Dennis Kennedy

	Web DennisKennedy.com

June 23, 2009

A Blogging Guide for St. Louis (and Other) Lawyers (and Others)

With the help of my St. Louis blogging pals, Matt Homann, George Lenard and Evan Schaeffer, I recently put together a roundtable article on "blogging for lawyers" for the St. Louis Lawyer magazine. The article is now out in print, but I believe it's only available in print to members of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis in its final form. I liked the way the article turned out so much, and the information in it is so good, that I couldn't stand the idea that the article wasn't widely available. So, I dug up our unedited draft of the article and post it below. As longtime law-related bloggers know, St. Louis has long been referred to as "Blawg City USA," and this is the first time Matt, George, Evan and I have shared in one place our recollections, observations and practical pointers about blogging. Hope you enjoy reading the article as much as we enjoyed writing it. Let us know what you think about the article.

A Blogging Guide for St. Louis Lawyers

Having a website has been a requirement for lawyers and law firms for many years. As people continue to migrate to the Internet as the place to find information, the return on investment from advertising in traditional print outlets for legal marketing, especially in the yellow pages, has been called into question. There's probably not a lawyer reading this article who hasn't been told recently that he or she should have a blog. Does a blog really make sense for you or your firm?

St. Louis is the home of four of the earliest and best-known lawyer bloggers. We brought them together to get their insights and reflections on blogging for lawyers in 2009.

In this article, you'll hear about blogging from Matt Homann (The NonBillable Hour), Dennis Kennedy (DennisKennedy.Blog), George Lenard (George's Employment Blawg), and Evan Schaeffer (Trial Practice Tips and The Legal Underground), who have combined for more than 20 years of blogging experience.

1. When and why did you start blogging?

Dennis Kennedy (DK): I started my blog as a birthday present to myself in February 2003. My friend Jerry Lawson likes to point out that I wrote an article in 2001 where I recommended that lawyers consider blogging and then didn't start my own blog for almost another two years. The funny thing was that at the time I started the blog I really felt like the whole blogging thing had already passed me by. My idea was that my blog would create a new audience for my writing and give me more visibility while I experimented with a new Internet technology.

Evan Schaeffer (ES): I started my blogs in January, 2004, after having tried and failed in 2001. My failed blogs were updates on class-action news for the lawyers I worked with at the time. The blog concept was new then, and the technological aspect was more difficult. I also had trouble getting my legal colleagues to remember to read. When I started again in 2004, I tried to reach for a broader audience outside my own circle of co-workers. I also lightened up my tone. By that time, blogging platforms were much more reliable and I found it easier to make my blogs look just right. I had two other reasons for trying again. One, I liked the idea that I could instantly publish my writings to a wide audience of readers. Two, I was hoping that if I was engaging enough, it might bring some new attention to my law firm. This is in fact what happened.

George Lenard (GL): I read about some of the early blogging lawyers in an article in the ABA Journal and began blogging a few months later, in May 2003. My original purpose was knowledge management. As I put it in my first post: "Most days I read recent cases and materials on labor and employment law. But too often, by the time I need to cite a case or whatever, I’ve forgotten what I read and can’t find it. So one purpose of this is to have my own personal archive. While I’m at it, why not share it with the world?" (OK, to be honest, I was not unaware of the possible marketing benefit -- but I was skeptical enough about that to not make it a primary objective or expectation.)

Matt Homann (MH): Like Evan, I began my blog in January of 2004. For me, it was place to collect and share the things I found interesting with the handful of other lawyers who felt the same way I did about hourly billing, client service and law practice innovation. It also gained me entry into the then-small community of legal bloggers -- many of whom I knew and admired.

2. What is a blog?

MH: It's funny, but this is a question you don't hear much any more now that blogs have gone mainstream in our profession and others. When all of us first began blogging, it was a far different story. People thought blogs were diaries then, and had a hard time understanding the value they could add to a professional's practice. I used to tell people that my blog was simply a place online where I put things that people who thought like I did would find interesting or valuable, with the newest "stuff" featured on the top of the page.

ES: I began blogging when most people didn't understand the word "blog," so I often just described my weblog as a "website." That's a concept that everybody could understand, and it still works--a weblog is nothing more than website that is updated weekly, daily, sometimes even hourly. I still call my blog a "website."

DK: I like to describe a blog as an online newspaper or magazine column without the newspaper or magazine. There are a lot of ways to define blogs. In general, I'd call a blog a form of website where content is delivered in the form of individual "posts" in reverse chronological order. You also use a blogging software tool that makes it easy to write for your blog without the need to know any HTML or other coding that you must know when updating a traditional web page.

GL: Dennis certainly has the conventional definition down. I would add that with current blogging software it is possible -- and not too difficult -- to create an entire, very attractive website, with the blog page as one component. One could call the blog page something else, such as "news briefs," with the blog software making it much easier to ensure freshness of the "news." On the other hand, with blogs all the rage now, it might be better to label it "blog." So the blog home page, with the reverse chronological entries, can now be viewed as simply part of a website. Another equally valid vision of the blog is as a series of individual web pages that are likely to be quite attractive to search engines. That is because in addition to maintaining the blog entries in conventional journal style, the software creates a unique "permalink" web address for each "post," and if done correctly, search engines will "crawl" and index each page as a separate item to match up with searches. Although I do have a decent audience of somewhat regular readers, the fact is that nearly 90% of my traffic is one-time visitors from search engines (mainly Google) who land not on the home page, but on a particular permalink page that correlates with their search.

3. Why should a lawyer have a blog today?

DK: I'm going to be a bit of a contrarian here. I don't think that every lawyer should have a blog. In fact, for many lawyers, having a blog will be a bad idea. Blogging works best for lawyers who can write regularly for a general audience. However, if a blog is right for you, it gives you an easy way to update your web presence with regular new content, attract a returning audience, and improve your search engine rankings.

GL: I agree with Dennis that it's not for everyone. In my experience, blogging tends to become compulsive, if not addictive, with a desire to update regularly and corresponding guilt at failure to do so, which could make it a big distraction and source of additional stress for many lawyers. I would add that a lawyer should have a blog only if they feel they will have something relatively unique to say. The flood of online content has become a tsunami. If you're just going to contribute to the world's information overload by rehashing news stories or what other bloggers say -- please don't.

ES: Probably everyone on this panel agrees with Dennis. Many lawyers shouldn't have a weblog at all. You have to be committed to putting up new content, which takes some time week after week. You also have to be willing to share your knowledge and insights, which some lawyers prefer to keep to themselves, thinking that otherwise, their competitors might get a leg up on them. Neither of these points are problems for me. I've always had a writing habit. I also don't have any illusions that I'm giving away legal knowledge so valuable that some opposing counsel will be able to use it against me. When I was a young lawyer working at a large defense firm, there were always a few friendly lawyers that I could go to for tips and advice. With my weblogs, I try to emulate that attitude and in this way, give back something to the legal profession.

4. What do you write and how do you decide what to write about?

GL: My writing has meandered quite far from the original employment law focus, though I still return to it regularly. Several years ago, I began monitoring my traffic (great tools are available to learn many details about one's traffic). I learned from such monitoring that regardless of who I wanted my audience to be (employers and their lawyers), I had little control over that. Google was sending me an awful lot of people who -- judging from what posts they found and what key words they searched -- were employees, especially job seekers. Particularly given the current economy, I added a significant dimension of jobseeking advice, catering more to the growing audience I realized I had. As to my source of topics, this varies a good deal. I try to emphasize originality and quality over quantity and frequency. I should add that I could now write very many blog posts without any effort at thinking of topics, because I get one or more PR or press release emails daily suggesting topics, books to review, etc. (way more than I can handle).

MH: I focus on innovative, creative or just crazy ways lawyers can become better at what they do. Whether it's an innovative billing model, unique marketing idea or an off-the-wall client service tip, I've always tried to share ideas from other businesses or industries that lawyers can adopt for their own practices. Recently, I've begun writing a series of "10 Rules of ..." posts that have become quite popular.

ES: My blog Trial Practice Tips is self-explanatory. My other blog, The Legal Underground, has over the years been a repository for my more whimsical writings, such as "The Trial Lawyer's Prayer" or "An Introduction to Lawyers for Those Who Have Not Yet Have the Pleasure of Being Introduced." On Legal Underground, I don't hesitate to write about anything at all: in addition to humor, there's serious critiques of class-action or mass-tort law, travel writings from Prague, Mexico, and Argentina, round-ups of law-student weblogs, and more. I've designed The Legal Underground to be a vessel into which I can pour just about anything.

DK: I was writing regular columns and articles about legal technology long before I started my blog. In many ways, my blog is another outlet for writing on those topics. I look for topics to write about that interest me and that I think will interest my audience. In general, I try to stay "on topic," but I'm probably known among lawyer bloggers as one who is willing to write about almost anything. That said, most bloggers get the ideas for their posts from news stories, other blog posts and current developments in their subject area. I always recommend that someone starting a new blog sketch out a plan for the first 20 - 30 posts for their blog.

5. Is it still a good time to start a blog?

MH: Absolutely.

ES: Some might think that the legal world is already too crowded with lawyers who have blogs--that it will be impossible to be heard over the din. But that's not true, since you can easily insure that other bloggers notice you by commenting directly on what they are saying and providing a link back to their blogs. They may in turn link back to you, bringing you more readers. In addition, since the search engines pick up blogs so efficiently, you will also get readers by writing about a niche that you know well, then waiting for others to search for information on that topic. It will definitely happen, sooner than you'd think.

DK: There's still plenty of space for new blogs and new lawyer blogs coming online everyday. The blogging tools are better than ever. There are still very few St. Louis legal blogs. It's a great time to start a legal blog with a local focus.

GL: It is still a good time to start a blog. I think for most lawyers the best approach would be to target a very specific niche, in terms of locale and/or legal sub-specialty. I think "Missouri DUI Defense Blog" is still open, for example, and would probably allow an attorney to get on Google page one for "Missouri DUI Defense" with relatively little difficulty.

6. How would someone get started in blogging?

DK: First and foremost, take some time and read a lot of blogs, both law-related blogs and other blogs on other topics that interest you. You want to get a good sense of what's out there and what you like and don't like before you jump in. Most people today use a hosted blogging service that allows you to have your own domain name. TypePad (www.typepad.com) and WordPress.com (www.wordpress.com) are common choices. Kevin O'Keefe at LexBlog has created a business around developing and hosting blogs for lawyers and law firms. You definitely need to look into what he's doing. My latest blog (www.lawyersguidetocollaboration.com) is a LexBlog blog. Some law firms will host their own blogs.

MH: I concur. Learning how to blog is less important than understanding why to blog -- and the best way to get the "why" is to read lots of other blogs. The legal blogging community is still a very congenial one, so reach out to others blogging in your area of interest and ask them why they blog. You'll not only get valuable advice, but you may find yourself a blogging mentor.

ES: A working knowledge of other law-related weblogs is very helpful in getting started yourself. If you don't have any RSS reader like Google Reader already, set one up (it's free), and populate it with feeds from law-related blogs. This is the easiest way to stay abreast of a large number of blogs in the least amount of time. Next, find a hosting service like Typepad or Squarespace and just dive in. The technological aspect is now very simple. Once you familiarize yourself with the blogging software, posting to a blog is no more difficult than sending an email.

GL: I highly recommend WordPress, as it is open source software for which a huge community of users are constantly writing cool tools ("plugins") and templates ("themes"). It is highly advisable to buy your own domain name and use an independent hosting company, rather than Blogspot.com or Wordpress.com. This is a bit more costly, but allows easier portability and a more professional-sounding domain name. Despite the relative ease of use compared to creating a website from scratch, some geekiness or a geeky friend or consultant is still advisable. Therefore the LexBlog option (or a competitor) for a premier service with all technical details professionally handled is definitely worth considering.

7. What are the best benefits of blogging?

ES: When I started my blogs in 2004, I hoped it would bring a little boost to my business, but that's not the sole reason I blogged. I would have done it in either case. As it turned out, my blogs have led directly to business opportunities, justifying the time and expense I put into them. But this benefit is certainly not a guarantee. Even absent a direct business benefit, however, a well-written weblog will raise your profile as a lawyer. In the years before blogging, I used to write Op-Eds, and published quite a few in some big-name newspapers. These would seem to disappear without a trace. With blogs, my writing has a much longer--indeed, an indefinite--shelf life, and readers are continually drawn back to it by the magic of search engines. I have had press coverage of my legal views, for example, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the New York Times, and the Economist, among many other publications. My trial-practice blog also led directly to book deal with James Publishing--now I'm the author of a book about depositions.

DK: You'll hear a lot of talk about ROI (return on investment), search engine optimization, attracting new clients and the like. A good blog is likely to produce those things, and requests to be quoted in articles as an expert in your field. In fact, Matt often talks about the "instant expertise" a blog can give you. However, I'm going to say that the best benefit of blog is gaining access to the community of bloggers and the blogging audience. It's definitely the friendships and relationships, especially with other bloggers, that's been the highlight for me. If not for blogging, I'd guess that the four of us would not even have met, let alone become good friends.

MH: The thing about blogging that's most fascinating to me is that your readers won't judge you based upon your years in practice, the schools you attended, or the firms on your resume. Instead, your measured by the quality of your writing and the value of your information to your audience. This is the "instant expertise" that Dennis mentions and doesn't take years to earn. I also feel that, for me, blogging has given me the confidence to leave law practice and make legal innovation my business.

GL: I agree with Dennis and Matt. I have certainly experienced the phenomenon of instant expertise -- leading to speaking opportunities, interviews with journalists, and even an opportunity to co-author a book. Directly obtaining legal business is certainly a possibility, but in my view it depends very much on the focus of your practice and your blog. Newer bloggers that begin with the benefit of years of accumulated search engine optimization and Internet marketing advice and carefully tailor their blogs as marketing tools will perhaps have more success generating legal business than the earlier bloggers like us who wrote in considerable part out of enjoyment of the freedom and opportunity to write whatever we pleased and have it magically appear on the Internet with a single mouse click. The community and connections aspect has definitely been great. When blogging is coupled with social networks, one has the opportunity to build a very valuable network and actively use it through a network such as LinkedIn. Most of my LinkedIn connections came about in some way as a result of my blog.

8. How do the ethical rules affect blogging?

ES: I'm no expert in this area, but I've always behaved as if everything I already knew about being an ethical lawyer applied to blogs. Be truthful, don't reveal client confidences, etc.
GL: I think it will depend a lot on the nature of the blog's content and the extent to which the content and overall impression created by the blog causes it to appear to be more like "advertising" or "legal advice" than like the educational information we might present in a public seminar or webinar.

MH: Evan's right on here -- and remember that what you say and do on your blog will live online forever.

DK: I've been quoted before saying the ethical rules on Internet marketing are "impossibly confusing." One of the reasons I stopped writing about legal topics or my law practice on my blog several years ago was that I couldn't get comfortable with the changes in Missouri's advertising rules a few years ago. I've studied the ethical rules on lawyers using the Internet for many years. In general, I think that because blogs are simply a form of website, the same principles should apply, and probably do. However, when you try to apply the literal meaning of the rules to blogs, it becomes difficult to be certain that you in compliance with the rules. It helps a lot that the tradition of lawyer blogging since the beginning has been to focus on education and explaining legal concepts and developments. If you like clear, precise, black-and-white answers, you won't find them in the rules on using the Internet for marketing.

9. Are there "best ethical practices" for lawyers who blog?

GL: Write a good disclaimer. Use cautious qualifying words like "generally," "may," "likely," etc. to avoid appearing to make hard-and-fast statements when what you are really presenting is simplified statements for general public education concerning complex legal issues. Avoid excessive self-promotion. Let the blog content and a standard "About" page speak for themselves regarding your qualifications and abilities.

MH: Since my blog is about the business of law practice, I've never written anything that could remotely qualify as legal advice. That said, know that even if your clients don't hire you because of your blog, many of them will ultimately find and read it.

DK: Use good judgment. Some bloggers have said that the best advice is "don't be stupid." I always recommend that lawyers have a good sense of the lines between education, advertising and solicitation, especially the last two. Although I'm not convinced that lawyers blogs are necessarily "advertising," I do think it's best to treat your blog as if it is and use all of the required disclaimers. You definitely want to make it clear who the author of your blog is and where you are licensed to practice. Take special care if you get near the line between advertising and solicitation. In Missouri, you definitely want to use the great resource of Sara Rittman, our Ethics Counsel, who will answer questions on an informal basis.

ES: Again, I think the "best ethical practices" are those that apply to lawyers generally. The others on this panel also make some extremely good points.

10. What is the future of blogging?

MH: I think we'll see the continued adoption of blogs by legal professionals as much by choice as necessity. The next generation of law firm clients have lived their entire lives online, interact with Twitter and Facebook constantly, and read blogs everyday. They may have never used the Yellow Pages, and instead look to the web before making any major purchasing decision. They'll expect a robust online presence from the professionals they hire, and a blog is one of the easiest and most effective ways to build that presence.

GL: Integration with the surviving remnants of mainstream media into enriched, customized streams of information in manageable chunks for busy readers, plus continuing contributions to the wealth of information available to web users through ever-more-sophisticated search technologies. I was recently told by a web-content distribution company that my posts now have the potential of appearing in a news stream on the Wall Street Journal's law pages amidst conventional sources such as the ABA Journal, if they match the WSJ search criteria, with no distinction in appearance that would suggest that my content is in any way inferior or less professional than that written by professional journalists.

ES: I don't have any predictions about the future of blogging. If you think of blogging as merely a means of publishing one's writing, which it is, you don't have to be too worried about the future. Get into the habit of writing, and if you like it, you can always migrate to the next technological platform, if and when there is one.

DK: Among bloggers, Twitter and microblogging is all the rage. That will continue to affect blogging, but blogging still has great potential, especially to cover niche topics. I remain bullish on blogging. As for predicting the future, I still like what Ernest "Ernie the Attorney" Svenson said in an article on the future of blogging from four years ago in Law Practice Magazine (http://www.abanet.org/lpm/magazine/articles/v31is5an4.html): "Perhaps the biggest question that remains is: How quickly will law firms move to develop blogs? It depends on a lot of internal and external factors. But the clock is certainly ticking. For some firms that sound is just loud and annoying, while for others it is stirring and prompting them to act. So when will your firm create a blog? Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick . . . ."

Our Panel:

Dennis Kennedy is an inhouse counsel for MasterCard Worldwide in O'Fallon, Missouri, the author of the technology column for the ABA Journal, a co-host of The Kennedy-Mighell Report podcast on the Legal Talk Network (www.legaltalknetwork.com), and the co-author, with Tom Mighell, of the book "The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together." His blog, DennisKennedy.Blog, is found at http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/.

George Lenard is managing partner of Harris Dowell Fisher & Harris, L.C., a management employment law firm in Chesterfield, Missouri. His legal interests include sexual harassment, employment of the disabled, the recruiting and staffing industries, noncompetition agreements, use of Internet information in employment decisions, and employment consequences of new technologies, including blogging and social networks. His blog, George's Employment Blawg, is at www.employmentblawg.com, and is always seeking guest posts on a wide variety of employment and career topics from aspiring or established bloggers, subject-matter experts, business leaders, and others.

Evan Schaeffer is a class action and mass torts lawyer based in the St. Louis metropolitan area. His firm is Schaeffer & Lamere, P.C. Schaeffer's weblogs are Trial Practice Tips at http://www.trialpracticetips.comabout and The Legal Underground at http://www.legalunderground.com. Schaeffer is the author of Deposition Checklists and Strategies (James Publishing).

Matthew Homann is the founder of LexThink LLC, a legal innovation consultancy (www.LexThink.com). He's also the author of the [non]billable hour blog (www.nonbillablehour.comtheir ), where he shares innovative billing strategies, creative marketing techniques, proven customer-service principles, and cutting-edge ideas from other industries and professions with lawyers to help them tap into their own creative reserves and make dramatic improvements in their businesses and their lives. He lives in St. Louis with his daughter Grace.

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

Follow my microblog on Twitter - @dkennedyblog. Follow me - @denniskennedy

Now Available! The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Visit the companion website for the book at LawyersGuidetoCollaboration.com. Twitter: @collabtools

Technorati tags: legal technology blogging iphone st. louis primer
blawg

Posted by dmk at 09:43 PM | Comments (2)

May 19, 2009

2009 Legal Technology Trends Article in Law Practice Today Webzine

Let me recommend the new issue of the ABA's Law Practice Today webzine. Wendy Werner has put together another great issue and I'm sure you'll find several articles that will make your visit to the webzine worth your while.

This issue also contains my article, "Legal Technology Trends for 2009: The Year of Hunkering Down.

Readers of this blog will know that the legal tech trends article is annual tradition of mine. I also like to do what I did this year and post the first draft of the article on my blog before the article gets published elsewhere. If you are interested in my writing process, you can see how the article evolved a bit before it was published in Law Practice Today.

The article has nine sections:

1. Technology Budgets Get Decimated.
2. Making Do with What You Have or Doing More with Less.
3. The Mobile Phone as Platform.
4. Looking to the Cloud.
5. Using Tech to Get the Word Out and the Money In.
6. Focus on Client-focused Technology.
7. E-Discovery in Still Waters.
8. The Perfect Storm for Collaboration Tools.
9. A Potpourri of Predictions .

I'd enjoy hearing your reactions to the article. Also, we're collecting questions for the audience Q&A segment of the upcoming episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report podcast. If you have a question about one of the legal tech trends in the article or any other legal tech question you'd like us to try to answer on the podcast, let me know.

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

Follow my microblog on Twitter - @dkennedyblog; Follow me - @denniskennedy

Now Available! The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Visit the companion website for the book at LawyersGuidetoCollaboration.com. Twitter: @collabtools

Technorati tags: legal technology trends predictions collaboration

Posted by dmk at 09:04 PM | Comments (1)

January 28, 2009

Client Technology Surveys - A Powerful Little Tool

Client technology surveys are an easy and inexpensive way to improve your use of technology and make it easier for your clients to work with you. In my latest ABA Journal tech column, A Powerful Little Tool You Must Use, I talk about the basics, benefits and best tips for using client technology surveys.

To summarize:

"It’s a great time to focus on client technology surveys. They are simple, surprisingly effective, can fit on a single page and can be used as a script on a phone call."

I prefer a short and simple approach and suggest five types of questions to use. Tom Mighell and I also have a sample client tech survey in our book because these surveys can really help you pick the right collaboration tools to use with your clients. It's also worthwhile checking with Adriana Linares for her latest suggestions about client tech surveys.

I also suggest some good times to use a survey and how it can be a way to create a positive "touch" of your best clients, an especially good idea in tough economic times.

I invite you to read the whole article and let me know your thoughts on the topic.

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

Follow my microblog on Twitter - @dkennedyblog; Follow me - @denniskennedy

Now Available! The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Visit the companion website for the book at LawyersGuidetoCollaboration.com. Twitter: @collabtools

Technorati tags: legal technology client technology survey Law2.0 collaboration

Posted by dmk at 08:32 PM | Comments (2)

January 04, 2009

DennisKennedy.Blog: The Year 2008 in Review: Part 1: Articles

This is part 1 of a 3-part retrospective on the year 2008 on DennisKennedy.Blog.

