This last Friday, I went to go see “MoneyBall”.

For the uninitiated, this is a baseball movie that reveals the secret behind  the Oakland A’s incredible 20-game winning streak with what was perceived to be a less than stellar stable of players. As the character Peter Brand says, they are “like an island of misfit toys.”

I couldn’t help but think of Big Law. I know, I think too much about work.

But bear with me here.

So basically, the movie is about how Peter Brand, this economics genius, figures out the way to win against the big moneyed teams, like Yankees and the Red Sox, was not by buying multi-million dollar players. Instead, you buy wins.

Cue up the montage where Brand teaches Billy Beane–by the way, don’t you love these names?–how to count RBIs, home run stats, walks, and all of the stats that are in baseball to figure out who the under-valued players are that score the highest points. This way, Billy Beane is able to scoop up good, over-looked players on the cheap.

Remind you of anything?

Yeah, I got your attention, now, don’t I?

Toby, Greg and me and others have been talking about this for a long time. It is the business of law. Don’t look at the players. Look at the wins. Don’t look at war stories. Look at the economics. Don’t look at laurels and law schools. Look at the bottom line.

So who among us is the Billy Beane of the legal world?

By the way, at the end, he turned down a $2.5 million contract from the Red Sox to stay with the Oakland A’s and be closer to his daughter. That reminds me of someone I know …

Since the post on “Is Practice of Law Already Deregulated?” I have seen numerous other books, articles and posts on this topic. Also since this post, I have challenged colleagues from a variety of roles, on whether I was off-base in my analysis. I wanted people to challenge my assertion that the practice was already de facto deregulated based on vague rules and a blind-eye to activity in the market.
First the Conversations
To give an idea of the range of perspectives I solicited on the post, I spoke with: mandatory bars, the bench, LPOs, law firm risk experts, clients, solo practitioners and even posted the challenge in some on-line forums. Everyone begrudgingly (or some times enthusiastically) agreed with my assessment.
Greg might say they there were just humoring the village idiot – and he may be right. I reassert that challenge here in any event. Feel free to offer your thoughts.
The Book
In my continuing research I came across a book from the Brookings Institute titled: “First Thing We Do, Let’s Deregulate All the Lawyers.” The Wall Street Journal sums up the he book’s premise well: “Every other U.S. industry that has been deregulated, from trucking to telephones, has lowered prices for consumers without sacrificing quality.”
The Backlash
This GC attacks the idea of allowing non-lawyer ownership in firms and laments the shift towards the “Pursuit of Profit.” In an odd twist he states “I find it particularly unsettling that the threat to the traditional client-lawyer relationship comes from lawyers themselves.” Last I heard, it was clients pushing for a new approach, with lawyers dragging their feet. A backlash is predictable, but I am still thinking about this one – especially coming from a client. The status quo is not working for clients, so maybe this is a “turn-back-the-clock” suggestion.
The Rest of the Story
The largest source of information I found comes from the symposium, “Unlocking the Law: Deregulating the Legal Profession.” Included here (so far) are 30 articles/posts on the subject. A majority favors the idea, however some take exception with it. This is very thought-provoking material.
Conclusions?
Even the most ardent supporters of the status quo admit some change is needed. IMHO – when the fringe of the opinion spectrum acknowledges a need for change, then there must be a serious need for it.
Am I suggesting a specific path for this change? No. I do not profess to be that smart. What I do see here is further, compelling evidence of a profession in crisis. If my challenge stands unopposed, the future may bring emerging “Non-Law Firms” striking at the commodity level of the market, then growing up into the more sophisticated levels of services. By the time law firms acknowledge this market encroachment, the game will be over. New-breed providers will have demonstrated the premise that services can indeed be provided at much lower costs without sacrificing (and likely even improving) quality.
The real challenge that should be presented is for the legal profession to abandon its Paradigm of Precedence and embrace the future. Too bold, perhaps.

Pushing one social media stream to another is nothing new. I’ve been pushing my Google Reader updates to an automated Twitter feed for many months now, and my Twitter feed goes automatically to my LinkedIn profile. However, these tend to be pretty automated processes, without a lot of flexibility built into that process. If you’re looking to put a little more structure in your cross-social-media experience, then you will want to check out a service called “If This Then That” (ifttt). If you’ve ever done any programming in your life, you’ll recognize the idea behind the name.

