One of the modern realities of consumerism is the requirement of arbitration clauses. The idea is that consumers and businesses can settle their disagreements without going to court, and instead have an arbitrator negotiate a settlement between the parties. For many of us, it is viewed as a part of doing business, and that the arbitration process is weighted heavily in favor of the corporations. Teel Lidow and his online tool, FairShake, is working to make filing an arbitration much easier for consumers and to actually show that many corporations are quite easy to approach when it comes to handling arbitration disputes. Time Magazine recently awarded FairShake with its award for The Best Inventions of 2020: 100 Innovations Changing How We Live, and we talk with Teel about his reasons behind creating FairShake.

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Information Inspirations

The pandemic crisis is allowing law firm management to reevaluate staffing needs, and once again, positions that are tied to a physical space are on the chopping block. However, positions that are viewed as “Knowledge Workers” are fairing much better as we look to a post-pandemic work environment. The key is those staff who understand the business and can work with clients and attorneys and function under pressure are going to thrive.

Check out the excellent i.WILL workshop on Courage & Emotional Durability tonight (12/3/2020 at 5:30 PM ET). Dr. Carli Kody leads a workshop based on Dr. Brené Brown’s research and Rising Strong™ methodology.

No matter how hard you think the Bar Exam is, Brianna Hill’s taking the bar during a pandemic, while in labor, having the baby and coming back to finish the bar the next day, and then finding out this week that she passed the bar, is much, much harder. While Hill is superhuman, she’s not the only one who had to struggle this year to take bar exams.

Our friends at Legal Innovators are collaborating with Bechtel Corporation (PDF Press Release) to provide junior lawyers to assist with Bechtel’s internal legal departments. This seems like a win-win for both companies.

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Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.

Transcript

Continue Reading The Geek in Review Ep. 96 – Consumer Arbitration Made Easier with FairShake’s Teel Lidow

I was recently listening to an episode of Without Fail called “The Tragedy Expert.” Kenneth Feinberg talks about how he has become the expert in administering funds that are distributed to victims and families of tragic events like 9/11, or the Newtown shoot, or the Boston Marathon bombing. He talks about becoming an expert, but that each case is unique and has to be handled like it is the most important case he’s ever handled before. The show’s host, Alex Blumberg, asks Feinberg if having gone through these cases so many times, does he feel like he’s the expert and can give some type of guidance because he is an expert at what he does. I really liked his response.

Absolutely not. It’s as if it’s the first time I’ve ever done one of these. Be careful about confusing the substantive terms and conditions of the program, where we’ll build on what we’ve done before, from the emotional response of victims and myself, to the individual cry that comes from the victim.

In other words, it doesn’t matter how well you know your topic, if you can’t apply it to the specific situation you are currently handling. You have to engage with the client, who may be going through one of the most important (and expensive) events in their lives.
Continue Reading Technology Doesn’t Change Who You Are… It Magnifies Who You Are

I’m finally back in my office in Houston today after taking a week to visit Austin and attend the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) annual meeting. Looking back on the last week, all I can do is take a deep breath and say… “WOW!!”

Here are just a handful of highlights:

  • AALL announced that

[NOTE: Please welcome guest blogger, Michael J. Robak, Associate Director/Director of Information Technologies, Leon E. Bloch Law Library, University of Missouri – Kansas City. -GL]

The movement to establish a true Technology instruction track and andragogy (meaning Susskind, Kowalski, et. al.) in the legal academy is gaining real momentum.  As

I recently gave a ‘client case study’ presentation at the HighQ Client Forum in NYC (recapped here). On the day, I opened my talk thusly:

I am of the opinion that I could tell you absolutely everything I have done at the firm for the last three years in excruciating detail, with charts,

As mentioned in my last post, law students often respond to their poor scores on a basic Word assessment by explaining to me that they need not need worry about this tech stuff because “that is what secretaries are for.” I think this is wrong for a number of reasons, a few