I’m still amazed at some of the Microsoft products that are common on the desktop in 2012. So, here’s a few I want to see go away by year’s end:

You’re not much better than your cousin IE6
Really?? Everytime I reboot I have to see this??

It’s not that I don’t love you… I’d just rather date your younger sister ’10

See my note to your younger sister, ’03, above

More like “Slow Up The Web” (come on! get with HTML5!)

You’re definitely not my “type” either!

We would like to thank Jordan Furlong, Simon Fodden and Steve Matthews for awarding 3 Geeks and a Law Blog with the 2011 Friend of the North ClawBies Award. It is quite an honor (or should I say, honour) especially being mentioned along some wonderful blogs like Mary Abraham’s Above and Beyond KM, Ron Friedmann’s Strategic Legal Technology, and John Wallbillich’s wiredGC blogs.

Toby and I constantly remark on the disproportionate number of Candians we see leading conversations at the conferences we attend on Knowledge Managment, Law Practice Management, Legal Technology, Law Librarianship and just about any other topic that we write about on this blog. I smile each time I hear a speaker say “PRO-cess” rather than “Prah-cess” and see the letter “u” added to PowerPoint slides in words like color and humor. So, we are happy that our Friends to the North consider us their friends as well.

Now we just need to get a few of those friends to guest-blog for us in 2012!!

It is day 366 of Cindy Romaine’s “Future Ready 365” Project. I imagine that last night may have been the last time she went to bed and slept without waking up in the middle of the night to make sure that she scheduled the next blog post properly and that it would go out on time. Either that, or she just collapsed from exhaustion from a massive project that gathered 365 guest blog posts on the topic of Librarians preparing for what the future has to bring to our profession. My hat is off to her for thinking big, taking chances, reaching out to the members of SLA and twisting their arms to contribute, and for achieving her goals. Well done, Cindy. Well done!

As someone that encourages people to guest post here on 3 Geeks, I know a bit of what she’s talking about, but not nearly on the scale that she took on in 2011. Just think of how difficult it is to work with one person at your office on a project. Now, think of expanding that to working with hundreds of people across the globe. Each having to complete their piece of the project… on time! I saw the fire in Cindy’s eyes in 2010 when she talked with me on the project, and I made sure that I got my part in early. I knew I couldn’t escape, and I could tell that she would hound me until I got my post in and published. 
In the final post, Cindy Romaine points out eleven lessons she’s learned from this project. If you ever thought of starting a blog, or contributing to a group blog, then take these lessons to heart: 
  1. What’s Hot. 
  2. Already There. 
  3. Business Savvy Required. 
  4. It’s Quotable. 
  5. SLA is made up of tribes. 
  6. Go Team! 
  7. The power of social media is in the connections. 
  8. Social media is free, but it is not cheap. 
  9. I can rise to the occasion. 
  10. Go big or go home. 
  11. SLA Rocks. 
Although Cindy may not want to put down the twelfth lesson, I can assure you that somewhere on this list needs to be:
   12. It is freakin’ hard work! 
Ask anyone that has attempted to start a project that requires contributions from 365+ people how they would plan to do such a thing. Many would say it is impossible. Future Ready 365, however, shows that it is very hard… but it is worth it in the end. 

Image [cc] fixedgear

As we say goodbye to 2011 and say hello to 2012, I’d like to take a moment to mention some of the things I’d rather not see make it into the new year (at least on my Twitter Feed.) Besides running into this poor sap that thought getting a Fail Whale tattoo is going to be something that will cool in 2012 (plus, that puppy looks infected to me), there are a few more things I’d like to see go into our collective pasts. So, if you are on Twitter, here’s a few things I’m begging you not to do next year:

