3 Geeks and a Law Blog

I written before that I think the Library department and the Marketing departments work very well together.  However, apparently the folks over at Morrison Foerster (MoFo) have taken my advice further than even I would have imagined.  Yesterday at the Law Marketing Association conference, MoFo new CMO, Joe Calve, discussed the topic of increasing ROI in the Marketing department and announced that the first thing he did when he came on at MoFo was to move the Client Development team and the Library Department into Marketing.  At which my initial reply was "Whaa??"

I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around this decision, and am reaching out to Joe Calve to get his reasoning behind the move. I understand putting Client Relations in Marketing (although others may disagree wwith me), but putting the Library in Marketing seems odd.

From what I'm hearing from the Librarians at MoFo, they are excited about the change and are looking forward to the transition. So, again, maybe I'm missing why this is a good idea. I just can't seem to think of any off of the top of my head. I guess if the Library can fit under Marketing in order to improve ROI, then how about moving it under Accounting? Or under the Paralegal group? Or Recruiting? That makes about as much sense to me as Marketing.

Anyone disagree with me??

In case you don't know what free legal research product your bar association provides you, here's an interactive map to help.

Great read over at LOMAP on Research Trails: Breadcrumbs for Recovering (the) Most of Your Research Buck.  This is a good follow up read to the post we did here on 3 Geeks asking if a lawyer really needs premium tools like Westlaw to practice.  Jared Correia at LOMAP points out that there are a lot of state and local bar associations that provide its members with free legal research tools - in Massachusetts it is Casemaker (same here in Texas).  In some other states it is Fastcase.  So, if you're state bar is providing you with access to these services, are you using them??  If not, why? Are you stupid or something??

If you're one of those attorneys that I mentioned last week that loves to search Google for legal research (probably because it is free and doesn't get charged to your firm or client), then you owe it to yourself, your firm and your clients to make sure you know what products are available to you.  And, if you're one of those folks that has a free service from your state bar, but plunked down a subscription to another low-cost provider at $1000 to $1800 a year, then let me ask you again... well, you know....

As Jared pointed out in the LOMAP post, sure these aren't Westlaw or Lexis, but they do offer some powerful researching abilities, and if they are available via your state bar... they cost the same as that silly Google search your attempting to do.  Go check out your bar association and see what they have to offer.  You might be surprised at how much they have to offer!

[Note: Carolyn Elefant at MyShingle.com has a nice list of Bar Association benefits that they provide their members.]

First Thought: Honestly – who would actually read a book on such a tiny screen?

Reality: Chapter 23 and counting …

As soon as they announced the Kindle for Blackberry (BB) was available (for free for all you Greg wannabes) I promptly went to download it. Once I figured out I needed to use the Blackberry Browser, the download went smooth and quick.

Next I signed up for an Amazon account. I wish that had gone as smoothly. I had to do that on the laptop instead of the BB and it took a few frustrating tries to get it done.

Moving right along, I was able to easily surf and search the book list on my BB and found a freebie book to try it out. The pages obviously are short on the BB screen, however it’s easy to adjust the font size to meet your eyesight needs.

I started out quite skeptical about the value of this, but had some time to kill on a flight to Ohio. When the plane landed I was on Chapter 9. It was such a good experience - that evening I picked it up again and continued reading. Now it’s my current ‘night stand’ book.

Judgment: Kindle for Blackberry works much better than expected (even off-network) and doesn’t burn a lot of battery. Feel free to share any Kindle book recommendations, as I plan to keep using this.

Well, if you're going to plunk down a cool million dollars to have your website redesigned, you might as well make sure you make it ugly, and slow. Apparently, that had to be the goal of the Morrison Foerster (AKA MoFo) website redesign.

I actually spotted this a few weeks ago and sent it around to some friends of mine for their feedback.  The usual comments were "Good Lord!! What were they thinking???" and "Oh my... as soon as I got on it, I couldn't wait to get out!" But the universal comment was "God, it is so slow!!"

Never mind the fact that it looks like whoever they paid to design the website appeared to be "print media experts" and not web designers, this site loads like it is running on an old 486 processor.  Why on earth would a site that is basically two colors, run so slow??

I went to IWebTool.com to see if it was really as slow as I thought by comparing it to some other law firm websites.  Sure enough, it was.  On average it took over 1.5 seconds to load the initial webpage.  Click on some of the links and it sometimes took 3 seconds to load.  When I compared it to Skadden's website, or DLA Piper, the MoFo site was significantly slower.  Skadden's and DLA Piper loaded 1kb of data in .05 seconds or less compared to MoFo's site taking 1.26 seconds.  That's means it takes MoFo 25 times longer to load the page!!

MoFo may want to go back to the drawing board on this one.  Maybe they have a money-back guarantee from whoever convinced them to go with this design.

For a brief moment I thought that the folks over at Bracewell & Giuliani had a competitive advantage over the rest of us.  When scanning the titles of the Bracewell's "People Search", it appears that Bracewell has someone with the grand title of "Master of Everything".  Unfortunately, it turns out that the position is currently vacant.  That's too bad.  I'd have really like to have gotten to know this person and ask them what is the meaning of life.

It actually reminds me of a position I applied for around 10 years ago.  They were looking for a "Director of Knowledge" position at the time. I joked with some friends that the position reported directly to God. Seems they've upgraded that position since then!!

On the plane ride back from New York, I came across this little gem of a mixed message, so I snapped a picture of it.  Smoking on domestic flights has been banned since the late 80's, but the 'resources' still remain.  Twenty-plus years later, here is a sign explaining to use the ashtray, right above an actual ashtray, right above a sign telling you that smoking is not allowed.

The existentialist part of my brain kicked in and I started wondering what process the airlines took to come to such a mixed message.  Perhaps they just said that it would be cheaper to slap a no-smoking, "Ghost Busters" style sticker on the door rather than remove the original smoking sticker, and replace the ashtray with a dummy insert.  Then I started thinking more diabolically.  Maybe the airlines and the FAA split the fines when people are caught smoking or tampering with the silly smoke detector in the lavatory. Place the picture of a lit cigarette carefully above the temptation of an ashtray might be too much for a smoker to resist.  Heck, I was thinking how cool it would be to have a smoke at 38,000 feet, and I've never been a smoker!!  I even got Samuel L. Jackson's voice stuck in my head saying "Ashtrays on a mother[blog edit] plane!!"  Then I got to thinking of how many times I've heard of passengers getting caught smoking on a plane.Since I couldn't think of one specific incident I've ever heard of, my diabolical side gave up and I just decided it was probably just plain laziness and cheapness on behalf of the airline industry that created such a mixed message.

If you've made it this far, you're probably asking yourself what does ashtrays on a plane have to do with law firms, libraries, technology or anything else I normally write about?  Truth be told... not much. I'm pretty sure that you can think of a number of mixed messages the legal industry (especially large firms) put out.  Such as buying high dollar legal research tools with the hopes of recovering that cost from our clients.  Or, how about the whole idea of putting out annual announcements of revenue and profits with the hopes that clients will be impressed with how much we charge and how large our profit margins are?  Makes my existentialist/diabolical side start wondering if clients are talking about our 'mixed messages' in the same way I just describe the airplane lavatory ashtray.  Now that I think about it... I bet they are.