DennisKennedy.blog: December 2005 Archives

Note:If you clicked on a URL that brought you to the top of this page rather than to the specific post you expected, please modify the URL you used by adding a small "a" before the number at the end of the URL and hit your return key or click on "Go" in your browser.

Search

Subscribe to this Blog

RSS Feed
FeedBurner Feed

Email Subscription to Newsfeeds for my Blogs

« November 2005 | Main | January 2006 »

December 31, 2005

A Reflection on Blogging at the End of 2005

This quote from Rich Karlgaard via Doc Searls captures something essential about blogging at the end of 2005:

Blogging is not overhyped. You may be forgiven for thinking so, as no day goes by without a story on blogs. But blogs are no fad. They are cheap and easy to do. And blogs fulfill that deepest of human needs as defined by psychologist Abraham Maslow: self-actualization. People write blogs because they want to know themselves and want to be known by others and because they want their lives to count. When a communications medium is both riding the Moore's Law cost-capability curve and tapping into a deep need, it's no fad.

All best wishes for 2006!

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 11:03 AM | Comments (1)

December 30, 2005

X1 Licenses Are Almost - Get Yours Now

As I mentioned here, the nice people at X1 are providing fifty licenses for the X1 Desktop Search tool for readers of this blog who email me with a request for the URL for the download. My rough estimate is that there are around fifteen of them left, so if you would like one be sure to email me (denniskennedyblog @ gmail.com) with your request for the down load URl soon. I appreciate it when you include comments about this blog with your request. As any blogger will tell you, it's fascinating to see who reads your blog.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www/denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2005

Disaster Remembrance Week

Blogs got a lot of attention in 2005 - for a lot of reasons, good and bad. However, there probably has not been enough attention paid to the practical impact blogs have had in times of disaster to assist others in need.

The WorldWideHelp Group is promoting this week as Disaster Remembrance Week.

From the announcement:

"Last December and this January, the online community came together as never before to help in the aid efforts in South-East Asia. The lessons learned there were put to use, and improved upon, when the other tragic events of the year unfolded.

Can we harness that goodwill, that togetherness, that willingness to help once more?

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Disaster Remembrance Week

Posted by dmk at 08:47 AM | Comments (0)

December 28, 2005

Looking for a Little Help Researching "Of Counsel" Arrangements

I'm working on a little research project, maybe it will turn into an article, on the practical aspects of "of counsel" arrangements between lawyers and law firms.

In part, my working hypothesis is that "virtual law firms" (I know that some of you don't like that term, but bear with me) will be founded on the evolution of "tried and true" legal relationships between lawyers rather than on some kind of new form of "affiliation" or other relationship model.

It seemed like a straightforward topic, until I started doing a little research and couldn't find much of anything.

Here's what I'm looking for some help on:

1. Collections of resources, outlines and articles on this topic (non-premium resources, to the extent possible). Send me the URLs.

2. If you are willing, sanitized copies of "of counsel" agreements so I can see what the standard approaches are.

3. Information, including anecdotal info, about financial and other arrangements and the successes and failures of this approach.

4. Discussion of ethical and practical issues.

I'll create a page of links to the best of the resources I find and post it here and/or on my website.

Thanks for your help.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(TM) - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink! - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization.

Posted by dmk at 04:49 PM | Comments (1)

December 27, 2005

Free X1 Desktop Search Licenses as Gift to Readers of this Blog (Limit of 50)

The nice people at X1 have graciously agreed to provide up to 50 of the readers of my blog with a free license to the X1 Desktop Search tool ($75 regular price). I wanted to used this offer as a way to say thank you to readers of my blog.

There's been no category of software hotter in 2005 than the desktop search category. X1 is one of the leaders in the category. The tool will let you swiftly search files and email as if you have a search engine for your hard drive. I can tell you that Microsoft Outlook seems like a completely different program once you use a desktop search tool for searching your email.

All you need to do is to be one of the first 50 people to email me (preferably at denniskennedyblog @ gmail.com) with a request for the URL you'll need for the download and I'll get you the info you need. The URL has a built-in counter that will cut things off at 50 or at an expiration date in January, so I'll simply ask you to download one copy only. Once the 50 downloads happen, the offer will end. If you'd like to pass along some comments or suggestions about my blog, I encourage you to do so.

By the way, although I am, of course, interested in sponsor inquiries, I'm also happy to talk to vendors about doing promotions like this one that provide benefits to readers of this blog (without requiring any more effort from me than this one does) or other discount / affiliate marketing arrangements.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's legal technology consulting services, featuring RSS and blogging consulting, technology audit, strategic planning and technology committee coaching packages especially for medium-sized law firms (15 - 100 lawyers) and corporate legal departments. More information on the "Second Pair of Eyes" packages for legal technology audits and strategic planning may be found here (PDF).

Posted by dmk at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)

Reinventing DennisKennedy.Blog for 2006

I have been thinking quite a bit lately about DennisKennedy.Blog and the directions I want to go with it. I've gotten some constructive criticism lately (or at least I think it's meant to be constructive) and some good suggestions from a number of people.

The four comments that seem to arise most often are: (1) the posts are too long, (2) the blog should have more focus, (3) jokes or other attempts at humor should be labeled, and (4) the posts are way too long.

So, I had been thinking about "reinventing" the blog before I saw Hugh McLeod's great drawing called "if you can't re-invent yourself." Now I'm working on at least a modest reinvention of this blog for 2006. Reinvention, from time to time, is a good thing, I think.

I'm also encouraging people to let me know your ideas and suggestions.

What's in the works? Here's what I'm considering:

1. Shorter posts. People have convinced me that "long posts" should actually be done as podcasts.

2. The biggest change I'm considering is to move completely to a question-and-answer format, much like the Ask Dave Taylor blog, of which I'm a big fan. There's always been a good response to the "By Request Days" (other than by people who got confused the first time I did it). Someone told me that they really liked the Q-and-A format for my writing and, as I've read Dave Taylor's blog, it seems attractive to me. Just to be clear, I'd be making up most of the questions are using the questions as titles of the posts, although I'm sure that the format would lead to more audience questions.

3. One thing that became very clear in 2005 is that blog advertising and blog advertising networks are now considered quite acceptable. I've had some reluctance to go very far in that direction, but now will move in that way. Your sponsor and advertiser inquiries are now welcome.

4. I also think that the blog's focus will be more explicitly on technology - legal technology and the impact that technology has on the law and the practice of law.

But that's just my current thinking - I'm not sure yet what I'll finally decide - and I do have some other ideas as well. I invite your reactions and suggestions.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 01:19 PM | Comments (3)

Survey Says Majority of Employees Have Sent or Received Potentially Damaging Email

I thought you might be interested in a recent press release on email usage issued by Fortiva that quotes me briefly. The press release summarizes the results of a study they did on employee email habits. The results are fascinating and might prompt you to do some follow-up at your firm, company or organization.

Risky Business: New Survey Shows Almost 70 Per Cent of Email-Using Employees Have Sent or Received Email that May Pose a Threat to Businesses

Survey results indicate employee email habits may be exposing businesses to potential legal pitfalls; substantial discrepancy exists between actual and perceived risks

November 15, 2005 – Norwalk, CT – Before you hit send, you may want to think twice about the content of your email. Chances are if it is a joke, gossip, or even information about your company, you could be putting yourself – and your company – at risk. A new survey released today, conducted by Harris Interactive® for Fortiva, shows that 68 per cent of U.S. employees who use email at work have sent or received email via their work email account that could place their company at risk. Despite this, 92 per cent of these employees do not believe they have ever sent a risky email. Together these statistics indicate a substantial discrepancy between employees’ perceived and actual risks.

Fortiva commissioned Harris Interactive, best known for The Harris Poll®, to look at email usage among employees. The survey, which examined the email habits of over 1,000 individuals who use email at work, uncovered a number of issues that raise concerns for businesses – both in the way employees are using and storing their corporate email.

According to the results, a majority of employees who use email at work (61 per cent) admit they have used email at work for personal use. Results also show that nearly half (48 per cent) say they have sent or received joke emails, funny pictures/movies, funny stories of a questionable tone (e.g., racy/sexual content, politically incorrect), while one in five (22 per cent) say they have sent or received a password or log-in information via email. When shared through email, this type of content could pose significant risks to businesses, either from a possible security breach or employee-driven lawsuits. Respondents were given a list of nine email categories that could be considered medium to high risk; only 32 per cent said they had never sent or received email in any of those categories.

“As email is being used increasingly as evidence in lawsuits, it is very important for organizations to educate their staff on what is and isn’t acceptable in a workplace communication,” said Dennis Kennedy, an information technology lawyer and legal technology consultant based in St. Louis, Missouri. “Those organizations that don’t implement effective policies and procedures, train their people, and enforce policies for email are at serious risk of facing both future lawsuits and unhappy results in those lawsuits. These statistics reinforce the fact that businesses need to do a better job of reducing their risk by communicating their policies more effectively with employees and backing up that communication with training and well-designed technology solutions,” Kennedy added.

While a majority of employees (73%) who use email at work are aware of corporate email policies, less than half (46 per cent) say they “always” adhere to the policy. This statistic suggests a lack of understanding among employees of the importance of an email policy.

The way that employees are storing their email may be of even more cause for concern than the content of those messages. While 41 per cent of employees who use email would prefer to keep important emails indefinitely, most businesses place limits on the amount of email that can be stored.

- more -
Such storage limitations may be leading to practices that could jeopardize information security. The survey reports that half of employees who use email at work (51 per cent) have saved email outside the corporate network, putting valuable and sometimes confidential information at risk of falling into the wrong hands. For organizations that are not archiving their email, this practice of saving data outside the controls of the corporate network presents an even greater risk, particularly in a litigation situation.

“It’s a fact – employees are using your corporate network to send personal emails, from jokes to gossip to confidential information – and every business should be taking the necessary steps to protect that data from ending up in the wrong hands, or leading to a lawsuit,” said Paul Chen, CEO of Fortiva Inc. “If email from your organization is presented as evidence in a trial, and you don’t have a copy of that email, you may be unprepared to defend yourself. Worse still, email that could support your claim of innocence could also be unavailable, ultimately leading to a forced settlement or guilty finding. A reliable email archiving solution can help businesses avoid these situations and save millions of dollars in fines and settlements, not to mention salvaging their corporate credibility.”

An email archiving solution can enforce policies and ensure that evidentiary-quality copies of all corporate email are available in the event of legal or regulatory investigations. Fortiva’s managed email archiving solution was designed to help businesses automatically enforce email policies, meet regulatory compliance rules, and quickly and easily meet e-discovery requests. The Fortiva solution also allows employees to access their own email archives, including deleted email, from their corporate mailbox. This feature can help reduce the burden on email servers, while eliminating the need for employees to store copies of email outside the corporate network.

Additional findings from the survey include (among U.S. employed adults who use email at work):

* Those who earn over $75K a year are more likely to save work-related email outside of the company’s network (62 per cent vs. 41 per cent of employees who earn less than $50K a year)
* 73 per cent admit to knowing their company has an email policy; yet less than half (46 per cent) admit to always making sure they comply with policy before sending a note
* 9 per cent of U.S. adult employees who use email at work have used company email to submit their resume to another company
* One-fifth of employees (22 per cent) have sent personal details to HR including Social Security numbers, salary details, or medical information via email

Survey Methodology
Harris Interactive® fielded the study on behalf of Fortiva, Inc. from November 2-4, 2005, via its QuickQuerySM online omnibus, interviewing a nationwide sample of 2,400 U.S. adults aged 18 and over, among whom 1,042 are employed and send or receive email at work. Data were weighted to reflect the total U.S. adult population on the basis of region, age within gender, education, household income, race/ethnicity, and amount of time spent online each week. In theory, with a probability sample of this size, one can say with 95 percent certainty that the overall results have a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points and the results of the employed adults who send or receive email at work is plus or minus 4 percentage points. Sampling error for the various sub-samples of employed adults who send or receive email at work is higher and varies. This online sample is not a probability sample.

About Harris Interactive®
Harris Interactive Inc. (www.harrisinteractive.com), based in Rochester, New York, is the 13th largest and the fastest-growing market research firm in the world, most widely known for The Harris Poll® and for its pioneering leadership in the online market research industry. Long recognized by its clients for delivering insights that enable confident business decisions, the Company blends the science of innovative research with the art of strategic consulting to deliver knowledge that leads to measurable and enduring value.

Harris Interactive serves clients worldwide through its United States, Europe (www.harrisinteractive.com/europe) and Asia offices, its wholly-owned subsidiary Novatris in Paris, France (www.novatris.com), and through an independent global network of affiliate market research companies. EOE M/F/D/V

To become a member of the Harris Poll OnlineSM and be invited to participate in future online surveys, go to www.harrispollonline.com

About Fortiva Inc.
Fortiva is a leading provider of managed email archiving solutions for regulatory compliance, legal discovery and email storage management needs. With its outsourced solution, Fortiva is helping businesses across North America to quickly and easily meet email archiving needs without risking data security. Using proprietary DoubleBlind Encryption™ technology, Fortiva stores all data offsite in encrypted form, so Fortiva staff can never access the content of archived data. The customer retains exclusive access to the encryption keys, allowing them to instantly search and retrieve archived data without worrying about managing the storage infrastructure. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada and with offices across the United States, Fortiva delivers its customer-driven solutions through a strong network of strategic partnerships as well as a direct sales force. Fortiva is a privately-owned company, with investment from Cargill Ventures, McLean Watson Capital and Ventures West. For more information, visit www.fortiva.com.

About Dennis Kennedy.
Dennis Kennedy is a well-known information technology lawyer and legal technology consultant based in St. Louis, Missouri. Kennedy speaks and writes frequently on legal and technology topics and has covered corporate policies on email and Internet usage on the Between Lawyers blog (www.corante.com/betweenlawyers/) as well as in his own blog and articles. He also co-writes a column called "Thinking E-Discovery" at DiscoveryResources.org. For more information, visit www.denniskennedy.com.

In organizations up to 2,000 employees, 57 per cent enforce a mailbox size quota; In organizations greater that 2,000 employees, 72 per cent enforce a mailbox quota – Messaging Archiving Market Trends, 2005-2008, An Osterman Research Multiclient Study.

###

Contact:

David Gollom
High Road Communications
416.368.8348 ext. 267
dgollom@highroad.com

Victoria Badgley
Fortiva
416.366.6666 ext. 383
Victoria.badgley@fortiva.com

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's half-day electronic discovery seminar - "Preparing for the New World of Electronic Discovery: Easing Your Transition from Paper to Electronic Discovery." Contact Dennis today for more information and to schedule a seminar for your firm or legal department.

Posted by dmk at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

Mining and Minding Your Metadata - New Electronic Discovery Column

The January Thinking E-Discovery column titled "Mining the Value of Metadata" is now available on the DiscoveryResources.org website. In this column, Tom Mighell, Evan Schaeffer and I take on the timely topic of metadata (in the legal world, "metadata" refers to hidden or revealable data contained in Microsoft Word and other documents).

The column is a wide-ranging discussion of the topic, complete with some practical pointers. There's been a lot of attention on this topic recently and I don't think it's all that difficult to become reasonably knowledgable about the issues. This column will help you get off to a good start.

The money quote is from Evan Schaeffer:

It just so happens that I have a Word document open on my desktop right now. When I look at the file's properties, I see that the "author" is listed as my law partner. She's never worked on the document but I'm using her computer. That's an interesting example of how metadata can be wrong.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)

December 26, 2005

Dan Donovan's Limited Edition, Fine Art Photographic Prints of Busch Stadium

Dan Donovan - professional photographer extraordinaire and my brother-in-law - has partnered with the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team (a long-time client of his) to produce a series of limited edition, fine art photographic prints of Busch Stadium, which you can see and purchase at http://www.dandonovanfineart.com.

As Dan notes, "The last game at the original Busch Stadium was played on October 19, 2005, with the team moving to the new Busch Stadium in 2006. To commemorate both stadiums, this series of prints has been created. There are currently 5 prints in the series, with more in development."

My personal favorite is the one Dan calls "Clouds," but I encourage you to check out the collection and how talented Dan is. Even if you are not a baseball fan or a baseball stadium buff, you'll enjoy these photos. If you are, you'll want to add one of these to your collection.

Dan also does great, creative portrait photography.

The details on the photo series and purchase info can all be found at http://www.dandonovanfineart.com. Be sure to tell Dan that you learned about the photos on this blog.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)

December 22, 2005

Dennis Kennedy's 2005 Best of Legal Blogging Awards (the Blawggies)

Welcome to the 2005 edition of Dennis Kennedy's annual Best of Legal Blogging Awards, celebrating a tradition that began nearly one full year ago. These awards, which have become affectionately known as the "Blawggies," celebrate the best of law-related blogs as determined from my personal and highly-opinionated perspective.

When Neil Squillante first started the @ awards at TechnoLawyer.com, he had an online awards ceremony. As I recall, I was one of a small number of people who really enjoyed the awards ceremony pseudo-atmosphere he was able to create through an email list. I thought I'd pay a little tribute to Neil and bring back the tradition of an online awards ceremony. I've held the Blawggie awards ceremony at the beautiful DennisKennedy.Blog Conference and Convention Center. As it turned out, all of the winners were too busy doing their real work to attend, but fortunately I was there to accept on their behalf.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that, like most of these ceremonies, the Blawggies awards show ran a little long. I know that many people do not like long posts, so I'll start this post with an "executive summary" that lists the award winners and then follow it with a transcript of the awards ceremony that will tell you more about each of the winners, the awards and a few of my observations about legal blogging as we enter 2006. I do encourage you to read the whole post.

I. List of 2005 Blawggie Award Categories and Winners.

1. Best Overall Law-Related Blog - Tom Mighell's Inter Alia
2. Best Legal Blog Category - Law Librarian Blogs

3. Best Practice-Specific Legal Blog - Marty Schwimmer's The Trademark Blog

4. Best Legal Blog Digest - Stark County Law Library Blog

5. Best Blog About Legal Blogging - Kevin O'Keefe's Real Lawyers Have Blogs

6. Best Legal Podcast - Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground Podcast

7. The Sherry Fowler Best Writing on a Legal Blog Award - Ernest Svenson's Ernie the Attorney Blog

8. Best Law Professor Blog - James Maule's Mauled Again

9. Best New Legal Blog - (Tie) Between Lawyers; Rethink(IP)

10. Best Legal Technology Blog - DennisKennedy.Blog

11. Best Legal Blogging Trend - Bloggers Making Money from Blogging

I encourage you to read more about the winning blogs (and why they were winners) in the transcript of the awards ceremony below.

II. "Transcript" of 2005 Blawggie Awards Ceremony."

"Hello and welcome to the 2005 Blawggie Awards - the second annual edition of Dennis Kennedy's Best of Legal Blogging Awards. (Theme music, based loosely on the intro music to Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground Podcast, plays.)

Your host for the show is Dennis Kennedy of DennisKennedy.Blog. (Warm applause.)

Good evening, ladies and germs, er, gentlemen! (Polite laughter.) I just flew in from St. Louis, also known as "Blawg City USA" . . . and boy are my arms tired! (Scattered chuckles, rolled eyes.) Is this thing on? (Silence.)

Well, let's jump right into the show. 2005 saw a tremendous growth in the number of legal blogs, also known as "blawgs," thanks to the word-coining abilities of Denise Howell. What do they call it when you get thousands of lawyers, law professors, law librarians, law students, legal consultants and others writing blogs that focus on law-related content? A good start. (Applause.)

My attitude towards law-related blogs is "let a thousand flowers bloom." I'm enjoying the wide variety of law-related blogs and the many different approaches legal bloggers are taking today. It's been a great year. (Applause.)

Let me note two interesting trends I've noticed this past year. First, long-time legal bloggers seem to be expanding the scope of their blogs and writing about more general topics while newer bloggers are creating highly-focused blogs about a specific topic. In part, this trend illustrates the movement into a second generation of legal blogging and I'm fascinated by the evolution of legal blogging. I've learned much from new bloggers this year and expect to learn much more in the future.

The second interesting trend is how often I notice that some of the best writing on legal topics can be found on blogs that would not be categorized as legal blogs. It's an indication of how blogs are often a conversation in which all can participate.

A few words about the first Blawggie awards and then we'll get to the envelopes with the 2005 awards.

Some of the reaction to the 2004 Blawggies surprised me.

I said in the 2004 awards post:

The Blawggies are not based on any popular votes, surveys or scientific measures. They are highly-opinionated choices made by me, based on my experience, expertise and likes and dislikes.

In general, I like to see blogs (1) consistently useful content, (2) a generous and helpful approach, and (3) a combination of commitment and talent. In other words, I like blogs that compel me to read them on a regular basis. I read almost all blog posts in a newsreader these days, so the awards will reflect a bias toward blogs with full-text RSS feeds as well as all of my other biases and personal preferences.

My real purpose, as it is with the 2005 awards, was to encourage a whole bunch of legal bloggers to do their own "awards." I thought that this would be a great way for legal bloggers to highlight the blawgs they really liked and an even better way for me to learn about some great blogs I might have been unfamiliar with.

I was surprised that people seemed to take the notion of "awards" a bit more seriously than I expected and that "a thousand blawg awards did not bloom." I also noticed a few criticisms of my awards. I thought I'd address some of those criticisms as a way to explain what my intention is with these awards.

1. Dennis Gave Awards Only to the Blawgs of his Friends. There is a sort of chicken-and-egg element to this comment. I now have a number of blogger friends who became my friends because we read each other's blogs and respected each other's work. We wouldn't have known each other any other way. I really like and respect their blogs. However, as I said, "They are highly-opinionated choices made by me, based on my experience, expertise and likes and dislikes."

2. Dennis Focused on Old Blawgs. Well, Dennis is one of the older bloggers. I think I had a pretty good mix of old and new, but I do focus on the entire body of work of a blog and that probably does favor long-standing blogs.

3. Dennis Gave Himself an Award. Yes, I did. I've been writing and presenting lists of "best of the Web" lists and doing other lists of links for many years. I've learned that these lists get reused and repurposed in a number of ways and often people don't notice (or don't get the chance to notice) that I was the author of the list. As a result, I usually include my website or blog on any of these lists where they fit. Bob Ambrogi has been writing about legal websites and blogs since almost before the World Wide Web existed. Bob recently wrote an article calling 2005 the year of the podcast and listing his podcast on his list of best legal podcasts. Let's face it, any list of legal podcasts that did not include Bob's podcast would be ridiculous, whether or not Bob wrote the list. I usually try to find a way to list my site or blog in a non-controversial way and I'd recommend that other people do the same thing when creating a "best of" list, at least based on my experience. Generally, you can create a narrow enough award that you can fit onto the list. For example, "best blog focusing on legal technology and technology law with the author living in the 63119 zip code" would work well for me. Anyway, it's not all an ego thing. I did give my blog an award again this year.

4. Who is Dennis Kennedy? A fair criticism. I expected this criticism and this was part of the fun of doing the Blawggies. I thought that people would say if this guy can give awards, why can't I? At worst, they might check out my blog.

5. Dennis Didn't Give the Same Awards I Would. I enjoyed the fact that the Law Dork blog (which I've read and enjoyed for a long time) won a recent vote as "best law blog." I was surprised that some people seemed to get those noses out of joint because the Law Dork blog won the prize. Similarly, I was surprised by how the discussion of the TechnoLawyer BlawgWorld eBook focused more on what blogs other people would have included, rather than on the fact that the eBook is an excellent sampler to give people who have just recently heard about legal blogs to get started. I'm not very responsive to criticism that boils down to "he didn't do it the way I would have." What's cool about blogging - you have your own printing press or your own channel to do the version you would have done. That's a notion I've often referred to as "two turntables and a microphone." In fact, my Blawggie awards are explicitly an invitation for you to announce your own awards. As an aside, I could not disagree more with recent commentary that blogs are a new form of a "vanity press." Two turntables and a microphone.

Now, let's move from the 2004 Blawggies to the 2005 Blawggies.

In the past few months, I've changed the way that I "read" blogs. As you may know, I rarely visit a blog. Instead, I subscribe to the RSS feeds in a newsreader and read the posts in my newsreader. Recently, I created a number of "saved searches" or "watches" and, rather than attempt to read all of the posts in all of the feeds, I monitor certain topics and read a limited number of blogs on a daily basis these days. The award-winning blogs represent some of the law-related blogs I read on a daily basis.

