Although we know that many of you 3Geek readers are extremely shy about expressing your opinions, we invite you to share your thoughts, visions, and suggestions here to help shape one of the BarCamp sessions at the upcoming ILTA Conference. Note that we encourage you to comment whether or not you’re planning to attend the conference. The session, entitled Making an Impossible Engagement Possible, will be led by John Alber, Rudy DeFelice and yours truly, and will take a crowdsourcing approach to solving a business problem that is becoming more and more prevalent in today’s legal world. The problem statement is described below — please read it, and comment on this post to tell us how YOU would address this issue. No holds barred. Let your creativity shine. Your suggestions here will provide the fodder we need to jumpstart discussion and brainstorming at the live session. Here’s the problem statement:

Your firm has had a long relationship with a major financial institution–Mega Mega Bank. As a consequence of the housing bubble bursting and the ensuing recession, the bank is dealing with a number of defaulted consumer and business loans. It’s facing hundreds or even thousands of lawsuits. Each suit is, on average, not a major matter, ranging from a few thousand to a few hundreds of thousands of dollars at risk. But collectively, they pose a significant expense to Mega Mega Bank. Rather than asking the law firms that serve it for price estimates to do the lawsuits, the bank has set a not-to-exceed price for each suit. That price is extraordinarily aggressive. It is a fraction of the average your firm has been charging for such suits to date, and you regard your teams working on the suits as already quite lean, leveraged and efficient. Your firm views the business with Mega Mega Bank as strategic and it has decided to do a portfolio of some hundreds of cases at the price proposed by the bank. The lawyers, project managers and technologists who will assist in handling these matters do not, at present, have any firm ideas how they will do the work to a high quality standard while, at the same time, controlling costs so as to make the engagements economically feasible. Your job is to work with others on the team to find a way, or many ways, to accomplish high quality work at a much lower cost than has previously been possible. The firm will invest as necessary to preserve the relationship–within reason. But time is of the essence. The longer the team does business the old way, the more money the firm will lose.

What steps can the firm take immediately to meet its goals here? What steps can it take over the medium term? What technologies and process improvements can be brought to bear? What can the firm do to increase the likelihood of success? In thinking about this, don’t limit yourself to your area of expertise. Cross boundaries. And don’t limit yourself to conventional solutions. If a conventional solution worked already, the client wouldn’t be pressuring your firm for radical innovations. We’re eager to hear your thoughts and suggestions for solving this problem. Provide your input in the Comments section here, or via Twitter by including #ILTA11 #ORG2 in your tweet. If you’d like to see how others have reacted, check out the comments on our cross-posting on ILTA’s KM blog.

My name is Ryan and I am a sarcastic person. I have a very dry sense of humor and I tease people that I like. A lot. This is simply who I am. My tongue is almost always planted firmly in my cheek. In person, this may endear me to you, or it may make you think I’m a complete SOB, but most of the time there will be little doubt that I am joking. Unfortunately, my sense of humor does not translate well online. Oh, I can fake it on the blog. (You do think I’m funny, right?) I can use parentheticals, punctuation, and over the top satire to make my points. I have plenty of time to craft my humor, to think about what I’m saying before I say it, and to try to be humorous without being misinterpreted. Many times I have written a passage that I thought was hysterically funny, then cut it the next morning because I realized that I could be interpreted as insulting Greg Lambert’s intelligence. (Actually I would have probably left that joke in, but you get the idea.) But the rest of the online world is rough for people like me. The number of times that I have typed a response to a tweet with a brilliant quick witted reply, only to delete it when I realize that I can’t say that in 140 characters without sounding cruel, is only surpassed by the number of times I’ve hit the Tweet button before I realized it. This morning, Matt Levy (@MattLevyIP) tweeted the following: I don’t buy this at all. #DoINeedToSaySarcasm? RT @abajournal: People Who Are Less Agreeable Get Higher Paychecks, Study Finds I thoroughly identify with his dilemma, but #DoINeedToSaySarcasm is 20 characters! That’s a seventh of my allotted space. I can’t type that hash tag every time I want people to know I’m being silly. In the real world sarcasm is subtle. It’s a raised eyebrow, or tone of voice. It’s the way you lift your drink to toast as you say, “Now you know what an elephant feels like.” We use emoticons to replace inflection and tone, but is there anything worse than someone telling you, “I’m just kidding” over and over again. You want to strangle that person. I don’t want to be the kind of person you want to strangle, but I also want you to know I’m probably kidding. This morning on Twitter, I asked for suggestions for a sarcasm emoticon. I suggested :-S , Lisa Salazar suggested :)~ , and Scott Preston suggested $;-) . But Scott also suggested “If you need to explain sarcasm, don’t use it.” He’s right, of course. That’s the advice given by Social Media Gurus everywhere. But they also say you should be yourself online. Well, I’m sarcastic, darn it! I’ve spent a lifetime honing my sarcasm, so that only 7 in 12 people find me completely annoying. I can’t just throw that away. It’s who I am. Today, I’m calling for online amnesty for sarcastic people everywhere. We need to create a Sarcasm Day. One day per year when I can just be myself and type furiously, witty responses, to every stupid thing I read online without worrying about how I’ll be perceived. Otherwise, I’ll have to settle for being staid, boring, humorless, and factual online, and if I wanted to be like that, I would have gone to law school. :)~