The big news in 2008 at DennisKennedy.Blog was the publication of the book The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technology: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Tom Mighell and me. We're delighted by the response to the book, especially the excellent reviews it has gotten.

However, I can definitely tell you that writing a book takes a tool on your other writing efforts, especially the quantity of blog posts. I'm hoping that 2009 will see a return to a more traditional pace of posts on this blog. In addition to resting after writing the book, I also launched the Twitter-based "microblog" companion to this blog at http://twitter.com/dkennedyblog (or @dkennedyblog in Twitterese).

As I looked back at this blog and my 2008 posts, I noticed that there were three types of post and so I decided to do a three-part retrospective on 2008. Today, I'll cover the first kind of post: posts about other articles I wrote. Part two will cover the other posts I wrote. Part three might be the most interesting: posts I planned to write but never got written.

1. My ABA Journal Column. I write the technology column for the American Bar Association Journal. Probably the best way to find them all is to use this link.

Over the year, I found that enjoyed writing the blog posts about each column as much as I enjoyed writing the columns.

Here are the columns, with links to my post about each and a link to the actual column.

It’s Time to Talk Audio/Video - December 2008 - Rethink the text-based world and thinking seriously about ways to use audio and video delivered over the Internet. http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/its_time_to_talk_audio_video/

Get the (Instant) Message, Dude! - November 2008 - Maybe my favorite column on the year, on ways lawyers can use instant messaging. http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/get_the_instant_message_dude/

Go Green, Save Green - October 2008 - My most thorough discussion to-date of green legal technology -
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/go_green_save_green/

Master Your Disasters - September 2008 - Basics of backup and disaster recovery -
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/master_your_disasters/

Learning 3G-Speak - August 2008 - A primer of the language of mobile communications.
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/learning_3g_speak/

Become a Google Master - July 2008 - Some of my best tips for Google users.
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/become_a_google_master/

SharePoint: A Legal Killer App? - June 2008 - Maybe the most popular of my columns focused on Microsoft SharePoint as a collaboration platform. http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/sharepoint_a_legal_killer_app/

Really Simple Competitive Intelligence - March 2008 - Some really simple approaches to getting useful competitive intelligence. http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/really_simple_competitive_intelligence/

Hiding Assets - February 2008 - Encryption and methods to protect confidential information.
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/hiding_assets/

Tech Greats for ‘08 - January 2008 - I must admit that I still don't understand the title they chose for this column, but the column was a list of New Year's resolutions for lawyers using technology.
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/tech_greats_for_08/

2. Roundtable Articles. I was also involved in two roundtable articles, which exceeded my highest expectations and I recommend most highly.

Competitive Intelligence Roundtable Article. The ABA's Law Practice magazine published an article called "CI Tactics, Tools and Lessons to Be Learned," which featured a who's who of experts on the use of competitive intelligence in the legal profession.

Law Practice in a Time of Great Economic Turmoil - Roundtable Discussion - A stellar cast of experts take a practical look at the impact of the current economic crisis on the legal profession in the Law Practice Today webzine - "What Should You Do Now? A Roundtable Discussion on Law Practice in a Time of Great Economic Turmoil." Highly recommended.

3. Collaboration Tools Articles.

Tom and I found some time to start a new companion blogsite for our book at LawyersGuidetoCollaboration.com (a big thank you to LexBlog where we'll both be posting on topics related to collaboration and the book (follow @collabtools on Twitter for regular updates on the topic of collaboration).

We also wrote a couple of articles on collaboration tools:

Collaborative Technologies: Working with Others Around the Corner or Around the World

Get Smart (starts of page 40 of PDF)

After reading this post, I now realize that I wrote more in 2008 than I thought I had. Hope you enjoy these articles.

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

Follow my microblog on Twitter - @dkennedyblog; Follow me - @denniskennedy

Now Available! The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Visit the companion website for the book at LawyersGuidetoCollaboration.com. Twitter: @collabtools

Technorati tags: legal technology 2008 Law2.0 collaboration

Posted by dmk at 09:03 PM | Comments (0)

December 04, 2008

Beyond Text on a Page: Time for Lawyers to Think About Audio and Video

My latest column in the ABA Journal is called "It's Time to Think About Audio/Video."

Here's the opening:

Lawyers love text on a page. The single-space letter or memo is the lingua franca of our trade. Our PowerPoint slides are usually dense with text, and even the mention of adding a chart, table or graphic to a document causes consternation.

My radical suggestion: It’s time to rethink the text-based world and think seriously about ways to use audio and video delivered over the Internet.

The idea for the article came from my editor, Reg Davis, who wanted to explore the question of whether audio or video might be "better" for lawyers.

My answer, not surprisingly, was a lawyerly, "it depends." The column explores why the answer is "it depends" and offers some practice advice about ways in which lawyers might start using audio and video as both consumers and producers.

I tend to be in the audio camp these days and am a big fan of podcasts, but I also think that the long-term trend is toward video. I'm shorting the prospects for the single-spaced, twelve page letter in Courier type.

The fascinating thing about this column was that after I turned in the article, I had several conversations with lawyers about audio and video and, in every case, I was asked exactly the questions I tried to answer in the column.

A "money quote":

Most lawyers will probably find the greatest short-term benefits from using audio and video as a learning platform. Those large stacks of ar­ticles, advance sheets and magazines to be read not only take up space but rarely make it to the “finished reading” category. Audio summaries, audio and video of seminars, podcasts and YouTube videos offer lawyers the same information in more succinct, accessible and portable form. Listening to a short presentation may also be much more effective than reading a 150-page law review article.

The key questions to consider: Where and how do you learn?

What do you think about the use of audio and video? I welcome your comments here or you can join the comment thread already started at the article.

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

Follow my microblog on Twitter - @dkennedyblog; Follow me - @denniskennedy

Now Available! The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Visit the companion website for the book at LawyersGuidetoCollaboration.com. Twitter: @collabtools

Technorati tags: legal technology column aba journal audio video lawyers

Posted by dmk at 09:46 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2008

Law Practice in a Time of Great Economic Turmoil - Roundtable Discussion

The graphic above is a tag cloud from Wordle that I generated from the article, What Should You Do Now? A Roundtable Discussion on Law Practice in a Time of Great Economic Turmoil, which is just one part of an excellent new issue of the ABA's Law Practice Today webzine that you should run, not walk, over to see. Your time spent there will be well-rewarded.

The roundtable article arose from an idea I had to put together a roundtable discussion of some of the most interesting thinkers (and doers) on law practice management issues about the most top-of-mind topic of the day - what should lawyers and law firms (and the profession in general) be doing in this tough economic times?

I wanted to pull together some practical answers to some of the most basic questions that everyone I knew was either grappling with or trying to pretend didn't exist. The latter is more common, while the former is more recommended.

My practical problem was pulling together a group of experts in the face of a very tight deadline. Fortunately, I found a group of eight who were as generous with their time as they were with their expertise and insights.

Frankly, it's a stellar cast: Tom Collins (formerly of the Fabulous More Partner Income blog, who I coaxed out of his novel-writing retirement), Jordan Furlong, Patrick Lamb, Bruce "Adam Smith, Esq." MacEwen, Patrick McKenna, Edward Poll, Allison C. Shields and Merrilyn Astin Tarlton.

And this stellar cast delivers well beyond my high expectations of them. I play the role of moderator and tried to ask the questions that seem to be on most lawyers' minds.

Here's a summary of the piece:

The economic turmoil rumbling through the land has lawyers facing layoffs, uncertainty and flat-out fear. In this roundtable discussion, our panel of law practice management experts share their expertise, wisdom and practical tips about what you need to do right now.

There are six parts to the conversation:

1. The Nature of the Crisis – Uncharted Territory.

2. Tell-tale Signs – When Do You Need to Act?

3. Taking a Prudent Approach – Setting the Right Priorities.

4. What Steps Do Make Sense? Some Practical Advice.

5. Predicting the Future.

6. Best Practical Tips.

There are many, many "money quotes" from this article, but let me give you this one from Merrilyn Astin Tarlton:

Convene a meeting of your firm's decision-makers tomorrow. Agree together to cease hand wringing and start planning. Don't leave the room until you have a short list of things that must be done and the names of the people who will do them - plus a deadline. Hold each other accountable. Switch from saying "What are we going to do?" to "Here's what we're going to do!"

As we say in the article, panic is not a strategy.

I'm proud of this article and highly encourage you to go over to the article and read it from beginning to end. Even better, work your way through the same questions I asked the experts and come up with your own answers to both those questions and the fantastic list of hard questions that Patrick McKenna provides as part of the article.

I put the graphic of the tag cloud at the top of this post for three reasons. First, I'm really intrigued by the visual summary of the article that the tag cloud provides (note that the importance of the word "clients"). Second, the graphic was left off the end of the article, making my last comments in the article quite confusing (at least until it's fixed). Third, to prove that I actually do know the difference between tag clouds and cloud tags, even though I have a tendency to type "cloud tags" (and I hope to get that corrected in the article as well).

Highly, highly recommended. And just one more example of why I love roundtable articles.

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

Now Available! The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Visit the companion website for the book at LawyersGuidetoCollaboration.com.

Technorati tags: law practice roundtable management economic turmoil recession

Posted by dmk at 05:58 PM | Comments (1)

June 03, 2008

A Quick Intro to SharePoint for Lawyers - My Latest ABA Journal Column

Several years ago, I was at the ILTA conference in Phoenix. I wanted to attend a presentation on Microsoft SharePoint, but found that the room was standing room only and people were standing outside the door to listen to the presentation.

Now, I'm known for being able to spot trends and look at the future of technology in the practice of law, but this was easy to see as a legal tech trend to watch.

In Tom Mighell's and my new book, The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together (see review from Jordan Furlong here), we devoted one of the central chapters of the book to a discussion of SharePoint. Any lawyer, law firm, legal department or other organization considering implementing collaboration tools simply must have SharePoint on the list of tools that they consider. It's a force to reckon with and helps you understand what collaboration tools can do and what the basic collaboration functions are. I don't necessary believe that SharePoint will be the right choice for you, but I do believe that if you compare your other options to it, you will make good decisions about the tools you do choose.

My new ABA column is called SharePoint: A Killer Legal App, and, although I would have preferred that they put a question mark at the end of the title, I use the column to provide a quick intro to SharePoint and how lawyers might use it.

The money quote:

Because they affect our actual day-to-day work so much, I think the two most important areas in emerging technology for lawyers are project management and collaboration. SharePoint addresses both.

I hope you find the column a good starting point to help you understand the growing interest in SharePoint (and other collaboration tools) in the legal profession and elsewhere.

I'll also recommend that you check out the other articles in this issue of the ABA Journal at its excellent and award-winning website.

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

Now Available! The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Join the book's Facebook Group here.

Technorati tags: legal technology collaboration tools sharepoint Law2.0

Posted by dmk at 09:03 PM | Comments (2)

March 06, 2008

Competitive Intelligence Roundtable Article

Just posted on the online version of the ABA's Law Practice Magazine is one of the best articles I've ever been a part of. It's called "Competitive Intelligence Roundtable: CI Tactics, Tools and Lessons to Be Learned."

I asked a who's who of experts on competitive intelligence in the practice of law (Mark Beese, David Bowerman, Cynthia Cheng Correia, Ann Lee Gibson, Mark Greene, Sabrina Pacifici and Meredith Williams) to participate in a roundtable discussion of the basics, practical tips and lessons learned about the use of competitive intelligence. To my delight, they all agreed to participate and the result is one heck of an article from which I learned a ton of things and so will you. I'm the article's moderator and a quasi-participant.

In the same issue is Ann Lee Gibson's How to Create and Use Competitive Intelligence: 45 Tips for Law Firms, a helpful CI primer to read as an intro to the roundtable article.

If you are familiar with CI, you'll benefit from the wisdom of this group. If you don't know anything about CI, these article will get you up and running. IF CI wa not on your radar, after you read these articles, it will be.

Highly recommended.

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

Debuting at the 2008 ABA TECHSHOW: The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell.

Technorati tags: competitive intelligence roundtable law pracitce ABA TECHSHOW

Posted by dmk at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2008

Is It Time for Lawyers to Encrypt Data?

Has the time arrived for lawyers to begin routinely encrypting data, especially data carried on laptop computers and USB drives?

I take a look at some of the practical questions involving data encryption and the state of encryption in 2008 in my latest legal technology column in the ABA Journal called "Hidden Assets." I focus on recent developments in the area of disk encryption.

The money quote:

When you balance the risks of loss or exposure of sensitive data against the costs and effort in encrypting data and drives, it’s becoming clear that we’ll see many lawyers moving to disk encryption in the very near future.

Disk encryption looks to be a simple, effective way to address some, but not all, data security concerns. Have you tried it? Is it working for you? Have you become less comfortable with not encrypting data in the past year?

Here's the article. Your feedback is appreciated.

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

Coming in March from ABA Publishing - The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell

Technorati tags: legal technology aba journal encryption

Posted by dmk at 04:18 PM | Comments (3)

September 18, 2007

Legal Talk Radio on Demand: Podcasting for Lawyers

The latest issue of the ABA's Law Practice Today webzine has a great article called "Legal Talk Radio on Demand: Podcasting for Lawyers." It's a roundtable article about lawyers using the podcasting medium and includes a stellar cast of podcasters - Bob Ambrogi, Evan Brown, Jim Calloway, Denise Howell, Tom Mighell, and Sharon Nelson, with me thrown in as organizer and, since I was unable to resist joining in, as a contributor too.

If you have any interest at all in podcasting, you will find valuable, practical information and tips from lawyers who have been podcasting for a long time and have some of the best-known legal podcasts.

The money quote (one of many possible candidates) is from Bob Ambrogi, host of one of the longest-running, best-known and most-listened-to lawyer podcasts:

Podcasting is a powerful marketing tool, particularly if your practice relates to technology or media. Podcasting distinguishes you as someone who is innovative and on the cutting edge. It allows you to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise and to provide a more personal view of yourself than potential clients could glean from a simple Web site. You will reach audiences you never imagined -- we've mapped the IP addresses of our listeners and found that they come from virtually every country in the world, even China and Russia. All this, and the cost of entry is minimal.

The article includes links to the author's podcasts, links to other podcasts and podcast resources, and podcast recommendations from the authors.

I'm proud of this article, very pleased at how it turned out, and invite you to put it on your reading list. And, yes, we all appreciate the irony of an article by podcasters about podcasting that is not available as a podcast. This article is a good example of how you can use the Google Docs online word processing tool to create collaborative articles, something that the Law Practice Today webzine has pioneered and used frequently with great results.

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

Get your legal technology information by audio. Check out The Kennedy-Mighell Report Podcast.

Technorati tags: legal technology podcast podcasting roundtable

Posted by dmk at 09:32 PM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2007

Previously on Document Assembly

My last two posts have been on document assembly, so I thought it might be a good idea to follow the rule of threes and post again on document assembly.

So, I went back into the archives and pulled out the second article I ever wrote on legal technology. It appeared in Lawyers Weekly USA in November, 1996. The subject was document assembly, and I now blush at my level of enthusiasm and how stunningly wrong my predictions and sense of urgency about document assembly were, in retrospect. I actually burst out laughing today when I reread the last two sentences of the article.

OK, so I'm a true believer in document assembly. I admit it. I also believe that you might enjoy this article as a primer to my way of thinking about document assembly. I have not edited or updated it. I would, however, enjoy reminiscing with any other ShortWork users who might read this post.

The money quote:

Document assembly can greatly increase your productivity and efficiency in document preparation while also allowing you to incorporate lessons that you have learned and custom language for individual clients into your standard forms.

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN 1996.

Document Assembly Saves Clients Money

A document assembly program is a software program that "automates" the preparation of legal documents. In simplest terms, a document assembly program allows a user to answer a series of questions which appear on the user's computer screen and then uses those answers in a transparent fashion to create a completed draft of a document in the user's word processing program.

Document assembly programs can be seen as a third stage in the evolution of document drafting, coming after the development of the typewriter and word processing programs. These programs run the range from Capsoft's $99 Hotdocs program to $500,000 custom software.

My experience with document assembly began five years ago with a program called ShortWork which I used to create a set of estate planning applications which I use on a daily basis. I am now beginning an upgrade of those applications which will involve a conversion to another document assembly program, Caps Personal.

I have noticed three significant changes over the last five years in document assembly programs. First, the development of and focus on Windows-based programs. Second, better and more seamless integration with standard word processing programs. Third, much greater emphasis on ease of use and improved user interfaces.

Document assembly can greatly increase your productivity and efficiency in document preparation while also allowing you to incorporate lessons that you have learned and custom language for individual clients into your standard forms. Instead of trying to remember the name of the client whose trust contained your language on S Corporation stock, you can now answer the question "does the client own S Corporation stock?" on your computer screen and all the relevant language will be added to the appropriate places in your first draft.

The prospect of drafting finished documents in a matter of minutes is a realistic one. A year ago I demonstrated the Caps program at a firm meeting with the goal of producing a completed draft of a simple standard lease in less than a minute. I was successful.

I work in the area of estate planning. Estate planners have been among the pioneers in the use of document assembly packages. Estate planning documents such as wills, trusts and powers of attorney lend themselves well to document assembly in that they are standardized but also customized depending on the choices a client makes.

You should not, however, conclude that the value of document assembly is limited to this category of practice. Applications can be designed in many areas of practice: leases, bankruptcy applications, interrogatories, preparation of standard petitions, and real estate closing documents. The software developers will be happy to show you many examples.

There are two basic approaches to document assembly programs: (1) a program which allows you to automate your existing forms, and (2) a program that includes its own forms, but allows you to modify its forms so that they can be more like your own. There are pluses and minuses of each approach. Based on my experience, a wholesale conversion of your forms will take significantly more time than simply using or making adjustments to supplied forms.

That brings us to the real questions about document assembly, which is not which package to use, because there are a number of good choices. Who will implement the package? Who will maintain the document assembly forms? Who will be the person or persons using the package? Since I have five years experience, let me share a few of the lessons that I've learned.

The key to document assembly is advance planning. All of the time that you spend on thinking about which forms you want to convert, how you use and maintain your existing forms, how you see the document assembly package being used, what efficiencies you hope to maintain and similar questions is going to be time that is very well spent. Your planning process will help you choose a program that is well suited to what you want to accomplish and will help you focus on how you will implement the process.

My advice is to start small and build off of your successes. I started with a durable power of attorney which is a relatively simple document to automate. In that way, I could learn programming functions in a simple and straight-forward way. I used that knowledge to move on to a simple will. From the simple will, the next step was to move to more complicated wills with trusts and a variety of other options.

Another important piece of advice is to be sure to block out a period of time where you can work on implementing the document assembly package uninterrupted. While it doesn't take a lot of time, perhaps 10 to 20 hours, to become comfortable with basic document assembly techniques, the process is highly logical and involves many steps. It is easy to get lost if you get distracted. If you work in a series of starts and stops, you will get easily frustrated. Remember: start small.

Document assembly is an excellent illustration of the "80/20" rule. The first 20% of the time you spend working on the project will get you 80% of the way to completion. Finishing the final 20% will take 80% of your total time. On the other hand, the 80/20 rule helps you think about how far you want to go in designing your application.

The goal of document assembly is to produce a draft of a document. Your goal should not be to produce a final version of each document for each client on the first attempt. If you can use document assembly to produce a good draft of a document in five minutes or less and then do a minor amount of clean up, you will be better off than you were without document assembly. Based on my observations, after implementing a document assembly package, I have seen decreases in total drafting time of about two-thirds over our previous method.

How do you pick a system? Decide on the level of sophistication you want in the package. Decide whether you want the package that comes with its own forms. Read reviews and articles, although be sure to note that a number of articles on document assembly are written by people involved with document assembly software companies. Talk to others who are using document assembly programs. Finally, the ABA's Law Practice Management Section is an excellent resource.

Document assembly raises some important cost recovery and billing issues. If you are going to spend several weeks, a month or more on implementing a document assembly package, how will you recover that lost income? Second, if you are billing on an hourly basis for time spent preparing documents, how will you now bill for a document that takes you only one-third of the time that it used to take?

Three approaches to recover start up costs are (1) develop your system as you work on documents for clients and bill those clients; (2) surcharge your clients for a period to recover the start up costs; or (3) make no effort to recover the start up cost, instead assume that the system will pay for itself over time during increased productivity and the opportunity to do higher volume or higher-level work.

On the second question, use of document assembly requires that you consider moving to a value billing system. In other words, it may become more appropriate to charge a fixed price for documents rather bill on the basis of time actually spent on the production of those documents. There is no single answer. The answer for you will depend on your client base and your practice, and the implementation of document assembly may give you a good opportunity to examine your existing billing practices and make appropriate changes.

The document assembly software companies have found that lawyers prepare documents in a wide variety of ways. There is no standard approach to document preparation and software companies have begun to concentrate on the user: flexibility, user interface and ease of programming. This is one benefit of waiting until now to look at document assembly.

I would not, however, wait much longer to consider document assembly. Document assembly offers real productivity gains that cannot be ignored. The environment for lawyers and law firms has become increasingly competitive. Competition has, in many cases, become based on price, and document assembly offers you a way to cut your costs.

My best practical tips? Devote substantial time to planning. Think about the $99 HotDocs program as an easy way to get your feet wet. Think hard about the packages that include forms. Give serious thought to how you will update forms once the system is in place. And, if you are not the right person to do this project, or there is no one at your firm who can or will do it, consider hiring a second year law student to take on the job. There is no time like the present to get started on document assembly. Your competitors have.

A version of this article first appeared in the November 4, 1996 issue of Lawyers Weekly USA.

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

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page.

Technorati tags: legal technology document assembly

Posted by dmk at 09:00 PM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2007

Dennis Kennedy's Seven Legal Technology Trends for 2007 on LLRX.com

Regular readers will remember my experiment last week of publishing a long version (really somewhat more than a first draft) of my annual legal technology trends article as a series of blog posts on this blog. I ended the series by posting a final, short version that I cut to roughly 1,000 words.

In the editing process, my first attempt at reducing the size of the article left me a version that was roughly 2,500 words. In the Goldilocks and the Three Bears fashion, I ended up liking this middle-sized version best of all.

I also mentioned in those posts that my favorite place to publish new articles is Sabrina Pacifici's excellent LLRX.com site. Fortunately, Sabrina also liked this article and it now appears as part of this month's issue of LLRX.com: "Seven Legal Technology Trends for 2007: Widening the Digital Divide in Law Practices." It's a small part of another powerhouse issue of LLRX and I encourage you to check out the other articles.

Completists are more than welcome to read all three versions, but the one on LLRX.com is my favorite. Your feedback is always appreciated.

[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).

