So, stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Two blonde-haired sisters walk into a bar and ask people if they have legal questions in need of answering. Actually, it’s not a joke, although the resulting YouTube channel is very funny. Amy Epstein Feldman (lawyer) and her sister, Robin Epstein (comedy writer) decided to expand their influence from their 2009 book, So Sue Me, Jackass!: Avoiding Legal Pitfalls That Can Come Back to Bite You at Work, at Home, and at Play, by taking their act on the road and going into the Dorian Gray bar in New York City armed with a video camera, Amy’s legal knowledge, and Robin’s comedic charm. The resulting videos are fun to watch, and discuss life-altering legal concepts ranging from dog v mailman cases, to who’s liable if a guy dies from a heart attack during a threesome (spoiler alert: it’s not the other two women.)

“The book is a Q&A about legal issues that people deal with on a daily basis, with chapters on subjects like Employment, Health, Home, Pets, Love Life, Parents, Kids & Death,” Robin Epstein tells me in an email. The book was a great start, but it seems that the sisters wanted more, and seemed to have a similar philosophy to what we refer to around this blog as the three beer solution. (Although, it turns out that Amy’s not a big fan of beer.) Robin explains that she and her sister “are trying to find a new way to reach people, so we now regularly go to a bar in NYC and ask folks if they have legal questions in need of answering.” The results are funny and informative short videos that take a legal question, lay out the facts, sometimes getting opinions from the local members of the bar (that’s actually the drinking establishment they are taping in, not the Bar Association), and then they explain what results a jury actually decided.

There are three current categories:

  • Your Pets – for all those legal pitfalls that Fido and Ms. Kittiez can get you into…
  • Your Job – including those things you should *absolutely not* do…
  • Bar Exam – the surprising world of “just who can you really sue these days?”
If you have a question you’d like them to answer, send them an email at SoSueMeJackass@gmail.com.

Take a quick 41-second introduction from the So Sue Me, Jackass! Sisters and then go have some fun watching as the authors decide that since nobody reads anymore, they needed to go where the people are…  at the bar.


My wife works for Lighthouse International, a terrific non-profit dedicated to empowering people who are blind and visually impaired. Last week we attended an “experience” developed in partnership with the Lighthouse. Dialog in the Dark is called an exhibition, and is produced by the company that produced the Bodies Exhibition, but calling it an exhibition or a production completely misses the mark. The experience begins with a brief video explaining how to use the cane they’ve just handed you. Then you are led into a small room with light boxes along the walls, and you’re instructed to take a seat on one of the boxes. Another video plays describing the daily experience of people who are visually impaired in New York City and the light boxes begin to dim. As the screens wink out the boxes finally switch off and you are left in the dark. The organizers have taken great care to remove all light pollution so that the rest of the exhibit is entirely pitch black, which means your eyes never adjust. For the next hour you experience something like blindness.

We sat in the dark for a minute or so; my wife squeezing my hand tightly. Then we heard a door open to our left and a man’s voice said, “Hello, I’m Pedro, what are your names?” After the preliminaries, he gave us one directive, “Don’t be a one-armed zombie. Use your cane to navigate.” With that, Pedro took us on a tour of New York City as experienced by people who are blind. We went to Central Park, to Fairway Market on the Upper West Side, and we took the Subway down to Times Square. I’ve lived in New York for nearly 20 years and I have done all of these things many, many times, but this was a different world. It was an immersive experience for the senses except for, obviously, sight — and as Pedro pointed out, there was actually no tasting on this tour. But they took great care to recreate the feel and sound of the city. In the subway set, they either pumped in the smell of stale urine, or my association with the subway is so strongly correlated to that smell that I imagined it.

