3 Geeks and a Law Blog

Today, I spent a lot of time messing around with Blogger, Feedburner and Google+.

Image [cc] Slippery Tiger

I have found that librarians at law firms walk a tightrope strung over the thorny issues of cost, risk and user demands. We have a reputation of being "gatekeepers" or impeding advances in legal research by holding on to old media at the expense of new media. Although it may be true that there are a few Luddites clinging to the idea of a traditional brick & mortar library, those Luddites are few and far between. Most librarians are actually ready and willing to adopt new ideas, media, technology, user experiences, and procedures, but they are also responsible for advising the risk involved in the adoption to the overall firm in which they work. There are times in which the risk outweighs the cool factor in moving forward.

One of the common themes I'm hearing from vendors these days is that "we need to get our products in front of the attorneys because the librarians are too challenging to work with." It is a logical thought on their end because librarians are challenging. We look past the "whiz-bang" interface and start asking the questions of "how much does it cost?" or "who can access it?" or "does it work with our current infrastructure?" or "what happens if someone gets into something we didn't put in our contract?" or "if we bill clients for the use of this product, can you work with us to make sure we follow ABA guidelines?" In other words, we ask challenging questions and won't move forward until those questions are answered.

There is a reason that law firms hire librarians to manage their external legal research content. We mitigate risk – both ethical and fiscal for the firm. We report up to the powers-that-be in a firm and present the pros and cons of new products, give our recommendations, then implement the decisions that are made. Sometimes the potential rewards are worth the risk, sometimes they are not. Like it or not, librarians do not make the final decision, however we do relay that decision to the vendors (so to them, it seems that we are the problem.) There are librarians out there that never want to bring in new products or technology, but they are rare – and getting rarer.

When vendors successfully do an end-run around the library and get a Partner to sign off on a contract for their product, the librarian spends the next year attempting to undo the damage. Pull any law librarian to the side in at a conference and have them tell you the horror stories of what happened when a Practice Group bought a product (usually somewhere in the vicinity of $25K) only to find out that the firm already had a similar product (sometimes the same exact product), or that the product actually didn't solve that problem the Practice Group thought it would. The story usually ends with how much time the librarian spent on getting the contract reworked into an existing deal (reducing the overall cost, but retaining the product) or finding some way to get out of the contract after tracking down the contract signed by the group.

Many librarians would love to adopt the newest version of a legal research product and be on the bleeding edge of technology. However, our biggest duty to the firm is to make sure that we first look at the risks associated with taking on the latest and greatest products. Skipping the library (either by a vendor, or someone on the inside of the firm) may get a product into the firm, however, it rarely comes without introducing some unforeseen risk to the firm. The librarian is then asked to fix the problem, and usually a note goes out reminding members of the firm that all contracts have to be negotiated through the proper channels, and that "X" vendor must from this point go through the proper channels. For the vendor,  the short-term victory turns into a long-term damage to their reputation within the firm. Even worse, now they have to go, hat in hand, to the very librarian they excluded, and work to make amends.

… and I thought I was alone… unique… special in some way. I thought I was the only blogger at my firm, but it turns out I was not alone. Yesterday, I found another person at my firm that was blogging. Not just any person either, but  ("gasp") a Partner!! Luckily, it turned out that he didn't know about my blog either. We found out about each other, not through an internal communication, but through a Tweet that was sent out that I happened to see in my Tweetdeck Search column. When I reached out and talked about our shared blogging interest, we both had the same reaction… "Cool!" I know I was a little embarrassed that I hadn't known about another blogger in the firm, but now that I know, I'm letting everyone else know about it too!!

Richard C. Hsu is a Partner in the King & Spalding Silicon Valley office and came over with a group of IP lawyers from what was then Townsend, Townsend & Crew (now known as Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.) But, enough about his day job… more importantly, he's a blogger at The One Page Blog. Hsu's blog (at the cleverly named hsutube.com … go ahead, say it out loud) focuses in on IP issues, as you might expect of an IP Lawyer, but the interesting angle of this blog is that it presents the information in a visual way using video and other images rather than just text.

Richard discusses his thoughts behind why he is blogging in the section of his blog titled "Lawyer's Confessions" where he admits that, although he is a super techie (CalTech grad and experienced programmer), he has found himself somehow "out of touch" with the new generation's mode of communications. He reminds us that, despite our experiences, there seems to always come a day when someone younger comes in and makes us understand that in order to "get with it" we'll need to climb outside our own comfort zones. For Hsu, that meant playing to the strengths that comes with age/experience, and that is understanding strategy.  He says it best in his explanation of technology and technology strategy:

On the other hand, technology strategy is not technology.  It is strategy.  And strategy’s half-life is more like plutonium:  what worked a thousand years ago works today, and will work in a thousand years....  Invest in understanding strategy now, and you will understand it just as well — probably even better [in the future.]

It is great having someone on the inside that is testing the waters of blogging. I'm sure that we'll be bouncing ideas off of one another from time to time. Hopefully we'll inspire others to pick up the urge to blog about what inspires them.

I know that Richard has inspired me to try to get my daughters to contribute their skills to help me blog, as he has done with his daughter Maya:



Now that's cool! Go check out (and subscribe to) The One Page Blog.