Let’s say you want to automatically send a Twitter message each time you upload a picture to Flickr… or, you want to be notified by email if a stock you are monitoring drops below a certain price… or, you want to get a Text Message when someone posts a certain guitar for sale on Craigslist. Then ifttt is the tool you’re looking for. Create the tasks so that “IF” a certain event happens (that Les Paul guitar comes available), “THEN” you get an alert of some type letting you know about it.

The service is free, and if you’re not sure how to get started, there are “recipes” that others have created and have shared with everyone. Just looking at some of the recipes this morning, here are a few examples of what you can do:

  • If you “Star” something in Google Reader, that gets pushed to your Evernote or Instapaper account
  • Send Google+ updates to Twitter or Facebook Wall
  • Automatically send a “Thanks for Following” to new Twitter followers (but please, don’t!)
  • Get weather updates send to your SMS (letting you know it’s going to rain)
  • If you’re tagged in a Facebook picture, a copy is sent to your Dropbox account
The list goes on an on. There are a number of supported platforms (see the list below.) If you’re wanting to find ways of expanding your ability to cross-pollinate your social media experience, then head over to If This Then That and give it a go. If you make something cool, be sure to share it with us!!
Image [cc] tambako

We all have trillions of pieces of information at our disposal through paid or free information providers. However, does that actually make us better informed? That is the question we asked our contributors to discuss this week, and, as usual, we got some pretty good perspectives on this issue.

Our contributors were split on the issue and pointed out some of the difficulties in handling all the information in a productive way. You’ll see terms like “separating out the wheat” and “over-informed”, but you also see things like “that’s okay” and “as informed as I need to be.” It seems that even those that feel uniformed have certain methods that they use to help them cope with all the information in a way that gets them through the process (just not as smoothly as they would like it to be.

Enjoy the different perspectives, and don’t forget to read next week’s question (conveniently placed below) and add your own perspective on the issue of what are you doing to improve efficiency at your organization? Since “efficiency” seems to be one of the code words that came out of the shake-up on 2008, we thought others might want to see if others are actually implementing new efficiency measures, or if they are still just talking about doing it.

Steven B. Levy
Author, teacher, consultant
No

I spend more time separating out the wheat, but it’s still there amid the ever-increasing chaff. Thirty years ago, I’d spend half an hour over breakfast each day reading the NY Times fully (while trying to keep the ink from rubbing off on my shirt — and of course spending a few minutes doing the crossword puzzle). Now it’s easier to pick and choose specific stories from multiple sources, but I still spend about 30 minutes keeping up with the real world and the legal world. (Kenken has replaced the crosswords, though.)  Hint on the fastest way to cut down on chaff: Put a block on any site or source that refers to celebrities by their first name! Famous isn’t the same as newsworthy or even interesting.

Elaine Knecht
Director of Information Resources
No

It’s all relative. I work hard at keeping current in several areas that are “mission critical” to my mind. For the rest, I skim lots of headlines. I can tell I’m “informed” because I am regularly delivering previously unknown-to-them information to my clients. As long as I know more than they do (about a given topic) I’m as informed as I need to be.

Cheryl Niemeier
Director of Library Services
Yes

My real answer is both yes and no, but since that was not an option I answered yes. With so much information out there, I think it is inevitable that I may feel uninformed and that’s OK. I can’t possibly be informed about everything. But I am very glad that I have resources at my fingertips to tap into so much knowledge in order to become informed if need be.

Kathleen O’Connor
Manager of a small public LL
Not sure… I need more data before answering

From my POV as a person without much of a legal background (if you count temping in many big firms in SF in the 80’s and 90’s doing donkey work) to having started from scratch here at a rural public law library. No training, no documentation worth using, etc.   I was already an “Internet groomer” (See Nina Paley’s comic of Mimi & Eunice) and was able tolerate the amount of reading and digging and embarrassing questions to get this place up to the 21st Century.   If I hadn’t had the computer admin experience and savvy, I would of been pretty clueless. But yes, I have MANY bookmarks and notes to follow up on and I will never get through all of them-especially if I restrict myself to company time.

Pat Orr
Manager of Library Services
No

If and when I realize that I’m uninformed on a particular topic, I know where to find the information. Whether it’s the mass media trying to fill a 24 hour news cycle, or vendors /publishers hoping to convince me that I need more information doesn’t matter.  I don’t need to know everything about anything. I just need to know where to find it.  Keep calm, and carry on.