My wife and I stumbled through the set, bumping into trash cans and mailboxes, benches and trees, while Pedro danced around us with ease. He would come up beside me, put a hand on my shoulder and work down to my wrist, grabbing it and placing it directly on an object in front of me, or on a wall. “Ryan, do you know what this is? What do you think that is?” It was incredible. He didn’t fumble or guess. It was clear that he knew exactly where we were at all times. He would say things like, “Oops, no you’re facing the wrong way, turn around.” How did he know? His voice would suddenly come from a new direction and he would say, “OK, we’re going this way now, follow my tapping.” And he would tap his cane on the side of the wall, or a nearby pole until we felt our way over to him. Most remarkably, he would occasionally say, “No one-armed zombies.” just as I raised my left hand to feel in front of me. At one point, I was convinced that we would come to the end of the tour, turn the lights up and find out that Pedro was fully sighted and wearing infrared goggles of some kind.

At the end of the tour, there is a Q&A session and the lights slowly come up as you are talking with your guide. Pedro sat across the table from us. No IR goggles. He was definitely visually impaired. Suddenly I felt a wave of guilt for even having a fleeting thought that it wasn’t completely above board. Since my wife began working at the Lighthouse, I have met many people who are visually impaired and I have seen hundreds more leaving the Lighthouse building as I waited outside for her to come down after work. I realized I’ve never seen any of them do the one-armed zombie as they navigated the real world.

I have now spent several days reliving Dialog in the Dark. I wanted to write this post because I feel like there are many lessons to be learned from this experience. The metaphors and analogies abound; from issues of leadership and faith, to prejudice and fear, to recognizing individual capabilities rather than focusing on inabilities, to navigating the “new normal” or planning a personal career path. I could go on. But suffice it to say, that a very good piece of advice, in nearly any endeavor is “don’t be a one-armed zombie.” Take that to mean what you will.

And if you happen to be in New York City, forget the lights of Broadway, go experience the Dark.

What happens when a comedian gets a Masters Degree in Library Science? Apparently, you end up with a fun website, a line of library inspired clothing, and a Black Crowes parody video that shares the difficulty of understanding just why Edgar Allen Poe’s writing is ♫ Hard to Handle now, Gets around… bomp, bomp, bom♫….

Saturday’s Baltimore Post-Examiner featured an article written by the person that combines all of these things, Meredith Myers.

Here’s the video, which before the song even begins brings back one of the best memories I’ve had as a librarian when a patron would raise their finger and “SHUSH” me…  “I AM A LIBRARIAN, MA’AM!!”

Enjoy!

Above The Law received an internal memo from Foley & Lardner’s CEO, Jay Rothman dated back on August 6th that announced the Foley’s Records Department would be outsourced to Williams Lea, a business process outsourcing company. To those inside the world of law firm records departments, this may or may not be a surprise to anyone that a firm has decided to outsource the function of handling documents, especially paper documents, to a service provider like Williams Lea. Looking at the presentations (PDF) that Foley’s Information Compliance Manager, Dana C. Moore, has been giving lately, it would appear that Foley has been planning a streamlining of the Records Department for a while. In fact, it is interesting to note that Moore’s title changed back in April from Records & Information Compliance Manager to simply Information Compliance Manager. The process change was stressed in Rothman’s memo:

Our rationale for making this decision is straightforward. The Firm is migrating away from records management processes that focus on the physical file to an environment where, in most cases, the electronic version of a document is the official record. Williams Lea has significant experience designing and implementing imaging processes, and our goal for the next three years is to re-configure and re-train the operations staff to adapt to the use of imaging technologies and work flows. Williams Lea is well-suited to implement these solutions and to provide the training and support that the records management personnel will need to be successful in the future. (emphases added)

Best of luck to those on staff at Foley in landing jobs at Williams Lea.

The second tid-bit of news that came out in the letter from Jay Rothman was his mentioning that Foley is now a Lexis-Only shop, apparently dropping Westlaw as part of an overall initiative.