I don’t totally hate my Gmail anymore.
My Gmail account and I have been together for at least 4 years. Probably longer.
But I tolerated it. I thought it was slow, pedantic and not nearly as slick as my Yahoo! email account.
My Yahoo! email and I have been together for a long time–since the 90s. I keep my Yahoo! around because it is dependable, reliable and always remembers to take out the trash. And its great at keeping spam away. It takes care of the shoes, make-up, books, movies and clothes that I buy.
But then I wanted another email for more personal relationships. So I picked up a Gmail account. All my friends like Gmail. Before I knew it, five years had passed.
Functional and straight-forward, my Gmail still drove me crazy.
Until now.
After reading an SAI blog, I went to the Gmail Labs (hit the cog in the right-hand corner of your Gmail account and then drop down and hit “Labs”) and downloaded a few of its latest features:
  1. A Preview Pane: Alleluia! That in itself was worth the price of admission. Geesh. Why do they hide this stuff???
  2. Email Count Icon: This little doo-hickey slaps the number of unopened emails into the tab bar.
  3. Auto-Advance: The thing I hated most about Gmail? Every time I deleted a message it threw me back to the main in-box instead of the next message. Now, with this thing-a-ma-jig, I can set Gmail to focus on the next, or older, email. Be still my heart!
  4. Preview Inbox: This feature really set me spinning in my happy chair. It used to be that it seemed to take forEVer–ok, really, just 1-20 seconds–for my Gmail to load. But with the Preview Inbox, I immediately get to see what’s in my inbox before my box is available. It is the little things, isn’t it?
Those are just of a few of the features available and the only ones I picked.
But let me tell you: I don’t hate my Gmail anymore. In fact, I might kinda like it now. Who knows, with time, maybe I could grow to love it.
What can I say? In my life time I have learned that some eMails are just more evolved than others . . .
And maybe I did a little changing too. 😉

The annual ILTA conference, coming up next week, is one of the best educational and networking opportunities out there. The program offerings are overwhelming, both in number and quality. The topics, although grounded in technology, reach out into almost every corner of law firm functions. This results in a great environment for sharing ideas, getting to know your peers and learning from the best-of-the-best.
I highly encourage you to check out the program to see the scale and range of topics. You will find the biggest challenge is choosing which session to attend during a given time slot.
Now … if you looked over the program and found the best sessions to attend, I also suggest you take an extra minute and check out a couple of “other” programs on the schedule.
Offshoring and Outsourcing: What It Means for Your Firm and Your Job.
This session explores the impact of outsourcing various law firm function, both front and back office, to the emerging Legal Process Outsourcing companies. This will be a lively discussion of how you and your firm might integrate and respond to these encroaching services. Twitter hashtag: #INFO2.
This session will walk through the AFA process and identify how IT, KM, records, finance and other firm functions can support and drive successful AFAs. Twitter hashtag #KMPG3.
Acknowledging these may be fallback options, you may want to attend for “other” reasons; those being the ability to heckle and generally make fun of me as I ramble through my portions of each one.
I know Greg would enjoy that.
Look forward to seeing many of you at ILTA!