Technorati tags: legal technology predictions 2007 Law2.0

Posted by dmk at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2007

Wikis for Lawyers, Email Vaults, and Legal Tech Trends in the UK

A few pointers to some of my new articles and a link to a fascinating response to my recent legal tech trends series from Tim Travers.

First, Tom Mighell and I have an article called "Wikis for the Legal Profession in the new issue of the ABA webzine Law Practice Today. It's designed to be an introduction to the notion of wikis, with lots of links to great resources and some suggestions on how the legal profession is using and might better use these collaboration tools. As usual, there are plenty of great articles in this issue of Law Practice Today, but let me single out an article called "How to be More User-Friendly" by my friend and fellow St. Louisan Wendy Werner.

Second, I occasionally get asked why I don't write about new products very often on this blog anymore. Well, it's because I'm writing about new products in the TechnoLawyer Newswire. The latest issue covers Symantec's Enterprise Vault (an interesting email archiving tool) and two other products that will interest lawyers. The NewsWire is free to registered subscribers. I encourage you to join up.

Third, I really enjoyed the point-by-point response UK blogger Tim Travers made to my recent legal technology trends for 2007 series, and the subsequent email exchange Tim and I had. I recommend Tim's post, not because he agrees with much of what I said, but because he brings a new perspective and relates these issues to the UK legal technology world in a way that I cannot. Everything is global as I'm constantly reminded, and it's great to have this kind of interplay on these issues. Tim is a relatively new blogger, and I encourage you to check out his blog.

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

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page.

Technorati tags: legal technology wiki technolawyer collaboration tools trends

Posted by dmk at 09:19 PM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2007

Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Trends for 2007 (Short Version)

[Note: For those of you following this series (see previous posts), I present the short (just slightly more than 1,000 word) version of my 2007 legal technology trends article. If you've read the long version, you'll see how dramatically the piece got changed in order to the meet the "keep it short" requirements most people like today. The versions to me are different - they serve different purposes and one is not necessarily "better" than the other. However, I will mention that I cheated a little bit in this experiment. My first edit took the article to roughly 2,500 words and that might be the best version. You probably will see that version published somewhere soon.

I welcome your comments and look forward to the discussion the posts might engender. I also hope that someof you find them an instructive look into my writing process. Also, note the disclosure statement at the end, which applies to all parts of the series. I'm interested in developing a good disclosure statement that will work both now and in the future and would appreciate feedback on what I've tried here.]

Seven Legal Technology Trends for 2007 - Widening the Digital Divide in Law Practice

By the end of 2007, we will be talking about a clear and growing digital divide between technology-forward and technology-backward lawyers and firms and a subtle restructuring of the practice of law.

The uncertainty and confusion over new Microsoft versions and electronic discovery will create a a lull in legal technology. Some will take advantage of that lull to re-evaluate and refocus, but many will not. There will be many opportunities to increase your competitive advantage, especially for lawyers, firms, and technology committees who keep their focus on the following seven trends.

1. Reacting to Microsoft.

With a new Windows release and a new Office release, Microsoft will be the center of attention in 2007. Deciding how to react to Microsoft issues will top most agendas.

A. Upgrading to New Microsoft Versions.

Windows Vista has a welcome emphasis on security and Office 2007 has a new interface and document format. Vista will probably require hardware upgrades. The decisions won't be easy, but they can't be avoided and will dictate other choices.

B. Macintosh and Linux.

One reasonable reaction to Microsoft is to consider non-Windows operating systems. The Intel-based Macintoshes have changed the thinking of many lawyers about Macintosh. Linux has an excellent track record, especially for servers.

C. Open Source, Freeware/Shareware, and Web 2.0.

There are often cheaper alternatives to Microsoft applications. Low-cost programs and web-based services have become realistic options, especially for small firms and solos.

2. E-Discovery - Evolution, Not Revolution.

Less will happen in e-discovery than most people expect. Lawyers will try to delay the day of reckoning, but the tectonic shift to e-discovery is underway.

A. Tools for Everyday Cases.

Most litigation matters involve only a small number of electronic documents and email. For everyday cases, lawyer-oriented litigation applications like CaseLogistix, all-in-one "EDD appliances," and the use of Adobe Acrobat 8 with the new CaseMap 7 will draw much attention.

B. Litigation Support Managers.

Law firms need a skilled person at the intersection of litigation and technology. The growth and professionalization of litigation support managers will be the most important EDD trend in 2007.

C. “Big Iron” for Big E-Discovery.

Most law firms will decide that they cannot host huge amounts of data. Much will happen with data repositories.

3. Making Sound Business Decisions about Technology.

The best firms will apply business principles to make sound decisions about legal technology past, present and future.

A. Audits and Cost Savings Efforts.

Too many firms have little idea of what they have, how much they spend, and what they are getting for their money. Now is the time to inventory, measure and assess what you have, and then save some money.

B. Applying Honest-to-Goodness Business Principles.

Business principles actually do apply to the practice of law. Traditional business approaches and tools now used in other professions will increasingly be applied to technology decisions.

C. Outsourcing Revisited.

Should all of the technology services your firm provides be handled internally? Answers will vary, but outsourcing will pick up momentum.

4. The Security and Disaster Recovery Combination.

The nature of security has changed, for the worse. Security and disaster recovery require continuing attention and are inextricably related.

A. Recent Redefinition of Disasters.

Expect to see some new twists on what “disaster” means in 2007. Test your assumptions. More planning is definitely better than less planning.

B. Applying Recent Learning to Setting Priorities.

Learn some lessons from recent events and take some actions based on what you learned. A good disaster recovery plan is always being rewritten.

C. The Combo Disaster.

Are you prepared for disasters or security threats coming at you in combinations? A security compromise can cause a spiraling set of technical and other problems, especially if confidential data is exposed or stolen.

5. Portability Becomes a Priority.

Lawyers need access to the Internet, their offices and other resources on a constant basis, and others need similar access to them. Portability will become a significant factor in every legal technology decision.

A. Movement to Laptops.

Expect to see more lawyers than ever carrying notebook computers, and we'll definitely see more lawyers with Macintosh notebooks.

B. The Decline of the Blackberry?

A number of forces at work - WiFi, the need to read attachments, spam - suggest the high point of Blackberry use by lawyers might be behind us.

C. Encryption Arrives.

Portable devices of all kinds can get lost, stolen or damaged. The move to data and drive encryption will pick up momentum in 2007.

6. The Internet is Back.

The Internet never really left, but it will be getting more attention from lawyers.

A. Yellow Pages and Local Search.

There has been a dramatic movement from yellow pages to search engines to find local products and services. Lawyers will need to re-evaluate how best to use the Internet to reach the target audience.

B. Creating a Meaningful Web Presence.

Have you looked at your firm's website lately? Law firms will be sprucing up and revamping their websites, with blogs, podcasts and video integrated into existing sites.

C. Email Alternatives.

Perhaps 90% of email sent over the Internet is now spam. Expect to see movement to email alternatives like RSS feeds, instant messages, extranets, shared workspaces and other options.

7. Collaborative Tools and Toolboxes.

People work together. We will see the move toward collaborative tools and toolboxes.

A. Document Tools.

Especially for transactional lawyers, there is a new set of skills for document preparation, editing, sharing, and even signing that must be mastered.

B. Let’s Conference.

Expect to see strong growth in the surprisingly affordable alternatives to the traditional office meeting, from conference call services to videoconferencing.

C. Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 refers to a set of lightweight Internet applications that let you share information and work with others. Of these tools, lawyers will gravitate to blogging, RSS feeds, and possibly wikis (see, for example, Wikipedia).

Conclusion.

It will be easy and even prudent for law firms to move slowly on technology issues in 2007. At the same time, however, some law firms and legal departments will modernize the practice of law, improve client service, and creative a competitive and technological gap between themselves and most other lawyers, firms and law departments. On what side of the gap will you be?

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

Dennis Kennedy (dmk@denniskennedy.com) is a well-known legal technology expert and computer lawyer based in St. Louis, Missouri. An award-winning author and a frequent speaker, he was named the 2001 TechnoLawyer of the Year by TechnoLawyer.com for his role in promoting the use of technology in the practice of law. His blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/) and web page, (http://www.denniskennedy.com/) are highly regarded resources on technology law and legal technology topics.

[DISCLOSURE: I have, have had, and might in the future have modest financial relationships with some of the companies mentioned in this article. I don't think that any of these relationships have an impact on my judgments, but you might, and I encourage you to do your own research on products and services, whether mentioned by me or anyone else. There is no more important skill we can have than the ability to read critically.]

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

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page.

Technorati tags: legal technology trends predictions! 2007 dennis kennedy law 2.0 collaboration

Posted by dmk at 03:30 PM | Comments (1)

July 11, 2006

The Growing Role for Legal Administrators in Legal Technology - Article

[ Note: This is another in a continuing series in which I am reposting some of my original drafts of published articles.]

I wrote this article earlier this year for the ALA's Legal Management Magazine. It's a short report on my trip to the 2006 LegalTech New York conference. It takes the point of view of the legal administrator and highlights some key trends and developments in legal technology that would especially interest legal administrators. There are a few insights in the article for lawyers and legal tech vendors as well. Enjoy.

The Growing Role for Legal Administrators in Legal Technology - A Report from LegalTech New York 2006

The annual LegalTech New York conference has been unveiling new products, services and trends in legal technology for the last twenty-five years. The 2006 event was a well-attended, even crowded, gathering of more than three hundred exhibitors and thousands of attendees.

There are many lessons that legal administrators can draw from this event. The biggest one may be that IT decisions in law firms will have an increasing impact on legal administrators. This article will give you some of the highlights and stress some of the trends and developments you need to know to help you do your job better.

1. Electronic Discovery Everywhere. By some counts, there are around five thousand vendors today who describe themselves as being in the electronic discovery business. Perhaps one hundred of them exhibited at LegalTech. There is no area of legal technology that is likely to have a bigger impact on law firms in 2006 than electronic discovery will have.

Although electronic discovery may seem to be the realm of your IT and litigation departments, it will have serious implications for legal administrators.

First, sorting through electronic discovery vendors is no easy task. Expect to see vendor research projects, request for proposal (RFP) processes and tech committee or management committee involvement in electronic discovery decisions.

Second, the electronic discovery process is becoming so complicated that it is inevitable that outside vendors, consultants and other providers will be involved in the process. From readjusting budgets to simply handling requests for identification badges for outside providers coming to your office, watch for the impact of electronic discovery on your day-to-day work.

Third, even firms that have had little experience with electronic discovery may be forced into action this year. Watch for staffing changes and the introduction of new positions for employees who focus on electronic discovery and litigation technology issues. Keep an eye on the growing trend of firms hiring litigation support managers.

Fourth, look for some of the techniques and requirements learned in electronic discovery to flow over into law firm administration – email management and policies, archiving and related issues.

2. Security and Disaster Recovery Issues Did Not Go Away. Concern about security and disaster recovery seems to ebb and flow. The 2005 hurricanes brought disaster recovery to the forefront and moved security concerns to the back burner. As time passes, we see security concerns getting more attention. However, neither issue ever goes away.

At LegalTech, you could find both sessions and vendors focused on these issues. A trend to watch is a growing sense that handling security and disaster recovery internally may no longer be realistic. Law firms in New Orleans, for example, learned about the value of keeping data and backup systems in another part of the country. Some firms report that their IT departments are spending more than half of their time on security issues, leaving limited time for new projects.

Legal administrators are invariably involved in both of these issues. Expect a bigger role for outside vendors in both of these areas. One interesting product/service to watch is Network Box (www.network-box.com), which allows you to get state-of-the-art security outsourcing for a reasonable monthly fee.

3. It's a PDF World. PDF is becoming the standard format for electronic filing, scanning and electronic discovery. Recent stories about embarrassing revelations of "metadata" (hidden data associated with Microsoft Word and other files) have also focused attention on PDF as the preferred way to send documents outside firms without the same metadata concerns.

Many firms think of PDF only in terms of creating and reading PDF files. Adobe Acrobat 7 (www.adobe.com) provides a wealth of other tools – security, collaboration, search and document management. Some legal programs, such as CaseMap (www.casesoft.com), let you integrate seamlessly with Adobe Acrobat and create PDF files as well.

Use of the PDF format makes sense in the area of dealing with metadata. Litera's Change-Pro (www.litera.com) is a suite of tools to help you work with PDFs and handle metadata.

PDF makes sense in many areas of law firm administration, especially external communications and for any documents that the recipients should not edit.

4. Outsourcing Becomes an Option in Almost Every Technology Decision. The sheer number of vendors and options can be overwhelming. It raises questions that many law firms are beginning to ask: what is our core business and do we need to handle every technology function inside the firm?

From evaluating products and services to hiring qualified people, the technology questions inside law firms are getting more difficult. Add in the pressure from clients wanting firms to provide technologies like extranets and we see technology issues moving outside the IT department and into management committees and the realm of legal administrators.

In even the most basic technologies, you will find in a law firm, you could see vendors at LegalTech that will provide the same services on an outsourcing basis. For example, companies like Pitney Bowes (www.pb.com), Merrill (www.merrillcorp.com) and others, will provide a variety of services, including handling your entire mailroom function.

5. Document Assembly in Nontraditional Ways. Some technologies shown at LegalTech may make sense for uses beyond what lawyers have traditionally considered.

Consider the example of document assembly. In a document assembly application, a user simply answers a series of questions on the computer screen and, as if by magic, the software generates a custom document based on the answers. Most law firms see it as a way to general legal documents.

However, with today's tools from companies like Ixio (www.ixio.com), Microsystems (www.microsystems.com), (www.exari.com) and DealBuilder (http://www.business-integrity.com/document-assembly.html), you might generate many of your standard administrative and other documents with these tools, saving time and effort and generating tailored documents. If you want to explore one technology for yourself in 2006, document assembly would be the one I would suggest.

Conclusion.

Of the thousands of people at LegalTech, lawyers made up only a small percentage. With so much happening in legal technology, especially in the area of electronic discovery, you will want to focus on more training for lawyers and getting some of them out from behind their desks to investigate and make decisions about the technologies that are changing the practice of law and the way law firms work. The time is right for legal administrators to play an even bigger part in the legal technology process. This article will give you a few places to get started.

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

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page.

Technorati tags: legal technology electronic discovery

Posted by dmk at 07:37 PM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2006

Lawyer Blogging Basics - How to Use Blogging Software Without Becoming a "Blogger"

[Note: This is another in a continuing series in which I am reposting some of my original drafts of published articles.]

Like many others, I was sad to hear about the very recent decision to cease the publication of Law Office Computing. The magazine was always a great resource on legal technology and published quite a few of my articles. I'm honored that the last issue to be published has an article of mine as a feature, and includes an illustration that uses the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's album cover with my face pasted on Paul McCartney.

I rarely write about blogging anymore. It's not that it's all been said, but Jerry Lawson pointed out that I first wrote about blogging for lawyers more than five years ago. I'm not being critical of others writing about blogging now, because it is important to bring this material to a new audience, but I regularly see new articles on blogging, especially blogging for lawyers, that contain points that were made several years ago presented as if they were fresh insights. However, I'll quickly note that I am not the audience for those articles. I do wish that current articles were a bit more generous in mentioning earlier source materials (e.g., The Internet Roundtable #37).

LOC's excellent editor, Amanda Flatten, asked me if I could come up with a fresh angle on lawyers and blogging. I initially did not think that I could, but, after sounding out the other blogging old-timers at the Between Lawyers blog, I decided that the freshest approach was to cut through all the "hype" about blogging and being a "blogger" and to focus on the humble element of blogging software and why it is so effective at what it does and how it simply, invisibly and effectively creates the magic associated with blogs. As I've said for many years, content is what matters.

I had also gotten tired about reading about blogging and how it was a panacea for marketing. Many articles on blogging these days are quite proscriptive and attempt to mandate what "true blogs"b should and should not do. For my taste, there's too much focus on bloggers and the personalities of bloggers and the mythos of blogging these days. To me, you stand or falll on what you write, what you actually do with your blog, and your authenticity.

My reference to "blogomania" in the article, therefore, is an ironic one, especially when it comes to blawgs. Just as the Beatles were about the music, blogging is about the content that creative people produce. Blogging software places simple tools in the hands of creative people and allows them to create art, rather than just learn how to use the tools. If you want to know the magic of blogging, there it is.

I really like the way this article turned out and hope you enjoy it. Much of whatever "wisdom," if any, I've gained over the years of operating a website and a blog is distilled and set out as simply as I can in this article. If even a few people read this, act on it and create something new and cool, express something real and true, or help us see the world, legal or otherwise, with new eyes, then I'll be quite pleased.

This blogging stuff ain't that hard - get out there and try it. As I've long said, let a thousand blogs bloom.

How to Use Blogging Software Profitably - Without Becoming a "Blogger"

I missed the whole Beatlemania thing, but there are days lately when I see so many articles and so much hype about blogging, especially blogging for lawyers, that I wonder if we are in a period of blogomania.

Law-related blogs are often cited as good examples of how a profession adopted the use of blogs. Lawyer blogging pioneer Denise Howell playfully coined the term "blawg" for law-related blogs a few years ago and the word has become widely-used. I see articles on a daily basis insisting, with increasing urgency, that all businesses, including law firms, must have blogs. Can this really be true?

As a longtime blogger, I regularly get questions from lawyers about blogging and whether they "need" to have a blog. One of the common reservations I hear is that someone does not want to be a "blogger." They feel that don't have the time or the inclination to maintain a blog on a regular basis with multiple daily posts, thought-provoking content, breaking news stories and doing the other things we read about bloggers that bloggers wish were true.

You might be surprised to learn that you can get some great benefits from using blogging software and blogging techniques without any need to become a "blogger." Most people will not even realize that you are using blogging software. The benefits you will find are a greatly improved Internet presence, better content, more traffic, easy maintenance and, most likely, reduced cost. If you can achieve that, who really cares whether you are known as a "blogger" or not?

Starting Point - What is a Blog?

Let's get everyone on the same page. "Blog" has been defined in the online encyclopedia called the Wikipedia as "a website in which items are posted and displayed with the newest at the top." I have often described a blog as "an online newspaper or magazine column without the newspaper or magazine." The simplest definition today might well be a type of website produced and maintained with blogging software.

For our purposes, let's think of a blog as a type of website in which new content is regularly added in the form of individual items (or "posts") that are displayed in reverse chronological order on a set of pages that are generated into a template. Blogs have a number of standard features and, even if you have never seen one before, after you look at a few blogs, you will recognize the common characteristics.

The reason that the simple idea of blogging has taken off is that blogging makes it extraordinarily easy to publish content without needing to know HTML or other Internet technologies.

A Key Concept -b Internet Presence.

In our increasingly Googleized and online world, you have an "Internet presence" whether or not you have a website. Do a search on Google on your name or your firm's name. To many people, that is your Internet presence. To an increasing number of people, that is also the basis on which they make decisions about you.

The best way to present and maintain a positive Internet presence is to have a good website. Unfortunately, many lawyers and law firms have websites that are lackluster at best or even create negative images. Problems include lack of interesting content, out of date information and general uninterestingness.

What Works on the Web.

Over the years, people have recognized that a number of standard techniques consistently make for a successful website. The biggest point is captured by the oft-repeated phrase, "content is king."

People using the Internet are looking for helpful sites that help them answer specific questions or solve specific problems by providing the type of information that is useful to them at that time.

A successful website will provide helpful information geared to its audience that is fresh, updated regularly and added to consistently. A website of this kind gives people a reason to return on a regular basis. When people return to your website on a regular basis, they become more likely to call you when they need your services or to recommend you to others who may need your services.

In addition to solid content, users also like to see a professional-looking site and some indication of your personality. Do you show something in common with them so that they might like to work with you?

Common Barriers for Lawyers.

Lawyers can get bogged down at several points in the process of creating a website, but no more so that in maintaining and regularly updating a website with good content. The primary reason is that there are some technical hurdles after you write the content.

Before blogging software, a lawyer might write a new item for his or her website – for example, a checklist of when to hire a lawyer for a certain issue. While it would be perfect content for the website, it was not ready to go up on the website. It would have to be coded into an HTML format that matched the rest of the website design, then uploaded to the website. While the concept is easy, the process is laborious and requires specialized knowledge. Adding one page might require that you make changes to several other pages and it is easy to make mistakes or even "break" your website in the process.

Your other choice would be to pay your web designer to upload your content, a process that has its own challenges. Often, updating your content will be about #4,667 on your web designer's to-do list.

As a result, it is relatively rare to see law firm web sites that have a lot of fresh new content on a regular basis, with two key exceptions.

The first is websites where one or more lawyers regularly write and publish articles in other publications and then republish them or link to them on their websites. These lawyers have a steady stream of content and establish a standard procedure for getting those articles on the website.

The second is websites of firms who list press releases, recent developments or "in the news" items. They will often have a page, or a place on the home page, that lists these recent developments in reverse chronological order. A visitor gets the sense that there is ongoing activity, updates and has a reason to return to see fresh content.

The perceptive reader will note that both exceptions have a "blogging" feel to them.

How Blogging Software Overcomes these Barriers.

As someone who has had a website for more than ten years, I can tell you that my wish list before blogging software would have looked something like the following. I wanted the ability to:

- Write the content with minimal need to know or use HTML or other coding.

- Publish my content into a template that looked like the other pages on my website.

- "Publish once" and have changes appear on every page where needed.

- Create archives and implement search tools.

- Republish quickly and easily to fix errors and make other simple changes.

Blogging software lets me do all of that and more.

There are two ways to look at blogging software, depending on your Internet experience. It is instructive to consider both of them.

Those of us who have had websites for a long time see the value of blogging software as a simple, powerful, lightweight content management system for a website. I can write my content and publish it into a template. The software automatically formats my post, displays it and refreshes the other parts of my website to reflect the new content. I don't have to painstakingly get the HTML right and make lots of other changes to my website.

For people who have never worked on a website in HTML, they simply avoid the learning process and move into a system in which they can write a post in something that looks and works like a simple word processor and then "publish" the new content on their website (usually by simply clicking on a button that says "publish"). A good number of bloggers say that they would not be blogging if they had to learn HTML. The key for them is that they can write and publish so easily.

In either case, the blog approach overcomes the most common barriers for lawyers on putting new content on their websites.

Software Choices.

One good thing about blogging software is that there are relatively few choices. It is reasonably easy to make a decision about what to use.

Your first choice is whether to install blogging software yourself on your web server or use a hosted service. If you do not even know what a web server is or if you have one, the choice gets very easy.

If you use a hosted service, you will pay a modest monthly fee. You will get a user name and password. You have a "dashboard" from which you can make selections about your blog. You can choose among a number of nicely-done design templates, include features like comments, set up categories for posts and much more. You can have a great-looking, full-featured blog in a few minutes for $10 to $15 a month.

If you want to do more customization and have more control, you will want to consider buying blogging software and installing on your web server. The good news is that your ISP should now be familiar with this process and be able to help you with the installation or install it for you. Take it from me, the initial installation can be tricky and time-consuming, but the software, once it is up and running, seems to be very stable. You can then choose a design template (or have a custom one created for you) and configure your features and you are off and running. Expect the software to range from free to approximately $200.