Consistent with our strategic plan, we asked various Firm administrative leaders to identify and implement changes to streamline the processes that they oversee, with a focus on becoming more efficient and cost effective. The resulting initiatives are aligned with our overarching objective of delivering exceptional client service and promoting innovation in our work processes and staffing models. All of these efforts are intended to position our Firm for long-term success. The decision to migrate to a single source research provider for library services (Lexis) is a recent example of one of these initiatives. (emphasis added)

For many of us in the law library world, we’ve been waiting for a BigLaw firm (Foley falls in at #45 in the AmLaw100 revenue rankings) to pull the trigger and go to a single legal research provider. Now we have someone to use as an example. Now that the seal is off that bottle, it will be interesting to see how many other BigLaw firms finally start looking seriously at dropping the two-vendor legal research model and start going as a Westlaw, Lexis, or even Bloomberg Law only shop.

Image [cc] Bryoz

I had a friend tell me a story about showing up to work one day and having this conversation with a co-worker:

Friend: Do you ever feel like a little tiny piece of you dies every time you walk in here?
Co-Worker: Not a tiny piece.

We’ve probably all had jobs (or at least days) where we feel like we are simply spinning our wheels, or worse, going backward. The reason for that feeling usually lands quite squarely on the shoulders of one person: your immediate supervisor. In fact, a Forbes article earlier this year nailed the effects that bad managers have on the work environment:

A bad manager is a big factor in employee performance. A good manager, no matter the salary, will inspire loyalty. … Managers who don’t create the right opportunities for their employees, don’t communicate with them, and don’t appreciate them often find themselves dealing with a high turnover rate. Good managers are people you keep in touch with even after you leave a position. Bad managers are people you keep track of so you can avoid them in future. (emphasis added.)

If you are reading this blog, chances are you work in the legal industry. Your co-workers, supervisors and subordinates are probably well educated with a minimum of a High School education, and many (probably the majority) of them with advanced degrees. You work for, with and supervise extremely smart people. That’s both good and bad. Smart people need to be challenged and felt appreciated. When they come into work, they need to feel like they are there to do something that matters. When they leave work, they need to feel like they’ve actually accomplished something that day.

How do you do that? Well, first of all, simply ask you them a simple question: “What are you doing that excites you?” I actually had someone ask me that this week in a meeting (a meeting that I planned to go in and discuss something that didn’t excite me at all!) This type of open-ended question does a couple of things. First, it gives someone the power to discuss the type of work that they like to do. Plus, it puts the person in control of the conversation… it tells them that their opinion matters and that you (hopefully, as a “good” manager) are willing to listen to them and that you want them to have a good work environment. Of course, as a manager, if the conversation about what excites your workers is all about things you do not provide them, then you should see those red flags popping up and understand that you have a big problem on your hands that needs to be solved quickly.

One of the best jobs I ever had was also one of the worst paying jobs I ever had. However, at the end of the day, I felt good about what I was doing, because I felt that I was actually accomplishing something that mattered, that I was contributing as part of a team to the overall mission of the workplace, and that I felt appreciated for my contributions by my peers, supervisors and subordinates. It didn’t mean that we all sat around a campfire and sang songs… far from it. We had numerous challenges, I got chewed out for failing to meet expectations, and I had to fire employees who would not meet the expectations I had given them. But the one thing that made it all worthwhile was the fact that at the end of most days we all felt like we were accomplishing something and that we weren’t simply showing up to a place that sucked a little bit of life out of you each day.

If you’re a fan of the idea that the government that represents you should be transparent and open, then you’ll be a big fan of the Sunlight Foundation Projects. The nonprofit, nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation has created a number of tools and resources to help citizens access public information, and work to expand the definition of “public information” beyond what governments may want its citizens to know. Sunlight Foundation leverages technology and encourages government policies to provide online information to the public in ways that allow the information to be distributed to a broader community. The idea is to enable easy access to public information as well as training citizens and journalists to use the data in order to become watchdogs over those that govern. As researcher, we may not rise to the level of journalistic watchdogs, but there are a number of resources available that make finding public information easier, and faster.