Chelsea Baldwin
Asst Dir. Academic Achievement
Not sure… I need more data before answering

The answer to this question is both yes and no.   On the yes side, I have the most information and access to the most information I’ve had in my life. It’s organized so that I can quickly pick out relevant pieces, place on the back-burner intriguing but not relevant pieces, and discard irrelevant information. It’s also gotten to the point where entities such as Amazon, LinkedIn, and Yahoo! are pretty good at providing me with content or suggestions for things I am genuinely interested in and even introduce me to completely new-to-me concepts and ideas that I enjoy and have relevance to my work and life.   On the no side, institutional information dissemination as well as the dissemination abilities of individuals within the institution (me included) can leave a lot to be desired. Frequently the information that is needed for operating within an organization resides in people and not within any formalized, or accessible, information repository. There is still a lot of stuff that you can only learn by going and having a face-to-face conversation with someone.

Bob Wells
Executive Director
Yes

I am over-informed on matters which I will not be putting into play.  People have been creative enough to get those ideas in front of me.  I hence have less time for research into what I need to know, and I am certain the unknown is there because I get caught in drafts from those in front.

Amy Bowser-Rollins
Litigation Support
No

audiobooks and podcasts, but only because I do it during my 1 hour commute each way in the car.  So to answer the question, I feel very informed these days.

Next Elephant Post Question:

How Are You Implementing Efficiency At Your Office?

One of the buzz words that came out of the financial market crash of 2008 was that law firms needed to become “more efficient” at what they do. Of course, the Knowledge Management world has been telling law firms this since the late part of the last century, but only finding luke-warm response to making processes more efficient (especially if it butted heads with the almighty billable-hour.) Therefore, the next Elephant Post question asks your perspective on what types of efficiency processes do you see actually taking root in your work place? Are they working, or are the lawyers finding ways of working around them and going back to their old ways of working?

I know that someone will take the argument that clients don’t really care about efficiency… what they want is firms that are more “effective.” So, for those arguments, tell us what you think is the difference and why implementing processes that improve efficiency does not necessarily result in more effective ways of practicing law or conducting other business within an organization. I look forward to reading the different perspectives on this issue.

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LinkedIn just added a new feature to their ad system: “New” Business Accounts.

Well, it’s not really new. The whole business/premium account idea has been around LinkedIn for while. Previously, it meant that you could pay a monthly subscription fee to get access to a wider net of profiles and get to see who actually peeked at your profile. Unless you were a recruiter, it really didn’t make much sense.

But LI finally figured out a way to make a few more bucks off of the feature.

Now, instead of tying up your personal profile to create a business ad on your business page, you can now set use the business account to set up a business ad. Now, you no longer have to use your own personal stuff to get things done. Looks like they took a feature from the Facebook Pages playbook.

Some nice touches are that you can set yourself as an administrator then assign rights to other folks to be a standard user, a viewer, admin, billing contact or campaign contact. Nice. You can set up multiple business accounts that don’t get indexed. Super nice. 
But you better make sure and set up your Company page correctly because it all hinges from there.

The only down side? A $5 activation fee. So unless you have an ad and are ready to rock’n’roll, don’t bother. You just lost your lunch money. Okay, well half of it.  

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you probably know that we are big fans of the arts around here. Lisa is a writer and designer, as well as a poet… Did you know that Toby was a bassist in a rock band and one time played the Terrace Ballroom in Salt Lake City? How about that Scott Preston is a professional drummer with an actual degree from a music conservatory? Ryan McClead moved to New York to expose Broadway to his talents as a composer/songwriter, pianist, and singer… Ayelette Robinson is a magnificent Ballroom Dancer… Jan Rivers is a photographer extraordinaire… Mark Gediman is… wait for it… wait for it… a professional DJ!! And, my family and I have our own rock band called “The Bendy Straws”!! In fact, now that I’ve actually written out all of these talents, it seems that we should form a band and hit the road!

We all love our day jobs in law firms because it gives us the ability to feed our love of the arts when we go home at night. I think that if we all had a wish, most of us would love spending more time on our arts projects and less time at work each day. However, we all like to eat, have a place to live, and we all like to travel, etc… so, we will continue to focus on our day jobs for now. But what about those folks out there that make a living through their arts? One of my favorite bands is trying a new way to make a living through their music, and is using a new approach to helping fund that work through a micro-financing website called Kickstarter.

Kickstarter is set up to help musicians, film makers, artist, technologists, designers, chefs, and publishers finance their work by appealing to the supporters of the arts to pledge a dollar amount to help produce the creative project. As the Kickstarter website says, “this is not about investment or lending. Project creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work.” So, this is not angel financing or having to sign over 51% control of your project to someone that has money (but probably no real love for your work.) In return, the artists give something back to their supporters. It could be a music download, signed pieces of previous art, clothing, or some other form of gratitude. Think of it as almost like having a garage sale to raise money to do your next project. In addition to getting something “physical” for your pledge, fans also get the “emotional” reward of being a part of the project. Quite honestly, most fans love the “emotional” reward more than than any physical item they may receive from the project.