As another clarification, I really do not read more than a few political blogs. I get my political news through emails from Marty Schwimmer. (A few chuckles and some muttered complaints about bloggers and their @#%*& inside jokes.)

As a transactional lawyer, I do not read many litigation blogs, except to the extent they deal with electronic discovery. As a result, some may feel that blogs in these categories are under-represented in these awards. My awards also focus on blogs of practicing lawyers.

I'll also note that the narrowly-focused blogs will work well for marketing and related purposes, but will diminish your chances to win general legal blogging awards. They've chosen the correct priority.

For the curious, I'm subscribed to around 180 law-related blogs in my newsreader these days. (Gasps from audience.) As I mentioned, that does not mean that I read all of them on a regular basis, except as they touch on topics that I'm interested in. Also, because of BlawgThink, I got the chance to visit hundreds of law-related blogs and meet or at least exchange emails with many legal bloggers. I say this both as background about me and to give some credibility to my claim that I'm very impressed by the quality of what's going on in the blawgosphere. Narrowing my selections for these awards was very difficult this year.

Finally, I prefer blogs that have maybe five or fewer posts a day and, big surprise, I tend to prefer blogs with longer essay-like posts.

And, now, the suspense-building is over, and we open the envelopes for this year's awards. (Loud, relieved applause.)

1. Best Overall Law-Related Blog - Tom Mighell's Inter Alia

Last year's winner was Sabrina Pacifici's BeSpacific.com. I could have easily given this blog the award again this year. However, I wanted to select a different blog for this award in 2005. I've noticed in the last few months that Inter Alia is the first legal blog I read each day. There are three things I want to highlight about Inter Alia. (1) I learn highly useful, practical information on a regular basis. (2) Tom has a great, succinct style that I admire greatly. (3) Tom's "Blawg of the Day" feature not only lets me know about new legal blogs, but is also an act of great generosity. Tom and I now write two columns together, have done presentations and webinars together and Tom is part of the Between Lawyers blog with me, so I get the chance to learn from Tom on a regular basis outside his blog. By the way, Tom has agreed to work with me to help me write shorter posts in 2006.

2. Best Legal Blog Category - Law Librarian Blogs

I stand in awe of the job that law librarian bloggers as a group are doing. Across the board, these blogs have developed into strong information resources, often with links to primary source information that I'm not sure how I would find otherwise. There are so many great blogs in this category. I'll simply mention a few to get you started: BeSpacific.com, The Law Librarian Blog, Out of the Jungle, Law Dawg Blawg, WisBlawg, Vancouver Law Library Blog, Stark County Library Blog, Library Boy, LawLibTech, Connie Crosby, BarclayBlog, and Slaw.ca

3. Best Practice-Specific Legal Blog - Marty Schwimmer's The Trademark Blog

The Trademark Blog won this award last year and, even though I wanted to move to a different winner, the fact is that The Trademark Blog remains the model of a practice-specific blawg. Marty covers trademark law with a great eye for compelling material, his trademark wit and lots of pictures. I said last year: "The Trademark Blog is a great example of a way lawyers can speak in a plain voice to both a legal and non-legal audience in an engaging way." Two other practice-specific blogs I wanted to single out this year are Dennis Crouch's widely-acclaimed Patently-O blog and Janell Grenier's always interesting Benefitsblog. Both are great examples of ways to do practice-specific blogs.

4. Best Legal Blog Digest - Stark County Law Library Blog

This blog could also win my most under-appreciated blog award. A big trend in legal blogging in 2005 was the development of blogs that aggregate information from other legal blogs, digest posts from other legal blogs or highlight and point to posts on other legal blogs. These kinds of blogs can be quite useful as a way to monitor a number of blogs in one place. Nancy Stinson at the Stark County Law Library Blog has been highlighting and pointing to useful posts for a long time now. She does a great job of picking up interesting and useful posts from other blogs, usually a few each day. I like this approach because other approaches can overload me with the sheer number of posts they cover. My honorable mention in this category goes to Lisa Stone's Legal Blog Watch. Lisa's summaries of posts are so great that I rarely go to the underlying post. Even though I understand the purpose of the blog, I wish Lisa would cover blogs outside the Law.com blog network on a regular basis.

5. Best Blog About Legal Blogging - Kevin O'Keefe's Real Lawyers Have Blogs

I like the way Kevin puts his opinions and his incisive comments and wise observations out there for discussion on a regular basis. He wants to get conversations started. He also has a long history of using the Internet, runs a blog design, hosting and consulting business, and has excellent insights and experience in the world of legal blogging. I always respect Kevin's opinion on these matters, even on the occasional times we disagree. I always learn something. If you want to learn about developments in the world of blogging, the use of blogs for marketing and practical information about the use of legal blogs, you'll find no better starting point than this blog.

6. Best Legal Podcast - Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground Podcast

I'm not prepared to go as far as Bob Ambrogi and say that 2005 was the year of the podcast, but podcasting was certainly an important development in 2005. My favorite podcast is Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground Podcast. Evan recently finished his 44th podcast. Evan's set a high standard of professionalism for lawyer podcasts - he uses scripts, excellent recording techniques, music, sound effects and creates a professional, polished podcast. He also created podcasts that run about 10 to 15 minutes (or less), a time that many people believe is the "sweet spot" for podcasts. Better yet, the material is great, often humorous and always insightful.

7. The Sherry Fowler Best Writing on a Legal Blog Award - Ernest Svenson's Ernie the Attorney Blog

As I wrote about here, I'm a big fan of the writing ability of some of the best legal bloggers. There are some legal blogs I read because I like the writing. I think that the best writer among legal bloggers is Sherry "Scheherezade" Fowler. However, Sherry has stopped practicing law and was wondering the other day whether she's still a legal blogger. That's for her to decide, but I decided to honor her writing abilities by putting her name on this award. Since the end of August, Ernie's writing, especially about the aftermath of Katrina, has been stellar. He's become such a great writer and captures something essential about New Orleans on a regular basis. If publishers are looking for someone to write a great book about Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans, I'd point them to Ernie.

8. Best Law Professor Blog - Jim Maule's Mauled Again

As Professor Maule says, his blog features "more than occasional commentary on tax law, legal education, the First Amendment, religion, and law generally, with sporadic attempts to connect all of this to genealogy, theology, music, model trains, and chocolate chip cookies." His blog also shows that you can write engaging and helpful commentary about the U.S. tax system. Mauled Again is a great read on any topic I really enjoy the writing. Two other law prof blogs earn an honorable mention from me because I enjoy reading them so much: Paul Caron's TaxProf Blog and Tun Ying's The Yin Blog (among other things, we like some of the same TV shows).

9. Best New Legal Blog - (Tie) Between Lawyers; Rethink(IP)

Oh, puh-leeze, like I'm not going to have Between Lawyers listed in this category? Both winners in this category represent the important new group blogging phenomenon and that's part of the reason that I picked them in this category. I've enjoyed the evolution of the Between Lawyers experiment (although the jury is still out on the "Lawyer X" thing). Between Lawyers shows how highly individual and well-known bloggers can create a group blog with a different focus and voice that exists alongside their individual blogs. I know a number of people who will tell you that one of the coolest things about legal blogging and its potential was seeing the RethinkIP guys - Doug, Matt and Steve - hanging out together at the ABA TECHSHOW. We all thought that they were best friends from college. The fact was that they were meeting in person for the first time. I like the way they've used the Rethink(IP) blog as a way to create a group voice and a forum to discuss issues that do not fit into their practice-specific individual blogs. They also taught me how to do Skype instant messaging this year and helped me rethink my approach to blogging, collaboration and making gratuitous "rethink" references. As I mentioned before, there are a ton of great new law-related blogs this year - there are many worthy of winning this award.

10. Best Legal Technology Blog - DennisKennedy.Blog

Ha! I figured out a way to give my blog an award. My recent effort to republish many of my legal technology articles over the last few months probably locked up this award for my blog. There's a lot of content there. My one criticism is that the posts tend to be a little long.

11. Best Legal Blogging Trend - Bloggers Making Money from Blogging

Need I say more, other than to say that we all hope that this is a much bigger trend in 2006.

And there you have it - the 2005 Blawggie Awards. (Applause.)

I'd like to take a moment to say a special "thank you" to my partner in LexThink!, Matt Homann, for hundreds of great ideas in Matt Homann's Nonbillable Hour blog, for putting together the BlawgThink conference and for proving everyday that the most powerful technology in blogging is the telephone.

As I said, these awards reflect my perspective on the Blawgosphere today. I welcome your feedback, but really invite you to post your own awards as a way of saying "thank you" to the blogs and bloggers that matter most to you.(Applause and Blawggie theme music playing.)

++++++

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post also brought to you by LexThink!(TM) - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink! - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization.

Posted by dmk at 08:16 PM | Comments (4)

December 21, 2005

A Phishing Primer from Dave Pollard

You can never learn too much about the real dangers of the Internet. I mean, of course, things other than reading too many blogs or too few blogs.

Dave Pollard has posted an excellent primer called "The Phishing Menace" on one of those dangers - phishing. Phishing uses a combination of technology and social engineering to try to get you to give up personal and financial information that can and will be used in ways that you will not like. Pollard's post will educate you on the basic safety principles and point you to some useful resources.

The money quote:

Phishing, by contrast, is not annoying, it's dangerous. It's not overzealous promotion, it's crime: fraud and theft. It is also, currently, harder to filter, and becoming more sophisticated.

Highly recommended.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 11:11 PM | Comments (1)

December 20, 2005

Why Lawyers Don't Choose (or Use) Case Management Software - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. This article was written in 2000. Because I think that there are many experts on case management software, I've rarely written on the topic of case management. This article is one of those occasions. It takes a high-level view of the topic and does not delve into specific programs, because, as I said, other people can do that much better than I can. Today, I'm interested in ASP (application service provider) approaches to case management and the integration of project and workflow management into case management tools.]

Why Lawyers Don't Choose (or Use) Case Management Software

Take a minute and try this exercise: add up the time you spend looking for files, looking for misfiled information, designing filing and calendaring systems and digging through the rubble on your desk in the average day. (As a starting point, the average person spends sixteen minutes a day just looking for lost items.) Multiply that by the number of days you work in a year. Multiply that times your hourly billing rate. Ponder that amount.

Lawyers spend an inordinate amount of time looking for information and attending to administrative details. And, if true is money, lawyers should be adopting ways to decrease the amount of unproductive time they spend.

If there were a way to keep your files constantly accessible to you and your staff, to organize your client information, to reduce paper and clutter, to streamline intake and retrieval of information, to generate reports that give you meaningful information about your practice and to keep information at your fingertips, you would probably stand in line to sign up for it. Case management software offers all these potential benefits, and more.

Yet, after many years, many seminars and many consultants, many lawyers and law firms have not adopted these programs.

Let's consider the reasons that lawyers give for not using case management software.

1. "I Don't Know What It Is." I've been surprised by the number of lawyers who have told me that "Someone told me that I need case management software, but I really don't know what it is." Part of the reason for this is that the term "case management" has a litigation feel to it and non-litigators struggle a bit with the concept. Think of it as "practice management" or, better, "matter management."

Every lawyer has some find of system for dealing with ongoing matters and dormant or closed matters. Typically, that system involves file folders, filing cabinets and papers stacked in piles on their desks and in their offices. Information retrieval typically involves memory, knowledge of an individual filing system, a byzantine numbering system, and lots of scrambling around to find items.

Case management software automates that administrative process. It makes information available to people who do not physically control the file, makes it possible to update and modify information easily, and, most important, makes it easier to find information quickly when you need it. In the more sophisticated programs, you can also integrate timekeeping, billing, accounting and even document management into a single package.

As a result, accessing the case management program when a client or opposing counsel calls can immediately bring to your computer screen the information you need to address the issue at hand.

2. "It Costs Too Much." I've heard this comment from lawyers about programs costing $295 as well as about programs costing thousands of dollars. I'm sympathetic to it because I've noticed that most firms have had at least one horrendous, money-wasting experience with technology in the last ten years and are, for good reason, gun shy.

Focusing solely on the costs of the program, however, is the wrong approach when considering case management software.

Instead, you will want to analyze this software requires on a "return on investment" basis. If you bill on an hourly basis, your income is limited by the number of hours you can bill. If you use value billing, the more efficiently you can work, the more profit you'll make on each transaction. In either model, recovering lost or unproductive hours will bring you a meaningful return.

On a conservative basis, cutting in half the time you spend simply looking for lost documents alone probably recovers $5,000 of time per year for the average lawyer. Case management software also offers other efficiencies and the costs and benefits can be quantified. You can make a meaningful decision based on how long it will take for the software to "pay for itself." In firms of 50, 100 or more lawyers, these economics will involve large, meaningful numbers.

Not surprisingly, lawyers starting a firm clearly see the benefits of a case management solution. If a solo can use case management software to help run a practice and avoid hiring a secretary (or can hire a paralegal who is billable rather than a secretary), those savings alone may make for an easy decision. In larger firms, simply reducing or holding the line of staff hiring may economically justify a move to a case management system.

3. "It's Too Complicated." I recently watched a demonstration of two case management programs for small firms in which the ability to enter information in six different ways was touted as a great feature. Wrong! Giving lawyers too many choices results in a training nightmare. Lawyers want to be able to use a program easily, to access the information they want simply and not be confronted with a computer screen that looks like the controls of an F-18 fighter jet.

Consultants and sales reps are too often guilty of describing an overwhelming vision of case management – all documents scanned, no paper, no filing cabinets, client files appearing on your screen as you pick up the phone. This overemphasis on the "gee-whiz" simply overwhelms many lawyers who see instead a future in which they are constantly trying to learn how to drive the software and never practicing law.

Each lawyer, however, if he or she thinks about it, can identify one to three administrative issues that, if they could be made available or eliminated, would dramatically improve his or her practice. Some examples: having accounting and timekeeping information immediately available when an opposing counsel calls with a settlement offer, having a list of all cases involving the same opposing counsel, judge or arbitrator, having a chronology of all contacts with a client readily available, or having the ability to do a mailing to all clients whose wills are older than two years.

Many case management products produce exactly this result and often give you the ability to enter data about a client or individual once and have it appear in a firm address book, in time, billing and accounting and in case and matter management. You do not need to make changes in 3 or 4 separate programs.

That simple feature really sold me and has sold many others. The point to remember: focus on your needs, not on the bells and whistles. In many cases, less is more and simpler is better. If the program can do the one or two things that you think are most important in a simple enough fashion, you probably won't find the program very complex after all.

4. "It Doesn't Match My Needs." Last year at the ABA's TECHSHOW (2000), I counted 25 vendors who offered some form of case management software. Some were general packages. Some were designed for small firms and some for large firms. Some were designed for specific practice areas or types of firms, such as plaintiff's personal injury firms.

Unless you work in a specific practice area that may be covered by a particular product or two, it is difficult to evaluate choices meaningfully. As I've mentioned the term "case management" lends itself to the work of trial lawyers and you may notice that some programs take that approach. If, for example, you do estate planning, "matters" really won't mean much because every client has the same matter. A demonstration of the software that focuses on the features of the software rather than its benefit to your practice will leave you with the feeling that the software is not for you.

Some case management software allows for a degree of customization. In addition to reading reviews and talking to others who use the product who have a similar practice, the ability to do some customization should be an important factor. If you also do a good job of identifying what the program can do to help you in your practice and insist on finding a program that will do that, I think you'll find programs that do meet your needs.

5. "I'm Too Busy." Time is money, after all. And why are you so busy? If the reason is because you are looking for documents or practicing in an inefficient matter, you may want to make some time to consider case management. For example, do you routinely work ten and twelve hour days that result in six to eight billable hours?

If you are too busy because of workflow, then case management software can really help you in handling that inflow of new work. Because case management information can be accessed remotely or even transferred to a Palm computing device, some lawyers have found that the software can help them avoid going to the office on weekends.

Again, the issue is one of identifying the barriers that keep you from working well and seeing if case management software can help you on those specific issues. Sometimes the simper changes can bring the biggest benefits.

6. "The Software Will Govern My Life." You may have even experienced this at home with Quicken. This reaction is a reasonable one. After all, for better or worse, you have developed a system of organization that's gotten you to where you are today. You want to practice law, not organization.

Sometimes I've found that this reason masks another reason. Lawyers can be embarrassed by their lack of technological savvy, the mayhem that passes for a "system" of organization in their offices or their utter dependence on a secretary who knows the system. In fact, it's interesting to see how the possible loss of a long-time secretary motivates lawyers to consider case management software. You will get your best results if you analyze your current methods as part of introducing case management software.

Another legitimate concern is the amount of time it may take to convert existing systems and transfer data into new case management software. Won't you be running a paper system and a computer system in parallel, at least for a while? Consider these issues in your return on investment analysis.

Finally, the closer a case management software program can mimic or adapt to your existing methods, the better a candidate it is for you. Again, customization may be an important consideration and worth additional expense. Your software should help you practice law better, not make you an expert on using the software.

7. "I'll Lose Money If I'm More Efficient." The villain here is hourly billing practices. What if I become 20 to 40% more efficient? Won't that simply mean that I'll make 20 to 40% less per year? Why would I want to do that?

Clients have not yet started to make lawyers pay for inefficiency. That tide is turning. As we see the rise of non-traditional competition and competition from law firms leveraging technology, there will be increasing downward pressure on the fees charged for standard legal services.

Case management software offers ways to deal with a higher volume, lower margin practice. It also can help you use information you have to strengthen personal relationships with clients (e.g., your software automatically reminds you of a client's birthday or gives you a list of clients you haven't talked with for over 6 months) or to track and identify sources of new clients (e.g., what clients reported that they came to you because of an ad you placed). A decision to use case management software will force you to look at your billing practices and what the alternatives are.

More important, this objection is based on the assumption that the time savings you find will eliminate billable hours. In fact, it's likely to eliminate non-productive time that probably was not being billed anyway. How often do clients get a statement with an entry like: "tore apart office looking for piece of paper that had notes regarding bank accounts; finally found it buried in papers on desk after third try: 3.5 hours"?

Conclusion: There is a grain of truth in most of the common objections to case management software. On closer examination, however, the objections tend to dissolve. If you can focus on your most important needs and the simplest steps that will bring you the most benefits, case management software will bring you meaningful and measurable business results and financial benefits. That's the whole point for bringing technology into your practice. Take a look at the programs out there today and what there capabilities and strengths are. Identify what your needs are. Then look at case management software. Your life may get a little easier.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)

December 19, 2005

My 2006 Legal Technology Predictions Article Published on LLRX.com

In what's become a tradition with me, I've written my annual legal technology predictions article. This year, the article is titled "Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Predictions for 2006: Small Steps for Most Firms, Giant Leaps for a Few Firms" and it was published today as part of another excellent issue of LLRX.com.

For a number of reasons, I think that this will be a wait-and-see year for many law firms, and that approach will not be unreasonable. At the same time, there are many opportunities for innovative firms to separate themselves from the pack, especially if they discuss these opportunities with their clients. For the details, I encourage you to read the article.

As I've mentioned on many occasions, LLRX.com is an excellent resource that everyone should know about and it's my favorite place to publish my new articles (that is, the ones I don't write on commission). I recommend that you add LLRX.com to your favorites and/or subscribe to its RSS feed.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

legal technology

Posted by dmk at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

Outside Counsel / Inside Counsel Partnering Through Technology - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. This article was written in 2002 in connection with a presentation I did on "client-driven technologies." I became quite intrigued with the DuPont Legal Model and other efforts that I thought would change the nature of the practice of law. This article was written from the perspective of law firms. Today, I'd be more likely to take the point of view of the corporate legal department. Most of the same principles still apply today, although perhaps with a bit more urgency.]

Outside Counsel / Inside Counsel Partnering Through Technology Toward the Virtual Law Firm

Fifty-five percent of corporate legal departments considered firing one or more law firms in 2002, down slightly from 62% in 2001. The leading reason, by a significant margin, was "lack of responsiveness." Add Enron, pressures to cut legal costs on the part of clients, increased rates and demand for billable hours on the part of law firms, and increasing movement of lawyers and law firm mergers to this mix and you get a volatile situation.

Both law firms and corporate legal departments desire stable relationships where work can be done at a high level, responsively and in a way where law firms can be profitable while a corporate legal department can control costs.

There have been a number of significant efforts at "partnering" between corporate legal departments and their core law firms to create these types of stable relationships. The classic example is the famous "DuPont Legal Model" developed by DuPont and its outside law firms beginning in 1992. The DuPont Legal Model grew out DuPont's attempt to reduce the number of law firms it used (then over 300) to manageable number (currently 35) and, in the process, take advantage of a variety of techniques to improve the delivery of legal services.

The core elements of the DuPont Legal Model are (1) a business focus on DuPont's legal issues, (2) an ongoing work process reengineering, (3) a commitment to cutting-edge technology, and (4) a shared culture of efficiency and cost control.

All lawyers who have corporate clients would be well advised to meditate upon these four elements.

Among other things, the DuPont Legal Model has resulted in the creation of the DuPont Primary Law Firm Network, an early form of a "virtual law firm," a collaborative team of law firms and service providers who are willing to and do work together. DuPont believes that the next step beyond simple "partnering" is the collaborative work team and that turning partnering relationships into collaborative work teams offer great value.

Consider this description of a "virtual law firm" (http://www.dupontlegalmodel.com/files/onlinelibrary_detail.aspibid=14) [Note: link no longer works – unable to find new link to white paper):

The virtual law firm connects lawyers electronically and culturally. Through the use of applied technology, such as extranets, integrated case management software, computerized databases, electronic invoicing software, document imaging, cell phones, personal digital assistants, and trial presentation software, team members in different geographical locations can perform legal work efficiently and cost-effectively in a shared environment. But this technology still depends on the human element and on the willingness of committed participants to implement and use it constructively in furtherance of an articulated vision and clear goals. In a virtual law firm, participants must share a common culture.

This description raises many issues and is an excellent basis for your discussion of this topic. I also want to emphasize this comment from DuPont's white paper:

"Without the benefit of sophisticated technology, neither the concept of the virtual law firm nor the DuPont Legal Model could exist."

This article will focus on the technology side of moving to partnering then to collaboration and to virtual law firms and perhaps beyond. There are also very difficult issues raised by taking these steps, competitively, economically, culturally and otherwise that also deserve very serious deliberation. I want to sketch out some key questions for you, some areas worth exploring more and some practical tips for getting started or moving forward.

1. Ask Your Clients. A recent survey indicated that over 90% of corporate general counsel would respond to surveys from their law firms. A tiny fraction of law firms use client surveys. Are there clients with whom you can extend existing relationships by means of technology or current technology cooperation into greater partnerships? Are they aware of initiatives like the DuPont Legal Model? Might they be considering such initiatives without including you in the discussion?

2. Listen to Your Clients. I have heard many stories of companies all but begging their law firms to cooperate on technology. Note that the number one reason law firms get fired is lack of responsiveness. If you survey clients, you must follow up. Find out where they want to go, what their priorities are and what they want to accomplish with their legal services. Of course, you will want to get a clear idea of where you fit into that picture. A very important lesson from the DuPont Legal Model is that clients are not necessarily adversarial with their law firms. Cost cutting may not be the primary concern and companies are willing to explore creative fee arrangements that may be more lucrative for law firms while maintaining a more stable relationship. Don't assume; ask.

3. Learn The Playing Field. You cannot move very far toward implementing client-driven technologies if you do not know what technologies and capabilities your firm has or can obtain. It is rare to find a firm that is using or is even aware of all the capabilities of its software and systems, let alone to find lawyers and firms who have a good understanding of all the new developments in legal technology. In addition, it is vital to understand what software and technologies your clients use for their own work and how they would prefer to interact with you. You might use surveys, meetings with the client or meetings between IS people to compare notes on what software and systems are used.

4. Find Ways to Cut Costs and Improve Profits. How much good will it do you to have your client telling peers and colleagues that his or her lawyer actually came to him or her with a way to cut legal costs? Likely areas of potential include identification of lower level work that can be commoditized or value billed, improved communications, hosting databases or eliminating the need for duplicate systems. Consider the issue of electronic billing. Corporate clients are bemused by law firms' reluctance to move to electronic billing. They see electronic billing as a way to streamline procedures and cut their own costs while at the same time improving the cash flow of their law firms by speeding up the payment cycle. Isn't this win-win? It is certainly worth taking the time to consider fully.