The majority of blogs have gravitated to two blogging software platforms – Movable Type ($199) and WordPress (free). Most law-related blogs seem to be on the Movable Type platform these days. Other choices exist, but there is little reason not to use one of these two packages.

If you choose the hosted services approach, you will find that the majority of law-related blogs are hosted on TypePad.com. I have personally used TypePad, WordPress.com and SquareSpace.com. You will also see blogs on Blogger.com, MySpace.com and other providers. I suggest starting w ith TypePad (a hosted version of Movable Type), but take a look at the others to compare services and features in light of your needs.

What Blogging Software Does – A Short Tour.

Your user experience will be very similar whether you install blogging software or use a hosted service. TypePad is really just a massive installation of Movable Type.

You will go to your own login page and enter your user name and password. You will be taken to a console page that lets you administer your blog and gives you information about it.

Most of the time, you will simply be adding new content. In the world of blogging software, new content is created on an item-by-item basis. The unit of blogging is an individual entry call a "post."

Let me walk you through the process of how I create a post.

I click on a button or menu choice to create a new entry. I see a template that allows me to give the post a title and to select a category for the post. There's a text box into which I can then type my content or post. Clicking on little icons allow me to bold, italicize or underline, to add hyperlinks, and to block quote or do other formatting, all without knowing HTML. The required HTML code is inserted for me.

I can type my entry into this box or copy it from another document. When I'm done, I can preview what the entry will look like when it is formatted, check for typos and make other revisions. When it is ready, I click on a button that says "publish" or "save" and the post is published on my website.

Here's where the magic happens. My post is now added to the main page of my blog, at the top, in reverse chronological order, within the design template for my blog. The post is also placed in the appropriate archives, shown on the calendar, and categorized and made available in the search engine on the blog. As I'll discuss later, the post is also sent out via my RSS feed. All of this happens automatically.

By the way, once you understand this process and see it in action, you will understand why most bloggers will say that writing for your blog takes much less time than most people imagine.

If I want to make a change to my post or add to it later, I simply go to the post in the blogging software, make the change and republish the revised post.

Why Blogging Software is so Appealing.

Blogging software allows you, especially you the busy lawyer, to concentrate on writing and producing content without worrying about the coding, the technology, the delays and other drawbacks that get in your way. In other words, it slashes away most of your excuses to procrastinate on producing content.

Do I Need a Separate Blog?

The beauty of blogging software is in its simplicity. If you look at my website (www.denniskennedy.com), you will see that my blog appears to be another part of my website. If you look closer, you will see that my blog is a Movable Type blog that is separate from my website, but, because of the common design template, appears to be integrated with my website.

Blogs take advantage of a web design technique involving templates and "cascading style sheets" (CSS). This technique separates the content elements and the design elements. The CSS is "applied" to the template and dictates how your browser displays the page. If you change the CSS, you can change the entire look and feel of the blog without changing the content whatsoever. In fact, some blogs allow you to click on a button and instantly change the look and feel of a blog.

Web designers today tend to create websites, or redesign old ones, using the template and CSS approach. You can then incorporate, as I do, a blog and a website into a unified design.

However, the key lesson I have for you is that you don't need to "have a blog" or "be a blogger." Instead, you can use the blogging software to create content for your website without even thinking about it as a separate blog.

For example, you could use the blogging software to generate a "what's new on this site" section of your website. If you posted a new article, it would appear on the "what's new" page, just like a blog post, but it would also be put into category archives. A visitor could then go to an "articles" section of your website, find the article and never be the wiser that the "articles" section was simply the "article category" archive page for your "blog."

Some people have even used blogging software to create what appears to be a standard website by creatively using the features of the software. In other words, their blogs appear to be standard websites. If you think of blogs as simply a form of websites, and blogging software as a lightweight content management system, you will have an idea of how this can be done.

Why Should Blogging Software Appeal to Non-bloggers?

The biggest reason most people don't want to be "bloggers" comes down to a question of time and priorities. Most people do not want to commit to the daily posting regimen that many bloggers seem to follow.

If truth be told, most bloggers, especially me, do not post on a daily basis. However, there is no question that an approach that time stamps posts and puts them in reverse chronological order will reveal how often you post and how long it has been since the last post.

If you forget about being a "blogger" and concentrate instead on how blogging software can help you improve your Internet presence, you will see how many elements of a successful website it helps you achieve and how easy it makes it to do so.

Blogging software gives you the ability to:

- Easily create and publish new content on a regular

- Avoid learning HTML and other technical elements

- Automatically organize and archive information

- Concentrate on your writing and personalize and target it to your audience

- Have a professional-looking design at very small cost

The end result is that you have the tools in your hands to create a website with exactly the elements that have proven to be successful in websites over the years. Blogging software more or less automatically and effortlessly pushes you into a disciplined approach that incorporates the most-effective website techniques.

Closing the Deal - RSS and Search Engines.

There are two other benefits of using blogs and blogging software to consider.

The first is search engine optimization. Because Google and other search engines currently place a high value on link popularity and other factors commonly present in blogs, blogs tend to rank very high in search engine results. This is not because of anything inherent in the blogging software. It is largely because blogging software helps you focus on content in ways that enhance your search engine rankings and, coincidentally, appeal to your target audience and make visitors want to return.

The second is RSS, which stands for "Really Simple Syndication." Think of it as a newsfeed. RSS allows people to subscribe to your blog through a news aggregator program or service and automatically receive your posts as you make them without ever needing to return to your blog. In essence, it creates a new information channel for your content. For example, when I "publish" a blog post, the item is also published in my RSS feed and subscribers receive it in a matter of seconds. You can do the same thing on your website, but would probably have to do that by hand. Blogging software does that automatically.

Conclusion.

Although I am one of those bloggers that you read about, like you, I'm not convinced that blogs are for everyone or that everyone needs to be or is suited to be a "blogger." I am convinced, however, that, more than ever, having a great Internet presence and website is vital for lawyers and law firms. If look behind the "blogging phenomenon" to see what is really happening, you will see ways that blogs and, especially, blogging software can help you create successful websites in an easy and inexpensive way. You can be a "blogger" or not - there are many great things about blogging - but you will definitely want explore the ways you can benefit from using blogging software to improve your existing website and enhance your Internet presence.

[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).

Technorati tags: legal technology blawg blogging software blogomania

Posted by dmk at 12:31 PM | Comments (2)

June 28, 2006

Bridging the Widening Communications Gap Between Lawyers and IT Departments - Article

[Note: This is another in a continuing series in which I am reposting some of my original drafts of published articles.]

Over past couple of years, I've found that the parts of my presentations that get the most response and generate the most questions are the parts where I talk about ways that lawyers and IT staff can better talk with each other. I've gotten the clear impression that there is a lot of pain and misunderstanding out there. The following article addresses the IT/lawyer communication divide from the point of view of the legal administrator and focuses on the role legal administrators might play in improving this dynamic. The article originally appeared in the March/April 2006 issue of the ALA's Legal Management magazine.

Bridging the Widening Communications Gap Between Lawyers and IT Departments: Some Simple Starting Strategies

We are finding that moving technology projects forward in law firms is not as much about hardware and software as it is about trying to get lawyers and IT departments to communicate in ways they can each understand.

Lawyers and IT people will universally agree that there is a wide communication gap between them. As firms try to bridge that gap, they may well find that the key to getting lawyers and IT departments together in the role legal administrators can play in the process because they have learned, sometimes painfully, to communicate with both groups.

A Question of Language?

The gap between lawyers and IT people is based on language. Both groups are known for using jargon excessively. More precisely, both will lapse into jargon when unsure of themselves or nervous. Lawyers speak in jargon, but use words precisely, both in their work and in general conversation. IT people also speak in jargon, but are not as precise with words in general conversation. However, IT people are quite precise with words within their discipline.

In both cases, the imprecise use of words may lead to statements and conversations that do not make sense. This annoys both lawyers and IT people, and members of both groups tend to get frustrated quickly. Things go downhill from there.

Lawyers with the most helpful and effective secretaries and the best relations with other staff members invariably have one thing in common. They spend time explaining the whys and providing the bigger context to others. I cannot count the number of IT people who have told me that they wished they knew more about what lawyers did so they could implement the most useful technology for them.

What Are the Hurdles?

There are three traits most lawyers share that make solving the communications problems difficult.

1. Lawyers really do work hard. The law is a high stress profession that places huge demands on lawyers. Every lawyer has developed techniques to deal with these demands. If a new technology project doesn’t work well, they get further behind the eight-ball, and you may have disrupted their coping mechanism, putting even more stress on them.

2. Although all lawyers are certainly capable of learning technology, the fear of technology is common among lawyers. Although lawyers do not like to look bad or foolish, there is also a genuine fear of technology out there.

3. Lawyers, by training, are critical and, at the same time, they are comfortable working with drafts. Even if they like something, their natural reaction is to find some flaws and comment only on negative aspects. They will change their minds as they see ways to improve the final project and often will criticize exactly what they told you to do earlier, because they see it as a draft in progress.

Strategies and Tactics for Bridging the Gap.

Legal administrators play a unique role in this process for a number of reasons. First, they have already had years of experience bridging the gap between lawyers and staff and, probably, between IT departments and staff. Second, based on my experience, legal administrators have the ability to schedule mandatory meetings that lawyers actually had to attend. Third, legal administrators know how to make meetings work, even if it's just seeing that there is food there.

Here are my best tips on helping this process:

1. The Communication that Matters Most is Lawyer to IT Staff. The best thing a firm can do is to help the IT department understand the business of the law firm and the nature of the practice and work that lawyers do. Part of this process is to make it clear that lawyers in the same firm may do very different work. IT people can be surprised to learn that not all lawyers try cases. Set up a series of lunches where lawyers talk about and answer questions about their work.

2. Do Some Project Reviews. The military evaluates engagements in detail after they occur to see what lessons can be learned about what went right and wrong. Law firms rarely do that with IT projects. Schedule some review sessions after completing IT projects to get lawyers and IT people talking about what worked, what didn't and how the next project might be improved, in an objective, rather than a crisis, setting.

3. Encourage Regular Conversations at Times Other than Crises. Consider this example. A lawyer waits until the last minute before printing 5,000 pages of documents due in two hours. An IT staffer simply calculates that, at ten pages per minute, it will take at least nine hours, and tells the lawyer it cannot be done. An argument ensues until someone intervenes and figures out a work-around. Both lawyer and IT staffer form low opinions of each other and vow never to speak to each other again. Getting conversations to happen outside of crisis settings must be a priority.

4. Take Advantage of the Natural Go-betweens. There are lawyers, usually young lawyers, who really "get" technology and can talk easily with IT people. There can also be IT staffers who talk easily with lawyers. Those people should be encouraged to be go-betweens and to survey and communicate the wishes and concerns of each group.

5. Use Food as Bait. I am hesitant to draw general conclusions about groups of people, but my experience with lawyers and IT people is that both groups cannot pass by a conference room with free food on a table. A spread of coffee, juice, bagels and donuts to start a day will work wonders at bridging the gap between lawyers and IT departments and getting the ball rolling.

Conclusion.

There should be no higher priority in legal technology at law firms today than getting lawyers and IT staff talking with each other on a regular, meaningful basis. Legal administrators have the best shot of being able to talk in the language of both groups and bringing them together. The job is not an easy one. I recommend looking for small victories based on the ideas in this article and your own experience, and then building on them. It is an effort that is well worth making.

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

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page.

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Posted by dmk at 06:23 PM | Comments (0)

June 22, 2006

Is There a Digital Dashboard in Your Future? - Article

[Note: This is another in a continuing series in which I am reposting some of my original drafts of published articles.]

You see a lot of discussion these days about digital dashboards and their potential. For examples in the legal profession, see the stories here, here and here. Another good overview is here. It's not a complicated idea.

Anyway, I mention the dashboard concept because back in 2000, Microsoft was talking about a Digital Dashboard approach that excited me as much as any technology innovation I had seen to that point. And I wasn't the only one. I wrote the following column, one of my favorites, back in May 2000. It was even reprinted on the Microsoft website for a time. Then, Microsoft dropped the initiative. I mean, it all but disappeared off the face of the earth.

I still like the article. With the idea of dashboards making a comeback (and justifiably so), I thought I'd reprint the article, even though the references are out of date. The concepts are still valid, and it's a window, if you will, on an interestiing approach to technology that once burned bright, then faded away, and seems to be reappearing.The title question is still a valid one. I also think that today's approach to using Outlook interfaces in law firms confirms my prescience about that issue, even if I was 5 or 6 years ahead of time.

Is There A Digital Dashboard in Your Future?

[NOTE: This article was originally written in 2000 and the specific product discussed in the article no longer exists.]

Microsoft's Digital Dashboard points to the use of Outlook as a major development tool in the integrated Microsoft environment. And, in some ways, Digital Dashboard gives a glimpse of how Outlook might be used in the case management context using custom programming.

That said, there are two issues worth noting. First, Digital Dashboard is a high-end, sophisticated technique (although the actual dashboards can, if well-executed, be both powerful and simple, a combination that always attracts my attention) and requires the newest versions and most likely outside consultants. Second, there are the security issues that have been plaguing Outlook lately, which have to be addressed.

On the other hand, for those of you who live in your e-mail program, this approach, rather than the browser-based intranet, may be especially appealing because it recognizes that e-mail is the killer application of the Internet rather than "surfing." As I say in the article, Digital Dashboard may give you a chance to get your own personal view of your information realm. By the way, for those of you who have programmed yourself to hate everything Microsoft, think in terms of the PIM or e-mail program you use rather than Outlook and see if the idea has any traction for you. I’m really intrigued by it.

A few months ago, I saw a demo of an application that gave me a glimpse of the computer desktop of the future, one in which incorporation of the Internet, personalization, integration of applications, and knowledge management appear at our fingertips. More important, at least to me, it showed a way to get some control over the tidal wave of information that seems to wash over us every day

The application is called "Digital Dashboard" from Microsoft.

In simplest terms, a Digital Dashboard is an entry screen or starting page built into Microsoft’s Outlook 2000, the e-mail and personal information manager that comes with Office 2000. Many people are using Outlook these days for e-mail, address books and calendars. If you are one of them and you are familiar with the "Outlook Today" screen, you will quickly understand the Digital Dashboard concept. For the rest of you, here’s a little background.

For several years, people have talked about intranets. Intranets are web sites accessible by members of a single organization. Intranet advocates have long championed intranets as a way to use the browser interface (typically Internet Explorer or Netscape’s Navigator) to provide easy access to information within an organization. Especially as people got used to full-time access of the Internet, the thinking went, the browser would be the program that people used most frequently and, therefore, the browser would become the primary tool to access all information.

A funny thing has happened on the way to this intranet vision: e-mail. It is not uncommon these days for attorneys to receive over 100 e-mails a day. Increasingly, the program we "live" in everyday is our e-mail program, especially when, as in the case of Outlook, it also contains our calendar and address book. The last several versions of Outlook have contained a feature called Outlook Today, a simple start page that gives you summary information about and access to your e-mail inbox, a week’s view of your calendar and a list of today’s tasks. Generally, the reaction of Outlook Today users is positive, but they wish it could do more.

Digital Dashboard takes the Outlook Today concept to the next level. You can think of a Digital Dashboard as an infinitely customizable version of Outlook Today or you can see it as the "dashboard" that gives you a view of and control over your information domain.

Here’s the trick Rather than use the browser as your primary access tool, Digital Dashboard uses Outlook and takes advantage of Internet functionality and features as well as the programming and integration underlying Outlook.

Digital Dashboards allow you to do two important things. The first is that they allow you to customize and personalize your view of "your" information, whether locally or on the Internet. The second is that they also allow you to pull key information out of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, databases and other applications and make that information available to you at your fingertips.

Think of your Digital Dashboard as your own personal web site (like http://my.findlaw.com - a site every lawyer should know). But it’s better than a web site because it also gives you access to your inbox, calendar and contacts, as well as every other feature of Outlook, including the powerful "public folders" for collaborative efforts. You can set up the views of those features you like and size them and move them where you want. You can add links to favorite Internet sites, stock or news tickers and even audio or video (a current camera view of your commute anyone?)

In addition, you can pull information from other applications, such as spreadsheets, PowerPoint slides and database reports, and make them available from your Digital Dashboard. Even better, you can place a chart tied to a spreadsheet or database on your Digital Dashboard and have the chart adjust to reflect the current figures in the underlying program. If using, for example, a time and billing program that is compliant with standards Microsoft uses, a managing partner could track at a glance work in progress, accounts receivable and the status of collections in the form of a chart that is always viewable right on the Digital Dashboard.

Each Digital Dashboard may be customized and personalized for each individual or you might roll out a firm-wide template. I have only touched the surface of the possibilities of Digital Dashboards, but I see a lot of potential.

The drawbacks? A Digital Dashboard is a high-end application that probably makes the most sense in large and medium-sized firms, although it certainly can be used by a small firm looking for an edge in technology. It is a strictly Microsoft application and requires Outlook 2000 and Office 2000. Powerful desktop computers and full-time high-speed Internet access are a must, but these are increasingly commonplace. Outlook users must also pay attention to outstanding security issues.

Although Digital Dashboards are based on HTML and other common web programming techniques, I think it will be rare where you will not want bring in an outside Digital Dashboard developer. The good news, though, is that I’ve talked with a number of Microsoft developers who like the potential of Digital Dashboards and can’t wait to get to work on development projects.

Are Digital Dashboards the solution for you? Those of you on an up-to-date Microsoft platform or planning to move there should take a hard look at the Digital Dashboard. You can get more information and examples at [Note: Link has been dead for many years].

The Digital Dashboard is an idea that had an immediate appeal to me and one that has stayed with me and become increasingly interesting. I like the idea of a development that focuses on the primary screen I live in everyday in a way that makes it more organized and more useful while giving me access at my fingertips to the information I need to use. And that is where the promise of Digital Dashboard lies.

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

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page.

Technorati tags: legal technology digital dashboard dashboard

Posted by dmk at 07:09 PM

June 21, 2006

Using Technology to Increase Profitability: Moving into Alternative Billing Via Technology - Article

[Note: This is another in a continuing series in which I am reposting some of my original drafts of published articles.]

In a recent post on the Between Lawyers blog, I linked to a post on the subject of value billing and the post seemed to generate a bit of discussion about the topic. It also reminded me that I wrote an article that includes my most extensive writing about the subject of value billing in an article that was originally published in the April/May 2006 issue of Law Office Computing magazine. Not surprisingly, I focused on the impact that technology might and should have in the area of alternative billing. Sharp readers will note that my real topic was profitability and not so much alternative or value billing, which was a bit of a side issue in the article. Nonetheless, I thought I'd republish my original draft of the article (that means there may be a few typos) on my blog and see if people think that it adds anything to the discussion. I really liked the way this article turned out and it contained some original ideas and approaches that I hadn't seen elsewhere. I hope you enjoy the article.

Using Technology to Increase Profitability: Moving into Alternative Billing Via Technology

Better. Faster. Cheaper. These three words have long made up the mantra for the benefits of legal technology, at least for those trying to sell new technologies to lawyers.

However, these three words, even if proven, have never been quite enough to close the sale with many lawyers, especially for technologies that promise to change the nature of the practice or substantially alter the ways legal services are delivered.

The final barrier is often concern about the impact of technology in a system where fees are based solely on the number of billable hours worked. Simply put, if you can use technology to do what is now a twenty-hour project in four hours, haven't you just cut your earnings by eighty percent?

This article is not going to be another manifesto about how lawyers need to end the tyranny of the billable hours system. However, I do want to make you think critically about your current approach to pricing your services.

This article, in fact, is about supplying the missing part of the legal technology equation: how will new technologies or better uses of technology improve profitability, client satisfaction and make your life better? In other words, how does the mantra of better, faster and cheaper actually help you make good decisions about alternative billing methods?

The Billable Hours Dilemma.

Let’s assume that your practice includes drafting a legal document that takes you six hours to produce a solid draft, and that you draft one hundred of these documents a year. You find that you can implement a document assembly application that will reduce the time to create that solid draft to six minutes per document.

Forget about the cost of the software and developing the document assembly application. What have you done to your practice? In a billable hours system, you have reduced six hundred billable (and collectable) hours down to ten hours! In addition to software and development costs, you have lost 590 hours of earnings. However, you definitely have achieved the goal of better, faster and cheaper with your technology.

Of course, this simple analysis is just the starting point. Perhaps not all of the hours are "lost." You might be routinely writing off some of this time. You might "replace" the hours with higher value hours doing something else.

When you implement any technology, you must rethink your approach to the use of your time and how you bill your clients.

I chose this example for two reasons. First, it is a great example of a place technology has a negative impact in an hourly billing approach and almost drives you to consider an alternative billing model. Second, clients increasingly think that lawyers have these capabilities.

In today's world of computerized forms, what does a client think if they see that you spent six hours producing a first draft of a will? Your client will believe that you chose the method that maximizes your billable hours.

Here's one of my favorite analogies. You contract with a builder to build you a new house on an hourly billing basis. The workers show up with no power tools, only hand tools. How do you react?

That brings us to the great billable hours dilemma. If there are strong pressures from clients to reduce the number of hours spent on projects and strong resistance to rate increases, what will the impact be on your practice? In general, the answer will be that you simply have to go out and find more hours (new clients and new projects) each year.

Alternative Billing Primer.

For a growing number of lawyers, technology is one of the drivers toward alternative billing methods. There is a list of good resources for learning about alternative billing in the sidebar.

For our purposes, I want to divide alternative billing into three categories: (1) value billing, (2) enhanced or blended hourly billing, and (3) other innovative approaches.

Think of value billing as flat fee billing. You and the client agree in advance to a fee for the project based on the perceived value of the work to the client. Implementing the document assembly application I mentioned earlier definitely makes sense here.

There are many examples of enhanced or blended billing approaches. You might have one rate for drafting and a higher rate for tax planning, for example. The document assembly application might make sense if your clients pay you more for you tax planning time.

We are also seeing a large number of innovative approaches, Bonus pools and incentives for meeting budget targets are examples in this category. Typically, these are used by large corporations or where there is a high volume of work. Technology might enhance your profitability in these settings.

Billable Hours Not Going Away - Ethics and Other Concerns.

Experts have been predicting the death of the billable hours system for many years. It's still going strong. In many cases, both clients and lawyers are comfortable with the approach and believe it achieves fair results. Changing your existing billing approaches may take time and negotiation and involve changing systems. There is also a vocal group who believe that any type of billing other than hourly billing is unethical, and innovative billing approaches can raise issues under applicable ethical rules.

You will find both a growing momentum for alternative billing approaches and receptivity on the part of clients to these approaches. If you want to see what lawyers really think of hourly billing, watch a lawyer's reaction when any other service provider suggests hourly billing.

For purposes of this article, I am going to assume that hourly billing remains the dominant approach to billing, with a small, but increasing, number of alternative experiments going on in many law practices.

My first rule is that you must think carefully about how technology might help make any alternative billing approach more profitable.