As I may have mentioned before, I’ve been working on a county law library project lately. One of the details of that project is looking for a new County Law Library Director for Harris County Texas.

Here’s the job description and contact information for the Director’s Job:

Position:               Director of Harris County Law Library
Salary:             Depending on experience and qualifications. Includes standard Harris County employee  benefits.
Closing Date:       Open until filled
                              To ensure consideration, submit resume by September 15, 2011
Harris County Law Library:  The Director of the Harris County Law Library is responsible for the administration of the Harris County Law Library which is located at 1019 Congress in downtown Houston, Texas. It serves the judges, attorneys, and litigants of Harris County, Texas. Harris County is the third largest county in the United States. The Law Library has a current staff of eight, and a current annual budget of about $1.5 million. It is a division of the Harris County Attorney’s Office, which provides general oversight and interaction with other county departments including the Budget Office and Commissioners Court. The Director is a practice group level manager in the Office of the County Attorney, participates in County Attorney manager meetings, and reports to the Chief of Staff for the County Attorney.
Duties:  Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, managing the overall operation of the Harris County Law Library, long-range strategic planning, budget development and implementation, acquisition of legal subscriptions and new technologies, supervision of the library staff, and management of the day-to-day operations of the Law Library.
The Director will be expected to:
  • Develop and facilitate relationships between relevant stakeholders, including government officials, other law libraries, and local bar associations;
  • Maintain a modern, high quality library that serves both lawyers and non-lawyers with a proper balance between electronic and non-electronic resources;
  • Publicize and promote the Law Library;
  • Oversee training programs for the public, including lawyers and non-lawyers.
Qualifications:  Applicants should have a Masters Degree in Information or Library Science from an ALA accredited graduate school and a J.D. Degree from an ABA accredited law school. Excellent analytical, organizational, interpersonal, oral and written communication skills, a customer-service orientation, and strong people-skills in interacting both with patrons and staff are essential to be successful on the job.
Application Procedure: Please submit your resume via email to:
Robert W. Soard
Chief of Staff/ Executive Assistant County Attorney
Office of Vince Ryan
Harris County Attorney
1019 Congress, 15th Floor
Houston, Texas 77002
Phone: (713) 755-3489
Fax: (713) 755-1553
Email: robert.soard@cao.hctx.net
Mark & Greg compare Elephants

We’re not all about BigLaw pricing, and Vendor bashing here at 3 Geeks. Sometimes we like to let our hair down and have a little fun. This week’s Elephant Post was set up to allow you to have a little fun (at Mark Gediman’s and my expense.) I also had a little fun with my iPad putting the captions on this with a new app I downloaded called Strip Designer.

Thanks to everyone for contributing and having some fun!

So have a chuckle or two on us, then scroll on down and answer next week’s Elephant Post on what ILTA session you think is a “must attend” (even if you, like me, aren’t actually going to go to ILTA… )

Alison P
Louis Abramovitz


Scott Preston

Ayelette Robinson

The PIC Coordinator!

Holly Pinto

Lisa Gianakos

Jeff Ward

John Gilies
Carol Bredemeyer

Greg Lambert

Terry Psarras

Martha Goldman

Margie Maes

Mark Gediman
Someone who has seen Toby’s HS Band Photos!

Next Week’s Elephant Post:

What ILTA Conference Session Is A “MUST ATTEND”? Why??


Everybody who is anybody seems to be attending the ILTA conference in Nashville in a couple of weeks. I’m not going (so I guess that means I’m a nobody), but I really, really wanted to go because there are some great people attending, and some great sessions going on. I know Toby has a post or two about his sessions queued up over the next couple of days, but he better be bringing his A-Game because I believe there are some presentations lined up for ILTA that are going to rock.

Let us know some of the sessions you are looking forward to. Also, don’t be afraid to “pimp your own session” if you are presenting at ILTA. After all, Toby pimps his stuff all the time!!

While lunching with new friend and social media guru @apudave yesterday, our conversation turned to grammar.