5. Get IS Departments Talking. Exchanging ideas and creating good relationships between your high-level IS people and the comparable client IS people will ultimately be a key to any successful efforts in this area. Do they know each other now? Do they meet with each other? Can you facilitate that in constructive ways? This effort will help resolve existing problems, result in shared knowledge and set the stage for more extensive efforts.

6. The Extranet Family. A key concept in collaboration has been the use of private, shared web sites commonly known as extranets. Extranets can take many forms – information portals, access to files and communication, case monitoring, document libraries and virtual deal rooms. It is important to realize that clients do not need the same features or even a full-blown extranet. A virtual deal room that simply gives access to documents in a case or transaction may be a perfect introduction to the use of technology for both a firm and a client. The time and cost savings of not Fedexing documents can be a measurable means of showing return on investment. Another idea gaining some momentum is the "project portal," an extranet dedicated to the work and resources in connection with a particular project.

7. Apply the 80/20 Rule. The 80/20 rule definitely applies in this area. The idea is that, as a general matter, 20% of your efforts will get you 80% of your results. You want to identify and act on that 20%. Which ideas make the most sense in your current context? From your point of view, which initiatives will best address the common reasons law firms are fired (improving communications to avoid "lack of responsiveness" issues) and hired (how can you show your expertise and understanding of the client's business?)? Do these initiatives cut costs or enable creative billing approaches? Do these approaches connect the client to you and make it harder for the client to leave? Are these approaches useful to other clients? Finally, are they responsive to your client's own list of priorities?

8. Make a Plan. Obviously, these kinds of initiatives cannot be done on a "back of the envelope" basis. Written plans are appropriate. In this case, educating your client is a form of marketing. Implementing the systems may an element of firm survival with a client in addition to solid marketing. The more you show your knowledge of the options, your familiarity with what others have done and the benefits for your client in the form of a well-conceived plan, the better shape you will be in. Part of any plan should be a method of measuring results.

9. Make it Reusable - Think Different. Some of the initiatives you take can be reused. Some aspects might even be licensed as moneymakers for your firm or even sold as products, either by your firm or jointly with a client. Be alert to intellectual property issues and opportunities, as well as reusable methods to implement similar projects for other clients. Databases of knowledge and expertise may also serve you well in the event of departures from your firm.

10. Make it Sticky. Stickiness is a term that is sometimes used in connection with web sites. It refers to a site's ability to keep a visitor on the site for a significant time and to visit multiple pages. By using technology to address key concerns for clients and to make it easy for them to work with you, you can also create a "stickiness" in working with your firms and your systems. As a result, you increase the costs and effort for a firm that wishes to take a client form you.

Conclusion. The DuPont Legal Model began in 1992. More than 10 years later, DuPont and its primary law firms are still working out the model for a virtual law firm. It is not realistic for you to expect that you can jump immediately into a virtual law firm model. For one thing, the cultural and economic issues alone are too complex. But you can definitely take advantage of opportunities to collaborate with clients to put down the technological underpinnings that can lead to such a model and, in the interim, provide significant benefits for both law firms and clients, including, in some cases, allowing your firm to survive and do work for its biggest clients. If you do not address these issues, your clients may dictate the answers for you, and, lately, that may mean that they think about firing you.

Ten Practical Tips for Technology Partnering Initiatives.

1. Educate yourself. My web page at http://www.denniskennedy.com/resources/legal-tech-central/clientdriven.asp is a good starting point. But it takes a lot of work to get up to speed on technology alternatives. Hiring appropriate expertise may be desirable in many cases.

2. Thoroughly understand the DuPont Legal Model. Your clients may approach you about the DuPont Legal Model before you approach them. They are reading about it and hearing about it in seminars. A great resource is http://www.dupontlegalmodel.com.

3. Send a survey. Statistics indicate that the vast majority of clients are willing to respond.

4. Listen to what your clients are already saying to you about technology. Lack of responsiveness is the major reason law firms get fired.

5. Give your clients new ideas to think about. Clients cannot know everything that is available. Give them some great suggestions. Clients appreciate creative solutions. Be the first to mention the ideas.

6. Get the right people involved. Are you the right person for this initiative? Who is? What role will your IS department play in the initial phases? I suggest that a high-level IS person be involved at the earliest opportunity.

7. Facilitate relationships between your IS people and the client's IS people. Here is a simple test. Ask the head of your IS department how many of the heads of clients' IS departments are in his or her contacts list. I bet it is too small a number. Are there ways you can get IS people to get together on a regular basis. Presentations by your IS group to client IS groups may make sense.

8. Find creative ways to control costs. Clients like law firms that are creative. They are also under pressure to control legal costs. Technology may allow you to show you are good at both. Controlling client costs is different from cutting your fees and profits.

9. Use technology initiatives in a way to increase the costs for a competitor to steal your client away.

10. Lead, follow (closely) or get out of the way.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Client-driven technology

Posted by dmk at 08:14 PM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2005

Just a Reminder about Getting Permission Before Reproducing My Posts on Your Blog

I noticed this week that my recent posts were regularly appearing on a site at the aspsurvival.com domain name. I'm talking about my full posts, not just excerpts. In at least one case, another blogger linked to a post on that domain, thinking they were linking to my post.

Let me make it crystal clear that I have nothing to do with the aspsurvival.com site.

Just to make the obvious even more clear, you will need to get my permission, which I usually grant, to reproduce and reuse my posts in a manner that goes beyond fair use.

I'll also note that there has been a growing growing amount of comment and concern about instances of blogs "repurposing" content of other blogs to take advantage of ad programs. At an extreme end of the spectrum is a phenomenon known as "splogs." Steve Rubel has some posts on the topic of splogs and related matters here, here and here. I definitely recommend that you read these posts (and the comments) and think carefully how you use posts from other blogs, whether they explicitly have a Creative Commons or other license, or whether they are silent on the issue of licenses and permissions. It's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the basic concepts and recent developments in fair use on a regular basis. As a reminder, I have specifically chosen not to use a Creative Commons license on this blog even though we use one on the Between Lawyers blog.

Interestingly, Frederik Hermann has, with more than a bit of irony, suggested that maybe blogs that mirror or echo your posts might be a backup source in case you have a problem with your blog.

One of the reasons I place the "originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog" note at the bottom of each of my posts is to try to be sure that some kind of attribution stays with my posts if they are harvested and repurposed.

It will certainly be interesting to see where, if anywhere, this post gets automatically reposted. That also will have more than a bit of irony, to say the least.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2005

What Did I Really License? - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. This article was written in 2003 for Practical Technology Contract Review News email newsletter I used to publish. It was part of a series of articles explaining the various sections of IT agreements and how to think about them. This article is a companion piece to the "5 Ws of License Grants" article I reposted today.]

What Did I Really License?

I want to take a closer look at the fundamental issue of what you are licensing. I'll give you some tips for analyzing whether the contract language you have is adequate, especially as it relates to software. I am constantly surprised at how often the definition and description of software being licensed varies from what both parties intend.

Software companies have a tendency to use old software license forms long after they have outlived their usefulness. These agreements often leave many issues unaddressed and invite problems in the future.

Your mission in negotiating these agreements is to document what you are actually paying for. Many times, that may take more work than you might expect. Here are five items to put on your checklist.

1. Accurate Definitions. What does the definition of "Software" actually say? Is it what you expect? Often, program names turn up in contracts that are different from the program names you expect. Do not assume that the name you see in the contract is correct. An agreement for another program could have been reused for your agreement and may indeed have the wrong programs listed. Are all necessary components or modules listed? Expensive results may occur if key components are left out.

Are there necessary utilities, installers or other programs that should be included? Are you getting the current version, the Windows version or whatever other version you need? Don't be afraid to ask for specific details.

2. Number of Copies. Does the license include the right to make the copies you need. Many licenses are quite specific that you can only make one backup copy of the program. In today's world, that makes no sense. Multiple copies of the software will probably reside on backup tapes. Most organizations today prefer to use installation disks for workstation installations, create disk images and have multiple backup and even disaster recovery operations. I like to specify these normal uses and "copies incidental to the operation of the computer," since the program will be copied into RAM, a browser creates history and temporary Internet files and no one knows how many copies Windows makes of everything and where it stores them.

What about copies for notebook computers and home computers? Does your remote access system "create" another "copy" of the software for the remote user? Perhaps these may seem to be minor issues in the big picture, but the "copies in RAM" issue has been litigated with a finding that the copy in RAM was a reproduction for copyright infringement purposes. Also, why start out under an agreement of which you are in technical violation from the date of installation?

3. Versions, Upgrades, Updates and Similar Creatures. The world of software has a bewildering number of terms, all with slightly different meanings, for modifications to software. There are fixes, patches, updates, modifications, upgrades, point versions (e.g., 3.1, 3.2), versions, and even more. In your agreement, you care about which you have to pay for and which you do not. Try to avoid being silent on this issue. You will not like to be forced to pay for an upgrade that seems to you like an update or a full version that seems like a point version.

Ask the specific questions and memorialize the deal accurately. Deals can fall through on these issues. Also, be sure to know what happens if key features of the software are moved into another package (especially important in the case of a change in ownership) or if the company no longer supports or develops the software. Not complicated enough? What about required upgrades that force you to move to a new version of Windows, for example? Spending a little more time addressing the drafting issues upfront will avoid expensive business issues latter.

4. Source Code and Object Code.The object code of a program is the form of code readable only by machine. The source code is what the programmers write and is, at least in theory, understandable to some humans. Almost all software is licensed in object code. However, if your deal contemplates any modifications or development by you, you must have a license to use and modify the source code. If you are dealing with someone on the other side does not understand this, you must find someone else who does.

Licensing source code raises a number of thorny issues, include whether to have a source code escrow agreement. In your review, you will want to see assurances that the source code is the actual source code, that it is written and documented in a way that programmers can reasonably understand, that it also includes all code and tools to enable the program to operate, and that you continue to get source code for any modifications.

5. Documentation. Don't assume that because you license the software you'll be getting copies of the manuals for all your users. Some license agreements fail to mention documentation. Some license agreements fail to describe it adequately. Some license agreements limit you to a single copy of the manual and documentation. Check the language and then ask that it be changed to reflect what you want.

If you are going to sign a software license, it only makes good sense to make sure that it actually describes what you are getting. Start asking the right questions.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)

The 5 Ws of License Grants - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. This article was written in 2003 for Practical Technology Contract Review News email newsletter I used to publish. It was part of a series of articles explaining the various sections of IT agreements and how to think about them. It really doesn't get any more basic that getting the license language to match what you want in your deal, but you'd be surprised how often that is not done well, especially in the first drafts of contracts.]

The 5 Ws of License Grants

Nearly every technology contract today contains at least one license grant provision. Most commonly, there will be a software licensing clause, but trademark, copyright and even patent licenses have become common in everyday technology contracts.

I have often been surprised when I review a contract prepare by a vendor to find that the license grant is not even close to what is anticipated by the deal, let alone what either the licensor or licensee actually wants. License grants are not "one size fits all" clauses. Because the license is a key to the deal, a license grant provision should never be treated as a stock or off-the-shelf clause. It's one clause that you want to get exactly right because if you don't get the rights you need now, you will probably run into problems later.

Getting a license grant right takes some effort, but simply focusing on the simple five Ws - who, what, when, where and why - that we were taught in school will put you ahead of 95% of people reviewing license grants. These may seem like basic questions, but, believe me, there are no stupid questions when it comes to reviewing license grants. You want to make sure that you understand the language and that it covers what it is supposed to cover.

1. Who? Don't take this question for granted. Who is licensed? Your company and employees? Yes, but is the correct company licensed? What about affiliates and subsidiaries? Employees of affiliates and subsidiaries? Do you use part-time employees or other independent contractors who are technically not "employees"? How about third party consultants who install, maintain or work with the software? Customers? Potential customers you want to allow to demo the software? Other users? I've seen questions come up in each of these categories.

2. What? What exactly is being licensed? Is it just object code of software? Do you want source code as well? How about documentation? Trademarks? Copyrights? Compare what you think you are getting to the license grant language to make sure that you are getting everything you expect.

3. When? Many license grant provisions do not spell out a duration of the license grant, leaving at least three interpretations – the grant is perpetual, the grant is equivalent to the term of the license agreement or the grant is for a "reasonable" period. Nail this question down and save yourself from any later trouble. As a general matter, setting the duration of the license grant equal to the term of the agreement (including renewals) is the most logical approach.

4. Where? I once reviewed a license for a mobile software application that was going to be used by technicians in their cars. Incredibly, the first version of the license grant provision from the vendor included language that the software could only be used at a specific address! Obviously, someone had simply used an old license agreement as a model with no awareness of the consequences. Sadly, I am sure that some licensees simply signed this "standard contract."

Site licenses or machine or location specific licenses were common in the mainframe era and that type of language occasional slips into today's license agreements. In the case of software especially, you want to determine where the software will be used and be sure that the license grant authorizes use in those locations. Will employees be running the program at home or on a laptop? Will they be accessing the program remotely? PDAs and wireless devices also may require modifications to standard license grant language. Be wary whenever you see any type of site license language.

Another "where" issue arises in the case of license grants for particular territories. Check the definition of territory carefully and consider how it may affect e-commerce or web marketing.

5. Why? Why are you obtaining the license? Is it exclusive or non-exclusive? You'll want to proceed with caution any time an exclusive license is involved. Also, it has become fairly common to grant licensees the right to "use" software or other intellectual property rights. Unfortunately, "use" is not one of the exclusive rights granted under the copyright statutes (reproduce, make derivative works and publicly display are a few examples) and it is only one of the rights patent holders have (make, sell and offer to sell are others). It is, therefore, important to spell out exactly what rights you want to license using the precise terms, especially if you want to make derivative works or to grant sublicenses rather than to rely on a court later interpreting the word "use" to include these rights.

The license grant may well be the single most important section of any technology agreement. If you aren't specifically granted the rights, you probably don't have the rights. Why take chances?
By using the simple 5 Ws approach, you can go a long way toward quickly getting a license grant provision in shape. You will not only have better and more accurate language, but you can then use your attorney more effectively to work on more important issues than simply making sure that the language at least covers the deal. As a result, you'll shoot to the top of the class in being able to review license grants.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2005

"By Request Day" - What Are Those Funny Symbols in Some of Your Posts?

Here's what I'd like to say: Writing on the Internet requires that you consider a different type of reader and that you accommodate a reader who likes to scan. Although some recommend avoiding long posts, like I have been known to write, if you write long (or short) posts, you want to break things up into short paragraphs, use headings, bullet points, bold and italics, and make the posts easier to read and visually interesting.

The funny little symbols and characters, I'd like to say, are a clever device to create visual interest and give my readers something break up the parade of words on a page.

That's what I'd like to say.

Unfortunately, the real story is this:

I sometimes write posts in Word. In the case of my reposted articles, I create the posts from Word documents. I might also copy portions of Word documents into my posts when I write them.

Unfortunately, in some Word documents I had turned on the "smart quotes" or "curly quotes." For reasons I don't understand, my version of Movable Type does not handle those curly quotes as regular quotes. Even worse, I cannot see that there is a problem when I "preview" he post before I published it. Even worse than that, I don't see the problem in my newsreader when I view the RSS feed for my blog. That's important because I don't often look at my blog in my browser, but I do look at the feed in my newsreader.

What I've learned is that the "smart quotes" and the "smart apostrophes" turn up as odd symbols and characters on my blog rather than as regular quote marks and apostrophes. I then have to edit the original post, change the quote marks and apostrophes (which are visible at that point in Movable Type) and republish the post. It's a pain and it's not a task that ranks high on the priority list.

I've now found a few tricks that usually catch the problem before it happens, but the problems occurs every now and then, especially in the reposted articles. I'll eventually find a more or less fool-proof method, but that's the explanation. If you can visualize a quote mark or apostrophe when you see those funny symbols, you'll know what I meant - but you were probably already doing that.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:06 PM | Comments (0)

"By Request Day" - Read Any Good Books Lately?

I'm always interested in what books people are reading and what they like. I always try to read books that people recommend to me. Lately, my brother and I have been recommending spy novels and thrillers back and forth. A few years ago, I gave him a Robert Ludlum book and he stayed up all night reading it. That started us on passing books back and forth.

There are two books that I've read recently that I highly recommend for the audience of this blog.

The first is Gerry Riskin's The Successful Lawyer - a great collection of practical wisdom on a variety of subjects involved in the practice of law or any other profession. It's also available with a companion audio CD through the ABA Law Practice Management book store.

Earlier in my career, I had the chance to participate in the Edge Group's rainmaker education program at my law firm. I'd rank it among the very best training I ever received as a lawyer. I mention this because this book includes the core principles from that rainmaking course. They're solid, practical and well-supported by my experience.

The book has 49 short chapters, each of which is packed with a punch and great practical tips. In fact, each chapter is like the conversation you would have liked to have with a mentor or experienced colleague during your career. It's a book that you can read quickly, if you want, but also one that you will want to return to again and again and work through the ideas and exercises in it. Add me to the long list of fans of this book. It'd be a great gift for yourself or for a lawyer you know.

The other book I want to recommend is Bob Burg's Endless Referrals, just out in a third edition. Ironically, I met Bob recently via email when I committed one of the cardinal sins of emailing people you don't know - accidentally using the wrong name in the salutation to the email. Even worse, I didn't realize who Bob was until he sent me a polite reply and we exchanged a few emails and got to know each other a bit.

Finally, I realized that Bob was the author of Endless Referrals, a book that I had found quite valuable when I began my solo career. Bob told me that a new edition of the book was out and asked me if I wanted to get an early review copy. Of course, I would.

Bob sent me a copy and I devoured it in one setting. I think that this is a gem of a book that is required reading for anyone who has customers or clients or works with other people. That, I believe, would be everyone. The book is about principles of business networking, but it goes far beyond that.

The money quote:

"All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust."

Think about blogging in that context.

Like Riskind's book, this book is full of practical information that you can really use, including suggested language for certain conversations. I dog-eared a lot of pages in this book. I was also surprised to see how much of Burg's advice from the earlier editions I had internalized and made part of what I do. Even if you have read the earlier editions, the third edition is still a must-read.

As an aside: I've been sounding out a few people about using Skype chat to create a book group to discuss books like these on a regular basis. Let me know if you might be interested.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog)]

Posted by dmk at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

Seven Dangers in Using "Standard" Forms for Law Firm Technology Use Policies - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. This article was written in 2004 in connection with a presentation I did on technology use policies for law firms. Although it focuses on the issues that face law firms, the same principles apply in many different contexts. Forms can be quite helpful as long as you know how to use them]

Seven Dangers in Using "Standard" Forms for Law Firm Technology Use Policies

"We need a technology use policy. Why don't you hop on the Internet and grab one that we can use?"

This conversation is all too common. The question asked is meant to be a rhetorical one. You will be better off if you treat it as a real question and think carefully about the answers to that question.
There is almost no limit to the dangers you can run into when you "grab a form" off the Internet. This article talks about seven of the most worrisome dangers.

Danger #1. Forms May Be Used As Something Other than Checklists of Issues. When I was co-teaching a law school course on drafting technology agreements, we started the course with a discussion of the use of forms. Our key point was that you have to consider forms as checklists for issues to consider, provisions to include and points to clarify. They should not be seen a complete in any sense or as covering all possible issues. They definitely should not be seen as something to grab and use. Take a form and think through the application of each section to your situation. Does it apply? Does it reflect the approach you would take? Does it raise other issues? Use a form as a checklist, first and foremost.

Danger #2. Forms May Be Outdated and Wrong. How comfortable would you be using a technology use policy from 1995? If you grab a form on the Internet, how do you know that you are not doing exactly that? Be aware that policies you find might be outdated and not cover issues that now affect you. Even worse, they may reflect an approach based on a misunderstanding of applicable law, a failure to consider applicable law or a misguided approach to relevant issues. Be very careful about assumptions that you are making.

Danger #3. Forms May Not Even Address Your Issues. Law firms have some unique issues because of confidentiality obligations to clients, ethical rules and other issues that affect the legal profession. A standard form that you find on the Internet or in a form book might not even address these issues, let alone address them correctly. The form you find might not cover home computers, blogging, instant messaging or other issues that are important to you. It is too easy to treat a form as being "complete" and, as a result, fail to cover key issues.

Danger #4. Forms May Make Decisions For You without Appropriate Consideration. There is not a single, perfect approach to technology use policies. Each policy reflects a consideration of unique issues and a large number of decisions. Similarly, any form will embody a large number of decisions on issues. Some forms take a middle of the road approach. Some forms, unknown to those who use them, take more radical approaches. Your only guarantee is that it is all but impossible to expect that any form you find will reflect all of the decisions that you would make on each of the underlying issues. Every sentence in any form could be written differently depending on the underlying policy. When an issue later arises, it will not be comforting to keep saying, "But, it was in the form."

Danger #5. Forms May Let You File and Forget. The use of a standard form makes it very easy to file and forget your technology use policy. The whole approach trivializes the importance of the policy. Rather than posting it, publicizing it and training people to follow it, you will likely file it and forget about it. That will come back and haunt you.

Danger #6. Forms May Relate to a Different Regulatory Scheme.b Surprise! The legal profession has its own ethical rules and regulatory issues. Other industries have their own rules and regulations. If you grab a form, you may inadvertently use a form from a company with different requirements while missing rules and regulations that apply to you. Neither result is a good one.

Danger #7. Forms May Allow You to Avoid the Real Work You Must Do. When you grab a form off the Internet, change a few words and announce your new policy, you neglect very important aspects of creating a technology use policy. You do not do the research necessary to understand how people use technology in your firm and what unique issues your firm may have. You ignore the value of putting together a team to put a policy together. You also treat the policy as fundamentally unimportant. You guarantee an unhappy experience in the future.

Conclusion.

The best approach to creating a technology use policy is to do the hard work, make the hard decisions and move to drafting the policy at the point that you are ready to document and memorialize your decisions. A form that you find can serve as a model or as a checklist, but should not be anything more than that. Your policy should be your policy – your policy should not be dictated by someone else's forms.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 07:53 PM | Comments (0)

An Important Tip about Word Track Changes and the Metadata Problem

I learned something new and a very important distinction to keep in mind about Microsoft Word metadata from Tom Mighell today.

Tom and I were discussing whether clicking on "Accept all Changes" and saving a document would protect you from having someone to whom you sent the document be able to turn the "Track Changes" back on or otherwise see revisions and comments you had made but thought you had hidden.

Tom contended that the "Accept all changes" approach would work. Based on my fuzzy memory of what I had been able to do in previous versions of Word and this article, I had my reservations - but I like to be cautious on these issues, but I trust Tom's opinions.

We tried a few experiments, checked with a forensics expert and did a little research. I'm now willing to admit that Tom was right, with a few words of warning and some advice that you satisfy yourself about the answer.

Here are the lessons I learned:

1. I was equating turning off Track Changes with Accepting All Changes. They are very different and the approach of turning off Track Changes is the one that is dangerous and can lead you into embarrassing situations. My approach was overly conservative, which is not necessarily a bad thing in this area. The one thing that you must realize is that simply turning off "Track Changes" will not protect your document.

2. If you want to rely on the "Accept all Changes" approach, you really have to make sure that you know what you are doing and check all of the right boxes. Any "user error" can make your revisions and comments viewable to someone who knows what they are doing. Proceed very carefully. The devil truly is in the details.

3. Before you rely on this approach, you absolutely need to make sure that this approach works with the versions of Word and the default settings you are using.

4. Microsoft has some great information on its website about the Track Changes issues, including a very helpful demo that should be required viewing for everyone who uses Track Changes.

5. As the computer forensics experts like to say, there may well be other ways for experts to find the revisions.

So, I some new things today, courtesy of Tom, about an issue that more and more lawyers are worrying about. I highly recommend, however, that you watch the demo.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 05:36 PM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2005

The Fully Connected Law Firm - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. This article was written in early 2000 and comes from a presentation I gave based on the draft of a book I was then writing with the working title of "The Fully Connected Law Firm." Unfortunately, my publisher closed up its publishing business before the book was finished. I've lately been toying with the idea of going back to the book draft, so I'm interested in your comments on this article. I think many of these ideas are even more relevant (and possible) now than they were in 1998 - 2000 when I was first working on this material. This article is another favorite of mine – it reads like a bit of a Law 2.0 manifesto and it touches on many of the themes I've found most interesting and important over the years. If you read only one of the many articles I've posted, I suggest that this be the one.]