The “fine print” of the Kickstarter projects is this:

  • Projects must have a dollar goal that must be met at a certain time
  • If the dollar goal is not met, then the project goes unfunded, and no money will be collected
  • Kickstarter gets 5% of any successful project, plus the money is collected through Amazon, who takes another 3%-5%. So, the artists get approximately 90% of the total money collected.
  • According to Kickstarter, project success rates are about 44%.
  • Since April 2009, Kickstarter has raised over $75 million for over 10,000 projects.

Let me give you an example of one of my favorite bands, and their Kickstarter project.

The Bunny Costume I wanted!!

The punk-pop band, The Dollyrots, is actually going to its fans to help finance their upcoming fourth album by using Kickstarter as their platform for raising money. This is a band that has been around for over 10 years, and has put out three great albums, and was actually picked up by Joan Jett’s label, Blackheart Records. They also tour the world like crazy. My guess is that they could probably get a studio to back their project, but would also fall under the control of that label and wouldn’t have the freedom to really create the type of music that their fans have come to love. So, why not let the fans be the money behind the project? In return, the fans get a couple of things for their money. First of all, the band is giving away things when you pledge a certain dollar amount. These items range from music downloads, to having you come to the studio and being part of the gang vocals and handclaps. My favorite (and I wished I had seen this sooner so I could have pledged the money) is that they are giving away their notorious bunny costume that they used in the “Because I’m Awesome” video. (That would have been… well, awesome to get!!)

So, how is the project going so far?? I’d say that The Dollyrots have hit a home run with this one. The initial $7,500.00 goal was met in the first day! Now, they have a goal of $12,000.00 (which the met in less than a week.) Looking at the numbers this morning, the average contribution is just shy of $70 per person. Not too shabby! In fact, the pledge success rate was so good, that they have been able to move up their studio time up and start getting the next album together next month today. I think that The Dollyrots lead singer, Kelly Ogden, says it best when she talks about how important it is to this band to have their fans finance their upcoming record.

“Let’s do this, guys. I promise this will be our best record, ever! … We believe in you, and we know you believe in us. That’s why this is going to work.”

In the age of flattening worlds, instant communications, and being able to find your niche, no matter how small or obscure, it seems to make sense that traditional funding methods aren’t the only way to get your projects financed. Projects like this, and platforms like Kickstarter prove that there is more than one way to get things done. This should have fans clapping, and studio executives nervous. I, for one, am looking forward to hearing this upcoming “fan funded” album. Hopefully, other artists out there can learn from this experience and use their fans to micro-finance their next project.

Kingsley Martin has done it again. We have previously mentioned his next-generation, analysis KM system on 3 Geeks before, but recently he crossed another threshold: Document Generation with Google Docs.
In a prior dot-com life, I used to sign NDAs at least once a week. I always wondered why they were so different, but yet not really. Of course the differences were idiosyncratic to the various lawyer authors. But the real meat of the document was always the same: You can’t tell anybody about this stuff.
So Kingsley, using his Contract Standards web service, analyzed a volume of NDA documents, and then boiled them down to their “standard” clauses. Then he was able to utilize Google docs in concert with his Contract analysis system (a.k.a. KIIAC) to establish a simple, easy-to-use NDA document generation service.
Simply answering seven questions and providing your email address will generate your own, functional NDA. Of course you may want a lawyer look this over and provide their counsel. But you won’t have to pay them to draft it.
And – just as importantly, you no longer have to pay tribute to Microsoft to create the document.
What is the world coming to and what will Kingsley think of next? We can’t wait to find out. In the meantime, we suggest you try the Contract Standards Google Docs NDA generator.