I was so happy.
The topic? Ellipses.
You know . . . those little dot-dot-dots?
We had quite divergent views on spacing, appropriate usage, surrounding punctuation and why, oh, why, lawyers ALWAYS have to be different.
After promising to look into the entire matter, here is my synopsis.
  1. Treat ellipses as missing words. That way, the grammar and punctuation rules make more sense. If you are collapsing two sentences and removing words from the beginning of the second sentence, that means that you retain the period from the first sentence and add the ellipsis afterwards. So your quote would look like this: “@glambert is a fine fellow. . . . and that is all that I have to say about @gnawledge.”
  2. Spacing is optional, but desirable. I know, in this Twitter-infested world, spaces are throw-aways. But it does make for a more eye-pleasing read . . . don’t you think?
  3. Punctuation should be retained. If you are quoting a paragraph and parsing out a sentence, you should include the quote’s punctuation. Grammar Girl gives some great examples of usage with other punctuation: “Aardvark went home . . . ; Squiggly would meet him later.” [Note the space between the ellipsis and the semicolon.]
  4. Use ellipses sparingly. Ellipses can be used to either indicate missing words, trailing thoughts or separate disconnected phrases. The first type is a grammar choice, the other two or style choices. Any way you do it, just don’t over do it.
  5. Lawyers use ellipses in weird ways. I could regurgitate the rules but will instead point you to The Bluebook §§ 5.3-5.4. Basically? Don’t start or end a quote with an ellipsis. And if you are skipping one or more paragraphs, do a hard return, indent, then place four periods (“. . . .”) on its own line.
You gotta love those lawyers; only they would quote entire PARAGRAPHS of text.
As an added bonus for sticking with me through this oh so interesting post, here’s a little PC shortcut for you: when you type 3 periods in a row, the spacing will create automatically. Alternately, if press Ctrl+Alt and a period, it will create the ellipsis too.
Who knew grammar could be so controversial . . . ?

Tips for Delivering CI via Email

Social media advocates predict the end of email but, while it is always interesting to consider new, improved ways to disseminate intelligence, most law firms are not likely to drop email any time soon.

Scenario: A litigation partner is leaving for a lunch with a target client and needs intelligence on the company, person, opportunity, competitors and our relationships within the hour.

It’s nice to imagine that you will have time to conduct an interview to determine the appropriate intelligence topics, perform thorough, in-depth research, develop a complete and insightful analysis, AND format your findings/results into an attractive document.

Or, better yet, you’ll upload your beautiful report to a social, sharable, fully-indexed and dynamic web/portal/SharePoint- or app-based report to distribute to all appropriate members of the practice/industry group or client team. Or, you could do something else even cooler and better..

But, the reality is that it’s all you can do to run the searches, scramble for the necessary analysis and shoot off a quick email for the attorney to read in the back of the cab on her way.

That said, here are some tips to effective intelligence delivery of intelligence via good old-fashioned email.

  • Put important stuff at the top – If you are delivering a handful of answers, put those answers right at top. When laying out your information, just think of a small mobile screen and remember that they won’t get past the first few lines.
  • Keep it short – We learn in school that a paragraph can be between 3 and 5 sentences. But in business emails, you want a double line break between almost every 1-2 sentences, especially if they are longer sentences.
  • Use bullets – In fact, wherever possible, avoid sentences and stick to bullets. Attorneys in particular are very familiar with the outline format and so feel free to group by heading and subheading and keep it very brief. No more than a sentence in length.
  • Double- and triple-proof – Check for common typos, grammar, punctuation etc. The smallest mistakes can undermine your credibility and the entire intelligence product.
  • Attach reports – You can almost assume that most anything attached to the email will be, at best, briefly skimmed and, at worst, completely ignored. If you want the attorney to know something, type it into the email. You might also point out the attachment (“Please see attached…”) and direct them to the page.

I’m sure there are a ton of other good ideas and I hope our commentors will share their tips!