The Fully Connected Law Firm

Sometimes the best way to think about the future is to take a look at the past. So, rather than look 10 years into the future, I'd like to take us back in time about 550 years.

The year is 1454. The place is Germany. You're in a small medieval village. You look up and see an ox cart on the road leading into your town. The cart has large wooden wheels. A lone driver is hauling a large piece of equipment covered with animal hides. As you wonder whether the stranger brings foreign conquest, a new pestilence, plague or promise, the man jumps off the cart and introduces himself as Johannes Gutenberg.

In his arms, he carries a box of books. He tells you that under the animal hides is his new invention -- the movable type printing press. He regales you with stories of its potential. At the end of his conversation, he presents with three choices: Do you want to buy one of his books? Do you want to buy one of the printing presses? Or, do you want to invest in the pre-IPO stock of his new venture, which he calls Gutenberg.com?

We have the advantage of more than 500 years of hindsight in considering how we might answer this hypothetical Gutenberg's questions. As a result, we know some of the legacies of the invention of the printing press: (1) universal literacy as books became widely available and used in education, (2) portability of information as people were no longer bound by geographic barriers, (3) new forms of communication such as the newspaper and magazines, (4) transformed political and religious structures, including the Protestant reformation and experiment in political democracy known as the United States of America, (5) the development of capitalism (some believe that the owners of printing presses were the first capitalists), and (6) the development of new forms of community, which I will later referred to as communities of interest, no longer based solely on geographic considerations.

But the most important legacy of the printing press was that ideas became as free as the air and, in a real sense, the genie was out of the bottle. And, as Major Anthony Nelson can tell us, once Genie is out of the bottle, it is very difficult to get her back inside.

I will cover (1) three key trends that underlie the development of the Internet and the Internet's likely impact on the legal profession, (2) three practical areas to illustrate the impact the Internet is having and is likely to have on the practice of law, (3) where we are going and some ideas about how you should prepare to get where you're going, and (4) six key points to think about over the next few days and weeks.

As we consider the legacy of Gutenberg and apply what we learn from the printing press to the Internet, you will see why I believe that the Internet is an event of historical dimension.

The Internet, however, has made its dramatic impact within a few short years, not several centuries. For my purposes, Internet history begins in 1995. Although we have recently celebrated the 30th birthday of the technical underpinnings of the Internet, to me, 1995 is the important birthday because it is the yefind ar that the Internet forced us to take notice of itself. It is also the year that Bill Gates publicly decided he was wrong about the Internet and turned the great ship of Microsoft toward becoming an Internet company. In January, 1995, somewhere between 8 and 15 law firms had any kind of Internet presence. According to recent surveys, over 90 percent of the largest 200 law firms have web sites and thousands of small firms and solos have web sites.

The demographics of the Internet audience are especially attractive to lawyers. Contrary to popular belief, the average Internet user tends to be older than the teenagers many people picture; less surprising, the average Internet user is more affluent and more educated than the average person. This demographic group is especially attractive for lawyers.

No technology, not the printing press, the telephone, the automobile, or the television, has achieved the level of market penetration in as short a time as the Internet has. The speed of acceptance of the Internet is startling and has yet to slow appreciably.

Along with the rapid rates of acceptance and change, the range of change the Internet has created is sweeping. In a matter of a year, an industry leader can be fighting for its very life. Take the example of Encyclopedia Britannica. New industry segments have grown up in months rather than decades. Billions of dollars of wealth have been created in a matter of year or two.

Let me emphasize that the change that the Internet has brought , and we all have begun to take for granted, has happened in the last five, not 500, years.

Three Key Trends.

There are three key trends to keep in mind about the Internet and its impact. By understanding these three trends you can analyze the impact that the Internet is likely to have on the practice of law and how you can prepare for and take advantage of what is to come. I sometimes think of these trends as the "three big words."

These three key trends are disintermediation, collaboration and innovation.

But First, A Diversion: The Law of Unintended Consequences.

But before I talk about the three trends in detail, let's briefly talk about the law of unintended consequences. The law of unintended consequences simply states that predicting the consequences of technology is extremely difficult, that technology and its consequences are in fact unpredictable, and that often the consequences we expect by not the consequences we get.

One example is the development of mass production techniques for automobiles by Henry Ford in the early 1900s. While it might have been easy to predict the likely effect of automobiles on blacksmiths and horse-drawn carriages, it was more difficult to predict the restructuring of the national economy, the development of roads, the impact of the automobile on railroads, and a variety of consequences that flowed from a widespread use of automobiles. Other effects which may not been intended or predictable include the demise of the family farm and an initial movement from the country to the city and the current movement to suburbs that is currently carving out the downtowns of many urban centers in this country.

At the root of the Internet phenomenon is the unintended consequence and the irony that was originally known as a computing tool has become a communication tool. Computers are fundamentally number crunching machines. The operation of ones and zeros perform a variety of high-speed mathematical calculations. In fact, in the early era of the computer, some experts thought we would not need more than a few computers in the world. Few foresaw the possibility that these number crunching computing tools would be used in their homes and offices. In a sense, most people do not visibly use the number crunching aspects of their computers. They focus instead on the ability to use a computer to communicate with people and, more important, to connect with people

As a result, people have been surprised to find that e-mail has turned into the "killer application" of computing. By killer application, I mean the one application that drives the purchase of computers for most people. People don't really buy computers to do word processing or balance checkbooks. They want to communicate with friends and family and be connected by the Internet to others through e-mail. In the early era of the Internet, e-mail didn't even exist. It came into play when someone got tired of constantly telephoning to connected computers to check if a file had arrived and invented a system to send a simple text message to which the receiving party could reply.

The unintended consequences of technology can be summed up in the notion of "high tech, high touch," a phrase coined by John Naisbitt in his 1982 book, Megatrends. Naisbitt's notion is that the higher the level of technology, the more important the personal element, that is, the "touch," becomes. As he suggests, face-to-face contact becomes extremely important in a highly technical society. I like yet another sense of the term and suggest that the highest forms of technology in fact promote the highest forms of touch. The better the technology, the more it promotes the personal element. Simple tools like e-mail and browsers have allowed us to create communities were people could connect to each other and are excellent examples of creating high tech, high touch.

Disintermediation.

Disintermediation is a big but important word. It simply means eliminating the middleman. I've seen a cartoon that shows the classic scenario of a group of dark suited middle-aged white men surrounding a conference table. One of them says "on the one hand, eliminating the middleman will result in reduced costs, higher sales and greater customer satisfaction; on the other hand, we are the middleman." We are the middlemen. Think about this notion and consider lawyers who perform essentially middlemen functions.

Bill Gates and others have talked about the "frictionless" economy. This is an economy that, using the Internet as a vehicle, tends to eliminate the drag and friction on transactions. In a frictionless economy, it becomes easy for buyers and sellers to transact business. Friction is reduced primarily by eliminating the middlemen who do not add value to transactions. Some examples might include car dealers and stockbrokers.

E-Bay has an online auction company where buyers and sellers exchange goods through an auction bid system. The friction involved with brokers, sellers or other techniques to bring buyers and sellers together can be reduced or eliminated by using the Internet. A true free market is established and value is set by using an auction bid system. E-Bay has implications not just for the obvious reasons, but also as we see auctions used to purchase and sell heavy equipment, commodities and other items not traditionally sold by auction methods.

Sales of cars also have been affected by the Internet. I leased my last car using a web site, Autobytel.com. Autobytel helped me make my deal by allowing me to specify the car that I wanted and the options that I wanted. It then matched me up with a local dealer who could give me the best price. As a result, I did not have to trudge from dealer to dealer and the buying process was relatively painless. Because for so many people the car buying experience is so unpleasant, the notion of frictionless economy has profound implications for the whole car dealer system. It can be argued, and many people do, that the car manufactures would be better off, as would consumers, if consumers could order from the factory exactly the car they wanted and then have it delivered to them within a week or so. That process has profound implications for the whole car dealer network, but car manufacturers are starting to move gingerly to explore this approach.

Stockbrokers have also seemed the competition of the Internet and the frictionless economy. Merrill Lynch recently sent up the white flag of surrender and reduced its brokerage commissions substantially in response to competition from online brokerage firms. The question became why should someone spend two hundred dollars in commissions for the execution of a trade that they can do with an online broker for under ten dollars in less than 60 seconds?

What about lawyers? Lawyers are classic middlemen and, unfortunately, like car dealers and others, they are not held in high regard as middlemen. In fact, many businessmen try to figure out ways to minimize the role of lawyers. Most lawyers are often seen as the friction in transactions. The fact that the Internet tends to route around middlemen and reduce intermediation, and the public is wary of lawyers, an especially deadly combination in the Internet era. Lawyers may be especially vulnerable to the disintermediation process.

The key word to think about is reintermediation. Reintermediation simply means reintroducing a middleman because that middleman provides value to the transaction.
For example, Autobytel can do more than simply find me a local dealer. If it only did that, I might search the web sites of local dealers for low prices myself. In addition, though, Autobytel provides great consumer information, financing calculators and the ability to pair me up with the someone who can give me quotes on insurance policies and many other services necessary for the purchasing of a new car. As a result, you want to involve Autobytel as a middleman because they add value, not friction, to the process.

Lawyers must focus specifically on what value they add to the processes in which they are involved as middleman and concentrate on those areas.

Collaboration.

To me, collaboration means creation of communities of interest. The communities of interests refer to communities not based on the geographic constraints but those based on common interest. These interests can be business interests, hobby interests, academic interests or other interest. They can be temporary or long lasting, for one project for or for ongoing series of projects. In classic sense, a law firm is a community of interest.

An important question to ask a lawyer in a law firm in the Internet era is whether the expert he or she wants is really the person down the hall from him or her. If you can create communities of interest for a project using the Internet, is the real estate expert you need really your real estate partner in your firm or might somebody you met on an e-mail discussion group be better suited to your client and this project?

We will see the rise of the Hollywood production business model in the legal profession. In Hollywood, if we were making a movie, we would get a producer, a director, a crew of skilled people, and the actors we needed to create the movie. These people might be gathered from widely scattered parts of the country. Some may have worked together before. Some may have not. They would assemble for the project for several months, then they pack their bags and go their separate ways. Some of them might work on the next project together. Others might not work on projects ever again. The idea is to assemble the best team and the best talent for each project.

As a client, if you were able to assemble a dream team of lawyers and other professional service providers, why would you want to be limited to only particular lawyers solely because they are members of the same firm if they were not the best people for the project. This approach has profound implications for law firms.

In collaboration, all depends on the quality of the conversation. Collaborative efforts should be directed to improving the quality of the conversation of the team that you have involved on your projects. Collaboration can occur through intranets (internal Web sites), extranets (secure, private, limited Web sites) or a variety of other means and processes.

Collaboration in the legal profession will lead to the development of the virtual law firm. Must a law firm have continuing existence or can it form freely on a project basis? Does a law firm have a mortars-and-bricks location? What are the implications for law firms when lawyers from different firms begin to work freely together on projects or are expected to do so by clients?

Innovation.

The third key trend is innovation. Innovation simply means making good responses in a time of changing rules. In the short history of the Internet, we have seen how the Internet changes many of the basic assumptions and rules of many industries and organizations, including government and education. The people who have been successful in the short Internet era are the people who try new things, innovate and make changes.

The best approach is something called "fast prototyping." The people who do well are often the first to market, those who have an idea and implement it quickly. You want to create your business model and try it. See if it works, then adjust, evolve or terminate it depending on the response you get.

There is a danger in a time of innovation of focusing on fighting the last war. History is replete with examples of victorious generals who continue to prepare to fight the last war only to find themselves in a difficult situation at the beginning of the next war when all the rules have changed. In the legal profession, the recent discussion of multidisciplinary practice seems to be an example of gearing up to fight the last war. The Internet has placed emphasis on global efforts, on routing around information gatekeepers, and breaking down barriers to monopolies. The response of lawyers has been to focus on state regulation to reinforce the rules of the legal economic monopoly and to implement barriers to competitors of the legal profession. All these seem to be seen symptoms of fighting last war.

Nicholas Negroponte of MIT has said "incrementalism is the enemy of innovation." Tom Peter, whose book, "The Circle of Innovation" was influential in the preparation of this section of this article, notes that Negroponte says incrementalism is the enemy, not just an impediment. In simplest terms, this means that half steps and partial steps are no better than no steps. The innovative law firm wants to take bold new steps and follow through on them.

In area of innovation, we can learn from the examples of Amazon.com, the classic example of Internet business. Because of the short five-year history of Internet business, it is important to be careful not to draw too many concrete lessons from any example. In the case of Amazon.com, this is especially important since the company has yet to turn a profit on its primary business. Nevertheless, we have seen a few things that are worth noting in the legal context. First, it is extremely important to be the first to market because being the first to market can create an enormous competitive advantage on the Internet. Second, successful Internet companies are willing to challenge traditional assumptions and turn traditional business categories upside-down. Third, Amazon.com has been successful by continuing to try new things and to bring those new ideas to its business on a consistent and rapid basis. Fourth, Amazon.com has constantly focused on improving the customer experience.

The Practical Areas.

We now turn to three practical aspects of the legal profession to show some of the effects that the Internet has had on those areas and the impact that is likely to happen in the future. The three areas are research, communication, and marketing.

Research.

It has become essential for lawyers to be conversant with Internet research methods. It used to be that you needed to know the books and, if you were fortunate to be in a firm that could afford Lexis or Westlaw, those research services as well. Lexis and Westlaw were thought to have impregnable monopolies because they had huge databases of cases going back over hundred years. Primary source material, however, including cases from courts, statutes from legislatures, and regulations from governmental agencies, have all become available on the Internet. For free. Lawyers found that for some other cases they simply don't need cases from the 1800s and the current cases suffice. A company like Versuslaw can create a niche market for lawyers who don't need cases going back so far at a price like $6.95 a month rather than several thousand dollars a month.

As a result, Lexis and Westlaw have been scrambling to find Internet models and are starting to see that the value that they have comes not from the databases themselves, but from their method of searching, the key number system, attorneys' familiarity with those methods, and the brands they have established.

The Internet has begun to alter the basic materials of research. It has become essential that lawyers be familiar with Internet tools such as Findlaw, CataLaw, LLRX and other Internet resources.

The biggest development to come in research will focus on the collaborative elements of research through the use of intranets and knowledge management techniques. Often in many large law firms, research is duplicated and the wheel gets reinvented many times. Intranets and other knowledge management techniques allow law firms to take advantage of research already done in the firm and use it as a basis for further research and to keep existing research constantly updated.

The roles of law librarians are also changing. As law firms realize that they have skilled professional librarians who can do research, we have started to see changes in the way those librarians are used in law firms. Some law firms have even started to contract out the research their librarians perform to clients and others. Some see the possibility that a library can begin to pay for itself or even to make money for the firm. As a client, the question may become whether you want to spend $30 an hour for professional librarians to find you a specific answer quickly or whether you want to unleash a team of four or five new associates to perform the same research at $150 an hour, producing a 45 page memo that really doesn't seem to answer your specific question, and giving you a bill for $35,000? Increasingly, we will see the model for research in the law firm changing and the likely development of research attorneys and/or research librarians.

Legal publishing will likely change as well. Legal publications run the range of a continuum between timeliness of the information and quality of analysis. On the one end is the simple publication of a statue by a legislature at the time of the statute's passage. It has excellent timeliness but because it is unanalyzed primary source material, it scores low on the quality of analysis scale. On the other end of the continuum is the classic law review article that has excellent quality of analysis but may be released the year or two after cases decided, giving it very poor timeliness.

The attractive part of the publications market will be the legal newspapers and publications that provide contemporaneous analysis. For example, if National Law Journal or Lawyers Weekly USA can provide within a few days a highly sophisticated analysis of the recently decided case, it has both excellent timeliness and excellent quality of analysis. A law professor who participates in your e-mail discussion group who writes a thoughtful response to a decision on the same date the decision is handed down also can provide timely, high-quality analysis. It is this niche of high timeliness and high quality that lawyers will increasingly look to and companies that fill that niche will do well. Publications with long lead times, such as law reviews, will be a competitive disadvantage.

An interesting new area in research is something called collaborative filtering. If you've been to Amazon.com and bought books, you will notice the next time you return some suggested books. Collaborating filtering is a technique allows someone like Amazon to use their customer databases to predict customer actions, such as what other books are bought people who bought the same books that you did. So, if you buy several books by the same author, the databases can predict, based on the behavior of others who bought books by the same author, what other books you might like. Legal research companies are looking at the same techniques. The model might look something like this: You enter a search of three or four keywords into Lexis and get your results. At the end of your research session, a box pops up and says people who also ran searches on those four keywords went on to do one or more of the ten following searches. Those searches may be irrelevant to you or they may be highly important to you. They may give you ideas that you wouldn't otherwise have had and allow you to follow the paths of prior researchers as part of an anonymous community of interest.

Finally, as clients become even more skilled in the areas of Internet research, we are entering the era of the highly informed client. Lawyers, doctors and other professionals report that they are finding clients who are increasingly knowledgeable about the issues involved when they come to the professional. This is so because the clients have done their homework on the Internet. Not only do the clients who are highly informed come to doctors with diagnosis and suggested treatment and to lawyers with specific questions and solutions, but they want to and expect their professionals to be conversant with the same information. When I still had an estate planning practice several years ago, I was already seeing clients who used the Internet to find out a significant amount of information before coming to a lawyer.

Communication.

Tom Peters has said "distance is dead!" If you are stuck in traffic with a bridge between you and your home, distance certainly doesn't seem dead. Peters, however, makes an important point. It is just as easy and fast to send email to someone in Hong Kong as it is to send it to a someone down the hall. Similarly, a local phone call is no different than international one, at least conceptually.

When we think about communications, we need to take a look at Metcalfe's Law. Metcalfe's Law essentially says that the value of a network increases exponentially with the number of nodes on the network. The classic example is the fax machine. When there is only one fax machine with no one to send to, your fax machine has no real value. It becomes more valuable when someone else has a fax machine. The fax machine becomes highly valuable when millions of people have fax machines and you are connected to the world.

In the practice of law, email, intranets and extranets will become increasingly important means of communication. According to some reports, in 1998 more business messages were transmitted by email than were transmitted by telephone calls. E-mail has taken root in the legal profession and is likely to become even more important. The use of e-mail raises important issues about confidentiality, encryption and a record retention. Intranets for internal communication and knowledge, management will also become increasingly important.

Probably the key area development in communication for lawyers will be extranets. Extranets are private secure Web sites were people can share information, communicate, and collaborate. One example would be a mass tort litigation involving fifty law firms scattered around the country who use a secure, password-required web site to share research information, depositions, strategy discussions, and evidentiary material.

The key to communication is to focus on improving the quality of the conversation. Do the communication methods you are considering implementing improve the quality of your conversation with clients and others? Communication should also be focused on harnessing the power in the intelligence of the network. For many years, scientists have focused on creating artificial intelligence by brute force methods of throwing computing power at the problem and trying to create simple rules to mimic human intelligence. Now we're starting to see that the true artificial intelligence comes from the network. If you ask a question you are likely to find an answer and see the network itself has intelligence. Communication efforts should be directed to harness the intelligence of your internal and external networks.

Communications efforts among lawyers will be largely client driven. It is clients who have seen the advantages of intranets, extranets, Lotus Notes and other groupware and want their law firms to participate in the benefits they have seen. Those companies want their law firms to be involved in the same processes. As a result, you're likely to get push from clients for these new forms of communications. The savvy law firms will work with clients to implement these advances in communications.

Marketing.

Law firms need web sites. I've spoken to many lawyers about the value of web sites. Sometimes people were willing to listen. Sometimes they never saw the point. As I spent time on the Internet looking at lawyers' web sites and observing what lawyers are doing, I began to realize that every firm already has an Internet presence, whether they know it or not. On the Internet, right now as you read this article, you and your law firm have an Internet presence that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The presence may be a black hole. The presence may be a web site that embarrasses you. The Internet presence may include information that is inaccurate or incomplete. But that Internet presence is there.

You should be concerned about not just creating an Internet presence but managing the presence that you already have. Marketing on the Internet becomes largely a question of marketing and managing the image that you already have and starting to make improvements and bringing in your online image in line with what you want.

Marketing on the Internet should not be seen as something that takes the place of existing marketing techniques. Marketing on the Internet is just one component of your total marketing picture. Marketing on the Internet does not replace the face-to-face closing of sales. But marketing on the Internet can be funded through other marketing expenses, and directed toward making an effective and efficient uses of your marketing budget. Many law firms have boxes and boxes of brochures gathering dust in their closets. A web site allows your to revise and update those brochures and give them new life on the web, available to potential clients 24 hours a day.

The key to Internet marketing is creating a brand name for your law firm. Traditionally, lawyers have not developed brand names for their firms. You can be aware of hundreds of law firms and never really know what anyone stands for. Some of the firms that use television or other advertising media have begun to create some brand names, but these are largely local. It is rare that you find even a national law firm that is created a specific brand name. Most firms simply consider themselves full-service firms. Developing a brand and using on the Internet gives you access to those attractive Internet demographics which are ideally suited for law firms.

Law firms have used email newsletters, collaborative ventures and web sites to market their practices on the Internet. Unfortunately, some effective advertising techniques being used on the Internet by others cannot be used by lawyers because of existing ethical rules and state regulation. Ethical limitations on testimonials, specific words and phrases, and prior review that made sense in the context of television commercials are now in the process of being adapted to the Internet. The Internet is a moving target and current regulations make it difficult for lawyers to use existing technology. As an example, if there is a state requirement that they law firm keep a record of every advertisement for two years and a web site is deemed to be in advertisement, a web site built that is dynamically generated from a database (a common and useful technique) could not be used by law firm. Limiting the technology a firm can use would give law firms a competitive disadvantage against the Big 5 accounting firms and other consulting professionals.

We are of likely to see substantial changes in the ethical rules relating to marketing of law firms as law firms find themselves increasingly disadvantaged.

Internet Signals.

Here are some interesting developments that suggest that the Internet is arriving and its potential impact on the legal profession.

1. The Growth of Nontraditional Competition for Law Firms. From the big five accounting firms at the high end of the legal practice to legal publishers like Nolo Press and other providers of do-it-yourself legal kits, lawyers are experiencing the influx of nontraditional competition at both the high end and the low end. A few weeks ago I received in e-mail from Nolo with an offer that if I bought some do-it-yourself legal kits or purchased some books, I would receive a do-it-yourself will form free. For many people, the do-it-yourself legal kits are highly attractive. They see the efforts of the legal profession to shut down legal publishers providing these kits as another example of lawyers protecting their high-priced monopoly. On a regular basis, however, we're seeing influx of nontraditional competition provided by the Internet.

2. Products Turning into Services. One of the trends we see on the Internet in the service industry is turning of services into products. These products might include books, pamphlets, videotapes, audiotapes and software programs. I received an e-mail from an attorney in Florida who realized that in an estate planning practice you tend to give the same explanations to clients over and over. Examples might include whether to use a will or a revocable trust, basics of the estate tax and other matters. This attorney prepared videotapes of her presentations on those topics and wanted to put the videotapes on her web site and direct clients to view the videos before coming and for an initial consultation. Not only would this streamline the estate planning process, but also it offers the opportunity to turn these videos into sellable products. We are seeing some of the larger firms turning presentations other materials into videos and products and putting them on the Internet, creating the possibility of an alternative income stream.

3. CyberSettle. Talk about eliminating the middleman! If you take the typical insurance company and insurance defense practice, there are a large number of cases on the docket and the sheer volume of those cases makes it impossible to determine which cases are actually worthy of being tried and which can and should be settled quickly. CyberSettle takes an interesting Internet approach. It allows plaintiffs and defendants to agree to submit cases to CyberSettle and submit offers of settlement to CyberSettle. When the CyberSettle web site receives the offers, it compares them. If offers are within 30 percent of each other, the parties have agreed to split the difference and the case is settled. The parties get three attempts to settle cases in this fashion. If none of the offers work out, no offer is revealed. At the end of three attempts, if the case cannot be settled, both sides know that they have a case that can and should be tried. This can be a way to reduce dramatically a large docket of cases.

