend to get it stated, with the money they will be required to invest and the effort they will have to devote to their new found business. What is it that you hope to accomplish and gain from your little venture.It will do you well to consider all the pro and cons and be honest with yourself. Setting down and counting the cost and plan your strategy of attack will pay off great dividends in the end. This is not a business you can just rush in and start in an instance.Making a decision on what kind of business you want to start will be a very important decision to make. If you make the wrong decision it will cost you big time. Most people start their home based business in something they have experience with or they turn their hobbies into a business. If you start a business in something you enjoy it will never be boring to you.Many have turned their love and passion of collecting antiques and collectibles into a full time living for themselves, all the while working from home. If you have collected over the years, it’s a possibility you have collected more than you wanted too and have the inventory to start a business.Some collectors just focus on certain items they like to deal in. this is a big plus, because the collector has gained some very important knowledge about the items they collected. Knowing your products you want to sell is important for this reason, you will not be selling items for far less than the book value and losing a great deal of money in the process.Making sure you have a continued supply of products or items to meet the demand of the market is crucial to your success, consequently you will have to do some homework on where those products can be obtained.If you want a home based business with a continued supply of products, then you can try affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing has come of age in recent years. The Internet is full of Affiliate marketing programs, choosing the right one the first time will be critical for you.If you don’t pick the right one the first time it may cost you time and money that you will lose and you will have to move on to another affiliate program and start over.

The Legal Industry & Information Technology

Like all other industries, the legal industry is not insulated from the tremendous changes in information technology over the past decade, and the challenges and opportunities it presents. If anything, the changes have more bearing on law firms & departments because information management is at the core of what they do – consulting with clients, colleagues or experts; increasing compliance & regulation demands, wading through a constantly expanding sea of legislation and case law; managing outsourcing partners; keeping abreast with latest developments; or managing a mountain of matter files.

Recent Trends

Perhaps the most significant change in the legal services industry the decline of “relationship lawyering”.

Recent times have seen increased competition, & changes in underlying market structure. There has been a continuing trend of decline of “relationship lawyering”. Traditionally strong relationships between law firms and corporates are eroding, with more companies opting for in-house legal departments, or “shopping around” for the best deal. Another significant trend is the increasing convergence of legal markets, where competition is as likely to come from a firm in another state or overseas as from a local firm. These & other developments are exerting greater pressures on legal firms to be more efficient, an it is imperative that attorneys spend their time analyzing information, rather than organizing or managing it.

Drivers of Technology Adoption by Legal Firms

Possibilities of Technology – The primary driver of greater use of information technology by legal firms is developments in technology itself. New technologies & greater bandwidths allow great possibilities in the arenas of information management, productivity and remote collaboration. Information can be moved over the internet with greater security. And unlike yesteryear, law firms can access these technologies without hefty costs and the need to set up specialized IT departments.

In 2004, Forrester Research Inc estimated that some 39,000 legal jobs will have moved offshore by the end of 2008.

Outsourcing/Offhsoring – Legal firms are now increasingly open to legal process outsourcing of tasks they traditionally held close – research, transcription, coding and even legal research and the drafting of legal documents. It is commonplace to see a NY based law firm, subletting research work to a team of professional lawyers & paralegals in Bangalore, India. This enables firms to majorly cut down costs & concentrate on core legal functions. But it also necessitates a greater need to communicate, collaborate & monitor the functioning of outsourcing vendors hundreds or thousands of miles away. Security is also an issue, since performance of the services often requires access to regulated consumer data or other sensitive data.

In 2004, almost 60% of lawyers worked at multi-office firms and over 10% of lawyers work at firms with ten or more offices.

Geographic Diversification – As mentioned before, there is a distinct movement towards multiple office firms, with offices spread both nationally and globally. US based companies are now serving many foreign clients, or serving foreign interests of domestic clients. There was a significant presence of international clients in even the smallest law firms of 1 to 20 lawyers. There has also been a spate of global mergers and acquisitions of law firms in the new millennia. All this necessitates a greater need for communication, collaboration and information exchange between branches.