The four major Sunlight Foundation projects fall under these categories:

  1. Track Influence – Track how money, connections and access influences government officials and policies.
    – Political Ad Sleuth
    – Checking Influence
    – Follow the Unlimited Money
    – Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker
    – Inbox Influence
    – Influence Explorer
    – Lobbyist Registration Tracker
    – Party Time
    – Poligraft
  2. The Inner Workings of Congress – Know how to contact members of Congress, along with the ability to see what types of communications they have deleted, presented in speeches, words they use the most, and who works for them.
    – Call on Congress
    – Politwoops
    – Scout
    – Capitol Words
    – House Expenditure Database
    – The House Staff Directory
    – Open Congress
  3. Track Legislation and Public Policy – Sunlight Foundatation helps track legislation from State, Federal and even some foreign governments and helps point you through the changes that occur in legislation, how members of the government talk about the legislation in speeches, and even a program set up to train you how to use these different modules and how to use a real-time investigative reporting platform.
    – Scout
    – The Open State Project
    – Clearspending
    – Open Congress
    – Open Parliament
    – PublicMarkup
    – Roku Open Government Apps
    – Sunlight Academy
    – Sunlight Live
  4. Mobile Apps – Sunlight Foundation has worked on a number of mobile applications to provide information directly to your iPhone, Android or Windows 7 phone that helps you track information about Congress while you are on the go.
    – Ad Hawk
    – Congress for Android
    – Congress for Windows Phone 7
    – Open States
    – Real Time Congress
    – Sunlight Health (Android and iPhone)
    – Upwardly Mobile (web app)
The idea of tracking data coming out of government institutions may initially make you think about conspiracy theorist, and I’m sure that there are many of those that love what the Sunshine Foundation has done here. However, as researchers, these types of resources are key in helping us find the information we need, and to track changes in government activities that have a direct or indirect effect on our firms’ or clients’ activities. As many of us have discovered, public information isn’t always easy to gather. Resources like these will make that task of finding public information a little easier.
Image [cc] jronaldlee

Tracy Thompson-Pryzlucki sent the following letter to AALL members this morning to explain why she is supporting the changes in AALL Bylaws (PDF) that expand the definition of Active AALL members. I asked Tracy if I could repost her letter on 3 Geeks as a continuation of the conversation started last week with an open letter against the amendment. Although, I am a backer of the amendment, I do appreciate the membership’s ability to express their opinions and have an open discussion of both sides of the issue. I agree with Tracy in that the way our members work is changing, and AALL needs to be ahead of this change in order to make sure we do not lose members simply because we feared that two vendors might find a way to take over the association. I do understand that fear, but I don’t think that we can let a worst-case scenario cause us to become a more exclusive organization in a time where we need to become more inclusive. Of course, Tracy says it much more eloquently than I.

Voting starts today. AALL members should receive an email from the organization with instructions to vote. Regardless of if you vote yes or no, I encourage you to read the amendments, look at both sides and vote what you think is best for the association. – GL

Good morning!
I am so grateful to these members who are engaged enough in their association to get this conversation going! A bylaws change should get our attention and get us thinking about outcomes and consequences, intended or otherwise.

I have been giving a lot of thought to the bylaws change (as a member who may or may not be currently excluded from participation in the highest ranks of AALL) and in the end I am in favor of the amendment, and for reasons that I hope are not dismissed as self-serving. I should note however, that I am now and have always identified as an ‘active’ member. And even if the bylaws change is not approved I plan to continue to self-identify as an active member until I am officially notified that I am denied that status. The current bylaws language is subject to interpretation, and if pressed I suppose the case is easy for me to make, as I do physically “work in a library.” However, if NELLCO were to relocate to office space outside of the Albany Law Library, would I then be relegated to Associate Membership status? I don’t think that achieves any perceived goal.