A recent post on Slaw highlighted an interesting tool called eGanges which employs the Ishikawa Fishbone approach to solving legal problems. This approach uses river logic in contrast to a decision tree approach. Beyond the wonderful ‘Ishikawa Fishbone’ name, I see some potential applications in the AFA world for a tool like this and river logic in general.
To understand river logic, consider starting with the outcome of a project instead of with the inputs. To better illustrate this idea, compare that concept to the traditional decision tree approach which starts with inputs, determines probable outcomes from each one, links those with dependencies from other outcomes, and determines a probable overall outcome (excuse my convoluted, yet over-simplification here).
The river approach gets its name from the analogy of starting at the mouth of a river (its outcome), instead of at the trunk of a decision tree (where the fruit is the outcome). The “Fishbone” moniker is another visualization of river logic, with the mouth of the fish being the mouth of the river and the fish bones being the tributaries.
As a means to more fully describe this approach, I have an idea for applying it to AFAs. When lawyers approach me about putting together a fixed fee or even just a budget for a matter, their instinct is to take a decision tree approach. They want to gather up a list of inputs (tasks) and select the timekeepers and number of hours for each task. Then these task costs (rates times hours) add up to an outcome: the budget. This approach works, but it also takes quite a bit of time to construct. And even then, the lawyer will invariably question the final number.
My preferred approach is to use the river logic method (although I only started calling it that today). I ask the lawyer what they think the final fee will be (a.k.a. the outcome). Now, standing at the mouth of the river, we move up-stream to identify any tributaries and establish how much water (fees) is coming from them. Some tributaries need to be explored to identify their water source to make sure it won’t fluctuate (think spring run-off). For legal work, these tributaries might be “discovery” or “jurisdiction” or “aggressive negotiators” – you get the idea.
With the river logic approach you spend your time testing your instinctive assumptions on a priority basis, only spending time on those that need it. Whereas the decision tree approach treats all aspects as equally important, forcing you to expend limited un-billable resources on low-value tasks.
Does the eGanges tool work well for this? That is yet to be seen. At a minimum, the river logic, Ishikawa Fishbone concept gives us a new way of approaching budget building for AFAs and any other fee deal.
Maybe we should rename our blog, “River Geeks.” OK … maybe not. That doesn’t sound quite as elegant as river logic.

In having a good laugh at sarcastic signs (Brilliantly smart-ass responses to completely well-meaning signs) this morning with my fellow Bradys, it occurred to me that the problem, or hilarious joke, depends on interpretation. If correctly interpreted, signs can indicate many things: where to walk, how to use a tool, or when there is danger. If misinterpreted, however, a sign becomes worse than useless – it’s a joke.

This is a common situation for many businesses, including law firms. There is plenty of data out there; some might say too much. (see next week’s Elephant Post question) But it’s not enough to have signs, or data. You must apply a correct interpretation.
You collect data about matters, fees, and clients. You perform research on markets, macroeconomic conditions, and industries worldwide. But, unless you can use that information to match Data 1 to Data 2 and correctly determine that Data 3 is the resulting value (and not Data 4 or Data Orange), all of your information cannot become intelligence.
You end up with “applaud the jellyfish”. Or, “push button receive bacon.” Which, although very funny, will not help you dry your hands.

What components do you need in order to compete with Apple and Google in the handheld and tablet environment? 
  1. Sexy Hardware
  2. Slick Operating System
  3. Software Distribution Platform

Research in Motion has exactly none of the three.  Jeffrey Brandt in today’s PinHawk newsletter pointed to RIM Suffers as Profit Falls 58.7% in yesterday’s NY Times.  Shortly after I read this article I saw Joe Scarborough this morning on MSNBC go off on a rant about how terrible the latest Blackberries are.  Things are not looking good for RIM.  The only thing keeping them afloat is corporate inertia.  Companies have invested millions of dollars in Blackberry Enterprise Servers and staff to run them.  Companies like the manageability and security of the Blackberry devices and RIM has rested on those laurels for too long.  Employees are consumers.  Consumers want sexy hardware, slick operating systems, and Angry Birds.  (As my good friend Sean Brady likes to say, “it’s not a real operating system if you can’t play Angry Birds.”) Corporate IT can not hold back the tide of iPhones and Android devices any longer.  What’s RIM to do?

Nothing.  Their best hope now is to sell their patents.  I’ve said for awhile that Apple should just pay cash for RIM, add BES connectivity to the iPhone, and watch the corporate world’s cash flow in, but I don’t think they’ll do that.  Their consumer approach is working fine so far, why change it.  But I think there is another player for whom a RIM purchase might make sense, Amazon.
Amazon has the best selling Kindle E-book reader that, despite it’s limited functionality, is a pretty sexy device.  It’s an open secret that they are attempting to build a fuller featured tablet device to compete with the iPad.  They have got one of the biggest distribution platforms in the world, I don’t think they’ll have any problem attracting developers.  With a RIM purchase and an attractive lineup of modern Amazon devices, all they would need would be a slick operating system and they could quickly take over the corporate communications market. 
I hear WebOS is available.