3 Geeks and a Law Blog

Someone left a copy of the Robb Report in the library over the weekend, and just flipping through it and seeing ads for Prada sunglasses, $90,000 wrist watches, and learning that I could be golfing in Bermuda in just two hours made me remember that there are people out in this world with more dollars than sense. When I flipped through the magazine, I found a great ad on page 253 for Avantair (also here on page 22-23), a private aircraft provider, that featured a plaintiff's firm of Robb & Robb, LLC out of Kansas City and with perhaps one of the most outlandish reasons for hiring a firm ever...

"Avantair allows us to be more productive and efficient as a law firm."

Now granted, this may work as a selling point for a plaintiff's firm, and this firm probably doesn't bill back this cost directly to its clients, but could you imagine a BigLaw firm putting this claim in their response to an RFP?

"To improve efficiency and productivity, we have our own fleet of private aircraft standing by so that we can be more responsive to our client's needs."

Imagine a GC choking on that response! I know of firms that won't allow their partners to accept free upgrades to first-class because they might accidentally be seen by clients that are sitting back in coach. And, firms where even business-class is discouraged for domestic flights. In BigLaw, the ads would read something like:

"Flying Southwest and Jet Blue may mean we can't get to you in an hour, but you'll love our bill at the end of the month!"

Although, the next time I present at a conference that discusses how to make law firms more efficient and productive, I'm bringing this ad as one potential method that probably no one in the room had thought to try.

We've all probably received those "continuation notices" or "reminder notices" from vendors that look amazingly like an invoice statement. After a while you get used to seeing them, and quite frankly you just get a little numb to the practice. It isn't until you see someone else's comments after they were confused by these 'notices' that you remember what a slimy advertising stunt these notices are. Take this comment from yesterday by a public librarian who came across a notice from West:

Our little public library received what seemed at first look to our accounting clerk to be a bill from WEST entitled "reminder notice - library update - - action required" complete with what initially seemed a customer number - but closer inspection showed this was "not an invoice" & the customer number was accompanied by an "offer #" It was for Quinlan's Zoning Bulletin.
If memory serves me right from my law library days, this was originally a Callaghan publication that was at one time part of the subscription to their Zoning & Land Use set.
Our little public library never owned that publication nor had our Town in the past decade.
What's most amusing is the "reminder - new edition" part - West has recently released an updated edition of the title below... Hmm, isn't that what a "newsletter, twice monthly" does ... twice monthly?
The "reminder notice" looked so hokey, that I initially considered it was a scam company posing as the West Publishing I remember - (w/ some very wonderful Reps back then I might add) but a Thompson Reuters tm at the bottom assured me this was in fact THE West Publishing Co...
I hardlyyknew yer!

To be fair, West puts in big letters that it is "not an invoice", and there are some other publishers out there that are much worse about this type of marketing of their products. The fact that it seems that West is expanding this practice to public libraries seems to be a little strange, but not all that unexpected (one commenter wondered if vendors were going to start sending these to High School libraries next.) These types of 'confusing' (I'll stop a little bit short of 'deceptive') practices are probably going to be more the norm in the future, especially with the fact that print subscriptions are being cut in significant amounts by law firms and even at academic libraries. So, once again, be vigilant in reviewing your invoices. I'll warn my kids' elementary library to be on the lookout for any strange looking "reminder notices" from certain publishers that are looking to expand their client base.

Ready or not... the folks at WestlawNext seem to think that the iPad and other touch-based, tablet-style computers are here to stay and will be making a significant impact in online usage in the next 18-24 months. Mike Dahn, WestlawNext VP of Product Development, gave a few snapshots to a group of Houston law librarians yesterday of the upcoming WLN App for the iPad, and it looked pretty good. The app is supposed to be out in the Fall of 2010 and offer a lot of the functionality (touch, scroll, flip, and rotate) that the iPad users see in other products.

Mike admitted that the iPad isn't really a great platform for "creating content" (such as writing a 20 page brief), but that it is a great platform for conducting legal research and reading the material. Some of the screenshots we saw show a dual-column format that is set up to mimic how you would read the text in a book. Unlike the web-browser version of dual-column (where you might have to scroll up and down each column because it ran off the bottom of the screen, the iPad version should format exactly to the screen and allow you to then turn the page using your finger.

It seems that more and more programs are going to be "app-based" (what we used to call software), and if we're going to get into the same issues that caused us to get off of Westlaw and Lexis' software based programs. I'd bet that some of those legacy software programs are probably still on the base PC install at some firms. (Go check your "Research Applications" tab on your Windows "Start" menu to see if they're still there!)