My second rule, which I will now turn to, is that, whatever your billing method, you must always consider the impact of technology on profitability. The vendors may be telling you better, faster, cheaper, but your response should be to ask about and understand the impact on profitability.

Profitability – The Key Measure.

Profitability is the key factor in technology decisions today. I had two recent conversations that brought home this point to me. First, I talked with a partner at a large law firm that is looking at its practice, staffing, technology and much else all in the context of how each item contributes to profits per partner. Second, I spoke with a lawyer in a small firm who made a large commitment to modernizing technology, with the result of a 50% increase in profit on the same annual revenues as the prior year.

Profit, classically, is the result of subtracting costs from revenues. In the short term, we can increase profits by decreasing costs and/or increasing revenues. In the long term, improving customer service also plays a key role in keeping profits strong.

I often find that lawyers underestimate the role technology can play in cutting costs, increasing revenue and improving customer services. Let's look at each of them in turn.

Using Technology to Cut Costs – The Cheaper of Better, Faster, Cheaper.

My wife's brother, Kevin Ford, started a solo law practice with a notebook computer, speech recognition software and no secretary. His calculation was that the technology would cost him $4,000. A good secretary would cost him $4,000 per month and need to be paid before he earned anything. His belief was that the technology investment would help him become profitable more quickly and that the savings each month would accrue to his benefit until he determined whether he needed a full-time secretary.

He was able to wait nine months before hiring a secretary. He saw the technology had a real-world payoff of $32,000. However, more importantly, it had a profound impact on the profitability (and cash flow) of his practice and helped him get his practice off the ground.

Here's another example. Lately, there has been much interest in Internet telephony or Voice over IP (VoIP). It's sold as a way to save money on your telephone bills. Annual call savings might be hard to calculate, but, if as a consultant recently told me, it would cost a law firm that was moving offices more to move the PBX and phones to the new office than to switch to VoIP, then I can easily see the bottom-line benefits.

I recommend taking a much more careful look at real cost savings as part of making your technology decisions. Notice that "better, faster, cheaper" benefits of technology may well offer you cost cutting opportunities. Some of these can be subtle and require that you think about your business model.

For example, outsourced technology services and even hosted software services may help you avoid large investments in hardware and software, reduce staffing needs and provide other savings. Similarly, you might use technology to let you hire part-time employees rather than full-time employees.

There are almost no end to the ways you can look at new technologies as potentially cost-cutters. Keeping documents in electronic form will save you on paper and printer ink or toner costs. Making documents available to clients on secure, private websites might save you postage and overnight shipping costs.

Cost-cutting uses of technology will work for you no matter whether you use hourly billing or alternative approaches. If you are realistic and think carefully about the economics, using technology will help you increase your profit margins on projects and run your office more cheaply, and that's a recipe for having a better year than last year.

Improved Revenues – the Faster of "Better, Faster, Cheaper."

Many variables come into play in determining a law firm's revenues. Projections involve assumptions that may or may not prove true. However, let's cautiously take a look at how technology might improve revenues in both hourly billing and alternative billing settings.

As a general matter, the case for technology improving revenues is easiest to make in the alternative billing approach. Client happily agrees to a price of $1,000 for a will. Rather than taking you ten hours at $100 an hour, you use document assembly to reduce the amount of time you spend to four hours. Assuming you do the same number of wills in the year and use the six hours you "saved" in other fee-generating work, you will increase revenues for the years. By comparison, in the billable hours world, you simply have reduced your fee for the will to $400.

While this example shows how technology can lead you to alternative billing, it's important to see that alternative billing models may not be realistic without the use of technology.

What is the biggest untapped information source in any law practice? It's the time records.

If you start to process and analyze those records, you will learn many important things, not the least of which is how to price flat-fee projects. If you don't know how long it takes you, on average, to do projects, how can you set a flat-fee that works for you? You've been forced to enter your time every day; why not use that information for something that benefits you?

In hourly billing, one of the hidden problems is time write-offs. Let's go back to my example of the document that takes six hours to draft. If you routinely write off half of that time for clients on every bill, then you are not making an accurate calculation of the economics of the impact of technology. Any process where you consistently write off time is an invitation to consider technology alternatives.

The biggest area to consider using technology to improve revenues is to improve your staffing. If using speech recognition allows you to avoid hiring a full-time secretary and hire a paralegal instead, or other technologies allow a secretary to do paralegal work, you've turned a cost into a revenue producer.

Another good area from increasing revenues through technology is to see whether you can automate documentation or other processes to create fees for "annual corporate maintenance" or other legal support or service packages as annual subscriptions.

Client Satisfaction – The Better of "Better, Faster, Cheaper."

The notion of "better" rarely resonates with lawyers. In most cases, the "better" is something that benefits clients more than lawyers. Although you might perceive few immediate benefits, the benefits over the long term can be substantial.

Let me give you two examples of ways to use technology to improve client satisfaction.

First, after developing a document assembly application to generate first drafts of complex estate planning documents, I realized that the same process could routinely generate document summaries and charts of the estate plan for clients with little additional time or effort. For almost no additional cost, clients received a package that helped them really understand the contents of complex legal documents.

Second, with just a couple of mouse clicks, the ReportBooks feature of CaseMap 5 generates a handy client summary of the main facts, issues and cast of characters in a litigation matter, along with an assessment of some of the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence. That's something that clients will appreciate and will keep them coming back to you.

In each example, you are looking to use some aspect of technology, small or large, to improve your client's experience in working with you. It might be as simple as using a color printer or enlarging the font size for elderly clients.

You want to look at technology with an eye for how it might improve client service, which will help tie your clients to you for the long-term. Study after study shows that it is better and easier to land new business from existing clients than it is to go out and land new clients.

Making the Turn to Alternative Billing.

Better use of technology will help you build an environment where alternate billing approaches make sense and may even thrive. I am not, however, trying to convince you, that you must switch to alternative billing methods. I do want to suggest that experimenting with alternative billing is advisable. You can expect to see it from your competitors and be asked about it by clients.

Five essentials for using technology to move toward better billing practices and enhanced profitability are:

1. Understand the Facts and Do Not Rely on Assumptions. If a project takes ten hours of time at $100 an hour, then charging a $500 flat fee will never make economic sense. Similarly, if you do not know the costs per page of printers and copiers, you can't evaluate whether it makes sense to buy a new one. Knowing the total costs of hiring an employee is essential when evaluating outsourcing or technology alternatives.

2. Use Your Facts, Not Anyone Else's Facts. People always give me examples of cost savings from technology for a litigation practice. I do not have a litigation practice. The examples simply do not apply to me. Keep the focus directly on you and what's going on at your firm.

3. Cheaper Will Help You the Most Now, But Faster Will Be the Key in Alternative Billing. Keep your eye on profitability. The benefit of technology today is in how you can use it creatively to cut costs. Cutting costs will help you increase profits, which will give you the flexibility and capital to try new technologies and new approaches to billing. However, cutting costs is only one step. Almost every alternative billing approach makes the most sense when you reduce the time it takes to perform services and become more productive.

4. Look for Billing Inefficiencies as Indicators Where to Experiment with Alternative Billing. I'd be surprised if you cannot use your existing software to analyze your time, billing and collection records to generate useful business information. Are you doing that? You should be. Do some analysis with those programs or a spreadsheet and then use the information. Tasks that are consistently written off, expenses that are not billed and similar facts may show you areas where technology can help you or provide fertile ground for alternative billing experiments.

5. Look for Happy Clients You Can Make Happier. My informal surveys suggest that lawyers often use new clients to test alternative billing approaches. I suggest that you might get better results and feedback by approaching your happy clients. If you've used technology in the past to improve client service, they may be even more receptive.

Conclusion.

It will be a while before we see a massive shift away from hourly billing. However, do not make the assumption that productivity gains from technology are always at odds with the hourly billing system. Instead, focus on the contributions that technology can make to improving profitability – cutting costs, increasing revenues and improving client service – and then use a hard-headed realistic approach to looking at whether your technology helps you in these areas. Then, apply some of the ideas I discuss in this article to begin to experiment with alternative billing models where they make sense for you.

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Useful Resources on Alternative Billing Methods

Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell, Alternative Billing Requires Alternative Resources, Law Practice Today, September 2004 (http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/articles/slc09041.html).

Jim Calloway and Mark Robertson, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590311175/Winning Alternatives to the Billable Hour, 2nd Edition: Strategies That Work, ABA Publishing.

Ron Baker, Professional's Guide To Value Pricing, CCH.

Alan Weiss, Value-Based Fees: How to Charge—and Get—What You're Worth, Pfeiffer.

The [Non]billable Hour Blog – http://www.nonbillablehour.com

Other Helpful Books on Value Billing

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

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page. More information on the "Second Pair of Eyes" packages for legal technology audits and strategic planning may be found here (PDF).

Technorati tags: legal technology alternative billing value billing document assembly

Posted by dmk at 07:57 PM | Comments (2)

May 22, 2006

Honoring the Tradition of Training: Ten Tips for Running a Summer Program

Denise Howell's recent post mentioning summer programs in law firms made me think back to the first article I ever wrote for publication, just over ten years ago. The article was called "Honoring the Tradition of Training: Ten Tips for Running a Summer Program." It was published in the ABA's Law Practice Management Magazine and I'll always be grateful to John Tredennick for deciding to publish the article.

I scoured my hard drive and found a copy of the article, which might be the original draft. I decided to republish it on my blog without making any changes to it.

This is the time of year that law students start summer jobs and law firms try to find ways to give law students a good summer associate experience. I know that there is still not a lot of material to help lawyers who run summer programs, so I hope that making this article available online will help some people.

I didn't re-read the whole article today. I did notice that it had some of the characteristics of what has become my writing "style" and I noticed that the paragraphs are so lo-o-o-ong, reminding me how writing styles have changed during the Internet era to reflect the way readers prefer to scan shorter paragraphs.

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Honoring the Tradition of Training: Ten Tips for Running a Summer Program

"How would you like to be in charge of our summer program?" So begins one of the most rewarding roles a younger attorney can have in the administration of a law firm.

You should take a momentary pleasure in the vote of confidence being so selected represents. The increased workload and time commitment, however, may seem a bit daunting. You probably know what you liked, and what you didn't like, about your own summer experiences. You have undoubtedly had some involvement with your firm's summer program and may even be a graduate of your firm's summer program. And you probably had at least an inkling that you would be asked to take on the leadership of the summer program. Where do you find help? What are the best sources?

I've just finished a four-year tour of duty in charge of the summer program at my firm. I was somewhat surprised to find that there are few articles and other materials available to help design and administer summer programs. Some of the more useful articles and sources may be found in the bibliography at the end of this article. Even better is to take over a well-designed program with a predecessor who will serve as an ongoing source of wise counsel and sage advice. That, however, may not always be the case.

This article lists my ten best tips for running a summer program. My firm has a relatively small summer program, but I have chosen the tips which have the most universal relevance. I have tried to combine both the practical and the philosophical and to place the role of running a summer program squarely within the tradition of training that is an integral part of the profession.

1. Involve Yourself in the Hiring Process. You have probably been interviewing law students for a number of years. Being part of the interview process allows you to develop relationships with summer associates early in the process and gives you an opportunity to evaluate potential recruits. When you are put in charge of summer program, you should become more than a mere participant in interviewing and hiring process. Becoming a member of the hiring committee or at least having significant involvement and input in the decision-making process is vital to the success of your summer program.

I tried to interview every candidate that we brought back to the office for a second interview and did a number of our on-campus interviews as well. This approach requires a significant time commitment and may not be practical in your situation. By interviewing each candidate, I could provide consistent answers to questions about our summer program and use my enthusiasm about the program to help sell the firm and the summer program. As time went on, I found that my experiences with summer program helped me identify potential candidates more easily and see potential problem areas with various candidates. I also found the interview process very helpful for getting feedback from students about what aspects of our summer program appealed to them and for getting responses to new ideas that I was considering for the next summer.

Because I saw a large part of my role as an interviewer to be providing information about the summer program, my interview techniques became friendlier and less-threatening. This approach pays dividends in helping you build an early relationship with offerees and allows you to be more active in actual recruiting of individuals. This early relationship also makes early and consistent contacts after a person accepts an offer a more natural process.
Being involved with your firm's hiring committee is useful for at least two other reasons. First, you will learn why offer decisions are made and what factors the other members of the hiring committee feel are important. This learning process will teach you many things about your firm, its culture and its mission. Second, after a couple of summers, you will have had the opportunity to field-test the results of those decisions and the assumptions on which they are based. Your observations become very important feedback to the hiring committee and should help to improve the hiring process.

2. Early Preparation Pays Off. It is difficult to exaggerate the time and energy commitment which is required to run a summer program. When the interviewing component of the job is included, running a summer program requires a significant amount of attention on a year-round basis. After the summer associates leave in August, you will find yourself writing memos to Managing Partners about the summer program, making your own notes about what worked and didn't work and deciding what might be new ideas to try the next summer.

It hardly seems that the summer associates have left (and sometimes they haven't) when you start interviewing law students for the next summer. You will be helping recruit your former associates who received offers and giving references for others. There might be 1-L interviews in December and January. In St. Louis, there is a Minority Clerkship Program which involves additional preparation and interviewing in the spring. By April I felt that I had to focus on the summer program and get set up for the arrival of new summer associates in May.

I also liked to incorporate new ideas in the summer program each year. I spent time looking for new articles and talking to others with the same job in other firms in the "off-season." I also talked to a number of people in the firm after the summer was over to help decide what went right and what went wrong. Also, there were always a number of people in the firm who sought me out to tell me what went right and what went wrong. I am afraid to add up all the hours that I spent in conversations with people about the summer program. As I suggested earlier, you learn many things about the culture, philosophy and mission of your firm by running its summer program.

You must have early and continuing contact with each person who accepts an offer with your firm. It can be as simple as a congratulatory note upon acceptance of the offer, a note to say good luck with finals at the beginning of December, a note to touch base with some information about the program in February and then a note every few weeks from April to the starting date. The worst mistake you can make is to have one of your summer associates call you up to confirm that he or she does, in fact, still have a job with you for the summer.

I also highly recommend some form of written manual and taking the time to do a comprehensive orientation on the first day a summer associate arrives. A manual can take many forms. I simply adapted our firm's staff manual into what I called a "guidebook" to help avoid any potential "official employee manual" employment issues. The guidebook contained a description of firm policies, phone numbers, computer, mail, copier and fax information, maps and biographies and secretarial arrangements. While I touched on much of the information covered in the guidebook during the orientation, the guidebook contained the type of material that will not be remembered after one listening. Our summer associates found it useful to have a written source to turn to for answers to basics questions. Never underestimate the importance of accurate office maps to your summer associates. In addition to the manual, I gave each summer associate and information packet with samples of written work and time sheets, an updated firm resume and telephone list, and articles useful to someone starting his or her legal career.

I have never liked to put someone right to work on his or her first morning on the job, but most summer associates arrive ready and raring to go. My compromise was to spend a few hours in the morning doing an orientation, touring the offices and introducing the summer associates to attorneys, taking them and their "buddies" to lunch, and then letting them get started on a project or two in the afternoon. It is unrealistic to expect that summer associates will hear and digest everything that you tell them in an orientation, but there are a number of items that they need to hear on a number of occasions and it is good to start immediately. I generally began with an introduction to the firm and its history, clients and structure. I proceeded to talk about matters specific to the summer program and then covered a broad range of practical details. I always took the approach that summer associates had not worked in a law firm before and stressed the practical while incorporating a few of my philosophical points about the program. I gave people practical tips about handling their first assignments and soliciting feedback, but I did not feel that walking through a sample assignment was useful. I also experiment with involving other people - managing partner, hiring partner, office manager, librarian - in the orientation itself. Involving others may make sense in your situation and it may even be part of your firm's culture, but I decided that it was best to keep the orientation focused and personal and, except for library tours, everything was covered by me.

The importance of early preparation for administrative matters - offices, secretarial arrangements, network setup, phone numbers, parking - goes without saying. It is good to get on top of this by April so that everyone is thinking along the same lines. If there is a problem with office space or number of secretaries, you can get it worked out much more easily over a six-week period than you can, say, over a six-day period.

Confidentiality and ethics issues involving summer associates have become far more significant in the last few years. There has been a growing awareness of potential conflicts of interest involving a summer associate who may have worked on the other side of a case at another firm the previous summer. Because summer associates are given small parts of cases, a summer associate may have worked on a case at another firm during the previous summer and have no idea of potential conflicts. A summer associate can get caught in the middle of these types of conflicts checks. The better approach seems to be to initiate contact, probably at an appropriate higher level, between your firm and the prior employer to work out the conflicts check issues and keep the summer associate out of the loop.

A large part of my early preparation went toward promoting interest in the summer program and increase participation by members of the firm. Make sure that people who will be participating in the program as "buddies," speakers, hosts of social events or in other capacities are contacted well in advance of the summer. I sent a memo to all attorneys and staff several weeks before the summer associates arrived describing the summer program, giving starting dates and providing brief biographies of summer associates. The day before a summer associate started an item containing a more detailed biography ran in our daily bulletin. Another item was placed in the daily bulletin on the actual start date and informed the receptionists when summer associates arrived so that they would be expected and warmly greeted. The little details really do matter. I also spoke about the summer program at the firm meeting in the spring. Participation by everyone at the firm is a large component of any successful summer program. Getting the summer program on peoples' minds is a first step toward getting that participation.

3. Make Use of Mentors. The summer program is probably not a place where you want to tough it out and go it alone. Although you are likely to run into a few things that no one else has ever experienced, many of the situations that arise during a summer are ones that arise fairly commonly. You will not have all the answers.
Your predecessors will most likely be tremendous sources of assistance to you. I talked to my predecessor on a regular basis and he was an enormous help to me. This type of regular consultation is a way to check your new ideas. Perhaps your ideas were considered or tried earlier. You should definitely learn where the potential pitfalls are as well as get a good sense of what has worked well before.

I also found the members of the hiring committee and the hiring partner to be good sources. It is good to remind them that the decisions they make have real consequences. People on the hiring committee are very interested in the training of younger attorneys and are often very willing to help you.

Your own mentor in the firm, even though he or she has little or no connection with the summer program, is often the best person to help you with some of the thornier issues or to give you important insights. In fact, tip #8 is a near quote from a comment made to me by my mentor as I lamented last summer that I felt I had the system really worked out, but that I was spending more time on the summer program than I ever had previously.

4. Consider Using a Buddy System. I am a big advocate of using a "buddy" system for your summer program. A "buddy" is a young associate who is paired up with a summer associate for the summer. I thought of them as "designated friends"; the buddies would have preferred the title of "associate advisor." A buddy's role, as with many things, lies somewhere in between. Each summer associate was paired with an associate in the firm with whom I thought he or she would be most compatible. The buddy helped the summer associate learn the culture of the firm and the many subtleties that are difficult to pick up in a short period of time - appropriate dress for casual day, forms to use, where to eat lunch and general information about working with individual attorneys. My notion was to try to have the assignment of a buddy act be a catalyst to a friendship that would be likely to develop over the summer in any event. I was not always successful at that, but I didn't expect to be.

The buddies also helped me by being my "eyes and ears" for potential problems and addressing other concerns before they became problems. For example, many summer associates will say that they can take on work even though they are swamped. A buddy could give me a more accurate assessment of the summer associate's workload and I could make the appropriate adjustment. On a lighter note, another example is the issue of what to wear to the firm picnic. I also found it infinitely preferable to pass off the issue to an appropriately-gendered buddy than try to answer questions about whether what type of swimsuit to wear to a pool party or float trip.

Although the use of buddies can take a good deal of the day-to-day load of running the summer program off of you, use of a buddy program does involve additional time to select buddies, keep them informed about what you want and to listen to their comments on summer associates. There are also tricky issues of confidentiality and objectivity. In my view, a buddy's job is to help the summer associate get an offer to return to the firm. As a general principle, a buddy could not give his or her summer associate a project. A buddy was not asked to give me a yes-no recommendation on the summer associate, although I would ask them for a more general assessment on the issue of "fit" and their opinions on whether a summer associate had a good experience and was likely to accept an offer.

For a buddy system to work well, a summer associate has to be able to feel that he or she can confide in a buddy. I chose to emphasize that aspect of the buddy relationship and respect the confidentiality of the relationship. There are obvious pluses and minuses of this approach and you might decide to take another approach. Disclosure of whatever the buddy's role is in the evaluation and information-gathering process, however, is essential.

Finally, a buddy system can help you handle the friend/evaluator dynamic that is an integral part of running a summer program. On the one hand, you want to have enough distance and objectivity to be an effective evaluator. On the other hand, it is unrealistic to expect that you won't end up liking everyone and rooting for them to get an offer. The buddy system allows you to be a bit stronger in the evaluator role. Because buddies are much nearer in age to the summer associates, a buddy system also helps you avoid looking foolish by trying to act like you are younger and hipper than you are.

5. Involve Attorneys on a Regular, Structured Basis Other Than Simply Giving Assignments. I met with all the summer associates on a regular, weekly basis. We would meet each Friday morning in the same conference room. The meetings had two purposes. First was the business side of the meeting. This part of the meeting lasted above five minutes and allowed me to discuss upcoming events, any problems that had arisen, workload issues and the like. The summer associates then had an opportunity to raise any issues that applied to the group at large (individual matters had to be discussed with me individually). The second purpose of the meeting was to have one of the partners in the firm give a talk to the summer associates. Partners could talk on any subject related to their specialty with only the instruction to make their talks personal rather than institutional. Partners were to talk about how they chose their specialty, what they liked most about their work and what they actually did on a daily basis. Invariably, this approach resulted in a discussion of advice that the attorney would give to a young law student. I followed the talk with a short homily emphasizing a point or two that the speaker made. Parents with children who watch Barney will recognize this approach.

This approach built on some of the things which were already being done in the program and reflected part of my answer to my consistent question: "What would I have liked to see when I worked during the summer?" Although this type of program results in a larger expenditure of time, it is very worthwhile. First, it is a non-threatening way to introduce attorneys to the summer associates and to help break down perceived barriers for the summer associates. After speaking to the group, a partner would be more inclined to take summer associates to lunch, to have them accompany him or her to a deposition or closing or to give out more projects. Summer associates were also more likely to seek the partner out either for projects or to discuss some of the points raised in the talk.

Second, it helps law students learn what lawyers actually do. Many law students simply do not know what an average lawyer does let alone what lawyers do in some of the more esoteric areas. Third, because I usually had eight to ten speakers in the course of a summer, I was able to promote participation from attorneys in various departments. Fourth, I could tailor speakers and, in a few cases, topics, to the particular group that I had for the summer. Some attorneys who I wanted the summer associates to meet might not be able to give projects, but were able to speak to them. I also let the summer associates pick one speaker at the end of each summer, which proved to be a very popular and successful experiment. It is a powerful motivator to tell an attorney that the summer associates have picked him or her as the one person they would most like to hear.

