In response to Greg’s post, A Chicken…, I thought I would expand on what caused me to goad him into thinking more creatively about the library and its structure. The other day I was reading an article about defining value in law firm billing, which referenced several disruptive entrants to the legal market. I
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The Inevitable Cloud
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AFA Advice for Clients
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| Image [cc] Magic Trax |
[Recently I was asked by Bridgeway to write a section for an AFA Handbook for Clients. My section is meant to give clients a look in to how law firms are approaching AFAs and give clients some tips on how they might better partner with their outside counsel on this subject. In my usual …
Commodity Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means
As law firms look for opportunities to grow revenue, there really is only once place to look: Down. By down I mean further down the food-chain of legal services. Most lawyers and firms like to hold themselves out as a unique brand: a brand worthy of only the highest levels of legal work.
Even…
2012: The Year of Pain
With great interest, I have been following Bruce’s series on Growth is Dead. Bruce brings a refreshing economist’s perspective to a bear on an important set of issues.
Apart from agreeing with him, I offer yet another economist’s perspective, taking on another dimension of this analysis. Back in the Spring, I dubbed 2012…
Logic and The Value of Time: Another Counterpoint
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| Image [cc] israelavila |
My good friend and blogging colleague Jordan Furlong suggested an intriguing idea while we were attending the ILTA Conference. We had started down a path on the sometimes taboo topic of timekeeping and the billable hour. Jordan takes the position that it should be abolished, freeing lawyers from the yoke of …
A Chicken In Every Pot & A Librarian In Every Practice Group, To Boot!
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| Image [cc] origamidon |
After I wrote the post last week on de facto embedded librarians, I started getting comments in from my friend Colleen Cable arguing that we shouldn’t settle for de facto librarians in law firm practice groups, but instead we should be pushing for real live librarians in every practice group. Initially,…
My Favorite Session at ILTA 2012
Mary Abraham, KM blogger and Queen of Alternative Presentation Formats (APF) approached me about putting together something unique for the 2012 ILTA Conference. With the assistance of Geek #1 and our traditional 3 Beer Solution approach I came up with a fun idea. The session would be a mock fee negotiation between a…
The Embedded (De Facto) Library Researcher
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| Image [cc] Seattle University Law Library |
We’ve discussed the idea of embedded library researchers on this blog in the past, but as I was having a conversation on alternative ways of promoting the value of library and research services in a firm yesterday, I started wondering if the idea of the “embedded librarian” could be…
The Billable Hour Drives Efficiency. Who Knew?
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| Image [cc] Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com |
Recently Lexis released its findings from a new survey on Non-Billable Hours. Lexis had previously done a survey on Billable Hours and their curiosity lead them to the second one. Both surveys focused on the solo / small firm market with firms of 20 or less lawyers. I was…