  • Don’t make us feel bad for you by sending a tweet to Ashton Kucher, and honestly thinking that he will tweet you back
  • Don’t brag about becoming the “Mayor of Smith, Jones, and Williams law firm” (especially when you don’t even work at that law firm!)
  • Please don’t send anything that ends with the oft-used hashtag #fail
  • Don’t brag about your Klout score (if you have to tell people you have “klout” you probably don’t)
  • If you’re a celebrity with 100K followers, don’t call breastfeeding #nasty
  • Please stop the tweets that tweet about the value of tweeting
  • Find the backspace button and don’t tweet with more than 5 @mentions or 5 RT’s
  • For goodness sake, don’t send me a tweet that say “Follow Me… I’ll follow you back!” (come on… you’re better than that!!)
  • I know some of you love those “Inspirational Tweets” but post those on Facebook instead, okay??
  • Stop sending me tweets that say how sad you are to find out that I, @glambert, am not singer Adam Lambert (although, I am quite fashionable for a law librarian and have been known to break out in song.)
Being the “smart old guy” isn’t too bad, though.

Whew… I feel so much better getting those off my chest. I wanted to say anything that mentioned #election2012, but I have a feeling those are going to be unavoidable in the next 320 days or so.

Got some tweet-types you’d like to see go away in 2012? Put ’em in the comments. It’ll make you feel better.

On a call with Greg Kaple and Gillian Neer from IMS, our conversation lead to a small epiphany for me. We were talking about how firms and clients are dealing with change and the current uncertainty in the market. This lead me to conclude that Uncertainty is part-and-parcel of the New Normal. You might say … Duh, everyone knows that. But bear with me on an explanation.
As an economist, watching the New Normal unfold has been a fascinating experience. One widely held economic belief has been that significant amounts of capital have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for markets and global politics to settle down before reentering the market. This makes perfect sense. People with money want some idea of the risks associated with their investments before they will make them. So it is better to sit on some cash for the short-term rather than invest it in unknown risk / reward options.
But here’s the epiphany: That level of uncertainty may be here to stay. And it may even expand in the future. Two examples to demonstrate this:
– Recent news about Iran threatening to blockade oil shipments gave speculation to the possibility of $5 per gallon gas by summer. Wild fluctuations in the market like this have been occurring with greater frequency and make it very difficult to predict the trend of prices, even in the very short-term. If you are in the energy business, your investment decisions will be highly impact by the difference between $3 and $5 per gallon.
– Anyone expecting the US government to become more consistent and rational after the next election cycle needs to change their medication. The New Normal is about constant change and government is the last institution to give in to change. So expect ongoing uncertainty here as well.
The bottom line is that rapid change results in uncertainty. And rapid change has become the norm.
In our conversation, we wondered with so much uncertainty where should a law firm invest its IT dollars? Our answer: invest in flexible infrastructure. Uncertainty drives the need to be able to adjust quickly to changing environments, driving the need to add and remove functionalities under very short turnarounds.
For the broader market it will be interesting to see how investment decisions adapt to long-term uncertainty. Capital cannot sit on the sidelines forever.
What I learned today: Epiphanies are fun, but they can make your head hurt.

In my ongoing study of the Law Factory vs Bet-the-Farm dialog, I keep an eye out for interesting news. Today served up a doozy. The Wall Street Journal ran the article “Two Lawyers Strike Gold In U.S. Disability System.”
The article discusses how two lawyers went after perhaps the lowest level of legal work possible – so low the US government opted to allow non-lawyers to perform the work. How did it turn out? “Last year their firm collected $88 million in fees ….”
The article goes in to some detail about questionable practices of the firm involved. Harkening back to my Bar days, it always amused me to see attacks on services like this, since they may harm the public – or the public good, in this case. What is almost never discussed, including in this article, is the point that many more people are getting access to justice because of this service. This point is implied in the growth of fees to lawyers in this market segment. Which likely is a result of the firm “spending more than $20 million on TV ads in the past year.”
So here we have a firm using the free market to increase access to justice. Is there a need for some oversight? Absolutely. Too bad lawyers didn’t take on this market which would have included a regulatory component. I suppose it’s easier to criticize the success of others than admit your own failing in creating a solution to a problem.
Moving right along to a bigger punch line hidden in the story, “In 2010, the brothers sold a large stake in their company to a division of H.I.G. Capital, a Miami-based private-equity firm.” Hmmm … seems like a market validation of the model to me.
Where does this leave the dialog?
On one hand we have lawyers expressing all kinds of concerns about taking on commodity work, as it is somehow beneath them. On the other hand you have a firm that happily embraced commodity work and is driving a very positive bottom-line while reaching a previously un-served segment of the legal market. At some point the legal market may want to step down from its crumbling pedestal and embrace the commodity brand. As this example illustrates, when you leave it to others, you are exposing clients to un-regulated services and potential harm.
image [cc] sailorwind

It’s that week between the Christmas break and the New Year’s Break. Unlike Law Schools, Law Firms are open for business. After talking with a number of people from different regions of the United States (and Canada), it seems that certain areas are very busy this week… while others will see an uptick in 99¢ downloads of EA Games to their iPads this week.