You can also benefit immensely from learning about the firm and its history and culture and, more importantly, about your partners and their history, work and interests. You will certainly benefit from being able to refer potential clients to others in your firm and to cross-sell existing clients as a result of the knowledge you gain about your partners that you might not have otherwise known.

6. Adopt a Structured Approach to Feedback and Evaluations. The two dragons of the summer program are feedback and evaluations. These two areas are largely a function of firm culture and you may be able to do little to change existing practices. To paint a fair picture of life at your firm, you will want to develop a feedback and evaluation system that is not too different from the one that is being used for young associates. I focused on eliminating barriers to feedback and evaluation and tried to minimize the amount of paperwork involved. I developed an explicitly two-tiered approach to feedback.

For feedback on the specifics of a given project, I simply relied on the one-on-one relationship between the assigning attorney and the summer associate. I told the summer associate that I would get involved in project feedback only if asked. Part of what I wanted to do was to push summer associates to seek feedback and to help them recognize feedback when they got it. Learning to get and interpret feedback is an essential skill that must be learned and practiced by young attorneys.

My focus was on the general evaluations rather than on specific project feedback. I gave two evaluations during each summer, one in the middle of the summer and one at the end of the summer. Each attorney with whom a summer associate had worked received an evaluation form and I concentrated on ways to get the highest level of responses. I experimented with different evaluation forms and finally decided to use a simplified form with 4 or 5 rating areas that forced a general conclusion. Attorneys seemed to write more comments when I left little space for comments than when I left large white spaces for comments. I used these evaluation forms as the basis for my own comments to the summer associates and filtered the responses back to the summer associates. This approach was preferable to showing summer associates the individual evaluation forms. Personally soliciting oral evaluations from attorneys may sometimes result in more in-depth evaluations, but the enormous amount of time that can be involved probably does not make this method practical in most firms.

Students generally will tell you that they are most interested in getting a thorough and honest evaluation at the middle of the summer. I put a lot of effort into the mid-summer evaluation. A mid-summer evaluation can be very inaccurate since it tends to highlight the comments on the first few projects done by the summer associate. Nonetheless, it is vital to get summer associates as information as possible by mid-summer.

I preferred a structured format for evaluations. I used the same format for each summer associate. Each summer associate review lasted at least 20 - 30 minutes. I began by explaining how the information was gathered and the potential inaccuracies that might arise during the evaluation process, especially at mid-summer. I then discussed with as many specifics as possible the positive aspects of the evaluations. I then mentioned at least three areas for improvement, again using as many specifics as I could. It is one thing to say that someone is "careless"; it is far better to say that the person needs to pay attention to detail and point to a specific oversight, like leaving out a page of a copy of a memo that was turned in to the assigning attorney. An evaluation of the summer associate's written work was next on my agenda. I tried to read some examples of each summer associate's writing, but I focused on a general set of points I wanted to emphasize during the summer - attention to detail, use of citation, drawing conclusions, considering the audience - and then made a few specific comments on the written work. Finally, I asked the summer associate for a self-assessment and his or her view on how things were going. The summer associate and I then tried to develop a plan for the rest of the summer to address the improvement areas or any other problems and to try to get specific types of work in which the summer associate was interested. The final evaluation followed the same format except that I asked for the self-assessment at the beginning of the meeting before giving my comments and I solicited feedback on the summer program and talked specifically about the summer associate's desire to return to the firm.

I liked this highly structured approach because it allowed for criticisms to be made in a positive framework, it ensured that each evaluation was similar, it made it easy for me to keep notes of each evaluation and to eliminate the complaint that "you never told me there were things I had to improve," and it promoted a two-way flow to the evaluation. It is important to seek information as well as impart it. My approach takes a good deal of time and effort, but it provides good information to the summer associates and it helps eliminate misunderstandings from evaluations which can take endless amounts of time to sort out.

7. Handling Social Events. My least favorite part of running our summer program was organizing and promoting social events. The social events were great, but working around schedule problems, work emergencies and other distractions was extremely difficult. And that was just getting the summer associates together.

My conclusion is that no matter how great a social event may be you are always better off getting summer associates out of the office, and out of the library, to attend trials, depositions, closings or any other work that shows what an attorney actually does. The time spent riding and talking with an attorney in a car to and from a deposition will likely turn out to be a more pivotal experience for the summer than will a night at the opera. Similarly, lunches and small group activities are also preferred by most summer associates.

The key, however, is to be who you are. Social events which fit within the firm culture and which are in line with your own personality as well turn out better than a great new idea that you may have. What you want to achieve is a setting where both attorneys and summer associates are relatively relaxed and comfortable (even though most law schools seem to counsel students never to let down their guard at any time) and the summer associates can get a better sense of what the attorneys in your firm are like outside a work setting.

I did not like to schedule many social events in the first few weeks of the summer. You will want to get a reading of what your summer associates' interests are first. Last year's most successful activity might be a disaster with this year's group. Remember also that a summer associate can get overbooked for the summer. Be sure that you do not plan so many activities that summer associates have little free time on the weekends or begin to see the events as a burden.

I always preferred a realistic approach. If there are twice as many social events in the summer as there are in the rest of year, you probably need to rethink your approach.

Remember that you do not have to do everything with respect to the summer program. Delegation is key. Getting several people, especially the buddies, to take over the planning of social events can be a big help. Another good idea is not to attend every event. Your presence can inhibit summer associates and, if you are not there, they can feel that they are not necessarily being told the party line.

8. It's a People Job, Not a Systems Job. Last summer was my fourth summer of running our summer program. I had all of my systems worked out and running smoothly. But I found that I was spending even more time on the summer program than I ever had before. It was frustrating me until I heard the words: "Well, it's a people job, not a systems job."

The systems that you design can make things flow more easily and smoothly, but running a summer program is a very high-maintenance operation. Many people are involved who need to be given attention on a regular basis. Do you really want to go for a week or more without chatting with each summer associate? Do you want to have regular meetings with buddies? Friday morning meetings may take up another hour or two. Managing workload can take up a good deal of time. Gathering evaluations from attorneys who do not turn in their forms can take a great deal of time. Evaluations take time. During the last few weeks of the summer, people who rarely, if ever, speak to you, will spend a great deal of time asking how summer associates are doing and speculating on offers. It is not uncommon to have at least one day during the summer where you find that it is time to go home and you know that all you have done is deal with summer program issues and you have no idea what they all were.

Because it is a people job, the best skills that you can have are flexibility and adaptability. Part of my enjoyment in running our program was making successful modifications in the way I did things during the course of the summer in reaction to the different people and situations we had. I tried to give the summer associates a high level of input into the way the summer program ran. There was also at least one issue which arose every summer for which I was completely unprepared and which I could not have predicted.

By all means, work on setting up a good system. But remember that any system you design will have to be modified over the course of a summer.

9. Practice Patience. My philosophy was to create an atmosphere where summer associates had a chance to show what they could do and then to let them do it. It is better to let a summer associate adopt the approach that he or she believes best than it is to force them into a mold that you think might be best. I did, however, try to do some steering if it seemed appropriate or necessary.

There are a tremendous number of practical skills that a summer associate has to learn over the course of a summer. Part of the summer experience is learning how to deal with these practical issues: How do I get my work done when my secretary is sick? Or, by "memo", did the assigning attorney mean a two-page action memo like my last assignment or twenty-page "law review" memo like the one before that? Or, how can people say that because the assigning attorney rewrote every sentence of my memo and kept rubbing her temples while talking me I should get the message that I had done a good job?

Most of these lessons should be learned by the summer associate himself or herself. Unless the summer associate is really floundering, it is probably best to resist the urge to jump right in and bail him or her out at the first hint of a problem. The vast majority of problems work themselves out in a fairly short period of time. This is especially true of the problems you hear second-hand. When a summer associate comes to you directly, though, you have to deal with the issue directly.

Some issues that arise during the summer should be delegated appropriately. I did everything possible to stay out of issues involving office furniture, for example. Secretarial and administrative issues should be handled by the summer associate with the office manager. Running the summer program gains you precious little weight at the firm - you do not want to be reminded too often how little - and you will want to choose your battles carefully.

Using a buddy system also gives the summer associate an initial friendly first step for advice on handling some issues. Generally, a summer associate is disinclined to bring every little issue to you. You want to be sure that they understand that you are always available when needed, but that there are often other avenues to try.

10. Don't Be Afraid to Stamp Your Imprint. Everyone runs a summer program in response to his or her own summer experience _ keeping the parts you liked, downplaying or eliminating what you didn't like and adding some of the things that you wished would have been part of your own experience. No matter how structured your summer program is, there will be some opportunities to have the program reflect your personality and your insights. It is wrong to simply be a care-taker of your firm's existing program. Every program can be improved.

I tried something new every year. My particular interest was in using the summer program to provide educational opportunities during the summer. For example, I talked one of my partners into being a writing advisor for summer associates. Once I was comfortable with the general structure of the program (and I inherited a good one), I enjoyed trying new things during the summer. As a result, our summer program had a spontaneous feel that reflected my personality.

What I learned at the end of my fourth year was that the person who runs a summer program, in many ways, the first mentor law students will have. Your philosophy about the profession, your enthusiasm about the practice and your firm, and your approach to the training of young lawyers will probably be passed on to your summer associates. That is at the same time both a sobering and exciting realization. George Leonard, in his book, Mastery, says that in choosing a teacher it is good to know who that teacher's teachers were. As I thought about this statement, I decided to make my last talk to summer associates about my own mentors and teachers. It is fascinating to see your own training as part of a historical tradition of teaching and to realize, as I did, how greatly you have benefited from the instruction you received early in your career. You honor your teachers by continuing their tradition of training.

Conclusion

I don't know whether I decided to stop running our summer program because the summer associates kept calling me "Dad" or because I heard myself saying "what a great group of kids." Running a summer program is and should be a young person's game, for many reasons. But I had a four great years.

The great enjoyment and reward of running a summer program comes largely from the opportunity to know, teach and assist the extremely bright, motivated and interesting law students who will end up working at your firm for a summer or, you hope, much longer. I had four "great groups of kids" who impressed me greatly and from whom I learned many things. I am richer for knowing all of them and hope that I have contributed in some small way to helping them become the excellent lawyers, and people, that they are capable of becoming.

I interviewed a law student this fall who told me a story of working with an older sole practitioner for period of time while she was deciding whether or not to go to law school. He gave her a lot of work, but also took a lot of time to talk to her about law school and the profession. When she told him that she had decided to go to law school, he told her that he had spent all the time with her because when he was young an older attorney had done the same thing for him. And, he told her, if she became a lawyer, she would have the same obligation to another young person in a similar situation. This is part of the tradition of the profession.

Often today you see and hear of an obsession with the "career path" and staying on it and fearing that you might fall even one step behind, that time spent working with young law students is time that might be better spent working on your own specialty, and that no one has any time for anyone other than himself or herself. I strongly believe that there is plenty of time and, if running a summer program is a detour off the fast track, it is a detour well worth making, a detour that has long been part of the tradition of the profession.

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Bibliographic Note: In many ways, the best general reference is Arnold B. Kantner's chapter on summer programs in The Lawyer Hiring Handbook (NALP). A good general article is Daniel F. Hinkel's "Success With Summer Associates" in the April, 1987 ABA Journal at pages 66 -70. An excellent practical article which focuses on orientation is Michele Mainaro's "How to Start Off a Summer Program" in the May 20, 1991 issue of The National Law Journal. You may also have access to seminar materials. The National Association for Law Placement is another source of information. Tapes of sessions relating to summer programs from the NALP annual convention are readily available and can be helpful as would attendance at the seminars.

Written in December, 1995/January, 1996

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

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Technorati tags: summer associate summer program law firm

Posted by dmk at 06:41 PM

January 17, 2006

Do You Have a Single PDF File with All of Your Articles You Republished on Your Blog at the End of Last Year?

Why, yes, I do have one handy PDF file with all forty of my articles I republished by posting them on my blog between October and December 2005. It even has each of the forty articles bookmarked for easy navigation.

Here's the URL: http://www.denniskennedy.com/pdfs/dkblogarticlesarchive.pdf

As you may recall, I posted the articles as a way to put them into my Movable Type blog database and get them into one convenient place.

There are forty articles in the collection. They range from 1997 to 2005 and cover both legal technology and technology law topics. That's not all of my articles, but I wanted to get a generous number of them up on my website and freely available again. I believe that I was able to clean up all of the strange characters that Word introduced into the posts when preparing the PDF file.

For those who don't like PDF files, remember that all of the articles are available in HTML in the articles archive of this blog. See the archive listing in the right-hand column.

This PDF file will let you read them at your leisure or print them out for offline reading. If while reading them, you get the urge to talk to me about hiring me to do some consulting, speaking or writing for you, that'd be great. Please get in touch. I'm also happy to talk with you about reprinting the articles or licensing them for other uses. And, of course, I always enjoy getting feedback on the articles. It was fun (and satisfying) to see some of the articles get a new life with a new audience when I posted them on my blog.

[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).

Technorati tag: legal technology

Posted by dmk at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

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/)]

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 09:35 PM | Comments (0)

December 19, 2005

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/)]

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).

Client-driven technology

Posted by dmk at 08:14 PM | 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/)]

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 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/)]

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 09:12 AM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2005

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/)]

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Posted by dmk at 07:53 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 year 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 where 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 fewer than 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, and then they would 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 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 you 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 to 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, and 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/)]

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 07:18 PM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2005

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/)]

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 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/)]

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 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

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/)]

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 07:57 PM | Comments (0)

December 07, 2005

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/)]

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.

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/)]

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.

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

December 05, 2005

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/)]

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.

Posted by dmk at 04:36 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/)]

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.

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

November 30, 2005

Beating Information Overload with News Aggregators - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. This article, from the fall of 2003, over two years ago, was my effort to explain RSS feeds and news aggregators (or news readers) in plain language and to show why I found them so exciting and, even, a "world-changing" technology. If you still visit this blog on a regular basis, you'll want to read this article to see how you can get the posts on this blog to come to you without you visiting this blog. People describe RSS as a "disruptive" technology and all kinds of other things. But until you "get" the newsreader experience, this is all just theory. Use of RSS feeds and a news reader can dramatically change your everyday experience of the Internet. It's powerful stuff, if it fits the way you use the Internet. It's worth making the experiment.]

Beating Information Overload with News Aggregators

I knew the world had changed the first morning I checked my news aggregator before I checked my e-mail.

We all have our routines for getting our daily dose of information. We might read a newspaper or two. We check our e-mail for messages and newsletters. We have our favorite web sites we check every day. The mail brings magazines, advance sheets and other information resources.

And it all overwhelms us.

“Information overload” is no longer a catchphrase – it is an illness that leaves us with a sense of being overwhelmed and falling further behind. Being a lawyer means that we are definitely in the information business.

I have found a solution that really works. The same tools can work for you.

Let me start with a paradox. The amount of information I now handle on a daily basis has grown dramatically, but the amount of control I feel that I have over that information has increased exponentially. You might be thinking: is he actually going to try to talk me into adopting a new technology that brings me more information? Yes, I am.

I’m also going to try to sell you on a new technology and hardly tell you any details about the underlying technology. Why? Because it’s not about the technology—it’s about how the technology can help you in what you do every day.

Some of you might remember back to a three-month period in the late 1990s when “push” technology was the hottest tech trend going. The idea was that rather than going out to the Internet to find information, we could have information “pushed” to our desktops. Pointcast was a classic example. “Push” was not ready for prime time and it disappeared off the face of the earth.

However, one of the ideas behind “push” – that it is better to receive some information, especially updates and news items, automatically rather than to go out and search for it – continued to be attractive. For the most part, e-mail and e-mail newsletters have since filled the role expected for “push.” Savvy e-mail users could subscribe to relevant newsletters and had friends and colleagues who sent them relevant material off the Internet.

Unfortunately, in the last year or so, the sheer volume of e-mail, spam and the danger of attachments, drastically reduced the effectiveness of e-mail for these purposes. It has become difficult to find relevant material in your inbox.

At the same time, it has become harder to find the information you want on the Internet. When you do find a valuable page, it takes work to keep up with developments on the site. Essentially, you have to remember to visit each page that you want to follow on a regular basis. I’ve tried a variety of techniques, from a “daily” favorites list to “tabbed” browsers to some “automated browsing” techniques. None of them work. The difficulty is that you have to make an ongoing effort to go out to each page.

As a result, I found that I never remembered to check a wide variety of useful sites, especially those of my friends, and I missed all kinds of useful material. I had accepted that as the cost of living in a world of information overload.

Enter newsfeeds and news aggregators. A news aggregator is a software program that automatically retrieves newsfeeds from web pages that supply these feeds. Newsfeeds come in a number of standard formats and are relatively simple items of code that (1) can be retrieved and read by news aggregators and (2) may contain headlines, summaries, excerpts, full text of articles, links or even images. That’s all you really need to know about the underlying technology in order to use it.

What are the benefits and advantages of news aggregators and newsfeeds?

• I do not have to visit each source site individually. Once I find a site with a feed (and I’ll talk about that below) and "subscribe" to the feed via my aggregator, I get the information the site feeds without taking affirmative steps to visit the site.
• I can review new information from a large number of sites in a short time.
• I can sort my feeds into groups categorized by subject matter.
• I can add and delete feeds easily.
• Because I receive information via feeds in a highly useful manner, I can deal with information easily and efficiently.

The last point touches on the essence of the usefulness of newsfeeds and news aggregators. With respect to new information, we, and lawyers especially, ideally want to do the following:

1. Know that the information is there (Alert).


2. Quickly determine what it is (Headline).


3. Quickly scan or get the gist of the information (Excerpt or Summary).


4. Read the full article if we are interested (Full Text).


5. Deal with the information – typically act on it, move it on, delete it or file it (Take Action).

If we could find a tool that allowed us to take these steps easily, not only would our lives be easier and less overloaded, but we could, in fact, take on and handle more information, especially if, at the same time, we are improving the quality and the relevance of the information we get.

News aggregators give us precisely such a tool.

In my news aggregator (I'm using FeedDemon as my example), I have a number of subject matter folders. In each folder are the feeds (sometimes called channels) that I have affirmatively added to my list of feeds. When my news aggregator updates (either on launch or when I manually trigger it), I will see in the left column a highlighted feed and the number of new items sent out by that feed. When I click on that feed, I see in the middle column the headlines of these feeds, with the unread ones in bold. If I click on a headline, then, in the right column, I will see either a summary provided by the author of the feed, a short excerpt, or the full item, in each case with a hyperlink to the page on the site providing the feed on which the item is located. Today’s news aggregators, for the most, look very much like the Outlook e-mail interface many of us use on a daily basis.

In short, I quickly see the Alert, the Headline, the Excerpt or Summary, and either see or can quickly jump to the Full Text. Therefore, I get four out of the five ideal steps in a matter of seconds, or less, per item, and I take full advantage of my ability to scan quickly. I also have the tools to perform the Action Steps in an efficient manner.

As a result, I have a great deal of control over the information I receive because I can “triage” it very quickly, and move on or go deeper easily and efficiently. If the headline doesn’t affect me, I move on. If the headline interests me, I look at the summary or excerpt. Doesn’t affect or interest me? I move on. If it does, I look at the full text. Then I act on it – bookmark it, delete it, forward it on to a colleague, whatever.

As you will notice, e-mail newsletters, web pages and other approaches, do not give you the benefit of following these five steps so easily. For example, many e-mail newsletters are full text. If you like, as I do, e-mail newsletter that provide a short blurb and a link to the full article, you’ll see the benefit of a news aggregator right away.

We now have access to a rich information environment that brings material to us on a regular basis in a manner we can work with. But what can information can we really get?

It is now time for a brief digression about weblogs or blogs. Newsfeeds and blogs are almost invariably talked about at the same time. Here is all you have to know: A blog does not need a newsfeed and a newsfeed does not have to be connected to a blog. That said, newsfeeds definitely play a major role in the world of blogs and some of the best feeds come from blogs.

You can now get feeds from newspapers, magazines, news networks, headline services and a wide variety of content sources as well as from blogs. If you want to monitor, on a daily basis, a dozen of the most well-known newspapers in the world, you can easily do so. If you want to see headlines on your favorite sport or subject of interest, you can do that. There are now hundreds of law-related feeds.

As a result, you can be more up-to-date, spot trends, see what some of the leading thinkers on a variety of topics are writing, and learn of new developments quickly and easily. I will tell you that you can realistically manage several hundred feeds in less than half an hour in the morning.

How do you get started?

Here is the path I suggest. There are a number of sites that point you to legal blogs with newsfeeds. I'd start at Blawg.org (http://www.blawg.org) and see what is out there and what might interest you. Technorati (http://www.technorati.com) is a good general search tool for blogs and newsfeeds.

Once you get a feel for the information that is available and want to take the next step, check out a news aggregator. There are a number of them and new ones appear regularly. If you ask me today, I would suggest trying NewsGator (http://www.newsgator.com) or Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com), an online newsreader. There are many newsreaders these days. I generally recommend using Bloglines as an easy way to get started.

\You will gradually learn a number of tricks to locate feeds and there are some helpful resources. However, you will want to start looking on your favorite web sites either for an orange, rectangular button that says “XML”, the phrase “Syndicate this site” or something similar that indicates a newsfeed, an “XML” feed, an “RSS” feed, an “RDF” feed or something along those lines.

Click on that link. You will be taken to a page of code that is all but incomprehensible. That’s OK because all you want is the URL. Copy the URL and go to your news aggregator and following the steps for adding a new feed or channel and paste the URL in the appropriate blank. In some cases, an aggregator may automatically pick up the feed.

From that point on, when your aggregator updates you will get fresh headlines and material from that feed and it will appear in a convenient place with the other feeds you monitor. You never have to go to the website or blog, or the incomprehensible XML page, again, unless you want to. New posts and items will just come to you.

As a result, you will find yourself better informed and more in control of the information tidal wave in which we now live. I have been looking for a tool that will produce these results for many years. News aggregators have dramatically changed the way I deal with information, especially developments that affect my practice, in a manner that is extremely positive, productive, and, I hope, profitable. I definitely encourage you to take a test drive with these new tools and technologies. They will help you where you need it on a daily basis and give you a greater sense of control, and that’s something all of us can use.

[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 advanced blogging consulting and technology committee coaching packages for law firms, corporate legal departments and other professional services providers.

Posted by dmk at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)

November 29, 2005

Flashback: My Legal Technology Predictions for 2000 - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. As you may know, I have a long tradition of writing an annual legal technology predictions article. I was gazing into the legal tech crystal ball recently and came a way with a bit of a sense of pessimism and a large sense of deja vu. I mentioned this to some of my legal tech buddies. They quizzed me a bit and I mentioned that 2006 in legal technology reminded me a lot of the year 2000 in legal technology. I dug out my predictions article for 2000 and quickly realized why I had that feeling. I'm finding that writing these predictions articles increasing involves a balancing between developments that really interest me, such as Web 2.0, and developments which are likely to happen in the use of technology by lawyers. With that in mind, I'm republishing my predictions article for 2000 without any changes. You'll seem some of my common themes and I'll let you judge how accurate my predictions were – some wags might say that certainly many law firms have had much financial success ignoring my predictions. The article may be especially interesting to those who contend that the legal profession are "slow adopters" of technology.]