4. Cherry Picking. We are already starting to see a trend toward cherry picking as law firms look for niche practices or to take lucrative segments of practice away from competitors. For example, a firm might do e-commerce law for a large corporation and strip away highly valuable and lucrative areas of representation from a traditional firm representing that client and leave the traditional firm with only lower-level or low margin work. Another example might be where a nonlegal competitor uses its skill set to provide services that can be highly lucrative, leaving law firms with less interesting work that cannot be compensated for as highly. An example might be litigation support or litigation management.

Key Questions.

As you consider these signals that are showing us some of the trends that the Internet is bringing to the profession, what else can we expect?

Here are five key questions I think are especially significant and worth your while to think about and discuss in your firm.

1. Who or what will be the Amazon. com of law? And, why shouldn't it be you?

2. What is the practice of law? The most disappointing part of the current multi-disciplinary practice debate was the unwillingness to define what the practice of law is. This makes it difficult for both those inside and outside the profession. Outside the profession there is pressure to define the practice of law down to the smallest level possible (rendering written legal opinions? representing clients in state sanctioned courts?). Inside the profession, there is pressure to expand the notion of practice of law to cover everything the law firm might conceivably supply to a client, including business services, consulting advice, technology consulting and more, to sweep more activities into the legal monopoly.

3. Will the law become a commodity? In the areas of bankruptcy applications, simple wills and other legal documents, there is pressure to turn these documents into commodities. If the practice of law becomes the commodity, there will be tremendous pressure to reduce price. The lawyers left in that part of the market that produces commodity items will be increasing driven to high-volume, low-margin practices.

4. Is law really different than any other information business? If it is not, the same pressures that drove Encyclopedia Britannica from being the leading encyclopedia manufacturer and a highly successful business into fighting for its very life within a period of a few years will also apply to legal profession. The answer to this question is that the practice of law is not like any other information business, but lawyers have to understand why it is not, and focus on those differences as they develop their practices. The Internet tends to route around anyone who tries to become a gatekeeper to information. There are aspects of practice of law that involve being a gatekeeper to information. To the extent that you're involved in the simple gatekeeping of information, you should be concerned what the Internet will mean to you and your practice.

5. What do you do?

Here are ten ideas about what to do:

1. Meditate on the word "reintermediation." In what ways can you reinsert value into the process in which you are involved?

2. Embrace the Internet. Use the Internet develop your ideas. As you develop your Internet presence, consider how the Internet changes your business model.

3. Think about what services you can turn into products. Videos, books, pamphlets.

4. Self-cannibalization. This term is used in the technology industry. The notion is that if you are aware that there are areas in which you'll be vulnerable to competition in the next few years, then you should consider being your first and toughest competitor in those areas. You should be willing to put yourself out of those businesses. This approach has huge implications in a law firm where you may be considering a limiting certain areas of practices and focusing on others.

5. Fast prototyping. Get the idea, get it out there, try it.

6. Do not fight the last war. Pulling up the drawbridges, relying on state regulation, and enforcing the legal monopoly are bound to be losers in the Internet.

7. Focus on cost-cutting, both for you and for your clients. The Internet gives you some ways to save postage, long distance and other costs. Focus on ways to save the money. More important, focus on ways to make it cheaper and easier for your clients to work with you. By reducing the costs the clients have associated with using your for legal work, you make it harder for your clients to leave you to go to another firm that cannot provide the same efficiencies.

8. Turn the kids loose. The Internet is largely a young person's game. There is now a generation of people who will have grown up with no experience other than that of having the Internet available. They simply see a different world. Recent law school graduates understand the implications of the Internet and how to live in its environment. Law firms must be increasingly willing to turn over portions of their businesses and the growth and evolution of the firms to the younger generation of lawyers.

9. Gregory Bateson has said you can't live without an eraser". Be willing to try things, take a hard look at them and admit your mistakes. Then take an eraser and try again.

10.Wayne Gretzky has said "you miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take." The Nike commercials say "just do it." In the Internet era, if you have opportunity, you must seize it. Don't get involved in the bureaucratic situation of constantly planning and never implementing.

Conclusions.

The conclusions are simple, but the efforts involved and the implications are profound. Treat the Internet with respect. Keep your focus always on the clients. Innovate, collaborate and reintermediate.

In my thinking, the most important and unintended consequence of the Internet era and the greatest impact of the Internet on law firms will be the growth of meaningful diversity. For a half-dozen years, I was a member of the steering committee of the minority clerkship program in St. Louis. It is a joint effort to increase minority participation in larger law firms by providing summer clerkship opportunities for minority students. A lot of smart and creative people were involved in this process. When we look at the actual results we achieved, I think we would say that were disappointed with the results. The paradox of the Internet is that to be successful in this increasingly global and diverse marketplace, you must have an increasingly global and diverse law firm to respond. As an unintended consequence of technology, we are very likely to see firms making steps to diversify themselves in meaningful ways not through mandated programs or well-intentioned efforts, but because that is what it takes to survive in the Internet era. This diversification will be one unintended, but welcome and overdue, result of the Internet revolution in the practice of law.

Finally, the choice is yours. Gutenberg stands before you and makes you an offer to invest in his book, his printing press, or Gutenberg.com. What is your choice? Now, apply that lesson to the Internet.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 07:18 PM | Comments (0)

The Last(?) "By Request Day"of 2005, the Blawggie Awards and Other Housekeeping Matters

I had an appointment for tomorrow cancelled and thought it might be a good day to run another "By Request Day" on this blog, possibly the last one of the year. You know the drill - leave your questions in the comments to this post or email me at denniskennedyblog @ gmail . com with your question and I'll try to answer the questions I get, plus a few I've been holding.

A number of people have been asking me when I'll announce the 2005 edition of my annual "Blawggie" awards for excellence in legal blogging. I noticed that I did those on December 26 last year, but that seems like a busy day and I think that I'll do them before Christmas this year - tentatively on December 22nd.

As the end of the year approaches like a freight train, you can expect to see on this blog an effort to finish the job of reposting my articles, which has proven to be a popular feature. My goal is to finish by the end of the year - I was surprised by how many articles I've written over the years. I'm nearly finished with the legal tech articles and will be mixing in some more of my technology law articles.

The 2006 version of my annual legal technology predictions article is in draft form and that will be published this month, perhaps in a long version and a short version. Details to come. The crystal ball was quite interesting in its revelations this year.

I'm also looking for a few volunteers to participate in a roundtable article on Web 2.0 tools for the next issue of Law Practice Today. Let me know if you are interested.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/

Posted by dmk at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2005

Yet Another Reason I'm a Big Fan of Law Librarian Blogs

Betsy McKenzie's post "Rex Libris - Librarian Regnant!" on the Out of the Jungle blog is a celebration of law libraries and law librarians, an enjoyable read and an invitation to read further into the excellent Out of the Jungle blog (and subscribe to its RSS feed).

The post starts out like this and is a pleasure to read (and I encourage you to do so):

"Here is what I think is important and timeless about libraries and librarians: we embody the culture and caring of our society, passed down over the ages. From the Great Library of Alexandria, where items on the shelves were scrolls and finding aids were lists and it was a huge technical leap to arrange things in alphabetical order -- through the medieval monasteries which kept learning alive in western Europe by hand copying Bibles and commentaries and classical manuscripts -- to today's libraries where we are in danger of forgetting our heritage and meaning."

I've long felt that the law librarian blawgs as a group represent some of the very best work in all of legal blogging. And, as I've asked before, will employers please give these librarians some nice raises and bonuses for their work in the blogging world?

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 07:59 PM | Comments (1)

15 Internet Legal Research Tips - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. This short list of legal research tips was written in mid-2004. I have not updated references for historical reasons. These are meant to be simple, handy tips for the average Internet user. I hope you find some of these tips useful.]

15 Internet Legal Research Tips

1. Keep Adding Tools to Your Toolbox. The Internet is not static and your use of it should not be static either. The best legal researchers are constantly adding new tools and techniques and evaluating their existing approaches. If anything is clear at this point, it is that no one has all the answers. New tools become available all of the time.

2. Subscribe to the Email Legal Research Email Newsletters. The Virtual Chase Alert and The Internet Legal Research Weekly are just two examples of the great, free email newsletters that cover developments in legal research and consistently provide new resources and tips. There is no reason for you to try to keep up with all of these developments on your own when great resources like these are available to help you.

3. Soup Up Your Knowledge of Google with Google Hacks. For better or worse, most people use Google as their primary search tool. Soup up the Google search engine by learning some of the hidden features of Google. Tara Calishan's book Google Hacks describes one hundred ways you can use these features and make better use of Google.

4. Use Quotation Marks to Enhance Your Results. For the non-Booleans, nothing is simpler and quicker than improving your results by putting quotes around a name or phrase. For some names, you need to use quotes to bring up relevant hits. A great, but underused, technique is to put quotes around a phrase that you might expect to find in the best hit for your search. For example, a search for "the capital of Alaska is" may bring you the result you want better than a simple word search.

5. Use Special Words to Locate Good Introductory Materials. When looking for good introductory or comprehensive materials on a topic, especially one for which a search on the phrase might turn up thousands of hits (e.g., "intellectual property"), do a few quick searches in which you add a word like "primer," "overview," "resources," "guide," "faq" or something similar. By doing so, you can often locate a great introduction that will lead you to some of the best resources and experts.

6. Use File Types to Find Presentations, Handout Materials and Articles. Many of the most comprehensive legal resources take the form of extended articles, seminar slides, handout materials and outlines. In a great number of cases, these materials are not put into HTML. Instead, they are placed on the Web as PDF files or PowerPoint files. Adding the additional search term of "pdf" or "ppt" can bring you right to many of these excellent resources.

7. Bring Information to You With News Aggregators. It's no secret that RSS feeds and news aggregators are becoming the primary way to get current quality information delivered directly to you. Do not miss this train as it leaves the station. Feeds and aggregators promise to change legal research for the better.

8. Add Blawgs to Your Search Lists. Legal blogs, or "blawgs," especially the law librarian blogs (e.g., BeSpacific.com), are tremendous resources for current developments, news and commentary. Many are written by leading figures in their fields and have a timeliness that print publications cannot match. Using Technorati, Feedster or other blog search tools is all but mandatory today.

9. Create Google Alerts and Other Automatic Searches. Probably the hottest area in search today involves the notion of "saved searches," in one form or another. From RSS tools to Google email alerts, you can set up standard searches and have them automatically run with the results sent to you by email or RSS feeds. These are very powerful tools that just keep working for you with no additional effort.

10. Make Use of Links Collections. Since the earliest days of the Web, nothing has been more helpful that an updated, well-chosen list of links on a topic chosen by a person knowledgeable in the field. The practice of creating links pages has diminished greatly over the years, but there are many still out there. It's also worth finding and collecting them.

11. Look for Specialty Search Tools. You can get better results by narrowing the field. Specialty search engines are great tools. From FindLaw to very specific search tools, you can find many specialty search engines, each of which allow you to dig deeper and locate more relevant resources on your topic by reducing the amount of "noise" you find in the general search engines.

12. Use "News" Search for Current Issues. It can take a long time for items to show up in search engines such as Google. As a result, search engines are not the best place to look for information on breaking stories. Simply switching over to the "news" search engine on Google will give you dramatically better results. Blogs are another set of great resources on breaking stories.

13. Don't Overlook Law Professor Pages. Many law professors today have web pages with heavily annotated syllabi for their courses. These pages are tremendous resources for anyone wanted to learn about certain areas of law. They also give the most important cases and note trends and areas of contention. Law professor blogs are also good sources of information.

14. Keep Up-to-Date with Search Engine Developments. Search engines change their search algorithms, spidering practices and even their underlying database technologies on a regular basis. These changes can produce unexpected results. Staying familiar with these developments, such as by visiting Searchenginewatch.com, will definitely improve your techniques and results.

15. Collect Tips, Tricks and New Techniques in a Way that You Can Use Them. You might well be able to collect ten or more new research tips, tricks, tools or techniques in an average week. They won’t do you much good if you don't use them.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 07:00 PM | Comments (0)

Promoting Your Web Site: A Twelve Step Plan for Reaching Your Target Audience - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. This article on developing a promotion plan for your website was published in April 1999, in the pre-Google era, as you will see below. I have not updated references for historical reasons. The same basic principles still apply for websites and blogs, even though the techniques and tools are now somewhat different, and the article still has a lot of value. I'm usually known for my patience, but I've been known to get irritated when a self-styled "web marketing expert" condescendingly lectures me about these same principles while trying to impress me with his or her expertise. That's an area where you want to be talking to the real experts, especially those with real legal marketing experience, who you can spot because they listen and discuss rather than merely talk at you. At the time the article came out, I had nearly four years of experience promoting my own website. I still believe that most people do not do enough non-Internet promotion of their websites and blogs, and promotion plans are still few and far between.]

Promoting Your Web Site: A Twelve Step Plan for Reaching Your Target Audience

The greatest web page in the world does you no good if no one visits it. Much has been written about how to design web pages, but relatively little information is available on how to promote your web site and make it findable.

You cannot simply launch your page, sit back, and expect your page to be a success. Based on my own experiences with my own web pages, I have come to the conclusion that you need a strategic plan for your promotional efforts. You should put in at least as much effort into promoting your web site as you do into its design and your choice of graphics. Here are twelve steps for creating a strategic plan for promoting your web site.

1. Why do you have this web page? Your plan to promote your web page begins with this basic question. Your answer will help you define your target audience and give you a sense of the level of promotional efforts you want to make. Are you simply providing information? Are you supplementing other existing marketing efforts? Do you want to generate new business directly from the web page? Or do you want to sell new products or services to existing customers? Most importantly, what is your target audience?

2. What are your goals for the page? Your goals should be specific, well defined and attainable. A goal may be as simple as generating enough savings or revenues to pay the costs for the page. If you want to have a million hits a day on your web page, different efforts will be required than if you are simply providing customer support or supplemental information to existing clients or customers. While web pages can also be used to sell products directly, other valuable uses include streamlining customer support, providing technical information and reducing costs of printing and postage catalogs and other marketing information. Goals can change over the course of time, but your goals will help you create a framework for your promotional efforts. Goal number one will be finding good ways to reach your target audience.

3. A written plan. Promoting your web page is a continuing process that will evolve after a number of false starts. You will need to develop some checklists and logs of what you have done to promote the page. Take notes on how well each of the strategies has worked. Keeping a written record of this information will help you avoid duplicate your efforts and give you a road map for promoting new pages you may develop.

4. Thoughtful choice of a domain name. Web users will typically try the most obvious domain name, e.g., www.yourcompany.com, to find your page before they will resort to search engines or other finding techniques. If you have not chosen a domain name well, you will make unnecessarily difficult for people to find your site. You will want to avoid using initials used only by insiders in your company or other non intuitive choices. It is also helpful to avoid long, unwieldy web addresses for commercial sites.

5. Listing your page effectively on search engines. The most common way that somebody will find your web page is by using a search engine. Search engines are extremely large databases containing information on millions of web pages which allow you to do keyword searches to find web pages. The larger search engines are AltaVista, HotBot, Excite and Infoseek. [Note: Wow! I wrote this article in the pre-Google era.] When you use a search engine you are not searching the World Wide Web itself. Instead, you are simply searching a database that the search engine company has created which is designed to mirror the World Wide Web. By definition, the search engine will always be somewhat out-of-date and never completely and accurately index the World Wide Web.

It is extremely important to realize that your page will not simply appear in a search engine or any other index. You must add your page to the search engines index. You can do this by simply clicking on an "Add URL" button at the bottom of most search engine home pages and submitting the requested information.

Simply getting your page listed on a search engine is not enough. You need to design your page and promote it in such a way that when someone does a keyword search on a topic he or she will find your page. You need to keep your target audience in mind. If, for example, you are targeting people are looking for a St. Louis law firm, then you will want your page to appear high on the list of responses of someone who does a key word search on "St. Louis law firm." If, on the other hand, your target audience is anyone who is interested in securities law, your strategy will focus on a different set of keywords.

There are a number of ways to enhance your findability on search engines. You can use programming techniques such as metatags, which are hidden codes which help you specify the key words which a search engine will index your page. You might also buy banner advertising for certain key words. You can also strategically use word placement on your page to help your page receive a higher priority in response to key word searches. All of these techniques require you to develop a good understanding of how search engines work.

6. Placement in directories and finding lists.Good promotion involves a narrowing of your focus to your target audience. In most cases, search engines are not the most effective means to promote your page. Directories, such as Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) or FindLaw (www.findlaw.com) for attorneys, and finding or "subject matter" lists can allow your page to be included on a specialized list of pages relating to a given topic. For example, if you are a computer consultant, you will want to find directories of computer consultants and other lists of consultants and get your page placed in those lists. This technique narrows the scope of your promotion and helps you direct web users more interested in your topic to your page. As a general matter, someone who finds your page through the use of a directory or finding list is someone more interested in your page than someone who found your page through a search engine.

7. Reciprocal links and targeted web advertising. If you do your homework on the World Wide Web before you publish your page, you will find a number of excellent web sites and lists of resources on which you would like to have your page listed. The real utility (and beauty) of the World Wide Web comes from these lists of hyperlinked pages. The way to get your page listed on a page you like is simply to request that the webmaster of that page add a link to your site on his or her page. In exchange, he or she will generally ask you to add a link to his or her site on your page. Since every webmaster is interested in getting more publicity for his or her page, this method works very nicely. Since every webmaster would also like to earn some money from his or her page, offering to place banner ads which link to your web site can also be a very effective means of generating traffic. [Note: My, how the world has changed! Reciprocal links are still a good thing, but the practice has been so abused that it's hard to get them any more. As for banner ads . . . ]

8. Announcements, advertising and other non-Internet techniques. Excellent, focused promotion of your page can come from both Web and non-Web efforts. Letting your existing customers know about your web page is an extremely important first step that can be overlooked if you focus too much on getting listed on search engines. Put the address of your web page on your business card, stationery and yellow page listing. Announcing the debut of your page in brochures, by a special mailing or even by e-mail will be very beneficial. Even on the Internet, nothing works better than word of mouth. Tell your employees and friends about your page so that they understand the benefits of the page. As you have undoubtedly noticed, many television and radio commercials and other advertisements routinely include a mention of a company's web page address. You've already paid for the time or space, so why not include a mention of your web page? Be creative.

9. Obtain favorable mentions from others. People are eight times more likely to believe a recommendation from an independent source than they are to believe an advertisement. An excellent way to promote your web page is try to secure favorable mentions of your site from independent sources. This method, of course, implies that you have good content, good design or something else that will cause independent sources to give your page favorable reviews. You can enhance your prospects of getting favorable publicity by sending an e-mail to a columnist or other writers who write on Internet topics or offering to write an article yourself. The bottom line in web promotion is that it never hurts to ask.

10. Pay attention to your promotion efforts. Many times, people put a lot of effort in promoting the rollout of their web page and then neglect to follow up with other promotional efforts. As I mentioned previously, your web page can fall down in priority on a search engine or even fall off a search engine. If you are adding content on a regular basis and updating the graphic design of your page, it makes good sense to focus on promotional efforts at the same time. Attention to promotional efforts is as important as attention to updating content.

11. Evaluate results on a regular basis.You must have a method to evaluate the success of your promotional efforts. Many pages have a simple counter that counts the number of visitors to a page. These counters provide useful information, but for the most part they are inadequate to help you with promotional efforts. More sophisticated web monitoring software is available and can generally be supplied as a part of your web page hosting arrangement. These programs will let you know how successful different techniques have been. Subscriptions to e-mail newsletters available on your web page are another excellent way to assess the number of quality visits. And, obviously, sales from the page may be the most important measure of all for some sites. This information should be analyzed and used to help you reinforce existing sources of traffic and to help you find new locations on which to put links and advertising.

12. Go back to the first item and start again. Do you still have the same reason for having your page? Do you still have the same goals? Do you now have a better understanding of your target audience and how to reach it? You will certainly have a better sense of what works and what doesn't work. Like content and design, your promotional efforts will evolve as you learn and as new techniques become available. A written plan will help you focus your marketing efforts and to improve these efforts on an ongoing basis.

Maintaining a great web page is a commitment. One key part of that commitment is to develop new ideas and new ways to publicize your page. Web pages can be extremely beneficial to you and your company, but you cannot expect simply to create a web page and to see results without making any other efforts. Your promotional plan will put you well ahead of many other companies with web sites, give you an important competitive advantage and help you connect with the audience you want to find.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2005

It's About the Deal, Not You: A Lawyer's "To Do and To Not Do" List for IT Contract Negotiations - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. After a frustrating conference call negotiating an IT contract, I sat down and wrote this article (2004). In it, I tried to capture whatever wisdom I might have learned over the years as a lawyer involved in negotiating matters. It's my approach, but I think most of the ideas would be useful to many lawyers. I'm always looking to improve, so I welcome the suggestions of others who have experience in these areas. Warning: it's a very long article, but I think it is a good article, with lots of practical tips and pointers.]

It's About the Deal, Not You: A Lawyer's "To Do and To Not Do" List for IT Contract Negotiations

Many moons ago, as a third-year law student at Georgetown, I took a class called "Business Planning." We spent the first few weeks of the class studying negotiation, reading some of the now classic books on the subject and doing mock negotiations. At the time, the idea of "win-win" approaches to negotiation was just beginning to become popular, but that was our focus. We were also taught that the role of the lawyer was not to kill deals (as many lawyers make business people believe), but instead to help make deals happen by creatively solving problems.

I later had the good fortune to work with a good number of excellent lawyers who had a similar approach. I also have had the chance to see in action some of the lawyers who fall into the deal-killer category and the damage they can do in deals that have great potential, sometimes costing their clients millions of dollars of lost revenue in circumstances where the business issues were essentially resolved.

As a result, I've formed some strong opinions about the role of lawyers in negotiations and the behaviors lawyers should adopt in the normal negotiating session. While there can be special circumstances when approaches that are more theatrical are called for, in most events the lawyer should play a limited role.

I recently spent what seemed like an eternity on a conference call with a lawyer who broke every rule I can think of for how to handle a negotiation by conference call. My clients even remarked after the call ended that if the deal fell through, it would be because of this lawyer. I submit that this comment is one of the worst evaluations a transactional lawyer can receive.

Even worse, I felt embarrassed for the legal profession because this lawyer confirmed almost every negative stereotype business people have about lawyers. Ironically, people feel that they compliment me by saying, "Dennis is a lawyer, but he’s not like most lawyers."

My experience was instructive and I wanted to use it to illustrate some points about negotiation, especially how lawyers should behave in negotiations and how business people might better manage their lawyers in this setting, both to save on legal fees and better use their lawyers' expertise.

Here's the background. Assume my client wants to enter into an "e-commerce" arrangement and the business people have been negotiating for a few months, like each other and want the deal to happen. I get a call that the business issues are all worked out and there will be a conference call that includes the lawyers with the following agenda: (1) confirm that everyone is in agreement on the final checklist of outstanding business issues, and (2) discuss briefly any remaining legal issues and get the revised draft of the agreement moving. Both parties believe that it will help speed up the process if the lawyers hear the discussion of the business issues.

I like this approach. In many cases, the best use of lawyer time is to discuss the significant legal issues and then the business people work out the deal points to their satisfaction before getting the lawyer back into the process. It makes good sense to nail down the deal and then have the lawyers document the deal. Having lawyers working away as the deal evolves often results in expensive legal time being spent on language that later becomes irrelevant.

My reaction to this call is very positive, because it sounds like we are ready to roll and get this deal finalized and signed. I expect a conference call that will last about an hour, and maybe ninety minutes at most.

Given the stage of the negotiations and the purpose of the call, I have the following goals for this conference call:

1. Support my client's representative in the most helpful way I can. In the case where the business people have been carrying the conversation, I expect that this will mean that I will (1) prep the rep on key issues, points that may still need to be dressed or clarified, possible approaches on likely issues of contention and the like, (2) be ready to discuss issues with the rep when he or she puts the speakerphone on mute and be ready to make comments or handle issues when prompted by the rep, (3) determine any other role I'm wanted to play, and (4) at the end of the discussion of business issues, be prepared to clarify any legal or drafting issues that need the input of the business person and, only to the extent necessary, clear up any significant legal questions and follow-up steps that it makes sense to handle with the other attorney during this call.