Here are my reasons for supporting the bylaws change:
1) While I do understand the concern that big money vendors could ‘stack the deck,’ the likelihood of that happening, in light of (1) the nominations process and (2) the membership’s voting power, seems obscure.
2) The Members of AALL ARE AALL. If we find this does in fact lead us in the wrong direction, we can change it.
3) Vendors are now fully active in the association in every aspect except Board service, and many have volunteered their time and talents for years. AALL should be able to leverage that expertise and reward that commitment with Board service when it’s warranted.
4) Membership categories are self-selecting, and are not being actively policed by AALL. And who is the arbiter? There are too many what-ifs and no one to adjudicate and enforce.
5) I don’t think a handful of well-resourced people with ulterior motives, even if they were to collude, can overcome the morality of the individuals within the membership.

If the membership of AALL really thinks this proposed change poses a threat to the Association’s integrity, my suggestions would be either:

  1. try to describe the very narrow category of people you are trying to exclude and recommend a clause that would cover that instance or
  2. consider recommending the revival of an ethics committee within AALL as a more comprehensive solution to the kinds of concerns you are raising.

I look forward to this continued discussion.

Cheers,
Tracy
——————————————-
Tracy L. Thompson-Przylucki, Executive Director
New England Law Library Consortium (NELLCO)
Albany Law School
Schaffer Law Library

Image [cc] David Armano

An article on SearchCIO-Midmarket caught my attention yesterday that discussed the problems of simply throwing in a Social Media platform on the Enterprise System, and expecting the employees to simply adapt it as they have in their personal lives. Author Karen Goulart specifically calls out Pollyannish CIO’s who seem to think that implementing social media resources for their employees is twice as successful (CIO’s at 47%) than the employees (27%) actually think it is. Goulart points out that the idea of Enterprise Social Media is a fundamental shift in the way employees work and this creates a Change Management issue. Unfortunately, CIO’s seem to be happy to create the “change” but leave out the “management” part of the process. The lack of management was summed up best by Forrester Research analyst, TJ Keitt:

You assume that your employees deeply want it because you observe some behavior in someone’s personal life and you take the leap of faith saying, ‘Well maybe this will work, maybe it won’t and we’ll go from there.’… Anyone expecting a technology in and of itself to create anything doesn’t really understand technology. People change their culture, executives set the agenda, and middle managers execute and create the incentives to change behavior.

 The tricky part of this quote is that this type of change has to create a shift in everyone’s attitude on how we communicate in the Social Media era. On top of that, the change doesn’t seem to be either a “top-down” or a “bottom-up” scenario. Instead, it is that ever allusive “middle-down-bottom-up with top buy-in” model. In other words, the CIO not only has to buy-in that this type of communication will work, but they have to trust in their middle-management to find ways to motivate and train staff in order to produce the momentum necessary for this type of behavior shift. Different employees have different motivations when it comes to changing the way they communicate, and finding that motivation is key to a successful change management process.

I also wanted to point out an assumption that Goulart made in her first paragraph of the article:

Today, one would be hard-pressed to find a business not providing a social networking platform, be it Yammer, Jive, offerings from Microsoft or IBM, or some type of homespun intranet.

There is a running joke in the law firm technology world that we are usually five years behind corporations when it comes to technology. The same joke seems to apply to most law firms when it comes to social media in the Enterprise. I’m not sure that firms will break this trend on this issue either. In fact, my prediction is that enterprise-style social media will creep into the law firm environment through one of two ways. First, small groups within the firm will just go out and find a way to do it and just do an end-run around IT and the CIO. Or, second, since Microsoft now owns Yammer, it is possible that they will work Yammer into Outlook at some point. This would create what some would consider the best of both worlds (email and social media on the same platform), and others would call the worst of both worlds (email and social media on the same platform.)