Regulatory Compliance – Since the Sarbanes Oxley Act came into effect, records management has become an essential requirement. Organizations are required by law to retain certain documents for predefined periods. Also, the amendments to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure went into effect on December 1, 2006, and apply to any firm involved in litigation in the U.S. Federal Court system. The amendments mandate that companies be prepared for electronic discovery. Firms have to drastically alter the way they preserve, retrieve and produce electronic data.

Competition is coming both from firms spread across the nation & the globe, as well as consultants & advisors who were traditionally not considered part of the “legal industry”

Competition – Because of the death of relationship lawyering, and “one stop shopping” by clients, firms cannot afford to be complacent anymore. Moreover, competition is as likely to come from the opposite end of the country or globe, as from local companies. Competition is also coming from other quarters, consultants and advisors who offer services that were previously the purview of lawyers. In this arena of intense competition, lawyers have to double up as “rainmakers” ; networkers (legal business development) in addition to traditional roles.

IT Needs of the Legal Industry

Centralized Document Storage – The legal profession generates a tremendous amount of digital information in the form of case files, contracts, court filings, exhibits, evidence, briefs, agreements, bills, notes, records and other office activity such as email. This information is the firm’s collective knowledge & learning which sets it apart from competition and needs to be retrieved again and again. Compliance also requires certain documents to be stored & retrievable for extended periods of time. Attorneys across different offices need to access and collaborate on this information.

In 2007, 53% percent of lawyers used a PDA outside of the office, 32% to check e-mail.

ABA Law Tech Report 2007

Remote Access – Ready access to crucial documents and information can sometimes be all the difference between a favorable or adverse judgment. Lawyers now have wings on their feet visiting clients, interviewing experts, or attending outstation court proceedings, and are often out of office. It is important that they are able gain LAN like access to documents from the firm’s repository even when they’re not at the office premises.

Document Collaboration – It is not enough to only be able to access documents from the firm’s storage. A single case file may need multiple inputs from attorneys with different expertise, clients, experts, researchers, and other associates spread over the country or even the globe (in case of outsourcing). Therefore it is important to have the ability to concurrently access and work together on the same file, from right where everybody is.

Remote Conferencing – Sometimes the ability to collaborate on a document may not suffice and actual discussion and knocking together of heads might be needed. Web conferencing allows multiple people to get together in a virtual meeting room and discuss issues as effectively as being there in person.

Security – A lot of the information a legal firm handles is highly sensitive client information, which it is bound my business ethics and contracts to protect. Since this information is mostly accessed and distributed over the public network of internet, and often distributed to third parties at some page, security is right at the top as a concern.

Access Control – Another level of security is the ability to manage who sees what information and what they can do with it. Since multiple parties like attorneys and associates across the company, outsourcing partners, and multiple clients access information from the firm’s central storage this is of prime importance.

Productivity Applications – Although managing documents and information is one of the most important things a law firms IT systems need to do, it is not all. They also need the ability to manage and share schedules, to maintain lists of important contacts, to manage and track different tasks and litigations teams or individual attorneys may be involved with, or billing management.

What They Don’t Need

41% of lawyers had no IT staff at any locations for their firm, while 17% have one person, 8% have two, and 38% have three or more

ABA Law Tech Report 2006

IT Hassles – If getting all the above goodies requires setting up a specialized IT department, installing expensive hardware, and managing ongoing maintenance and upgrades, it might just not be worth it for a small to mid sized law firm. Bigger firms have the deep pockets and incentive to set up dedicated systems, but it might not be sustainable for smaller firms.

Complexity – To ensure that attorneys embrace the IT system, attorneys should be able to concentrate on the information itself, rather than grappling with the nitty-gritties of the system.

Costs – Cost, of course is a top consideration for small to mid sized companies across industries. The ongoing costs and hefty capital investments needed for custom and enterprise systems are just out of reach.