2. Obtain the information needed to document the actual deal accurately. "Does the invoice cover the prior month or the following month?" "Does the license also include independent contractors as well as employees?"

3. Identify and frame legal issues in ways that business decisions can be made. "Under this language, if X happens, Y will result. I want to make sure that Y is what is supposed to happen."

4. Explain what I meant by language I drafted or how a certain issue is covered. "I think we handled that in Section 3.3 rather than in the section you are looking at. Let’s take a look and be sure."

5. Keep the process moving. "The best approach is probably to get some words on the page that cover the concept, and maybe leave some blanks for time periods, and then adjust them once we can look at something in writing. Why don’t I put something together and get it to everyone? I have a good understanding of what each side has in mind. I think we can then knock off the next issue pretty easily."

6. Provide the blessing or play the bad cop. As I mentioned earlier, especially as people work together over time, clients prefer that a lawyer play a certain type of role. Sometimes a client prefers that a lawyer bless the acquiescence to a point so the client does not actually concede the point. Sometimes the client wants the lawyer to hold the line on legal grounds so the client can appear to be accommodating but constrained by the lawyer.

7. Keep a positive attitude about how close we are to getting the deal done. "We're almost there on the business points. It's down to finding the right language." "I see that we have two main points that are keeping us from putting this to bed. Are they deal-breakers or can we nail this down now?"

8. Leave my client feeling good about my role in the meeting. Lawyers do not need to be present in every meeting in which a contract is negotiated. Over time, I want to educate my clients and give them the tools with which to handle everything that they are comfortable in handling and bring me in at the points where it makes the most sense and does the most good. Each client has a different comfort level, but I would like to find at the end of each meeting that my client felt that it was appropriate that I participated and that I gave them what they needed for that meeting. In some cases, this may mean that they are ready to "graduate" and handle similar meetings on their own or with me available by phone on an as needed basis.

Sixteen Suggestions.

In my hypothetical situation, assume that I have a knowledgeable and focused CIO who had carried the negotiations to this point. She has a specific checklist of the key points to cover. We talk about the legal issues before the call and positions to take on a few points that may still be unresolved. I fully expect to say very little, primarily covering a couple of legal points. I also expect that I may offer to draft some proposed language if the discussion of a point bogs down. Otherwise, the CIO is more than capable of handling the discussion.

In the real situation that formed the basis for my hypothetical, the call lasted over four hours, left everyone with the feeling that positions were farther apart than before the call, and left my client and I shaking our heads. Unfortunately, the blame for all of that fell squarely on the other lawyer. Perhaps the nadir of the call occurred when my client had to interrupt a monologue from the other lawyer to say, "It’s our deal, not yours."

After the call, I jotted down the following list of sixteen rules for lawyers involved in negotiations, especially when your client is also present or on the phone call. I made this list because I felt the other lawyer broke every single one of these rules in that one phone call and I'd like other lawyers to avoid going down that road. For those of you who are not lawyers, this list will help you prep your lawyers so that they work with in the most helpful ways and so that you can recognize counter-productive behavior and change it rather than simply accept it as "what lawyers do."

However, I can sum them up in five words, "It’s not about the lawyer."

In other words, if the other party or your client reminds you that "it’s our deal, not yours," you are not part of the solution, you are the problem.

1. Know the Purpose of the Meeting. I spent some time earlier in this article explaining the underlying scenario because the purpose of the meeting greatly influences the role of a lawyer. In that type of meeting, the business issues are front and center and the lawyer’s role will be limited. If the purpose of the meeting is to work out technical issues about indemnification language, the lawyer's role will naturally be greater. The better a lawyer understands the purpose of a meeting and the wanted or expected results, the better the job the lawyer can do. A hint: if both parties start the call by making a statement of how much they like working with each other, how much they want the deal and the relationship to work, and how they schedule the meeting or call to confirm the details and get the lawyers to work on finalizing the agreement, you not only should get a good feel for the purpose of the meeting, but you should also get a clue that your contemplated role is not to raise objections to every proposed change, complicate every process, not give on any point, large or small, and generally take over the call.

2. Discuss Your Role in the Conversation with Your Client. It simply makes good sense for the people who have been talking to do most of the talking and lead the conversation in this type of call or meeting. In most cases, it also makes sense for a lawyer to talk mainly with the other lawyer and not have an extended discussion (or, even worse, an argument) with the other party, unless that is the approach that the client wants you to take. If a lawyer takes over or monopolizes the call, the lawyer runs the risk of undercutting or embarrassing the client rep in front of the person they will be dealing with on an ongoing basis. Worse yet, many women and young business people are sensitive, I believe correctly, to this issue and will complain to superiors about your approach. The client rep on the call has ownership of this deal, it may well be the most important thing that they working on, and it may also be a major opportunity to show that they can handle this type of deal. Ignoring their preferences or directions and turning the meeting into the "lawyer show" is a recipe for disaster.

3. Agree on Your Signals. This rule goes hand in hand with rule #2. There will be times when the client wants the lawyer to step in or stay out. There will be times when a client wants the lawyer to give on a point, stay firm on a point or move on. There will also be occasions where you want to take a break or discuss a point in private. By signals, I do not mean engaging in skullduggery. Signals might be physical when you are in the same room with your client only, such as when you are on a conference call. They might be verbal when both sides are present. Simply pointing to who takes the lead, indicating when to mute the speakerphone your side of the conversation or asking for a break can all work as signals that will keep you and your client in sync. A tip: if you need to take a break to discuss a point, you will find at least one participant more than happy to agree if you ask for a bathroom break any time after an hour into a meeting.

4. Do Not Confess Your Lack of Preparation. There is only one exception to this rule. In certain rare circumstances, you may "confess" that you haven't had time to look at the revisions closely, apologize and then spend the rest of the meeting citing section and paragraph numbers and showing complete knowledge of the draft. Obviously, you take this approach only when you are fully prepared and primarily as a tactic to make people wonder how good you would be if you did have time to review the document closely. There are three things worse than simply confessing your lack of preparation. The first is mentioning it two or more times throughout the meeting. The second is confirming the fact time after time by not knowing either what is in the agreement or the fundamental aspects of the deal. The third is giving your client good reason to wonder why they are paying you.

5. Do Not Bluff on Your Knowledge or Your Experience. No matter what lawyers like to believe, law is not rocket science. Business people who work with contracts develop a good understanding of the major issues, the common compromises, what is normal and what is an overreach, the legal issues that matter to their business, and have heard many arguments posed by lawyers many times. Your argument that "even Microsoft can't get that concession" will make you look ridiculous when you are talking with someone who routinely gets that concession. Worse yet, many lawyers will try to bluff on their knowledge of the underlying technology, software or operations. While this approach usually just results in a good laugh for people who understand the technology, it can make the lawyer look foolish and lead to an agreement that does not cover key issues adequately.

6. Know When to Move On. As we all know, it is possible for a lawyer to beat a point to death. It is also possible to run into issues where it's not possible to hammer out all the points. At some point, the lawyer needs to say either "Why don’t we have the lawyers draft some language that we can look at?" or "Let’s come back to this point and see if we can get everything else done." The first approach turns an uncomfortable discussion into a "to do" item for the lawyer. The second approach is the standard negotiation strategy of putting the tough items aside and getting agreement and momentum on what can be agreed upon with the hope that the "held" issue will seem smaller and easier to resolve when you come back to it. Either approach advances the negotiation and keeps the ball moving.

7. Understand Standard Negotiation Practices. If you read the literature on negotiation tactics, you'll see that there are some standard practices and approaches to negotiation. It's important to learn to recognize those and to use them where appropriate. You will also find that there are some general principles of negotiation etiquette. If you don’t recognize these or run roughshod over them, you take the risk that the other side will dig in its heels and turn a relatively small point into a deal-breaker. For example, if I say that we are very close and we want to get the deal in place and then accede to your first point, pointing out my willingness to not create issues that get in the way of the deal, that means that I expect you to take the same approach on some issues that mean more to me than they do to you. If you instead decide that it means that you are going to win on every point and never relent, there will likely come a time where my client will dig its heels in on an issue that you will not see as important. Part of the reason is that you have set off alarm bells for my client that your client will be difficult to work with when the deal is implemented.

8. Avoid High Pressure Sales Techniques. "We never negotiate on this." "We’ll only give you these terms if you sign today." "It’s our policy and our hands are tied." On occasion, you find lawyers whose conversation sounds like a Negotiating 101 class because they use every negotiating cliche in the book. While there are occasions that one of these approaches makes sense, most of the time they are boring, tedious and get in the way of meaningful negotiation. In addition, you later look foolish when you have to back off from these positions and lose important credibility when you need to take a position on something that matters. Good responses to consider are: "We have a policy never to agree to those terms. Where does that leave us?" or "OK, if it’s deal-breaker, tell us and we’ll go back and make a business decision about whether we want to call things off right now." The last response is "calling your bluff" and may not result in an answer you want to hear, but if you are willing to walk away from the deal, it can be fun and instructive to see what happens when you use it. I routinely use this approach when a publisher wants me to agree to a one-sided agreement to publish or reprint one of my own articles because I have no trouble walking away in those cases.

9. Avoid Explaining Basic Law School Concepts and Turning Everything into Legal Jargon. I'll admit that I find this approach more irritating since I started to teach a law school class. Lawyers can do a great service by explaining legal issues when they are asked to do so. However, some lawyers cannot resist jumping in with lengthy explanations of standard principles that everyone in the conversation is already familiar with. It's usually a little insulting and it's invariably not responsive to the issue at hand. Similarly, the use of legal jargon generally interferes with effective communication and will grind a discussion to a halt.

10. Remember Business People Are Not As Fascinated by Legal Issues As Lawyers Are. It's sometime difficult for lawyers to believe that not everyone wants to be a lawyer. Legal education teaches lawyers to excel at spotting legal issues. Unfortunately, almost everyone else is interested in getting the deal done. A legal issue should always be discussed in connection with potential solutions and/or the business risks involved in making one choice over another. Raising "interesting" legal issues in a negotiation meeting is pretty much a "no-no." If a legal issue will affect your client, you need to discuss it privately, not brainstorm about it in the meeting. I'm fascinated by the number of lawyers who will launch into rambling, thinking-out-loud discussions of legal issues that may have a negative impact on their clients.

11. Don't Be a Know-it-all. I've always found negotiating sessions to be a great way to learn more about my client's business, the other side's business, the industry and what economic and other issues are most important these days. I even have a tendency to ask questions about processes and the subject matter of the agreement. In a good number of cases, learning more about the underlying subject matter will help make the agreement better or show ways that an "irresolvable" issue can be handled satisfactorily. Too many lawyers take the attitude that either there is nothing new under the sun or that they don’t have anything to learn. A big part of this approach comes from an unwillingness to admit they don't know something, which will be taken as a sign of weakness. Unfortunately, the result is that the lawyer doesn't "hear" what the client insists is a key concern or that they use a "standard" agreement for something that is not standard at all. My favorite example is lawyers who want to use standard software license agreements for application service provider arrangements. As lawyers like to say, those are "apples and oranges," and not interchangeable at all.

12. Don't Be Condescending. There's a step past being a know-it-all that will get you in trouble. Taking a condescending approach will push hot buttons, which means that it can, in certain cases, be used as a tactic, but most of the time it will cause the other side to stiffen its opposition. Most lawyers respond very negatively to being treated in a condescending matter, almost as if it is part of the "lawyer personality." Taking that approach with a lawyer is almost guaranteed to make him or her less cooperative. Taking that approach with the business person on the other side is likely both to confirm stereotypes about lawyers and make the business person less likely to agree to legal changes. Taking that approach with your client, which I've seen too often, is unforgivable in my book.

13. Don't Cut Off or Undercut Your Client. I cringe when I see or hear this one. I have the old-fashioned notion that a lawyer should be on the side of his or her client and be of assistance. While I don't think that this point needs much explanation, the fact is that it occurs all too often. If I think I can help by jumping in, I use the agreed-upon signal or pass a note to my client. Too often lawyers jump in when they don't understand what their client is saying and either address a point that is not at issue or confuse a point that everyone else was clear on. This is especially true when the discussion focuses on a technology issue that is not understood by the lawyer.

14. Don't Interrupt or Talk Over the Other Party. Lawyers are used to arguments and dealing with other lawyers. Non-lawyers are not. Lawyers have learned not to take things personally, but that's not usually the case for non-lawyers. To my horror, I listened recently to a lawyer interrupt the ultimate business decision-maker for my client, talk over the top of him and generally not let him get in a word edgewise. At the same time, the lawyer was doing the same thing to her client. I honestly think that I could feel that lawyer's client sinking down into his chair over the telephone. People will attribute the behavior of another party's lawyer to the other party and a lawyer's rudeness can have a very negative affect on a deal.

15. Don't Imply You Don’t Trust the Other Side For No Reason. Look, sometimes there are good reasons that you don't trust the other side. In my opinion, if that's the case, you need to be questioning whether you want to do the deal at all. In those cases, it's important to address the issue directly. However, there is no good reason to imply that you don't trust the other party for no reason at all. Here's a great example. The conversation is over, everyone feels great and it's time to turn to the lawyers to draft the changes. I ask for the Microsoft Word version of the document so I can easily make the changes, noting that the other side sent the prior draft as in the PDF format. The proper answer should be 'yes." If you have concerns about changes not being properly reflected in a redlined version, take steps on your end to be able to prepare a redlined version that you can check. Here's what recently happened to me that I would caution you to avoid at all costs. "No, we can't do that. We'd have to check what you send us word by word to make sure that you didn't change things other than what we talked about." My client said, "But that’s what 'Track Changes' are for." The other attorney would not give an inch and my client was looking at paying me to type in a whole set of changes by hand when an electronic version was readily available. There was a certain irony to this situation because an earlier draft from the other side contained metadata that should have been scrubbed before the document was sent to us. In this case, I resolved the situation by saying that I'd simply copy what I needed out of the PDF document, being 99% sure that they hadn't taken steps to prevent me from doing that. Not surprisingly, we got the Word document the next day. What purpose did insulting us serve?

16. Remember That It's About the Deal, Not About You. It's easy for lawyers to get caught up in being the lawyer and wanting to take the stage. What almost invariably results is that the focus moves away from getting the deal done. The best lawyers keep their clients' concerns and the deal as their priorities. That's a hard skill to learn, but one that benefits clients greatly.

Conclusion. It is no easy chore to try to follow each of these rules, but they give lawyers a good target to shoot at and clients a good checklist to use in preparing and evaluating their lawyers. Notice that all these rules can be followed no matter how easy-going or aggressive a lawyer might be. Those tactics can and do vary from one deal to the next and you can be extremely aggressive and still follow every one of these rules. These rules create a solid foundation from which you can advance a deal, protect clients and treat everyone in a way that will lead to good ongoing relationships. The contract is important, but ultimately the business relationship you develop matters most.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

December 08, 2005

Useful Technologies We Don't Use

A great conversation-starting article from Dave Pollard, one of my favorite bloggers, lists four "Useful Technologies That Are Too Complicated or Geeky to Use."

As a preview, they are:

1. Videoconferencing (although I've recently seen a videoconferencing demo that really impressed me).

2. Voice recognition (it's getting better, but it fits the description).

3. 3D Display Video Eyewear (I'd like to see this one actually work well).

4. Music and Video Composers (It'd be great if these got easier to use).

Given my bad luck with cell phones, I'd be tempted to put them on my list.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:09 PM | Comments (0)

Keeping Pace While Keeping Your Cash Flow: Technology Leasing for Lawyers - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. I first wrote about technology leasing for law firms in the late 1990s in my Lawyers Weekly USA column. I revisited the subject in 2004. I'm intrigued by the opportunities leasing can create to reach higher and farther when implementing technologies. You may decide against leasing, but it's always a good idea to "run the numbers" and consider leasing as an option.]

Keeping Pace While Keeping Your Cash Flow: Technology Leasing for Lawyers

Remember the first time that you realized that the reason your neighbor was driving a new BMW was not because he was embezzling money from his employer but because he was leasing the BMW? Now we take for granted that many people with new cars are leasing them, in the process changing attitudes toward leasing and the culture of ownership.

The next time you notice an opposing party with another new notebook computer or a competitor law firm with all new hardware, you might be seeing evidence of the movement of technology leasing into the legal profession.

The adoption of technology leasing by lawyers and law firms should not surprise you. Many small businesses lease technology as a common practice. Some have suggested that as many as 80% of all businesses use or have used technology leasing to one degree or another.

The New Popularity of Technology Leasing for Law Firms

Computer technology is an attractive area to consider leasing. Computer systems get outdated quickly. There are good reasons to keep pace with technological change. Experts consistently recommend replacing computers on about a three-year schedule. After three years, the typical computer has little or no market value and will no longer be covered by warranty. Hardware costs, especially for servers, add up quickly and may require large cash outlays for new purchases.

The combination of these factors creates a situation that is similar to the new car sales business before leasing became so prominent. As a result, many individuals have started to look for comparable leasing opportunities for computer systems.

A new car lease is an excellent analogy when considering technology leasing. There are financial aspects of the decision – effective rates, time value of money, total costs, and the like. There are economic considerations – cash on hand, available credit, and the like. There are needs factors – potential growth, future requirements, likely usage, and the like. Finally, there are some X factors – “moving up” to a platform you can’t afford to buy, having newer and better equipment, meeting prestige or other requirements, simply getting what you want, and the like.

While there are some people who can make the lease vs. buy decision purely based on financial factors, most of us will make the decision as a result of a more complex dynamic.

The good news is that many creative leasing options are available to small businesses and individuals, one or more of these options may make good economic sense for you, and the so-called “smart leases” or “value leases” extend the benefit of leasing by, in certain cases, letting you bundle hardware, software and consulting services into a single monthly payment.

If you strip the business of a law practice of all the subtleties, we are ultimately in a cash flow business. The main goal of both a new firm and an existing practice is to reach and maintain a positive cash flow. In that light, technology leasing deserves a close look as a way to spread out expenses and create a more predictable cash flow, in addition to the benefits of keeping you current on technology.

Leasing is especially attractive to law firms that want to stay closer to the cutting edge in technology and to smooth out their cash flow and to protect their working capital while avoiding large periodic expenses for the purchase of new technology.

Technology as a Utility Cost and Other Financial Considerations

Legal technology consultant, Bill Coplin, in St. Louis, Missouri, explained the benefits of leasing to me quite a few years ago and the same principles still apply today. His approach goes to the root of the issue. He believes that leasing allows law firms to "fix their costs per seat" for technology on an ongoing basis. But he goes further than that and says, "All firms should begin to look at computer costs as utility costs and not capital costs." A lease allows you to stay at an appropriate level of technology for a set monthly cost that you can budget for in advance.

However, the lease analysis is often far less sophisticated or subtle. Studies are consistently showing that technology expenses have grown to roughly 5% to 6% of the total expenses of the average law firm. At these levels, paying cash may no longer be a viable option. Even firms that traditionally only pay cash or wait to purchase technology until the proverbial “good year” will look at leasing options today once they see the dollars required for a purchase and factor in software, training, support and other services. Often those firms will cut costs and cut corners on other parts of the package, most often training, and not realize all the hoped-for benefits of a technology upgrade. Sometimes this approach is known as being penny wise and pound foolish.

The “smart” leases give you a way to roll services, hardware and software into your monthly lease payment. This type of bundling allows a firm to consider an appropriate monthly cost of technology and reach a little higher on hardware, while not cutting corners on training and support. For example, a bundled lease may even provide a way for a smaller firm to afford a high-level consulting firm, better software or a robust network infrastructure.

Can you just walk into a leasing company and expect to obtain a lease? Not necessarily. You still have to show credit-worthiness. Be aware that some technology leasing companies may require more financials than a small or new law firm can provide. On the other hand, vendors such as Dell, HP, Microsoft and others offer leasing options to their small business customers as a standard option and may prove to be better alternatives for certain firms. In each case, however, leasing companies and vendors will probably more willing to work with you than traditional banks.

The Leasing Mentality

In many law offices, the newest and best technology can be often be found in the copiers, which are typically the only pieces of equipment a firm is leasing. Lawyers, however, tend to think of computers as capital costs or as equipment that they must own. Are copiers really so different?

A lessee is a user, not an owner. We often are caught up in the notion of ownership. However, in the case of the office itself, copiers and our cars, we are quite comfortable with leasing. Technology leasing requires a similar approach, or a “leasing mentality."

In other words, if you are currently leasing your car, you may be very receptive to leasing your computer. If, on the other hand, you are proud of telling people that your car has 150,000 miles on it and you haven't yet noticed that you tend to start out many conversations with "my mechanic was saying the other day ...", you may have more difficulty.

As a general rule, younger lawyers, lawyers starting a solo or small firm practice and lawyers with small bank accounts will tend to have a leasing mentality.

Leasing Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages of leasing include:

Reduce your initial investment and capital expenditures

Spread out your technology costs over time

Make your technology costs more predictable for budgeting and other purposes

Give you favorable tax treatment in certain cases

Make it easier for you to upgrade computers and systems

Allow you to bundle software and services costs into monthly lease payment

Reduce the impact on your cash availability and credit limits

You may be able to qualify for a lease more easily than for a loan

Lessor handles disposal of old equipment

Offers you better terms than available for bank loans or other financing

Gives you the convenience of one-stop shop

Disadvantages

You do not own your equipment

Potentially larger total outlay of funds over the term of the lease

Cancellation fees will likely apply if you want to get out of a lease

Leases may not be assignable or contain other onerous provisions

Financial viability of lessor may affect your lease arrangement

Make it too easy to add additional equipment

If not carefully crafted, you may not get desired tax benefits

Leases may be based on prices for equipment substantially higher than what you could buy the equipment for

Actual finance rate may be quite high

In the case of vendor leases, becoming “captive” to one provider

Getting Your Toes Wet

Some law firms test out the idea of leasing with notebook computers before moving to leasing desktop computers. The duration of leases for notebooks is typically eighteen to twenty-four months, while leases for desktop computers typically last twenty-four to thirty-six months.

Leases can be creative, customized and flexible. A leasing arrangement may involve a master lease schedule with a phase-in of equipment. Another type of lease might allow you to add equipment on an as-needed basis and simply incorporate new items into the lease arrangement.

As mentioned above, leasing companies, hardware vendors and some consulting firms can put together a package that includes hardware, software and consulting services into a single monthly lease payment. Some leasing companies, however, may require a fixed percentage of the lease to be based on the hardware.

Another good starting point to experiment with leasing is with a new network server. I know of several lawyers who received quotes for the server set-ups they wanted that greatly exceeded what they had budgeted for all technology costs. Buying a server is far more than simply buying the “box.” As a result, firms often cut corners on memory, backup, redundancy and other important features when they make the initial purchase and try to eke more service out of badly outdated servers as replacement time approaches. Given the vital importance of stable and well-run networks to today’s law firm, these approaches create vulnerabilities at precisely the place you want to be strongest. A lease arrangement for your server will let you experiment with the leasing concept in a limited way, but allow you to take advantage of cost-spreading and other benefits of leasing to help you get the sufficient and reliable network infrastructure you need.

End of Lease Options

What happens at the end of a lease? Despite the available purchase option, the purchase of three-year-old, heavily-used equipment at the end of a lease term is relatively uncommon. Typically, a lessee will simply order new replacement equipment and have the lessor take away the old equipment. In other cases, the lease term is simply extended with the monthly payment kept the same for any new equipment. In effect, the lease never ends. The lessee will typically be working with the leasing company well in advance of when the lease term expires to work out the various options for bringing in a new technology package.

By working under a master lease agreement or by staggering the terms of multiple leases (sometimes referred to as “layered leases”), you can get the new equipment you need when you need it without ever incurring a large capital investment for purchasing equipment. In some cases, you might even upgrade all of your equipment with no change in your monthly cash outlay for technology.

A lease also eliminates the growing concern about how to dispose of old computers properly. The leasing company will take back your computers and handle disposal. On the other hand, it is vital that you have your data “wiped” or electronically “shredded” from hard drives before turning computers back to the lease company.