Time will tell if the coolness factor, and the usability factor make this a long-term situation, or if we are seeing a flash-in-the pan type products that will loose their shine the first time that the IT department tells the user that they'll have to fix the problem with the iPad themselves because the iPad is not supported by the firm. WestlawNext seems to be betting that the iPad and other tablet-based devices are here to stay. I think they may be on the right side of that bet. I wonder how long it will take Lexis and Bloomberg to also place a bet on iPad apps??

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that “the more I know… the more I know I don’t know.” Apparently, I could use that quote on just about anything I post on this blog. Over the weekend I was catching up on some reading when I found a reference to something called the Public Library of Law (PLoL), powered by Fastcase. After a few emails back and forth between myself and Fastcase’s Ed Walters, I found out that this free resource has been out since the first quarter of 2008. I’m not sure how I’ve missed it for so long, but it just proves the first sentence above!

Ed Walters gave me a brief explanation of why Fastcase launched this service:

We launched PLoL in February 2008 as a resource for non-lawyer researchers.  We saw lots of journalists, business owners, students, and pro se litigants signing up for free trials of Fastcase, and thought there should be a simple, free resource for them that fit their needs.
The idea was to empower people to educate themselves as best they could -- not in place of a lawyer, but more likely before or in conjunction with professional legal help.
We wanted to build a library for law like WebMD was for medicine.
Nobody uses WebMD instead of going to a doctor, but it can empower people to take better care of themselves in conjunction with their doctor.
At its launch, it was the biggest free law library on the Web (a claim we need to update with the launch of the terrific material on Google Scholar).

After signing up for a free account and playing around with PLoL for a while, I found it to be pretty straight-forward, and I liked the format of both the search results, and the layout of the text of the case, especially when compared to Google Scholar. (I still don’t like how you cannot do a specific citation search on Google Scholar, but I might be ‘unique’ in using that feature to pull cases.)

The Public Library of Law hosts the cases through the Fastcase database, but the statutes, regulatory and other materials pass you through to the state or federal websites which host those individual materials. According to the site, here is a list of what you can find on PLoL:

• Cases from the U.S. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals [hosted on PLoL]
• Cases from all 50 states back to 1997 [hosted on PLoL]
• Federal statutory law and codes from all 50 states [via State or Federal websites]
• Regulations, court rules, constitutions, and more! [via State or Federal websites]

PLoL is also a way to promote the main product in the stable and that's Fastcase. When you click on links to material that is outside of this range, you get a pop-up message pointing you to the Fastcase “pay service”.



Also, when you do a search on the database, it will bring you back a message of how many results are available on PLoL, and an additional message that lets you know that there are a lot more results available if you move up to the full Fastcase subscription.


One of the features that I saw on PLoL that I think would be very valuable is an RSS feed of new decisions for each state, federal district, or US Supreme Court. Many of us would like to know when new decisions are handed down, and putting that in my RSS reader is a giant plus in my book.

The Public Library of Law isn’t something that you’d want to hang your legal research hat on, but for a freebie product, it isn’t half-bad. Like Ed told me, PLoL isn’t really set up for lawyers or power-user legal researcher types… but rather for non-lawyers to get a streamlined view of cases and access to other primary legal resources. For someone that may not have access to research tools like Fastcase or Casemaker through their bar associations, and Google Scholar doesn't really do the trick, then having a product like PLoL out there can be a useful legal resource.

Over the last three and a half years after my divorce, I haven't gone out much: no bars, no happy hours, no mixers. Lots of week-ends at home and working at my career. And watching lots of YouTube.

A few months ago one Sunday, I spent about 3 hours watching some YouTube videos on how to flirt by Dating Coach Dave Wygant. Seriously, you can find anything on YouTube.

Last week, I was able to put his advice to the test: a friend dragged me out to a Happy Hour. So I decided to experiment with my newly learned skills. Amazingly, despite the fact that this man was talking to two different women, at the end of the evening, he came over and asked for my number instead of theirs. Why? Because after 48 years of being alive as a female, I have finally learned how to flirt.

SO. Why should you care about this?

It is my professional opinion, after working at three of the largest law firms in Houston and with some of the most renowned lawyers in Texas, that lawyers are of a general type: nerdy.

We were the smartest kids in class--outliers. So we never learned how to talk to people (or maybe we talked too much). Some of us lawyers are better at it then others; others are naturally gregarious. Some of us are natural marketers.

But for the most part, most of us have ABSOLUTELY no social skills. Meaning, we have no idea how to begin and maintain a relationship.

So give David Wygant a listen. You might learn something.

Just tell him I sent you.