So, we thought we’d put together this extremely un-scientific survey to see what lawyers at your firm are up to this week.

Let me explain my holiday shopping experience to you.

First, I received a print catalog through the mail from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art in mid-November.

Now, I’m not sure how they got my work address or even knew that I might be inclined to shop in their store–I haven’t been to New York in years and I am not a current member of their museum.

I suspect that my subscription to our Houston Museums and being a member of a firm that supports our local museum may have meant that my name and work address might have been sold to them.

After perusing the catalog’s glossy pages for several days and admiring the beautiful colors of a particular piece that I thought that my mother might like, I finally logged into their web site to check out their site, any current deals and examined the one item more closely.

I finally took the catalog home on the first week-end of December.

That Sunday, I went online with the intent to buy. I ended up doing all of my Christmas shopping for my entire list with the store and, in the interest of future discounts, became a museum member, to boot. In the last few minutes of my shopping, I made a quick call to the museum’s customer service department to confirm discount codes.

My shopping was done in about 15 minutes. But in reality, the purchases had been percolating for weeks.

The lesson? My very large spend–well, for me, anyways–was a result of both print and digital efforts. Marketing is not limited to just one touch–it is multiple touches by multiple channels.

If you review my interaction with the Museum, you will see that I met with them in nearly every way possible but physically: print, PC, Android tablet and iPhone.

Don’t put all of your eggs in any one basket be they print, digital, email, mailers, catalogs or whatever. They should all work in tandem.

As a marketer recently told me, we have all these different paint colors on our palette and we have to mix them just right. Otherwise, all you’ll get is a really ugly brown.

photo [cc] shootingbrooklyn

Big tip-o-the-hat to Out of the Jungle blogger Marie S. Newman for pointing out an interesting decision against the Brooklyn Public library in her post “Judge Throws book at Brooklyn Public Library.” I’ll try not to re-hash what Marie pointed out, but there were some very interesting parts within the decision, one in which it seems that Supreme Court Justice Arthur Schack took personal offense. Justice Schack blasted the defense counsel from Wilson Elser argument as being “disingenuous” and went on to say that the argument “borders upon being frivolous, because it is completely without merit in law.” He even puts in a final punch toward the end of the opinion by saying, “The Court finds it interesting that defendants BPL and WHITTAKER did not make their disingenuous lack of a notice of claim argument until they were represented by their new counsel, Wilson, Elser.” Ouch…

But wait. It gets better.

Justice Schack gives a history of the public library system in New York and how that “prior to 1901, robber baron-turned philanthropist Andrew Carnegie offered more than $5,000,000 to the City of New York to erect public libraries.” Perhaps that is how New Yorkers refer to Andrew Carnegie… “robber baron-turned philanthropist,” or perhaps Justice Schack’s Grandfather lost some money to Carnegie in the 19th Century??

Justice Schack continues his history lesson and points out that the argument that the Brooklyn Public Library is neither a Municipal Corporation, nor are its employees employed by the city.

But wait. It gets nastier.

Justice Schack then starts in on the finances of the Brooklyn Public Library. I’m not sure of the relevance of this part of the decision to the municipal corporation claim… which the Justice has already rejected… but, it sure makes for some interesting reading.