Tax Issues

Leases, especially those that bundle hardware, software and services, raise a number of tax issues. I want to highlight two key points about taxes.

First, there are some significant tax consequences arising out of the different methods of leasing. Consulting with your tax advisor before entering into a lease is highly recommended, especially since tax laws relevant to the leasing decision have changed recently. One reason to use a computer leasing company is the expertise it will probably have on tax issues and its experience and flexibility in structuring leases. As a general matter, you will want an “operating lease” rather than a “capital lease” and a fair market value end-of-lease purchase option rather than a $1 end-of-lease purchase option. Bundling software and services into a hardware lease may also have significant tax consequences.

Second, calculating the relative costs of buying vs. leasing accurately requires that you consider the impact of taxes and time value of money. Simply adding up the total of all lease payments and comparing it to the cash payment required will not give you accurate information upon which to make a decision. In addition, changes in Section 179 that raised the total amount of equipment that can be expensed in the first year of a business may lead to completely different financial conclusions for a start-up and an ongoing firm.

Evaluating Leasing Companies

As I suggested above, entering into a leasing arrangement will probably result in a long-term business relationship. In doing your due diligence on a leasing company, look closely at:

The length of time a leasing company has been in business and its reputation in the market.

The leasing company's financial strength and credit-worthiness.

Does a firm keep its financial paper? A company that services its own leases is preferable to a lease broker.

The expertise of the leasing representative.

Are there hidden costs, such as closing costs, “documentation fees,” or other service charges?

The administrative abilities of the lessor, particularly its record of paying vendors on time. A leasing company with a bad record with vendors may make those vendors less willing to work with you.

Knowledge of the legal business. A leasing company with expertise and experience in the legal industry should be able to come up with more creative options and customize a leasing arrangement for you, with a greater sensitivity to lawyers' concerns.

Key Terms in Leases

Once when leasing a car, I had a salesperson ask me if, as a lawyer, I wanted some time to read all the provisions carefully. I said, “Will we be able to change anything I don’t like?” Sheepishly, the salesperson said, “I really doubt it.” I suggested that, in that case, it probably wasn’t an effective use of my time to do a complete review of the lease agreement.

In some cases, you or your firm will have limited, if any, flexibility in negotiating a technology lease. In other cases, you may have enough leverage to get some concessions.
Here are a few provisions to pay attention to:

Duration of lease – is it appropriate for the leased equipment?

Total cost of lease and all additional charges

Cancellation options and penalties

Assignment provisions for both you and the lessor

Automatic renewal provisions

Permissible rate increases

Ability to exchange or update to more modern equipment

Service or maintenance charges or plans, especially mandatory plans

Contract language required for desired tax treatment

Leasing Tips

Consider the bundling option. Interestingly, a hardware vendor, a software vendor or a consultant may each have the ability to combine hardware, software and services into a single lease payment. Ask each of them what options are available.

A diversified approach makes the best sense. A combination of leases, purchases, durations and providers will often produce the best overall results.

If you are committed to certain providers, the convenience of dealing with one arrangement may outweigh other benefits of diversification for you. But be sure to revisit this issue from time to time.

Learn about leasing options from websites and other resources before you ask about them.

Proceeding as if you will make a purchase and arriving at a final price before announcing that you want to consider leasing may result in better pricing.

Leasing will work best for you if you use it as a weigh to upgrade and keep current your technology.

If you do not have a leasing mentality or cannot see technology as an ongoing monthly cost of doing business, much like a utility, reduce your stress and stay in your comfort zone by continuing to purchase equipment. However, remind yourself that you may give up competitive advantages to stick to your old ways.

Keep in mind the powerful impact leasing can have on your cash flow and consider whether leasing will enable you to free up money for needed other investments in people, marketing or other areas. What are the opportunity costs of using large amounts of cash for technology purchases? What else might you do with that money? Why not use leasing as a way to do both?

Make sure that you understand the lease arrangement and that the lease agreement actually reflects what your arrangement is.

Conclusion

Clients are putting pressure on firms to keep current with technology. Once a firm spends a significant amount of money on computers, there is a reluctance to make the same kind of cash outlay within a few years. As a result, firms have a tendency to hang on to outdated technology or to cut corners on training and support.

For existing firms, leasing offers a path to make those upgrades and maintain a good technology platform without making significant capital expenditures every few years. For new firms and solos, leasing offers a great way to reduce initial start-up costs, acquire enough technology to create a competitive advantage, and create a positive cash flow.

The advantages and disadvantages of leasing may result in firms reaching different conclusions for different technology at different times, so it is important to analyze the leasing option carefully each time and not make a permanent decision always to buy or always to lease. In many cases, a mixed approach to buying and leasing will make good sense. The path to avoid is the one that avoids any consideration of leasing at all. If you are starting a new firm, however, technology leasing, including bundled arrangements, may be one of the wisest decisions you make.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.dennskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 07:57 PM | Comments (0)

December 07, 2005

The Unique Legal Technology Needs of Medium-sized Law Firms

As many of you know, I've spent the better part of my legal career at The Stolar Partnership, a medium-sized law firm of roughly 40 - 50 lawyers when I was there.

My legal tech career probably began on the morning when I got into my office early and found a large manila envelope on my chair. I opened it and found a set of keys, a pager and a memo from our then one-person IT department that began: "As you have probably guessed, this is my resignation letter." It went on to say that that he gave me the memo because I was the only one in the who could understand the importance of and what to do with the info in the memo.

For better or worse, he was right and it made for an interesting day and next few months, to say the least.

So, I've always had a special understanding of the unique legal technology needs of medium-sized law firms. By medium-sized, I mean firms of roughly fifteen to maybe one hundred lawyers.

I've noticed, as have many others, that there are lots of great consultants and other resources for small firms and solos, and, of course, for large law firms.

However, there seems to be a gap when it comes to help specifically tailored for medium-sized law firms. As a local St. Louis sportscaster likes to say, they are kind of caught betwixt and between.

I've spent quite a bit of time talking with lawyers in medium-sized firms over the past few years. I have an affinity and an affection for this group - we have a lot in common.

Firms in this category have a difficult time evaluating legal technology options and face an overwhelming, sometimes paralyzing, number of choices. I often hear that these firms simply do not know what options they really have.

I've also found that these firms have two overriding concerns. First, they want to be sure that they are not wasting money they are spending or making truly bad decisions. Second, even with limited budgets, they want to identify a few technology projects that will be good projects that really help them. I absolutely agree that those are the big two concerns for firms of this size.

So, I've found myself thinking a lot about this group of firms and have decided that I want to make this category of firms my primary focus in my consulting. It's the category of firm or corporate legal department I can understand well and probably help the most.

As a first step down that road, I'm introducing some new, I hope reasonably-priced, consulting packages that focus specifically on the two biggest concerns decision-makers in medium-sized firms have expressed to me over the years. I described the packages as "A Second Pair of Eyes" and here are some of the details:

++++++++++++

A Second Set of Eyes: Legal Technology Audit and Strategic Planning Packages from Dennis Kennedy

Too many law firms and corporate legal departments flush away a surprising amount of money on poor technology choices and implementations. Maybe you work at one of them. Poor buying decisions, wasteful and duplicative projects, failure to take advantage of volume licenses and many other factors result in the waste of dollars firms actually spend. Failing to plan or put together any kind of cohesive approach to technology spending in the future will result in missed opportunities, misspent funds and mistaken priorities.

No one likes the terms "audit" and "strategic plan" these days, but the fact is that, whatever you want to call these processes, failing to do them will waste time and money, make people unhappy, and leave your firm unprepared for client demands.

In most cases, law firms have good people at work on these projects, but they are stretched too thin and simply do not have the time to become familiar with everything in the world of legal technology.

In many cases, what is needed is not a full-blown, expensive top-to-bottom consulting project, but simply a "second set of eyes" to look at your situation and help you set priorities, redirect projects appropriately and make better decisions.

Dennis Kennedy offers three standard packages designed to give you that "second set of eyes" from one of the most highly-regarded authorities in legal technology today.

1. Legal Technology Audit Package. Dennis Kennedy takes an overview look at your existing technology and your current projects based on telephone interviews and documentation you provide. Using his experience and knowledge of the industry, he provides you with a report of what you are doing right and what you can do better, with a focus on identifying places where you are wasting money or spending money in unproductive ways. You get a report, with a set of action steps for you to consider as ways to save or better spend your technology dollars. Price: $2,500.

2. The No-nonsense Quick Strategic Technology Plan Package. Dennis Kennedy will review your current technology plans, discuss your strategies, ideas and wish lists, and do a high-level review of your current technology set-up based on telephone interviews and documentation you provide. He will then produce a report that recommends three to five strategic technology goals tailored to your firm and action steps for working toward those goals. Price: $3,500.

3. The "Second Set of Eyes" Combined Package. The "audit" and "strategic plan" pieces fit together like hand in glove. You can combine both phases into a single package. Price: $5,000.

I've put a flyer (PDF) on my website here.

If you'd like to talk in more detail about these packages or other medium-sized law firm issues, contact me.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)

A Memo to the IT Department: The Lawyer's Wish List for Knowledge Management Projects - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. I thought I'd complete my thoughts on knowledge management (KM) with this short, very informal article I wrote in 2004. It's a simple "ten tips" article, again pulled from a seminar presentation I gave. What's interesting to me now is that it introduces two ideas that became very important for me as I discussed KM (and, frankly, other legal tech issues). First, bridging the wide communications gap between lawyers and IT people is vital. Second, there is an element of creativity in what the best lawyers do that often is not appreciated by the designers and implementers of legal software. If you can identify and honor those creative elements, your chances for successful projects increase dramatically. ]

A Memo to the IT Department: The Lawyer's Wish List for Knowledge Management Projects

If you are a lawyer in a firm of any significant size, you have been or will one day be involved in a "knowledge management" project. You will hear of the enormous benefits it will bring to you, how law firms are in the "knowledge business," and that it will cost a lot of money. You may not hear some of the other benefits because you are thinking about what "a lot of money" may mean. You will hear more buzzwords than you can imagine and you may start to think that you heard some of the same talk about the document management system (DMS) the firm implemented a few years ago.

At worst, you may feel like your firm wants to run a vacuum cleaner on your brain, suck out everything that you know and then discard you. You may see the potential benefits, but your most fervent hope is that the new system does not make it any harder than it already is for you to do your work.

If you had the time in your busy day to jot down your wish list for a KM project, it would probably look something like this:

1. Honor My Uniqueness. Even if you really don't think that what I do is unique, I certainly do. I've developed ways of practicing law successfully in a high stress environment. If you come in and act like you can do it better than I can or that what I do is no different from any other lawyer, I will push back.

2. Understand My Practice. Many technology people assume that every lawyer's practice looks like a litigator's practice. Nothing could be further from the truth. Make the effort to learn what I do, who my clients are, what documents I produce and what my typical work day is like.

3. Ask Me What Must be Fixed. Lawyers are great at spotting problems. You'll need a thick skin, but sit down with me and ask me what can be made to work better and what simply does not work. I will tell you.

4. Ask Me Questions About Anything You Do Not Understand. I know that lawyers talk too fast, use a lot of jargon and assume that people are more familiar with lawyers do than they really are. Stop me. Ask the questions you have. I'll slow down and explain, or tell you to come back when I have the time to explain. I don't care if you keep coming back and asking more questions as long as we can move to a good result. On some days, I'll be happy for the interruption.

5. Listen to What I Tell You. I will think that I gave you my key points in order of importance. I will expect to see that you have addressed these issues. If you fall down on this point more than a few times, I simply will not trust you and will be reluctant to contribute.

6. Quick Responses are Usually Good Responses. If we talk about a feature or a wish I have and you take several weeks to get back to me, I may forget what I told you or I may criticize you for doing exactly what I told you to do. Lawyers like people who are responsive. Lawyers are also comfortable working with drafts of documents. Show me a quick prototype or mock-up and I'll be more helpful.

7. Make it Easy. I guarantee you that your vision of how a page should be laid out and my vision will be very different. However, I'm more likely to be convinced that my vision is correct. I will not be so insistent if you give me ways to do common tasks in a very easy way, such as by clicking on a special button, giving me a custom menu or other means.

8. Keep in Mind That Lawyers Are Creative. In many cases, KM efforts treat lawyers as if our main skill and need is to locate and re-create old documents. That could not be more wrong. The best lawyers see connections in what appear to be unconnected things and solve problems before others even see that a problem might exist. Lawyers need to look at things in a number of different perspectives, "slice and dice" information, trace out relationships, brainstorm and use a number of creative processes not often associated with lawyers. If you lock me into an elaborate and inflexible category system or, worse, put me into a world limited to Boolean queries, I simply cannot do my work.

9. Understand the Demands of a Billable Hours World. The efficiencies you can create for me have real consequences in a billable hours compensation system. Some of the resistance you see to your best ideas may come from my unresolved issues about compensation and the like. Help me understand the implications better and we can work well together.

10. Limit Your Technical Jargon. We have enough jargon of our own. We care much more about the results than the process you are using. If you meet me half way on your jargon, I'll try to meet you half way on mine.

Conclusion. It's not too difficult to work with me. Treat me as an individual, not a "knowledge worker unit." Seek out my opinions and listen carefully to what I have to say. Show that you want to help me make my job easier and do it better. Try to talk with me and not at me. We can get farther by working together instead of against each other.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.dennskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:26 PM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2005

Ten Tips for Successful KM Projects in Law Firms - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. This article is an article on knowledge management from 2004. I'd probably include more discussion of blawgs and RSS today. It's practical stuff and was taken from a KM seminar I did in 2004. As I've mentioned, I really enjoy writing and speaking about knowledge management and don't get as many chances as I'd like to do so. I'm now quite bullish on today's KM tools and techniques. I have not updated this article.]

Ten Tips for Successful KM Projects in Law Firms

Law firms struggle with knowledge management. On the one hand, law firms are classic examples of information and knowledge businesses. On the other hand, managing lawyers has often been likened to "herding cats." Combining "knowledge" with "management" in the law firm setting has proven to be surprisingly difficult.

The legal landscape is littered with the debris of abandoned brief banks, ineffective document management systems and little-used practice management tools. We have reached this point not through lack of effort or failure to make the required investments, but rather because of difficulties inherent in today's practice of law. Some of these difficulties are well-known – emphasis on billable hours, lack of incentive structures, and the legendary "busy-ness" of lawyers. Others are more subtle and perhaps less subject to change.

Walk into the office of almost any lawyer. What are you likely to see? A desk piled high with files and scattered papers. Files and papers covering the floor, credenza, chairs and any other available space. A computer monitor covered with Post-it notes. The lawyer's secretary's cubicle may look no different. How realistic is it to think that we can transform this picture into a sleek, well-oiled, computer-based knowledge management system?

There's no question, however, that there are many good reasons to try to do so. The following ten tips will point you in directions that maximize your chances for success in legal KM projects. While nothing can guarantee success in trying to manage anything having to do with lawyers, these steps will help you move toward solid, measurable and appreciated results in your projects.

1. Bag the Jargon and Give Us Buttons. If you use the word "taxonomy," you will lose the interest of many lawyers. If you use "taxonomy" and "ontology" in the same sentence, you may lose them forever. Concepts like "tacit" and "explicit" knowledge are simply not helpful to most lawyers. Forget the "XML" and "SQL."

Lawyers tend to be doers. They can learn the underlying concepts, but will do so only if there is a good reason to do so. Because the emphasis is on "doing," it is important to stress the "what" rather than the "how." Find out what lawyers what to accomplish, give them a method to accomplish it, and then work on making it as simple as possible to execute that process. Ideally, give lawyers a button to click on or a tab that shows the information that they want. Hide the process and highlight the result.

2. Try to Adapt the System to Lawyer Behavior and Not Vice Versa. After twenty years of practicing law, I have a tendency to laugh when I hear about knowledge management systems that require significant changes in lawyer behavior. I heard recently of a system in which lawyers would be expect to fill-in thirty-five (!) fields of information for each document. One CKO I know checked the firm's document management system and found that at least 20% of all documents were classified only with default options (e.g., Firm – Miscellaneous). I have had lawyers tell me that there is no way that they would enter even two fields. You can bring a KM system to a lawyer, but you cannot make a lawyer use it.

This behavior is clearly self-defeating, but you make a big mistake if you think that it does not exist and will not persist. When in a hurry, every lawyer will develop work-arounds to avoid cumbersome data entry requirements. If you require fields, give lawyers drop-down menus.

More important, however, is that the implementation of any successful KM system requires a solid understanding of how lawyers work and how they will not work. If you design a system that does not reflect the way lawyers work, you all but guarantee its failure. Because lawyers are creatures of habit, especially in times of stress, and conservative by nature, expecting behavioral changes, especially in times of high stress, is simply not realistic.

3. One Size Does Not Fit All. You want to be very careful about rolling out a "firm-wide" knowledge management system that looks and works the same for all lawyers. Lawyers work in many different ways. Practices vary from department to department and from lawyer to lawyer. The needs and practices of litigators are far different than those of corporate or transactional lawyers. Tax lawyers and employment lawyers, for example, may have completely different needs. A system that fits the way some of my former law partners work would be a horror show for me.

If you do not fully understand these differences and you attempt to roll out a single-interface, single-approach KM system, I guarantee you that it will be "doomed." Your odds of significant adoption, let alone success, will be greatly diminished. You will see significant "leakage" out of your system as lawyers use their own work-arounds or even ignore the system.

You must take the time on the front-end to understand how lawyers work and also look for ways to build in flexibility and personalization to make it easy for lawyers to use your system in a way that complements how they work.

4. Enter Data Once; Use Many Times. For many years, the promise of document management, case management and other legal software has been that we can enter information only once and then it can be used in many places. The reality, however, is that, as a lawyer, I found that I was entering client and matter numbers in many different places, time after time. In too many cases, information that is already in the "system" must be re-entered with regularity. ODBC was supposed to make this problem go away and now most legal back office programs, DMS and the like are all built on SQL databases.

However, far too often, information in one database is not used by other databases. Given the tendency of lawyers to disregard or work-around field entry requirements, it is vital to use existing database information to automatically generate metadata about documents. Even if the results are not perfect, they have to be better than what we are now getting. For example, in many firms, email is an unconnected island of information that exists outside of DMS. Even if all you could do was automatically and invisibly pull and assign client number and a limited amount of other metadata based on the domain name to which an email was sent, you would be miles ahead of what most firms have now.

5. Address the "Pain" and Handle the Perceived Problems. In many cases, a KM system offers lawyers solutions for problems that they do not have. For example, a common selling point for KM is that I can automatically update the cases mentioned in my documents. I am not a litigator. My documents are almost always agreements. This "feature" would play almost no role in my practice. Similarly, a system that helped me locate and use "clauses" would be more valuable than one that focuses on documents.

There has been a lot of emphasis placed on the ability to find "documents" in the world of KM. For some lawyers, this emphasis is correct. For others, the ability to locate the "expert" or other KM concepts may be far more important. In each case, however, I can guarantee that a conversation with a lawyer will reveal several places where the current system gets in the way of what the lawyer wishes to do and causes "pain." If you can identify those pains and solve them, you will build strong momentum for your KM system, often with surprisingly little effort.

6. Expand the Concept of "Document." The initial focus on "documents" in DMS proved to be unwieldy when email usage exploded and important "documents" stayed outside the DMS. Today, think about instant messages, RSS feeds, voicemail, social software, deal rooms, web meetings and more new ways people work together that all create valuable information that does not fit the standard concept of "document." As is the case in email, these new forms of communication may well contain the most valuable "knowledge" with respect to a case, transaction or other legal matter. If my KM system does not sweep this information in and make it usable, then the KM is not as useful as it could be or, worse, is potentially dangerous if I proceed on the basis that it is a complete system.

It has also become clear that expecting lawyers to fill out surveys, write memos or otherwise reduce to paper their resumes, areas of expertise and other information that would be useful to others is not wise. The use of audio and video to gather this information by interviews holds much promise in KM. Even if all you do is to assign interns to interview lawyers on video with a set of questions, you will be miles ahead of where most firms are. The results would include video, audio and transcripts. Audio and video would be especially valuable for firms with lots of offices.

In my old firm (300 lawyers), it was difficult to learn much about lawyers in other offices from the standard bios and black-and-white headshot photos you had available. If, on the other hand, I could have viewed short videos of the lawyers talking about their backgrounds and what they did, it would have been more valuable by orders of magnitude. Think about tip number 2 above for a minute. Lawyers like to talk about themselves and what they do, but they do not have the time to write all of that down. Audio and video techniques offer enormous promise.

7. Mimic the Standard Web Experience. Lawyers use Google, Amazon and any number of the other "ten most popular websites." Usability experts, such as Jakob Nielsen, confirm that the best approach to take for your own website is to adopt many of the standard navigation, placement and other practices of these sites. As a result, users take advantage of familiar skills that they have learned and used on the websites that they use most commonly. Resist the urge to create new navigation schemes or to "break" common user expectations.

Adopting a web interface or "portal" front-end to your KM system, therefore, just makes good sense, as would using Outlook as a front-end. It is difficult for lawyers and other users to move between programs that work in different ways. We are all at a point where we do not want to learn any more interfaces or find that we have to go to another program to get information. If you can mimic the common web experience and give access to the underlying information from a "start page," you can expect a great level of acceptance of your project.

8. Make Categories Flexible. I must admit that my eyes roll up into my head when people start talking about taxonomies, especially custom taxonomies. I recently abandoned yet another system of subfolders for email and bookmarks because it no longer worked. I have found that categories evolve over time and that I often will not know what the "right" category for certain information is until I am in a context where I need to use the information.

There are many problems with categories. How do you handle items that should be in multiple categories? How can I split up categories or create new subcategories? What about variations in naming? My biggest difficulty often comes when I am presented with a list of categories and my item simply does not fit any of them.

You will see occasional references to "liquid" categories or "flexible" categories as potential solutions for these kinds of issues. "Saved search" techniques may also become valuable in this context. Much work remains to be done in these areas, but a system that allows for the easy creation of new categories and the easy reassignment of items to categories will be much more acceptable than a rigid, committee-developed taxonomy system.

9. Make it Personal. If I go to Amazon.com, I will find "My Recommendations," "My WishList" and other personalized features. I can create and customize "My Yahoo," "My Excite" and "My FindLaw" pages, to mention only a few. I can use "skins" in a number of programs to make my user interface look the way I want. Certain sites with cascading style sheets (CSS) even allow me to change the look and feel of the pages I see.

Consider the likely reaction of an audience accustomed to this level of personalization and control to a KM system that is rigid, inflexible and offers no ability to customize. Nothing is more personal than knowledge management. In fact, there is an argument by some KM experts that KM can only be achieved through personal KM. If you do not give users the ability to personalize and control their experience, your odds for success will diminish greatly.

10. Hitting Solid Singles Beats Swinging for Home Runs. I cringe when I hear that a law firm plans to implement a KM "solution" for lawyers. The best approach for getting lawyers to use technology is to build momentum by introducing a string of incremental successes, each of which addresses a real-world, well-understood problem lawyers are facing while not doing violence to the way they like to practice law.

If you remember back to when you were first taught to hit a baseball, you'll probably recall someone saying over and over, "Just meet the ball. Don't try to kill it." As you adjusted to the more realistic ambition, you noticed that you began to hit the ball more consistently and probably farther than you did when you tried to swing like Babe Ruth. The same principles apply in KM for law firms. Listen carefully to what lawyers are saying, make the effort to understand how they work, develop fast prototypes that show that you listened to their concerns, and make it easy for them to do the things that they care about doing. Reduce your big ambitions, concentrate on the ball, relax and be ready to make adjustments, and focus on the solid hits. Over time, a string of solid results can build something far more spectacular than what you might have originally envisioned.

Conclusion.

Tools are very important in KM, but it will be whether you can use your KM tools to create tools that your users can easily use that will be the key to any successful KM project. KM in law firms is no easy task, but if you implement the tips in this article, you can greatly enhance your likelihood of achieving success for the long term.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:11 PM | Comments (0)

A Great Set of Microsoft Office Tips

Ed Mendelson's article "Office Problems, Solved" in PC Magazine is one of the best articles I've seen on truly useful tips for Microsoft Office programs.