My assumption is that, one way or another, employees will start using social media tools to communicate internally and externally whether the CIO and IT want them to or not. The key to this fundamental change process isn’t about how do you create the change, but rather, how do we manage this change in a way that benefits both the employee and the firm as a whole.

[Editor’s Note: Steve Lastres asked if I could repost this information on the Law Library Society of Washington DC (LLSDC) and the Private Law Libraries’ (PLL) “Showcase: Empowering the Next Generation of Law Firms.” The original post was on the On Firmer Ground Blog, which should be in your RSS Reader, and was co-written by Steven A. Lastres, Director of Library & KM, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP and Scott Bailey, Director of Research Services, Squire Sanders. – GL]

A group of librarians from The Private Law Librarians Special Interest Section (PLL SIS) of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and The Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, D.C. (LLSDC) have been brainstorming ways to promote the value of law librarians. The idea is to demonstrate to lawyers, the “C” level and other professionals that work in law firms not just the traditional value to the practice of law, but to show how law librarians can be strategic allies in supporting the business of law.

As a result of a number of conversations and planning sessions, LLSDC and PLL are hosting “Showcase: Empowering the Next Generation of Law Firms.” This exhibit focuses on four targeted strategic areas to enhance law firm administration’s and attorney’s position in a challenging environment with strategic research and management capabilities.

The Showcase provides four exhibit areas focused around:

  1. Budget/Contract Negotiation: Strategically Cutting Costs with Dynamic Research Services Management
  2. Moves/Facilities: Planning and Reducing Library Footprint while Increasing Research Capabilities
  3. Business Development Research: Competitive Intelligence, SWOT and Growing the Firm’s Business
  4. Non-Traditional Strategic Roles: Embedded Researchers, Risk Management Research, Compliance, Legal Project Management & Knowledge Management

Each area will be manned by experienced Library Directors and Managers demonstrating what they are doing strategically in their respective firms to provide top-notch practice support and positively impact the firm’s bottom line.

The Showcase will take place on November 8, 2012 at the law firm of Pepper Hamilton in Washington, DC. Members of the American and DC Bar Associations, the Association of Legal Administrators, Legal Marketing Association, and ARMA are all welcome to attend. To RSVP or obtain more details click on the link below.

http://www.llsdc.org/en/cev/395

In the future this model will be replicated at local chapters of the organizations listed above. Law Librarians understand that in today’s economic climate new approaches are imperative. As a result, LLSDC and PLL are taking a grass-roots approach to move beyond the comfort zone of our libraries to educate our internal clients: lawyers, administrators, and other professionals that work on law firms about our value proposition.

Please spread the word to the local chapters of the organizations that have been invited to the DC Showcase.

Stay tuned!!!

Jeff Brandt shared a great video in a recent Pinhawk newsletter. The video was produced by Riverview Law, an innovative provider of legal services.

The video, which I thoroughly enjoyed, is a conversation between lawyer and client about a fixed fee. As Riverview Law is based in the UK, so is the scenario. The client asks for a fixed fee about 20 times, meanwhile the lawyer does his best to redefine fixed fee as ‘hourly.’

In many respects the video represents reality … for both sides.

My thoughts:

Law Firm Side

The law firm guy struggles to grasp doing it differently. Any fixed fee in his mind will come from an accounting of the billable hour. When it appears he may be succumbing to the fixed fee concept, he lays out a list of incomprehensible caveats as some lengthy and easy to invoke list of out-of-scope assumptions. When the client doesn’t buy that, he reverts to his known quantity – hours.

Client Side

The in-house lawyer gets points for sticking to her guns. The video is obviously meant to show her in a reasonable light, as opposed to the blundering law firm guy. However, what is unspoken by her, and is definitely part of the challenge, is that she gives no scope or parameters when requesting her fixed fee. Somehow her outside counsel should be able to produce a fixed fee on a complex matter with Zero Scope.

I recommend you watch the video. It’s a great lesson in how not to have the conversation – for both sides.