A Legal Technology Agenda for 2000

Assuming you have put the aftermath of the Year 2000 Problem behind you, 2000 will be a year in which you will find that your clients more so than innovations in technology will dictate changes in the way you practice. In 2000, it will be more a question of implementing existing technologies well rather than preparing for strikingly new technologies. It will be a year of great opportunity for lawyers and law firms, especially those looking toward the Internet.

Here are twelve items to put on your technology agenda for 2000:

1. How Will You Do Windows? Lawyers live largely in a Windows world. You may hear a lot about Linux, Macintosh and other alternatives, but most legal applications are Windows applications.

The biggest technology release of 2000 will be Windows 2000, Microsoft’s much ballyhooed and much delayed successor to Windows NT 4.0. A major new version of Windows is big news in any year, but Windows 2000 is the proverbial 800 pound gorilla – much of your thinking about upgrades and new systems will be a reaction to Windows 2000.

Microsoft clearly wants business users to move to Windows 2000, which it sees as the next generation in operating systems. Expect to see availability and support for Windows NT and Windows 98 dwindle as the year proceeds.

You may still conclude that you will stay with Windows 98 or NT for the foreseeable future, but you have to look at Windows 2000 and understand the reasons for choosing it or not choosing it. Your thinking, unfortunately, will be further complicated by the Microsoft antitrust case. Although there’s always a reluctance to move to the first release of any software, it’s hard to imagine a more thoroughly tested product than Windows 2000. There’s a feeling of inevitability about Windows 2000.

2. An Explosion of Non-PC Options. How much longer PCs will be the "computers" of choice? Some predict that as early as 2001 the number of "information appliances" purchased, such as Palm computing devices, "smart phones" and the like, will surpass the number of PCs purchased. We soon will be seeing the decline of the PC.

Information appliances focus on a limited number of specific tasks (calendaring, e-mail, paging, web access) and are generally portable in a meaningful way. They tend to be "instant on" (no waiting to boot your PC) and extend the reach of your office computer in user friendly ways. The cost is more likely to be a few hundred dollars rather than the few thousand dollars you might spend for a PC.

While Palm computing devices are the hot items in this category and the new Visors from Handspring have gotten a lot of attention, watch this year for e-mail appliances, web pads that allow you to browse the Internet, wireless devices and other specific-purpose devices. These devices are tailor-made for the ways many lawyers work and may improve your productivity while trimming your technology costs.

3. A Move Toward Knowledge Management. Knowledge management gets a lot attention these days. From simple efforts to make earlier work available to reduce the need to "reinvent the wheel" to more elaborate efforts to capture and exploit the accumulated "wisdom" inside your firm, innovations in knowledge management continue to grow.

Knowledge management really means finding ways to move beyond simply processing data or managing information to unlocking the "knowledge" in your firm. You and your firm have a lot of knowledge – methods, people to talk to get things done, strategies. Typically this knowledge is in the head of only one person. The result can be inefficiencies and duplication of effort when someone doesn’t know the right person to ask, can’t find a file that shows how something was done in another case or can’t locate a research memo on the same topic.

Firms and software companies have put a lot of effort into "unlocking" this knowledge and finding ways to make it sharable and more usable. In larger firms, attorneys use intranets, Lotus Notes applications and databases. In smaller firms, attorneys use case management packages, litigation database programs and simpler databases.

Law firms have been slow on the draw in this area, especially when compared to the massive efforts of the Big 5 accounting firms and other professional service firms. In part this slowness is because knowledge management is usually cast as a highly invasive, retooling of a practice. The better approach is to pick discrete areas in which to experiment, focus your efforts where they may bring the best results, limit the scope of projects, and try to measure your success.

Here’s a move toward knowledge management for trial lawyers that everyone can afford: (CaseMap). CaseMap costs less than US$500 and this powerful software allows you to capture the knowledge you have about a case, categorize and rate your evidence, see patterns in evidence, analyze evidence and even share results with others on a team. I’m a big fan of CaseMap. Another development to watch in this area is Microsoft’s Digital Dashboard initiative, which turns Outlook into the primary means of access to a variety of information you use on a regular basis.

4. Security Is No Longer Just a Blanket. Over the past year or so, hackers and virus creators have made the world much more dangerous for computer users. Your computers and your networks have become increasingly vulnerable to attack from a variety of sources.

While you might expect lawyers, with their concern for confidentiality, to be in the forefront of computer security, the sad story is that many law firms keep information on systems that are shockingly vulnerable and commonly allow practices that make virus infection all but inevitable.

The security issues with Microsoft products alone dictate a policy of installing a regular set of upgrades, patches and industrial strength security and virus protection. Even the most secure networks are vulnerable because firms allow easy-to-break passwords. Hacking "tools" and scripts are readily available on the Internet to assist even the novice hacker.

Simply put, you must get security issues onto your technology agenda. The program to watch in this area: BlackICE. You will also want to add Stuart McClure and Joel Scambray’s weekly Security Watch column in InfoWorld to your regular reading list.

5. Web Presence Matters. More than ever, law firms must have a professional web site. While many law firms now have web sites, it is time to move these sites to a second generation and use the sites to provide real value.

Current Internet usage statistics show that today’s user is not the stereotypical 15-year-old, but a member of a demographic group that should be attractive to almost all lawyers. A surprising number of people look for lawyers on the Internet and if you don’t have a site or if you have an amateurish site, you will not get these clients.

People are developing Internet expectations and a professional web presence is one of those expectations. Take a hard look at your web site and compare what it does to what you want it to accomplish. A major revision is probably in order.

6. There’s Gold In Your Networks. It’s not what you know but who you know, right? Most of us do not do a good job of capturing or mining the information we have about contacts. Address books get out of date. We have a collection of business cards of people who we no longer remember. We can’t remember our last conversation with a client, her birthday, names of children, et al.

It’s not only embarrassing, but it hampers our practice. Programs like ACT!, GoldMine, Outlook, TimeMatters, Amicus and others all provide "contact management" options. In a sense, this is a subcategory of knowledge management. Contact management turbocharges your address book. You can keep expanded types of data on a contact and, most important, keep historical data. And you can pull useful information out of your contacts.

Such as: contacts most responsible for referrals, clients with wills over two years old, prospects who are basketball fans for the extra tickets you have, the names of art appraisers you’ve used in the past. You get the idea. Some programs can work with caller ID and even pop up the caller’s information as you are picking up the phone.

7. Expand Your Network with E-mail Discussion Lists. One of the great Internet phenomena we’ve seen is the development of e-mail discussion lists. For virtually any topic you can think of there is a discussion list.

They work like this: You "subscribe" by e-mail to a list. You receive a copy of every e-mail sent to the list manager. Copies of any e-mail you send to the list manager are sent to everyone on the list. This mechanism produces an ongoing and wide-ranging discussion.

Why are they so useful? Many times, the leading lights in a field are regular participants. People tend to share a lot of practical knowledge. It is rare to see a question that goes unanswered. You can make friends all around the word. And, there is no better way to learn about new developments. Start at TileNet (http://www.tile.net) to find lists that appeal to you.

8. Taming the E-mail Tiger. Many attorneys have seen great benefits from using e-mail and clients increasingly want to contact attorneys by e-mail. E-mail, however, raises many important management issues. How long do you store e-mail messages? Must you protect messages to clients with encryption techniques? How do you ensure that an e-mail with important information is integrated into a client’s file? How do attorneys manage growing numbers of messages? You will want to implement management solutions well before you and your attorneys are run over by the volume of e-mail they face.

9. Computers Continue Their March into the Courtroom. One clear trend in legal technology is the march of computers into the courtroom. Litigation technology includes real-time transcription, litigation databases, trial management and trial presentation. Projectors and large monitors are becoming more common in trials. This technology can dramatically level the playing field for small firms and solos against much larger firms. Expect to see continued explosive growth in this area. From video depositions to PowerPoint slides to digital cameras, trial lawyers are seeing the benefits of using technology to present cases to jurors (and judges) who are part of the TV generation. Litigators ignore developments here at their peril.

10. Collaboration Counts. Intranets allow you to turn all the information contained in your firm into a giant, private web site. All that information can then become easily accessible to other members of the firm. While intranets offer a great way to share information of all types within a firm, extranets allow you to create a private web site for a client that the client can reach over the Internet and see work in progress, billing information and other information that can enhance the client relationship and offer novel ways to work together more closely and more cheaply. Clients are starting to put pressure on firms to create extranets or to implement other collaborative software (sometimes called "groupware") such as Lotus Notes.

Extranets are becoming popular as a way for co-counsel to collaborate on complex, far-flung litigation matters like tobacco or other mass tort cases. By going to a secure, private site on the Internet, co-counsel can share information, discuss cases, work jointly on projects or documents and stay up-to-date on case developments. Other firms, large and small, are starting to use extranets for clients who want access to drafts of documents, billing information and the like. Extranets have potential to both aid in collaboration and to help save money – a dynamite combination.

11. Browser Interfaces Become Ubiquitous. A hot new Internet topic is "web-enabled" technology. In essence, this means that you can access programs and underlying information using only an Internet browser (Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Netscape’s Navigator). For example, many firms now give attorneys access to e-mail through a secure web site interface. Another example to watch: the application Service providers (ASPs) such as the Serengeti project (http://www.serengetilaw.com), which plans to provide a web interface to high-powered legal software applications that are hosted by a third party rather than at your firm. Expect to see even more of this trend, including in bread-and-butter applications like document management. The benefits: reduced training time and ability to access information from almost any computer.

12. Training Takes A Front Seat. Most law firms I know tend to skimp when it comes to training. This approach can be short-sighted and foolish. Excellent training can bring you excellent results. As you consider your technology agenda for 2000, think hard about dramatically increasing your training budget and focusing on how to make that training more effective. Consider a variety of training options and remember that lawyers who refuse to participate in training can generate substantial support and other costs.

Bonus Point. Try Something New that Can Revolutionize Your Practice. There are a lot of great new technologies available to lawyers. I recommend that you pick one technology that can have a dramatic impact on your practice and invest in it. For litigators: real-time transcription, databases like Summation, trial presentation packages like Trial Director, or a trial strategy program like CaseMap. For lawyers who produce a lot of form documents: document assembly software. For presenters: Powerpoint. For all: getting your practice onto the Web. Best advice: turn your young lawyers loose on some technology projects.

Conclusion. You may notice that I did not mention much hardware and only a few software programs. More important than gee-whiz new hardware in 2000 are the Internet and your attitude toward technology and your motivation to find ways to make technology work for you in your practice.

[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 07:23 PM | Comments (1)

November 23, 2005

Fast Fish and New Technologies - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. Here's an oldie that someone recently reminded me about. I wrote the first version of this article way back in 1997 and the version you see here was published in this form in 1999, but many people still like this article and tell me that they have found it valuable. It shows my belief that thinking carefully about how to use technology well is usually much more important than over-focusing on features of specific hardware or software products. As you begin to think about ideas like "Web 2.0," you might want to give careful thought to the "fast fish" metaphor used in this article. It also applies to individual departments within larger organizations and other collaborative efforts.]

Fast Fish and New Technologies

We have moved from a world where the big fish eat the little fish, says Tom Peters, the famous management consulting guru, to a world where the "fast fish eat the slow fish."

I've noticed lately that many of the most innovative developments in legal technology have come from smaller firms and solo practitioners. Small firms and solos have developed some of the most successful legal web pages, pioneered voice recognition and other applications, and taken the lead in developing "paperless" office strategies. They have become the faster fish.

While much has been written (including by me) about the difficulties small firms and solos have in finding good technological assistance, the flip side of the story is that small firms and solos have some advantages over big firms that help them leverage new technology and level the playing field against larger firms.

Here are ten advantages that small firms and solos have over large firms when it comes to innovation and technology:

1. The People Most Affected by the Technology Decisions Actually Make the Decisions. Large firms generally have an IS department that handles technology matters. Technology decisions are generally announced to lawyers rather than discussed or voted on. As a result, decisions tend to be based on what is best for the organization as a whole rather than what it best for individual lawyers.

In a small firm, the people most affected by the decision actually make the decision. There is more opportunity to tailor technology to individual needs. More importantly, the decision-makers will directly experience the impact of their decisions. A critical factor in the success of the adoption of any technology is the amount of "buy-in" from the people who will be using the technology. Better participation leads to better attitudes about changes, greater success with training and more effective use of new technology.

2. Decisions Can Be Made Quickly. Some large firms have spent years debating whether to have a Web page. Some small firms have gone from decision to implementation over a weekend.

Any process that involves a long series of committee meetings will foster an atmosphere of cynicism and frustration. In a small firm, decisions often can be made over lunch or when several attorneys decide to make an impromptu trip to a computer store. For solos, important decisions can be made in the shower or on the drive to work.

3. The Need to Find Cost Savings Drives Innovation. In a small firm, every little bit of cost savings can have a direct impact on an attorney's earnings. In larger firms, cost savings have more indirect results. Cost savings can be an important motivation for adopting new technologies.

If you are starting up or maintaining a small practice, the cost of a library can be prohibitive. Purchasing library material strategically on CD-ROM rather than in book form can result in both space and cost savings. Wise choices made while attempting to cut costs can result in an innovative use of technology that leads to a more productive practice.

4. The Size of the Project is Less Daunting. It is easier and cheaper to set up a network of three computers than it is to set up a network of three hundred computers. Adding a new hard drive to one computer is far easier than to add several mirrored hard drives to a network server.

5. Technology Improvement Can Be an Important Use of Downtime. Smaller firms and solos sometimes have alternating cycles of busy periods followed by slow periods. In a large firm, the constant push to bill hours does not allow for that type of cycle and puts pressure on attorneys to focus exclusively on generating billable hours and not on developing systems or improving technology. In a small firm, a slow period in the practice may be a perfect time to implement new software, to use document assembly to automate forms, to try a new calendaring or contact management program, or simply to plan for future technology requirements. Taking more time to think about technology and to explore options will result in more successful applications of technology.

6. Small Firms Are More Willing to Adapt Their Practices to Shrink-wrapped Software. In a large firm, different departments often do things in very different ways. In addition, there may be a "Firm" way of doing things which has not been modified for many years. These firms will often spend enormous amounts of money to customize programs to match existing practices.

Small firms, on the other hand, are likely to use commercial legal software, and even commercial software designed for home users, and adapt their practice to the software. This flexibility will often allow a small firm to use a time and billing program costing a few hundred dollars as opposed to a $100,000 time and billing package which might produce no significant practical difference in results. What matters is that time gets recorded and bill get sent out, not that you are using "legal-specific" or customized software to do it.

7. The Payoff From Technology Investment is More Easily Seen. If every time that you want to print a document you must copy the file onto a floppy disk and take it to another computer which is physically attached to a printer, you will clearly and concretely see the benefits when you network your computers and printer. A larger monitor may give you an immediate impact by reducing the need to squint to see details. A Web page might start producing clients that can be readily traceable to the Web page. A small firm's return on investment can be easily seen and measured. In a larger firm, return on investment can be harder to identify and may take place over a longer time frame.

8. Small Firms Are Willing to Experiment. Small firm lawyers are usually the lawyers speaking at seminars about voice recognition software and other innovative technologies. As a general rule, lawyers are not known as "early adopters" and many large firms are extremely conservative and unwilling to take risks when it comes to technology.

In small firms, there tends to be more of an attitude of experimentation and a willingness to try new things. There is also a willingness to admit that an experiment has not worked and to try something new. This attitude allows smaller firms the opportunity to match technology to their needs and to keep them in some cases closer to the leading edge of technology than many larger. Smaller firms seem more willing to try new options like leasing technology and breakthrough legal software like CaseMap.

9. The Need to Level the Playing Field Drives Technological Change. Some of the more innovative uses of technology by small firms came in response to the practice of larger firms of trying to bury smaller firms in paperwork during discovery. The use of programs like Summation, or other litigation management software, can give a small firm control over mountains of evidence in a way that can be superior to what can be achieved by a team of big firm lawyers not using the same technologies.

Because it is all but impossible for a small firm to compete with a large firm in a war of attrition using human resources, small firms have tremendous motivation to leverage technology to level the playing field against big firms. Competitive factors often drive excellent decisions about technology.

10. Small Firms Focus on the Practical. Often big firms seem to be preoccupied with the theory of technological improvement and with thinking about how technology might work rather than actually using the technology. In the meantime, small firms are adopting new technologies that streamline their practices, putting up Web pages that draw in clients, and producing charts and visuals that help them to win cases.

An important example is law firm web pages. Large firms have a tendency to put out web pages because it is seen as a requirement for a firm of stature, with no real expectation of getting clients, often a self-fulfilling prophecy. Small firms put up web pages that work and get clients.

Here are five final points to remember about technology and the small firm:

1. Be flexible and willing to experiment.

2. Build on your successes. Constantly try to extend the efficiencies you have already gained through other technology and systems you've developed.

3. Try to identify areas where cost savings will also result in innovation and increased productivity in your practice.

4. Focus on practical and measurable results.

5. Get on the Internet.

Be a fast fish. By being flexible, practical and innovative, small firms and solos can use technology to increase their effectiveness and productivity and level the playing field against slower-reacting large firms.

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. I wrote this article in January 2004 for the ABA's GP Solo Magazine. Please note that parts of this article are dated, but I've not updated it to give you a sense of history. This article sets out several of my key principles in making legal technology decisions.]

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

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's legal technology consulting services, featuring website and blog consulting and technology committee coaching packages for law firms, corporate legal departments and other professional services providers.

Dennis Kennedy

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Posted by dmk at 10:31 AM | Comments (1)

November 22, 2005

To Tech or Not to Tech? - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. I wrote this article in January 2004 for the ABA's GP Solo Magazine. Please note that parts of this article are dated, but I've not updated it to give you a sense of history. This article sets out several of my key principles in making legal technology decisions.]

To Tech or Not to Tech? Important Questions (and Answers) for Your Practice

Hamlet, in Act III, Scene 1, delivers these immortal lines:

To tech, or not to tech: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The crashes and reboots of outrageous operating systems, Or to take arms against a sea of software glitches, And by opposing delete them?

Or he might have, if the play was written now and set in a small law practice.

Trying to make good technology decisions has left many otherwise skilled and confident lawyers feeling like TechnoHamlets – seeing and speaking with ghosts and making friends and colleagues wonder about their sanity.

However, it doesn’t have to be that way. This article will show you how to think about systems and technology and give you a solid foundation upon which to build a framework for making good decisions about legal technology.

Technology is both a tool and an investment. As does any good craftsperson, we must try to find tools that are both the right tool for the job and of sufficient quality to give us a good return on our work.

A Story of Technology as Both Tool and Investment.

My wife's brother went back to law school at the age of 40 after working in the real estate and art gallery businesses in the San Francisco area. He wanted to open his own law firm from day one. We had a number of telephone conversations about what computer and software he needed when he started, primarily focusing on a laptop computer and speech recognition software. He would ask me about specs, memory, screen size, percentage accuracy of the programs, and the like. After a while, we seemed to be returning to the same questions without getting a decision made.

Finally, I asked him what he really wanted to do with a laptop and speech recognition software. It turned out that, as a practical matter, he could expect to pay about $4,000 (about the price of the computer and software at the time) a month to hire a good legal secretary. He didn’t know whether he could make enough in the first months to pay the secretary, let alone leave anything for himself.

Now, we were on track. If the only thing the laptop and speech recognition software did for him was to delay the need to hire a secretary for a few months, buying them would be a good investment. In fact, he bought himself nine months. That's $36,000 of value for a $4,000 investment in just nine months, not a bad return. He has told me several times that my "advice" made all the difference in getting his business off the ground.

I don't think that I gave him "advice." I simply asked the right question. When you ask the right questions, the answers get a lot easier. What I want to teach you is how to ask the right questions about technology.

The Right Questions.

The question whether "to tech or not to tech" is one of the right questions, but, properly understood, it is a question that comes later in the process.

There's a great scene in my favorite science fiction TV series, Babylon 5, where one of the main characters is suspended in a state between life and death, bathed in waves of light, with disembodied voices asking repeatedly, "Who are you?" and "What do you want?" Because the character can answer those questions with clarity and authenticity, he goes on to fulfill his great destiny.

"Who are you?" "What do you want?" It really doesn't get much more basic than that. However, these are pretty deep questions to answer when you really thought that your question was "should I get an inkjet printer or a laser printer?" My argument is simply that the better the answers you have to these two questions, the better decisions you can make about technology.

Here's the Key.

You must choose technology on the basis of whether it helps you be who you are and do what you want better than the other alternatives that you are considering.

There are several consequences of this approach. First, my best technology choices will not be your best technology choices. Second, although you should listen to advice and recommendations, the final decision must be your decision. Third, this approach forces you to think of technology as both a tool and an investment.

Do Not Separate Technology From Systems.

Lawyers create and are creatures of systems. A law practice incorporates a large number of systems. There are systems for:

• Running your office (Workflow management, operations and procedures, hiring and training, accounting and financial, planning and continuity)
• Getting clients (Contact management, marketing materials, follow-up, client intake, engagement letters)
• Serving clients (Project and workflow management, procedures, filing, forms, calendaring and docketing)
• Getting paid (Fee setting, timekeeping, billing and collections, banking and trust account, procedures)
• Complying with rules (Conflict checking, confidentiality, calendaring and docketing, recordkeeping, training and CLE, taxes)

It's no wonder you are so tired at the end of the day. There's plenty of work involved in creating and maintaining systems before you even get to the practice of law stuff.

I have two core principles about systems:

1. You always have a system, but it may not be the one you want.

2. Your systems should work for you, not against you.

We all know lawyers who use the following "system" for locating notes, correspondence and documents. Every piece of paper is stacked in tall piles on desktop, credenza, office chairs and floor. When something is needed, the lawyer digs through the papers until frustrated and then calls in a secretary who assists in going through the piles until the document is found or another emergency arises.

This is, in fact, a system for retrieving needed documents. Is it a good one? Is it an efficient one? Is it one that the lawyer would have designed or ever have intended?

Technology in Proper Context.

Technology must always be viewed within the context of your existing systems. Thinking about technology outside this context will lead you in the wrong direction. Unless you consider how a technology fits into this context, you cannot read reviews in a meaningful way and lists of "editor’s picks" may lead you to unsuccessful purchases.

Consider the previous example of a "system." The question of whether the lawyer should buy one brand or another is not useful. The "best" scanner is the one that will hold the highest pile of papers stacked on it when it is treated as another storage space. The better question is: does any scanner make any sense in this type of system or are there better options?

If you want to implement any technology, the introduction of the new technology must do one of two things:

1. It must implement a better system; or

2. It must improve an existing system.

If it will, it makes sense to proceed. It's as simple as that. Even a technophile like me will admit that in certain cases a technology solution may not be the best approach.