From how to back up your options to how to use macros to getting rid of line breaks in pasted text, there's great stuff here.

My favorite one is how to create a Work menu for frequently used documents.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 12:02 PM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2005

December Issue of Law Practice Today Published Today

The new issue of the ABA Law Practice Management Section's webzine, Law Practice Today was published today. I'm an editor and on the board, so, in my potentially somewhat biased view, I think it's great and encourage you to check it out.

The feature article is a roundtable article called "Looking Back and Looking Forward," which got together most of the LPT editors and a few guests to talk about what technologies we actually used and liked in the last year. It's a fun and informative article. We all like the roundtable article format.

The article was written in part as an experiment in using the Web 2.0 collaboration tool, Writely (www.writely.com). To say that we liked our experiment with Writely is quite an understatement. It seems perfectly suited for use in creating this type of article. We're already planning to use it for regular roundtable articles in the future, including an article on Web 2.0 apps for the next issue.

The issue has the usual assortment of good articles. Let me highlight first Fred Faulkner's article where he revisits three predictions about legal technology he made at the beginning of the year. I have to remind Fred that it's best to write those predictions articles and either not revisit them or only revisit the ones that were on target. I learned that from the newspaper psychics. I think Fred did better than he gives himself credit for and I'm in 100% agreement with his quick predictions for 2006.

The second article I'll highlight is Patrick McKenna's excellent "Bringing Outside Voices In: The Logic For Having An Advisory Board," which I highly recommend. I must admit, however, that it did leave me thinking about whether I could come up with a way to get Patrick on my advisory board. As an aside, one of the interesting things I've noticed happening in blogging this past year is that a good number of bloggers have become informal advisory and sounding boards for each other in an organic and collaborative way.

Finally, Tom Mighell and I wrote the Strongest Links column on the topic of legal ethics resources. We didn't use Writely, though. We used an old-style technique - we used a "best of" the column approach (which was a working theme for this issue) and Tom took his excellent article on legal ethics resources from April and we updated it with some new resources and updates.

I mention the way Tom and I wrote this column because I noticed recently that some people apparently do not realize that I have been writing this column with Tom for the past year in preparation for me transitioning it over to him. Truth be told, he does most of the work on the columns (and all of the best work - I primarily handle the mistakes and typos), although they are true collaborations. Tom is enormously talented and I hate to see his efforts slighted because people make the assumption that I am the lead writer of the column. For example, the instant messaging column we did, which I think is our best, was Tom's idea. He deserves far more credit on these columns than I've seen him given lately - as they say, be careful when you assume.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)

Do-It-Yourself Knowledge Management Practical Personal KM - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. I ran across this article today. It's from 2003, and it distilled a lot of my thoughts on "personal knowledge management" (PKM) in the legal profession. I remember that it was one of my better-received articles. I really enjoy writing about knowledge management and don't get as many chances as I'd like to wribte about KM and PKM. My latest approach to PKM is that I have created a folder called Research and I save PDFs and other documents into that folder and use Copernic Desktop Search as a way to find information when I need it. In a sense, I'm creating my own little "information cloud" of locally-available information that I've already identified as potentially useful. I also still use a good number of the techniques mentioned in this article. As I mention at the note at the end of the article, I was a little pessimistic about KM when I wrote the article. I'm now quite bullish on today's KM tools and techniques. I've added a few notes in the article to update certain sections.]

Do-It-Yourself Knowledge Management: Practical Personal KM

Recent experiments implanting memory chips directly into brain tissue notwithstanding, the holy grail of integrating computer technology into the practice of law remains a distant hope. Lately, we have heard much about "knowledge management" as the new tool to "leverage" lawyer knowledge, experience and expertise and more efficiently use what we know.

There is much hype about knowledge management, or "KM" as the cognoscenti call it. KM is a nebulous, seemingly ever-changing concept that varies as each new vendor enters the field. For the average lawyer who needs a time management tool just to schedule some time to learn the differences among case management, document management, litigation management, customer relations management and practice management, the introduction of KM into the mix may be the "management" straw that breaks the camel's back.

KM software "solutions" are generally expensive and directed to big firms. They can do amazing things, but too often are not implemented in effective ways. However, the promise of KM appeals and applies to all lawyers, even if million dollar KM solutions do not.

This article takes a different approach to KM. I call it "do-it-yourself KM." I believe that individual lawyers and small firms can use existing tools, obtain inexpensive tools we don't already have and employ unused features of those programs to create simple, practical and useful personal knowledge management tools that help them not at the theoretical level, but where the rubber hits the road.

I will take a look at a number of software programs you probably already own and suggest simple ways to turn them into tools and resources that simply and quickly achieve some of the basic goals of knowledge management, such as easy retrieval of reusable knowledge materials. Try a few of these approaches and you will begin to understand the practical value of KM and use KM more effectively than the big firms with high-end but underutilized KM software.

1. Email Programs.

Collecting and retrieving relevant information easily is a key element of KM. Today, we receive much useful information through email. Email newsletters, messages from discussion lists and emails from clients and colleagues contain valuable "knowledge" that might be reusable. Emails contain references to cases or articles, instructions, recommended professionals, tips and other valuable material.

While there are many good reasons to improve your management of email, KM may provide the best incentive. I suggest the simplest of approaches: start to use folders for email. Using the "New" option under the "File" menu, you can create new folders and subfolders in your inbox. You can then copy messages you later might need into one or more of those folders. When you later are trying to remember something you saw earlier, simply use the "find" function to search the folder and you have a solid "knowledge retrieval" system. [Note: If you use Outlook, the free Lookout plug-in from Microsoft will change your entire outlook on Outlook. It is an astonishingly fast search engine that typically returns results in under a second.]

For example, for several years, I have routinely placed all of my email newsletters into a "Newsletters" folder. When I run into an issue that I think I might have seen something about recently, I run a search in that folder and generally can find the reference I need. I usually delete newsletters after they get to be six months old to keep the folder manageable.

Similarly, you might create separate folders for discussion list messages, messages from colleagues and the like. I suggest resisting the urge to set up too many folders so you don't have to figure out which folder you might have put the information into. In fact, you might just set up one folder, call it "KM" and copy any message that contains useful info into that folder for later searching. Don't forget that you can use email "rules" to automatically move or copy messages to particular folders and that can make this process even easier.

Because Outlook and other email programs do not have the greatest search tools, looking at inexpensive search tools such as Enfish (www.enfish.com) or making use of email search tools in a document manager such as Worldox (www.worldox.com) might improve this approach for you. [Note: In addition to Lookout, I also use the Copernic Desktop Search tool. Another interesting option is to use Adobe Acrobat 7's ability to create PDF files from your Outlook folders and then use Acrobat's cataloguing and indexing tools. You can also use your RSS news aggregator as another ad hoc KM repository.]

2. Word Processing.

You can find a number of tools in your word processing program that can be used for knowledge management. Sophisticated users can take advantage of autocomplete features, smart tags and wizards to create reusable material that can be invoked and reused with little or no effort. I recommend that you take a look into some of those and consider training for those features.

However, let's keep it really simple. The simplest form of KM is creating forms. When you finish a document, consider whether it might serve you later as a form. If so, replace the names with blanks, add a few notes (such as, in a lease, is it pro-lessor or pro-lessee?) and save it as a new document. Keep all your forms in one folder so you can find them easily. Merely adding the notes and a descriptive name ("Pro-lessor triple net lease form") is an enormous advantage over the common approach of trying to remember the last lease that you did.

Another simple and powerful approach is to harvest new clauses or legal arguments on a regular basis. Create a "clauses" or "legal analysis" document and, on a regular basis, copy new contract clauses you create or use, variations of clauses, arguments from briefs on standard issues and similar material into this document. Add a few notes about each and you have a stored repository of valuable work, plus the "knowledge" you associate with it by adding notes on use.

3. Document Management.

Many lawyers and firms have a document management tool, such as Worldox (www.worldox.com). These powerful tools help you identify, locate and retrieve your documents. You can do full-text searches, key word searches and associate documents with each other. In most cases, lawyers do not take full advantage of these tools.

However, with a minimal amount of effort, you can greatly enhance the KM value of these tools. In document management programs, you create a "profile" of each new document, which typically includes client and matter numbers, author name, title, etc. Lawyers hate to be bothered with filling in these profiles. As a result, it can become very difficult to find documents and the software is not as useful as it could be.

There are four simple steps to take to enhance the KM potential of your document management software. First, spend a few extra seconds filling out as much of the profile as you can. Second, when you are finished with a document, dictate some key words for your secretary to add to the profile. Third, clearly label forms and make sure that forms are kept in one place where they are easy to find. Fourth, choose title names and key words with the idea that you will want to find and reuse the documents later.

4. Contacts.

It's not what you know but whom you know. Outlook, other contact managers and practice management programs will keep track of your contacts for you.

Too many attorneys, however, enter only the basic address, phone number and email information. Each of these tools provides places to enter additional data, to group contacts by categories and to retain important information about your contacts, from names of secretaries, birthdays, where you met and much, much more. A minimal amount of effort to add this information to a contact listing can pay off big later.

Also, most of these tools let you process the information you collect. Do you know which of your contacts provided you with the most referrals last year? Would you like to know that the next time you have an extra hockey ticket and see a note that the contact is a hockey fan? [Lookout, Copernic Desktop Search and other desktop search tools make searching contact information easier and faster today. If you upload your contacts to LinkedIn and use its "grab" tool, you can harvest contact information from emails automatically and even use the LinkedIn network with ease.]

5. Internet Bookmarks.

You can find a lot of great information on the Internet, but it's not so easy to find it again when you want it. Traditionally, browser programs have allowed you to collect links to web sites either as bookmarks (in the Mozilla family of browsers (FireFox or Netscape)) or as favorites (in Microsoft's Internet Explorer).

Your list of bookmarks or favorites can quickly get overwhelming and unwieldy. The good news is that the browsers contain organization and management tools. These tools (e.g., those found on the drop-down "favorites" menu in Internet Explorer) allow you to create folders, move and organize your bookmarks and favorites. Using convenient folders and cleaning up your list of favorites can make them substantially more useful and aid you in retrieving information that you have already found once.

There are also third party bookmark managers (e.g., PowerMarks, www.powermarks.com) and online bookmark repositories which allow you to access the same set of bookmarks no matter where you are. [Note: There is still no "great" bookmark management tool. I like the Omea Reader from JetBrains and also use Copernic Desktop Search to index and search bookmarks.]

There are also great tools like Copernic Agent (www.copernic.com) that allow you to search multiple search engines and once and to save and reuse the search requests. These tools are another set of simple and inexpensive tools that provide excellent KM results.

6. Practice Management Software.

According to a recent ABA survey, the number of lawyers reporting that they use case or practice management tools (for example, Time Matters (www.timematters.com) and Amicus Attorney (www.amicus.ca)) has doubled in the past year. [Note: Most recently, I've heard that these programs have a market penetration of about 20% in the legal industry.] These programs have definite KM implications because they offer ways to collect, retrieve and, most important, share knowledge and expertise.

The key to using these tools for KM is to start to think about ways to use them other than just for standard office and case management. Here are just a few examples in Time Matters: stored Lexis search capability, full-text search tools, and the ability to create "non-client" cases and matters for stored research, training tools, forms and instructions. Thinking about these kinds of uses will help you realize the potential of these programs as a great platform to implement simple and beneficial KM initiatives.

7. Document Assembly.

A significant number of lawyers are using document assembly programs (such as HotDocs (www.hotdocs.com) and GhostFill (www.ghostfill.com)) to automate the drafting of documents. These programs allow the user to answer a set of questions and automatically generate a good first draft of a document based upon those answers.

With only a little extra effort, these tools can have KM implications. Implementing a routine effort to add new clauses to the document assembly system will help you consistently use your latest and best approach and save you from reinventing the wheel. More importantly, building some explanations into the system will help with training, minimize mistakes and improve quality.

For example, if the user of your document assembly system reached a question that gave a number of choices, you might explain in what circumstances a choice was or was not appropriate. In addition, by using the answer to a question to generate all related clauses, you could eliminate situations where a user answered questions in a way that produced inconsistent results. All of this leverages the knowledge and expertise that you have gained in your practice and turns it into practical results – the primary goal of all KM. [NOTE: I am the eternal optimist when it comes to document assembly. I created some document assembly applications for my law firm more than fifteen years ago. The adoption in the legal industry has proceeded quite a bit more slowly than I expected, to put it mildly. In 2005, we saw the arrival of some new tools and approaches that make document assembly an area to watch in 2006. People still underestimate the value of simple document assembly apps.]

8. Networking.

Even the best KM effort has limited impact if you implement it only for yourself, while even the simplest KM effort can have results multiplied many times over if your whole office shares it. In each case where you consider a KM effort, look for ways that you can use your computer network. Because case management tools are usually network applications, they make an excellent platform for simple do-it-yourself KM efforts.

As many lawyers have also discovered, there is KM power in other networks. The ABA Solosez list and state bar email discussion lists are often cited as invaluable resources for solo and small firm attorneys to get advice, recommendations and help over the Internet. [NOTE: The network of bloggers is an amazingly valuable network for me these days.]

9. CaseMap.

CaseMap (www.casesoft.com) is a litigation knowledge management tool that costs under $500. CaseMap allows you to work with the facts and issues of your case in powerful ways to formulate strategy, assess the strengths and weaknesses of your case and organize and present your case in the most persuasive manner. It also unlocks all the information in your case that is typically hidden in legal pads, banker's boxes and attorney's heads.

For example, in CaseMap, you and your colleagues can assess each fact in your case for its relative strength or weakness and determine whether it is favorable or unfavorable. Facts can also be associated with specific issues. In how many cases would it be helpful to you to have a list of all strongly favorable, undisputed facts on the causation issue, with the names of the relevant witnesses and researched associated with each fact?

CaseMap is an inexpensive and powerful KM tool that no litigators should be without.

10. Routine Recording and Transcription.

Do you routinely tape your presentations and arguments? Why not? If you think you have a good reason, why not videotape or audiotape your practice sessions?

Recording spoken and performance materials can be an excellent KM tool. The recordings might be used for training other lawyers. Transcripts might be made so that the material s could later be reused for articles, seminar materials, email newsletter or web site content. Would a potential new litigation client benefit from seeing a video clip of you in action?

The opportunity to capture this type of material is routinely lost by lawyers. The availability of relatively inexpensive video cameras, recorders and voice recognition software, when combined with the today's digitization techniques, opens up a new world of possibilities in this area. [NOTE: I feel even more strongly about this today.]

Practical Tips for Getting Started in DIY KM.

Here are a few of my best tips to get started with do-it-yourself KM.

1. If you don't understand the whole KM concept, don't worry about that one little bit. Even the experts can't agree on what KM is. What you care about is the practical, real-world impact of KM techniques for you. You practice law, not linguistics or philosophy.

2. Start with a few easy efforts. Look through the items above. Make a list of the ones that seem easiest for you to do and where you can see that they would bring quick, concrete results. For example, it's easy to record presentations and have your secretary transcribe them. It's also easy to create a "KM" folder for email.

3. Consider how you work best. KM techniques that force you to modify how you work are doomed to failure. If you aren't collecting clauses with notes, circle the clauses on a printout and dictate some notes and have your secretary take care of it. Dan Felean of PensEra (www.pensera.com), a KM tools company, argues persuasively that KM is a team sport and that the best approach to KM in the legal profession involves building upon the routine relationships and tasks of lawyers and their staffs.

4. Set reasonable, business-oriented (or personal and professional) goals. We can all go a little overboard on technology. Think in business terms. If you are applying the simple KM approaches that I suggest above to contacts, don't think in terms of either technology or "contact management." Think in terms of the effects and goals that you want to achieve. Do you want to "implement a contact management system" or do you want to know who your top twenty sources of referrals are and what kind of "quality contacts" you are having with them? I hope that's a rhetorical question.

5. The network is the message. Personal knowledge management is great, but the real power of KM comes from sharing. Look to ways to put KM efforts in place across your network and to take advantage of the collective knowledge of the whole team.

Conclusion

The approach that KM software vendors have taken to KM today is not working yet for many lawyers. Lawyers now find KM impossibly vague, very expensive and, rightly or wrongly, just today's flavor of "management." At the same time, lawyers need to take advantage of KM tools and techniques to cope with increasing information overload, new competitive pressures and changing economic realities. Ignore the hype. Take a do-it-yourself approach to KM and try to get real-world business results using tools you already have or can cheaply obtain and you will move well ahead of those who are content merely to debate KM concepts. [NOTE: Although I was critical of the high-end KM tools at the time I wrote this article, in part I used that critique as a rhetorical device to make the argument for the personal KM approach taken in this article. The focus of this article is individuals and small firms. I am quite bullish on today's generation of KM tools for larger firms – what a difference a few years can make.]

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)

December 04, 2005

Is Email Putting Your Company at Risk?

The Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal has a piece called Is Email Putting Your Company at Risk?" that includes some quotes from me on the potential legal and liability issues involved in business use of email, and some thoughts about how to handle those issues.

The article and quotes come from a press release from Fortiva that talks about the fascinating results they found in a recent survey about the business use of email.

The money quote:

"While a majority of employees (73%) who use email at work are aware of corporate email policies, less than half (46 per cent) say they always adhere to the policy. This statistic suggests a lack of understanding among employees of the importance of an email policy."

Here are my comments:

As email is being used increasingly as evidence in lawsuits, it is very important for organizations to educate their staff on what is and isnt acceptable in a workplace communication, said Dennis Kennedy, an information technology lawyer and legal technology consultant based in St. Louis, Missouri.

Those organizations that dont implement effective policies and procedures, train their people, and enforce policies for email are at serious risk of facing both future lawsuits and unhappy results in those lawsuits.

These statistics reinforce the fact that businesses need to do a better job of reducing their risk by communicating their policies more effectively with employees and backing up that communication with training and well-designed technology solutions, Kennedy added.

Thanks to Michael Arkfeld for the pointer to the article, which includes some eye-opening information about how people are using email these days.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)

Data Diligence - Legal Issues in ASP Contracts

Jennifer Jones has a very good article in ComputerWorld called "Data Diligence: It takes a skilled lawyer to skirt danger zones in a managed service provider agreement." I was fortunate enough to be one of the people quoted in the article, which is my first appearance in ComputerWorld, a publication I have read and admired for many years.

The article is a great primer on the many issues that can be raised when entering even the simplest "managed service provider" (MSP) or "application service provider" (ASP) agreements. In this area, small and medium-sized businesses often face the most pitfalls.

From the article:

"Vigilance is prudent, not because MSPs are neglectful but because problems are common, experts say. "When outsourcing, it is surprisingly easy to do things like run afoul of a privacy policy," says Dennis Kennedy, an IT attorney in St. Louis."

If you are considering this type of arrangement for IT services - and most everyone is these days - be sure to check out the article.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)

December 02, 2005

Law and Order in Open Source

If you were interested in my recent article on best practice for using Open Source software on LLRX.com, Computerworld has a good article called "Law and Order on the Open-Source Range" that addresses some of the practical issues and approaches businesses are taking when they use Open Source software.

The approach of Fidelity Investments mentioned in the article - in essence, an internal Open Source task force - is especially interesting.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2005

Seven Quick Negotiating Tips from Columbo - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. This article is from my "Practical Technology Contract Review News," a newsletter I did a couple of years ago, before concentrating on blogging and other writing efforts. This article is meant to be fun, but still give you some helpful tips about negotiation. And, yep, my daughter and I are still Columbo fans.]

Seven Quick Negotiating Tips from Columbo.

My daughter and I have been watching reruns of the old Columbo TV show. It struck me that there are some good lessons to learn from these shows about contract negotiations. Consider these:

1. Do Not Underestimate the Opposing Party. The criminals always make the assumption that Columbo is not an opponent who matches up to the high opinion they have of themselves.

2. "Bear with me, I'm just trying to understand this." Columbo often uses this tactic to get his adversary to spin out explanations of events in ways that show contradictions. Try this: "Bear with me, I'm just trying to understand how if your software infringes someone's copyright, and we can't even see the source code, why should we bear the risk of an infringement claim instead of you."

3. "My superiors want me to tie up all the loose ends. You know how they can be." This tactic is actually a variation of #2. The advantage is that you can keep a friendly relationship and blame the boss.

4. Be Polite But Be Persistent. Columbo uses a very high level of patience combined with a dogged persistence. He remains personally likeable while continuing to move toward his goal. The opposing party still likes you, but they reach a point where they just want you to stop coming back to the same point about the damage cap, and may become willing to give on the point.

5. Ask for the Opposing Party's Help. A good tactic when you reach the endgame stage. "Can you help me out? If we can just get these two points - and they really are minor points when you think about it - then I know we'll get the signature and put this one to bed."

6. "Just one more thing." Columbo says this signature line as he gets to the door to leave, as if he has just remembered a small point that slipped his mind - almost as an afterthought. The "one more thing," in fact, deals with his major reason for having the conversation in the first place. Psychologically, Columbo's opponent has already mentally "closed the door" on the conversation, dropping his or her guard, and leaving an opening to make the point with greater effect.

7. Keep Your Focus. Misdirection plays an important role in Columbo's style and approach. However, his focus never wavers from his goal of solving the case.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 07:09 PM | Comments (0)

Dennis Kennedy

Search

Subscribe to this Blog

Email Subscription to Newsfeeds for my Blogs

December 31, 2005

A Reflection on Blogging at the End of 2005

December 30, 2005

X1 Licenses Are Almost - Get Yours Now

December 29, 2005

Disaster Remembrance Week

December 28, 2005

Looking for a Little Help Researching "Of Counsel" Arrangements

December 27, 2005

Free X1 Desktop Search Licenses as Gift to Readers of this Blog (Limit of 50)

Reinventing DennisKennedy.Blog for 2006

Survey Says Majority of Employees Have Sent or Received Potentially Damaging Email

Mining and Minding Your Metadata - New Electronic Discovery Column

December 26, 2005

Dan Donovan's Limited Edition, Fine Art Photographic Prints of Busch Stadium

December 22, 2005

Dennis Kennedy's 2005 Best of Legal Blogging Awards (the Blawggies)

December 21, 2005

A Phishing Primer from Dave Pollard

December 20, 2005

Why Lawyers Don't Choose (or Use) Case Management Software - Article

December 19, 2005

My 2006 Legal Technology Predictions Article Published on LLRX.com

Outside Counsel / Inside Counsel Partnering Through Technology - Article

December 17, 2005

Just a Reminder about Getting Permission Before Reproducing My Posts on Your Blog

December 15, 2005

What Did I Really License? - Article

The 5 Ws of License Grants - Article

December 14, 2005

"By Request Day" - What Are Those Funny Symbols in Some of Your Posts?

"By Request Day" - Read Any Good Books Lately?

Seven Dangers in Using "Standard" Forms for Law Firm Technology Use Policies - Article

An Important Tip about Word Track Changes and the Metadata Problem

December 13, 2005

The Fully Connected Law Firm - Article

The Last(?) "By Request Day"of 2005, the Blawggie Awards and Other Housekeeping Matters

December 12, 2005

Yet Another Reason I'm a Big Fan of Law Librarian Blogs

15 Internet Legal Research Tips - Article

Promoting Your Web Site: A Twelve Step Plan for Reaching Your Target Audience - Article

December 09, 2005

It's About the Deal, Not You: A Lawyer's "To Do and To Not Do" List for IT Contract Negotiations - Article

December 08, 2005

Useful Technologies We Don't Use

Keeping Pace While Keeping Your Cash Flow: Technology Leasing for Lawyers - Article

December 07, 2005

The Unique Legal Technology Needs of Medium-sized Law Firms

A Memo to the IT Department: The Lawyer's Wish List for Knowledge Management Projects - Article

December 06, 2005

Ten Tips for Successful KM Projects in Law Firms - Article

A Great Set of Microsoft Office Tips

December 05, 2005

December Issue of Law Practice Today Published Today

Do-It-Yourself Knowledge Management Practical Personal KM - Article

December 04, 2005

Is Email Putting Your Company at Risk?

Data Diligence - Legal Issues in ASP Contracts

December 02, 2005

Law and Order in Open Source

December 01, 2005

Seven Quick Negotiating Tips from Columbo - Article

Affiliate Marketing Links

Recent Entries

Archives