Apparently, Brooklyn Public Library is running a $1.1 million deficit, and the judge immediately points to nine reasons that he thinks are behind the deficit. And he names each of them along with their salaries that add up to over $1.7 million dollars:

$254,959 to Dionne Mack–Harvin, then Executive Director; $228,757 to John Vitali, Deputy Director of Business Administration; $221,258 to Judith Nichols, Deputy Director of External Affairs [a euphemism for a lobbyist]; $214,858 to Mary Graham, Deputy Director of Public Service; $196,086 to Lawrence Jennings, Director of Human Resources; $172,033 to Selvon Smith, Director of Information Technology; $166,672 to Lay Cheng Lee, Director of Information Technology; $164,788 to Aron Bukspan, Director of Major & Capital Giving [a professional fundraiser]; and, $162,275 to Vintress Brown, Director of Finance.

But wait. Then it gets personal.

Justice Schack apparently doesn’t care for the fact that, despite running a huge deficit, the Brooklyn Public Library has a “professional fundraiser, who receives more in compensation that every New York State judge, including the Chief Judge of the State of New York.” At this point it just seems that Justice Schack is just piling on.

But wait. Then comes the pièce de résistance… a quote from Mel Brooks:

To paraphrase Mel Brooks’ famous quote, “It’s good to be the king!”, when he played King Louis XVI of France prior to the French Revolution, in the 1981 film satire, History of the World: Part I, “It’s good to be operating a deficit running non-profit, receiving 62% of its revenue from the financially challenged City of New York!”

Here’s the link to the full opinion from Justice Schack, who may want to paraphrase Woody Allen on its impact:

If my decisions make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job.

I think he’s accomplished that here.

image [cc] johndal

I had a conversation with a techie librarian yesterday that has found there is a dividing line between the IT and Library when it comes to support for creative ideas that originate in the Library. It’s an old story, but one that seems to continue in an age where the IT mantra is focused primarily on the issues of Security and Up-Time. Not that Security and Up-Time are not important, they are critical pieces of the technology puzzle, but they are not the only pieces.

The whole IT process has become a road-block for those creative and ingenious ideas, as many of those ideas are viewed as “security risks” or not supportable in the current infrastructure. Ideas are suffocated in the extremely bureaucratic process of getting it on the IT schedule… which allocates it to some future Quarter of the next fiscal year. IT has become a slave to the Gantt chart, and has caused the creative projects that require flexibility to go underground.

Chances are there are a number of “underground” projects going on in your firm right now. Unofficial SQL databases; web servers running off of an internal PC; MS Access databases being shared across a network folder; external services hosting internal data… the list goes on and on. Many of these are known to the IT department, tolerated, but not supported. However, as time goes on, and the procedure for getting items on the “IT Calendar” gets harder and harder, and the implementation dates for approved projects are pushed further and further down the line, the underground projects start becoming more elusive. Underground projects that started off as work-around’s, suddenly become critical tool to certain departments or lawyers. Critical tools that are unregulated by IT.

How can there be a happy medium in this scenario? First of all, it would seem that IT has to understand that there are those in the organization that will find work around’s to the roadblocks they set up in the name of up-time and security. Instead of viewing these as rouge employees that need to be shut down, perhaps it would be better to have some type of IT liaison to go out and discuss why a work around is needed in the first place, and  work with others to determine a safe way to manage the project that minimizes the security and up-time risks, while also suggesting official alternatives that may already be in place. Maybe the reason for the work around is a lack of knowledge of existing resources or training, rather than the non-existence of a resource. The key is communications. Ignorance may be bliss, but only if that ignorance doesn’t cause other systems to shutdown, or key confidential data from leaving the secured network.

IT cannot do everything. It does not have the budget, the people or the resources.

Work around’s are not always good ideas either. Some work around’s are huge security risks, or waste limited resources on projects that return very limited value.

This brings me right back to the communication solution. IT cannot continue to hide behind the bureaucratic processes as a way to stifle potential projects that originate from outside the department. Doing so will only create more incentive for those with ideas to completely shut out IT and go create them on their own, or simply give up on a creative and ingenious project simply because they know IT will shut them down.

Security and up-time are critically important, but so is creativity and ingenuity. These ideas should dove-tail together, not be at war with each other. IT needs to walk out from behind that secure set of doors that divide them from the rest of the office and start communicating with the people that have been creating the work around’s. There is value in that relationship… the first step is to start a dialog.