Lawyers who are also parents are quite familiar with how easily their plans for the day can be derailed. A call from the day care announcing that your child has a fever means you have to pick up your child and figure out what to do with him or her for the rest of the day. This is particularly difficult if it happens when you are running up against an important deadline.

How should a lawyer prepare for bringing a sick child to the office? Attorney Jennifer Gumbel provides some advice in a new article called Sick Kids and the Office. Take a look at her recommendations, and share your own advice in the Comments section below.

Last year around this time we discussed the rise in bankruptcy filings in 2010. In that report, the best that could be said was that bankruptcy filings increased but not by as much as they had in the previous year.

In a new report that brings bad news for bankruptcy lawyers but good news for everyone else, the United States Courts reported in Bankruptcy Filings Slide in Calendar Year 2011 that overall bankruptcy filings fell 11.5 percent in calendar year 2011. The report provides the following breakdown:

• Chapter 7 filings totaled 992,332, down 12.9 percent from the 1,139,601 Chapter 7 filings reported in CY 2010.
• Chapter 11 filings fell 15.9 percent to 11,529, from the 13,713 filings in CY 2010.
• Chapter 13 filings fell 7.5 percent to 406,084 in CY.
• Chapter 12 filings totaled 637, down 11.9 percent from the 723 Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings in CY 2010.

What are your thoughts on the decrease in bankruptcy filings? Is this a sign that the economy is recovering, or just the natural result of so many people having already filed bankruptcy in recent years? Share your thoughts below.

Are you interested in knowing which US Presidents filed bankruptcy? Take a look at this article to find out.

Social media in the courtroom is an issue of growing importance. As more and more jurors are carrying cell phones with access to the internet and to their favorite social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, courts are having to deal with the complications that arise from jurors engaging in improper conduct with their tweets and posts. Information about jurors available through their social media accounts has also become extremely valuable when conducting voir dire.

To learn more about how juror use of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts is affecting courtroom trials, read our new article on Social Media Use by Jurors in the Courtroom. Have some suggestions on how you think lawyers should use social media in jury selection? Have you experienced improper juror social media conduct during one of your trials? Tell us your thoughts in the Comments section below.

Does your law firm use an attorney merchant account to accept credit card payments? Many lawyers are hesitant to get involved with accepting credit card payments. Some are concerned about getting locked into contracts or monthly service fees, while others worry about ethical issues over credit card fees and IOLTA trust accounts. Some attorneys don't want to take credit card payments simply because they think it makes them seem like an ordinary store rather than a professional law office, while others fear taking a credit card payment only to have it charged back later.

For those lawyers who have realized the benefits of accepting credit cards in their businesses, there are several companies that have been popular. While there are many companies available to provide credit card processing services to law firms, a few companies have been widely used by attorneys to handle their credit card payments. To learn about some of the more popular credit card processing systems for lawyers, read our new article called Credit Card Processing for Lawyers.

Does your firm use a credit card processor not mentioned in our article? Share your recommendation in the comments section below.