Technology is only a tool; it is not a panacea. As a practical matter, technology simply enhances the habits and skills you already have. Technology does not magically give you new skills. Speech recognition only makes it easier to get your words into a document; it does not magically make you a better writer.

It all comes back to the basic question: does the technology help you be who you are and do what you want? If the answer is that you want to be a better writer, speech recognition will not be as good an option as some non-technological efforts. If, on the other hand, you want to be able to launch a practice with minimal expenditures and only bring in a secretary when you feel that you need one, then speech recognition makes a great deal of sense.

Two Big Roadblocks.

Most lawyers are aware of only a tiny fraction of the choices available today. For example, did you know that there are more than one hundred "case management" programs? Often, a lawyer or firm will be trying to decide between the lesser of two evils when there are better choices available that they haven’t heard about. The list of resources at the end of this article will help you with this roadblock.

You will also get a lot of well-intentioned misinformation about legal technology. People recommend using Linux instead of Windows to a lawyer who barely knows what a mouse is. People will warn lawyers away from newer versions of software or installing updates and patches (a security problem just waiting to happen), lead them to obscure programs, and draw conclusions from setups that are outdated or clearly inadequate. In simplest terms, they are giving you generic information that does not take into account your specific needs or the context of your systems. The result is that you learn that what works best for them doesn't work out so well for you.

Think about the practice of law. A client comes to you and asks whether they should form a C corporation or an LLC. The best response is to ask, "What do you want to do?" To answer, "I heard that some people had some kind of tax problem with C corporations a few years ago so I tell people never to use them," probably is not a good approach to the practice of law or helping your client.

Key Variables to Consider.

Some factors are especially important in making technology decisions and your needs in these areas can have a dramatic impact on the choices you should consider.

Solo / Solo with Staff / Small firm. The type and number of users will have a huge impact on your choices. If your practice consists of just you, you can look at much simpler choices over a longer period of time. As soon as you move to two users, you must consider networking, training and standardization of software.

Litigation or Not. I do not see how you can be a litigator and not use a laptop computer. Because litigation software, such as CaseMap and Summation, can be so valuable, you will need to devote time to learning more software options. Projectors, wireless access, PowerPoint and other "options" may well become necessities.

At Desk All Day or Not. If you are an at-the-desk lawyer, PDAs and cell phones are much lower priorities.

Volume of Work. This factor may be the most important one of all. The cost of replacement cartridges for an inkjet printer will eat you alive if you print thousands and thousands of copies a month. If you have a small number clients, you may well be able to run your accounting with a spreadsheet. If you have a lot of clients, a range of rates and lots of matters, you probably have to go with a legal accounting package. Asking "how often will I use this?" is an essential part of hardware decisions in particular.

Your Priorities. It could well be that who you are and what you want will be the lawyer who has the coolest gadgets. It might be that you want to reach jurors with a simple, plain-spoken style rather than thrill them with the latest thing in multimedia. Don't ignore who you are.

Area of Practice and Client Needs. In some areas of practice, there may be standard technologies that everyone uses. Some lawyers have told me that to make a decent living in family law these days, you need to automate to the greatest extent that you can. Similarly, you may have clients who require that you provide documents in certain formats, have ready access to e-mail, or implement security measures.

Twelve Tips, Observations and Recommendations.

Because this article argues that a one-size-fits-all approach is never appropriate in making legal technology decisions, I hesitated before setting out a list of general comments. However, I do want leave you with some practical pointers.

1. Even the least expensive of today's computers is a rocket ship compared to the computers of even a year or two ago. Don't limp along with old, slow computers. Four corners not to cut in configuring a new computer are: memory (RAM), hard disk capacity, number of USB ports and CD or DVD burners.

2. The new generation of high-capacity external hard drives offers the best inexpensive backup solution we have seen so far.

3. A laptop now makes sense as the primary computer for all attorneys. It is essential for today's litigator.

4. Windows XP Professional is the operating system of choice for lawyers in the Microsoft world.

5. For any firm putting in a network, the new low price of Windows Small Business Server ($750, or less when bundled with a server) make it a must-consider option to get standard networking capabilities, including remote access, at an affordable price.

6. Volume discounts for many software programs, including Microsoft programs, can be obtained for as few as 5 users and some consultants can offer you programs to roll hardware, software and consulting costs into a monthly payment option.

7. While Microsoft Office 2003, Small Business Version, might be the best option for small firm lawyers, there are now free alternatives such as OpenOffice that may work in your situation.

8. If you are prepared to do a little more research and go off the well-worn path, Macintoshes and Open Source software represent very acceptable non-Microsoft alternatives and no lawyer should dismiss them out of hand.

9. With the advent of electronic filing, a PDF creation program should now be considered essential software. The gold standard is Adobe Acrobat (Writer, not just Reader), but cheaper alternatives are available.

10. If you have a laptop computer, you should have a wireless card (802.11b or 802.11g) or Intel Centrino technology to take advantage of wireless Internet hotspots at airports, hotels and restaurants.

11. If you are not installing Windows security updates and updates for other programs, running an updated antivirus program, and using a hardware or software firewall (ZoneAlarm is free), you might as well turn on a big neon “welcome” sign to the bad guy hackers.

12. Take a class in any program you use on a regular basis.

Action Steps.

So . . . what should you do when you finish this article? Take a few minutes to think about your technology and your systems. Then take the following actions over the next week or so:

• Do enough research to find 3 or 4 software programs you did not know about that can be used in your specific areas of practice.
• Inventory and make a quick assessment of your current technology and systems.
• Look back at one significant technology decision you made in the past and reevaluate it using the principles outlined in this article and write down the lessons you learn.
• Identify one or two technology options that have been on your mind and apply the principles outlined in this article as you make your decisions about them.

Conclusion.

"To tech or not to tech" is only part of the question. Technology should not be seen as an area of bewildering complexity. Instead, treat it as both a tool and an investment. Fit your technology into the context of your existing systems and only make decisions that result in either the implementation of a better system or the improvement of an existing system. If you do so, you will come closer to the goal of having your technology enable you to work the way you want rather than force you to work the way it wants.

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

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's legal technology consulting services, featuring website and blog consulting and technology committee coaching packages for law firms, corporate legal departments and other professional services providers.

Posted by dmk at 08:35 PM | Comments (1)

November 21, 2005

Blessed Rage for Simplicity: The Most Important Trend in Legal Technology - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. An earlier version of this article appeared in the September 1999 of my legal technology newsletter called "Legal Technology Strategies." Please note that parts of this article are dated, but I've not updated it to give you a sense of history. In many ways, I've long felt that this article captures most closely my general philosophy about technology and its use. ]

Blessed Rage for Simplicity: The Most Important Trend in Legal Technology

When you are around accomplished craftspeople for any period of time, you start to notice how easy their work seems to be for them. You also notice that they have a lot of tools, many of which you've never seen before, all of which seem perfectly suited for the task at hand. I’m often struck by the elegance of their function and how simple and well suited both to the task and to the individual doing the task they seem.

I've noticed this in a number of settings lately. The other day, I got on an elevator with a guy who was delivering five-gallon water bottles. He had a handcart that had a couple of shaped metal tubes that allowed him to slide the bottles securely onto the cart and unload them easily. He could also carry several more bottles than he could with a standard handcart. In fact, I tried to imagine how difficult it would be to hold these rounded bottles on a standard handcart and the time and effort that it would take to try to strap them on and keep them secure. I also pictured myself with a tipped handcart and the bottles rolling across the floor, something that would not happen with this specially-designed handcart.

But I also imagined a day when someone said, "Here's what we need. Why don’t we try welding some tubes onto a handcart so the bottles slide right in and don’t fall out?" In fact, maybe one delivery person got so tired of bottles falling off that he or she welded the bars on a regular handcart. A simple idea makes a great tool. A better result comes from considering the user and the process and by limiting functionality rather than expanding it.

I was reading the story of the inventor of the PalmPilot and his efforts to make sure the first PalmPilot would work as he envisioned it. He focused not just on operating system and technical details. He also cut a block of wood in the same dimensions as the PalmPilot and carried it around for months to make sure that it really worked as a shirt-pocket device. He wanted to understand the user experience. Thinking about this story will help you understand what a Palm device can and cannot do well.

We are moving toward a time when we have technology that fits our tasks rather than having our tasks fit our technology. In other words, I think all the talk about "information appliances" means something.

Part of what's driving this movement is the general sense that our lives, and our PCs in particular, have become too complicated and overwhelming. There's a movement toward simplicity in other technologies we use. Want fresh-baked bread? Push a button on your bread maker. Microwave ovens have one button to push for popcorn and cooking sensors for one-button cooking and reheating. As more intelligence gets built into products, they become easier to use. PCs have even more intelligence built into them, yet it seems that using them is getting harder and harder.

In part, there are, in a way, too many choices - Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows 95, Macintosh, Novell, Linux, BeOS, WordPerfect, Word, 25 different case management programs, Palm, multiple product versions. You finally reach a state where you long for what Wallace Stevens once called a "blessed rage for order." How do you make sense of it?

We are trying to make our PCs and the standard programs we use perform tasks for which they are not optimally suited. Another part of the problem is that clearly the PC environment does not always work for the ways that we work. You see a lot of frustration, primarily focused on Microsoft.

Now, some people seem to deal with this issue by adopting an anti-Microsoft method of dealing with complexity. It goes like this: I don't care how much it inconveniences me, as long as I can avoid using Microsoft products, I am doing a good thing.

As a general rule, this kind of negativity gets you nowhere, in no small part because it does not focus on how you work.

I advocate another approach: a movement toward simplicity. Simplicity in the sense of what works best for the way you, not anyone else, work. And we are seeing some signs of that movement.

Windows can be a maddening environment, but I tend to like it. Microsoft has done some things that really work for me. I really like the right mouse button and knowing that I can click it and most of the things I want to do become available. Coming from a Macintosh background, I'll always prefer a graphic interface. I also like the fact that you get a lot of consistency in the interface. I never liked DOS and DOS programs where F7 would mean "enter" in one program, "print" in another and "exit" in a third. Even if you argue that it is easier to press one key than to use a mouse, that doesn't work for me. The good news, however, is that there doesn't have to be a right and a wrong.

How do you work? Learning to dictate for voice recognition does not make sense if you can type 100 words a minute and have an unusual accent. Learning to type is no solution if you can't type but can dictate 100 words per minute. "Simple" depends on how you work best.
How you work best can vary with each task. It now drives me crazy to wait for Windows to boot. Especially if all I want to do is enter a phone number, make a note to myself or jot down some ideas for an article. Here, the instant-on Palm device is perfect. When I want to write an article like this one, however, a Palm device is not the right tool. A handheld Windows CE device might be perfect for on-the-road presentations because it is so light and will run PowerPoint presentations. If you have to edit your presentation on the fly, however, it's the wrong tool.

Other examples? Bill Coplin, at NetTech, thinks that the "killer app" for attorneys will be the perfection of handwriting recognition on a device like the CrossPad [NOTE: Today the example would be a Tablet PC.] because attorneys are so used to carrying legal pads. On the other hand, Bob Wiss and Greg Krehel at CaseSoft want CaseMap to "replace the legal pad." I'm excited by the cordless flat panel web appliances due out soon from Cyrix and others that will allow you to access the Internet while sitting in your favorite chair. My notion of the perfect simple device has full-time Internet connectivity. [NOTE: These deviices never made it, but a Tablet PC with WiFi access does the same thing I had hoped for.]

The fact is that getting to simple is not so simple. In fact, the whole notion of simplicity is quite complex.

How do we begin to move to simplicity in our computer technology. I want to talk about four possible solutions, all of which open up the paradoxes of simplicity.

One solution is to create simplicity through multiplicity. There's always been a strand in predicting our technology future that focuses on making computers "ubiquitous." An excellent recent discussion on this point of view can be found in an article on MIT’s Oxygen project by Michael Dertouzos in the August 1999 issue of Scientific American (http://www.scientificamerican.com/1999/0899issue/
0899dertouzos.html). The notion is that we can make life easier and simpler by having many computers instead of one and scattering them all over our houses and offices and matching function to location. Lately, this notion includes the idea of having "Internet tone," just like dial tone, so we can plug into the Internet anywhere and anytime.

As an example, we might have a PC on the desk, a Palm in our pocket, an electronic phone book in a cell phone, an electronic book on the night table, and so on. The right tool will always be at hand because there will be many location- and function-specific devices.

This approach becomes more possible as hardware prices continue to drop. In my opinion, the Palm gives us a taste of this approach and it is an attractive one.

A second solution is to create simplicity by standardizing on one interface (and that interface might even be Windows). The most-talked about candidate is the browser. The browser is simple. What if we can use the browser as the main interface and treat all the information we use as if it were a series of web pages? Click on a hyperlink and access information anywhere and retrieved information from other programs or even get Java applets to do word processing and other functions.

This approach really appeals to me because I sometimes feel that I'm one of the half dozen people outside Microsoft who really likes browser integration in the operating system. Think about it: whether you are accessing files on your local computer, your network or the Internet, all you're doing is accessing files. Why use a different program? This approach to file access and management is so obvious and desirable to me that I literally cannot even understand the arguments to the contrary.

But the browser is not the only option. Look at is how you use your computer. In what program do you spend most of your day? It might be Outlook (check out Microsoft’s Digital Dashboard initiative), ACT, a word processor, a PIM, a case management program, an e-mail program. An approach to simplicity would be to add functionality and access to your data to that program.

A third approach is to create simplicity by limiting functionality. Palm computing is one example. Another example is something like a Java-based approach that would allow you to grab as much functionality as you need at the time.

Here's an example. As I write these words, I’m looking at a screen that has shockingly close to 100 buttons and menu items on the screen as I simply type text. If I step back from writing and look at the screen, I feel a bit like a jet fighter pilot.

What if I could grab versions of a word processing program that gave me only the functionality I needed for the task at hand? A couple of fonts, spell checker, word counter. When I needed more functions, I could just grab that specific functionality as, for example, a Java applet. [NOTE: Sounds a little like AJAX and Web 2.0.]

Or, maybe I could rent the additional functionality or even other programs only if I need them from an Internet-based service. Presumably, a limited-function version of our standard programs would run faster and cause fewer glitches.

A fourth approach is to create simplicity through customization. A custom approach tailored to how we work might require the underlying programming to be more complex, but what we will see and use will be much simpler - to us. It's going to be more expensive, and more work to set up and get right, but it gives us some interesting possibilities.

Consider this example. Think of a lawyer who doesn’t want to use a computer, but when pushed, says that what really frustrates him or her about computers is that they can’t do what would be most useful to him or her: calculating settlement figures. When an opposing party makes a settlement offer, it might take days and several people using several programs to put together disbursements, fee arrangements and the like into a form where the lawyer could decide whether the offer was "reasonable" or not. Far too often, these settlement calls come on a Saturday or after hours, at a time when the lawyer can not get any information. That lawyer might very well say that if you could give him or her one button to click on that would produce that information, he or she would immediately buy whatever technology that could make that happen because the technology would solve the lawyer’s business problem.

A programmer might be able to give the lawyer that button to produce that customized result. Clicking on that button would set of a process, invisible to the lawyer, that pulled information transparently from a variety of underlying programs and then displayed the necessary result in an understandable and usable form.
Custom approaches are funny things. Most people have a reluctance to go that route. The upfront costs are certainly higher than off-the-shelf solutions, especially where you don't put a cost on frustration and wasted time. In this country, "custom" seems for many people to be synonymous with "decadent," or seen as a luxury.

On the other hand, custom can bring us closer to getting the right tool for the job, Just as the carpenter has a specialty router jig for certain cuts that saves a great deal of time, gets the job done right and allows the carpenter to enjoy the craft, a settlement calculator may do the same thing for a busy personal injury attorney. Ironically, the better the custom design and the more upfront work put into it, the more effortless and simple the results.

I'm fascinated by this notion of simplicity and the "complexity" that seems to underlie it. My friend Howard Smith is a serious cyclist (he owns 15 bikes) and was helping me buy a bike recently. He ended up building a bike that he thought would work best for me and I learned a lot during the process.

At one point, Howard introduced me by e-mail to Grant Peterson, something of a legend in bike design circles. We had an interesting discussion about handle bars and other things, all in the context of how I would actually use a bike. After I got my bike, I began to subscribe to Grant's great newsletter (www.rivendellbicycles.com). Even if you don't ride a bike, the newsletter is fascinating for the glimpse it gives into how a gifted designer sees things. Grant's comments on things outside the realm of cycling are often incisive and profound. Another great source of ideas about simplicity is Jakob Nielsen's writing on web design at Useit.com.

Both Peterson and Nielsen advocate a highly user-focused approach that moves you toward customization, where it makes sense, and lots of upfront effort in the design stage of a project. Both leave you with a sense of simplicity and effortlessness in the actual use of a bicycle or web site that you will want to apply in other areas.

There's a lot to think about on this subject. I recommend taking a look at the technology tools you use and thinking about how they work for you and how they could better fit what you do. It's that aspect of simplicity that I would suggest that you focus on and make a guiding principle. Resist the urge to make a dislike of Bill Gates your motivating principle in making technology choices. You still may end up miles away from Microsoft, but do so in a way that reflects the way you work best.

The great news is that there are so many technology choices and so much power in those choices that we can come much closer to finding the tools that suit us best than we ever have before. And that trend is likely to continue. Paradoxically, it may be in more complexity and looking forward rather than backward, that we move to a simplicity most of us crave.

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

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's legal technology consulting services, featuring website and blog consulting and technology committee coaching packages for law firms, corporate legal departments and other professional services providers.

Posted by dmk at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2005

Hanging Out Your Shingle on the World Wide Web: Promoting Your Practice in a Digital Era - Article

[NOTE: This is another in the series of repostings of my previously-published articles. This article is another favorite ofmine. Earlier versions of this article appeared in the September 2000 issue of the Missouri Bar Bulletin and the Spring 1997 issue of the St. Louis Bar Journal. Please note that parts of this article are dated, but I've not updated it to give you a sense of history. This was my first significant to capture what I thought I had learned about the use of web pages by lawyers. It's instructive to see how many of the links are dead in even an article like this one with a short list of footnotes. In early 1997, there were only a few articles like this one available and it seems like all of the authors sought the other others out for guidance. In a real sense, this article led to my chance to meet Jerry Lawson and built the foundation for the Internet Roundtable columns that Jerry Lawson, Brenda Howard and I (along with the occasional guest author) wrote on LLRX.com that I think constitute some of the best analysis and advice about lawyers using websites that you can find. It's also interesting how blogs, by their nature, create the content-based approaches I advocated in this article.]

Hanging Out Your Shingle on the World Wide Web: Promoting Your Practice in a Digital Era

While many attorneys have focused on the use of the Internet for legal research, others have learned that the most innovative uses of the Internet by lawyers can be found in the area of marketing. In January 1995, no more than twenty law firms had web pages.[1] In the past few years, however, thousands of law firms and lawyers have created web pages and many more firms will debut web pages this year. If you have not thought seriously about implementing a web page for yourself or your firm, now is the time to consider your options.

Individual attorneys and law firms have been attracted by the demographics of the hundreds of millions of users of the World Wide Web – generally more educated and more affluent than the population at large. Attorneys have seen their clients, potential clients and competitors establish presences on the World Wide Web. Internet-savvy firms have learned that web pages can be excellent ways to deliver and enhance client services and to develop cross-selling opportunities with existing clients. A web page can also provide a cost-effective way to supplement or enhance other marketing efforts.[2]

Peter Martin has said that "enterprises moving serious commercial activities onto the Internet undoubtedly will want legal counsel and representation from lawyers who understand the Internet and show that they can work comfortably in that environment. They will be looking for law firms with branches already established in this new enterprise zone."[3] A web page offers a lawyer or law firm a chance to create a presence in and gain access to this new enterprise zone.

This article will focus on the two types of World Wide Web pages commonly used by lawyers -- the law firm web page and what I call the specialty page, offer some practical tips on getting started and publicizing your web page, and discuss realistic expectations of results.

The Law Firm Web Page.

There are two general types of law firm web pages: the "static" web page, which is basically an electronic business card or brochure, and the "dynamic" web page, which adds a number of enhancements and interactive features.

A static web page generally is a simple conversion of an existing marketing brochure into electronic form. Such a page might contain biographical information about attorneys, information about firm practice areas, contact information and other marketing materials. In some cases, a static page is no more than an electronic business card or billboard. Other static pages are electronic copies of existing marketing brochures or recyclings of existing marketing materials. The major drawback to static pages is that there is no reason to visit them more than once.

A dynamic web page includes much of the same material found in a static page, but adds a number of important enhancements, such as articles and memos written by firm members, e-mail newsletters, lists of links to other web pages and other information helpful to clients and non-clients alike. Each of these enhancements is designed to prompt some form of interactivity or to encourage a visitor to return to the page on a regular basis. New types of features incorporate the lessons of "e-commerce" learned from Internet companies like Amazon.com and might include personalization, private areas and discussion areas.

You will want to have a dynamic web page because the main goal with a web page is to create a high volume of traffic and, especially, return traffic from visitors of the type that you want to attract. Return traffic creates potential clients, potential referrals and enhances your reputation or that of your firm.

You can give people a reason to return to your page by providing interesting and changing content which highlights the specific aspects of your firm which you wish to market. One of the key maxims on the Web is that "content is king." Your page should offer content that is valuable to visitors of your page and which gives them value on each visit to the page. Your web site should also provide easy and speedy navigation through all of the pages comprising the site so that visitors can easily find content which would be useful to them and e-mail contact to request more information or follow-up with you.

Law firms that have generated clients from their web pages point to the use of e-mail newsletters and mailing lists as the key to a high number of return visits and the production of business directly attributable to the web page.[4] E-mail newsletters can help enhance your reputation for expertise in a given area or provide you with a ready means of contacts with people who are already interested in your firm, whether they are clients or not. As a result, you can use the e-mail newsletter for targeted marketing efforts. An e-mail newsletter also provides a built-in feedback mechanism to help you measure the impact and effectiveness of your web page.

Since a primary purpose of a law firm web page is to market your firm, you will want to know how well your efforts are working. Web counters are available which will count the number of visitors you have had to your page, but these simple counters do not inform you whether you had one-time visitors or prospective clients. More sophisticated tools are becoming available and should be used as a matter of course, but simple features like e-mail newsletters and guest books will help you count the number of quality visits to your page. A subscriber to your e-mail newsletter shows much more interest in your firm than a casual browser. These simple techniques can help you gain useful marketing data and quantify the benefits of the web page.

There are many innovative and useful law firm web pages. Visiting even a few law firm web pages will give you an idea of some of the potential benefits of a web page for your firm. A great listing of reviews and links to many law firm web pages can be found at http://www.redstreet.com.
[NOTE: Website no longer in existence.]

The Specialty Page.

The second type of web page being used by lawyers is the "specialty" web page. A specialty web page is a page that is devoted to one specialty topic; for example, estate planning. A specialty page can be a stand-alone page done by an individual attorney or it can be a sub-page on a law firm's overall web site.

Specialty pages tend to be built around a set of