[Guest Blogger Eric Hunter]

As part of the next phase in our ongoing Google evolution revolution at Bradford & Barthel, I have it on good authority that Google is currently researching an inter dimensional time portal. This allows attorneys to work their product through the space time continuum enabling clients to receive product at a fraction of our current AFA’s, while also ensuring that attorneys employed through this space time continuum are immune from international law. The result, of course is they can be employed at slave wages ensuring maximum profitability for the firm! (Enter Dr. Evil chuckle).
Well, okay so I’ve just been told that’s a ways off yet, but how about the Evolution Revolution potential in social media driven technology and how it can potentially integrate within our industry? Take Google+ now as a tangible example. The integration potential within our industry is compelling indeed. But before we get there, let’s get back to Google Apps and why we should still be talking about it, and dare I say rather loudly.
It’s really all about Business Solutions and Law2020
I think of Google Apps not as an ‘apps’ interface but as a business solutions driven interface. In legal, we look to future-focused initiatives like Law2020 and are continually struck with the reality that law firms must change the way they run their business. At Bradford & Barthel, as at other firms, an evolutionary restructuring is already taking place … alternative fee arrangements for firm clients, alternative staffing arrangements, project management, our take on six sigma, and a shift to a culture that integrates rather than interacts with clients.
As part of our competitive strategy moving forward at B&B, our goal is to integrate components of the platform – video, voice, unified messaging with social media(the usual external kind), business and competitive intelligence. But that’s the easy stuff (not really, but relatively speaking). The challenge lies in continual behavioral change and re-shaping the business to expand in multiple markets and move past law2020 before we get to 2020. Hopefully we’ll achieve it by 2014 instead (remember the space time continuum), but I digress.
Actually, it’s really all about Integration and 2020
Keep in mind Google’s consumer line tends to be integrated in one way or another with their Apps platform over time. In addition to a business solutions platform, think of Google as an integration platform. The platform is built to integrate and evolve with the organization and competitive industries at large. In legal, we integrate areas of practice, client/matter integration, project management, business case, the list goes on. The platform is not only built to be intuitive, flexible and adaptable to third party platforms and vendor integration, but to anticipate where these industries are moving and innovate appropriately. Why? Remember, by choosing a hosted platform, you’re choosing to integrate a portion of your business model with your hosted platform, and Google in it’s current form continually innovates. 
But how can large complex third party applications specific and essential to law firms hope to successfully interface (timely) with an organization like Google that is continually innovating? As a firm, we’re currently working on a portion of this concept through Doc Automation/Assembly. The larger and more applicable answer to that question though, is through the marketplace.
The Marketplace
Vendors looking for seamless interfacing capabilities interface through the Google Apps Marketplace. Part of their model is enhancing the products to seamlessly integrate within the platform. It’s a business model shift for vendors, with impacts on licensing, development and integration. In essence though, is it truly any different than developing apps interfaces for mobile? How fast do mobile apps evolve? As we move towards law2020 legal vendors will also need to evolve and innovate their path forward… or go the way of the newspaper industry.  When attending conferences like ILTA in Nashville this year, walk through vendor hall, check out all of the legal vertical specific vendors that benefit our industry. Then think of those that will need to transform their business models to successfully integrate within a model that integrates monthly, that no longer demands license upgrades, but instead provides annual license fees while continually innovating. The sooner our vendor partners rethink their integration business models, the more they’ll be able to shape the game.
I believe success in this rapidly evolving realm is based on flexibility and intuition. Could Facebook have permeated cultures across the globe through social media in any other way? Consequently, law firms have to find ways to channel this social media driven intuition as everyone is using it, in fact for younger generations it’s simply already there. Be it Twitter, Search, Maps, mobile apps… we’re already channeling the consumer flow through business. This concept begins to challenge our traditional concepts of identity. The identity of the individual(consumer) and the business is truly merging. Now let’s bring Google+ back in.
Google+ and the Evolution Revolution
Google+ as an alternative to Facebook or Twitter is not a case I’m going to make here. But I am going to make the case for Google+ integrated through Google’s business solutions platform. This is where the concept of the merging of identity becomes quite literal. One of the biggest challenges my organization faces is not the third party application integration described above. That will happen; it takes development, vendor cooperation, coordination development, and will. What about Google+ integrated throughout every aspect of daily business?
That’s a game changer… where do the circles stop? Where does the individual begin and the business end? How is a business re-organized using a social media technology that re-organizes the individuals’ sharing preferences on a continually evolving basis? How do we re-organize our AFA arrangements with the time saving potential both the firm and the clients have within this new medium? When extranets are shared with clients through circles, or email correspondence as announcements through limited circles, and video chats within our project teams handled in chat forums; do we care where our offices are spread, which countries we live in, how large we consider our organizations?
Social media is built to reach and bridge together millions and millions, Google’s platform is designed to support organizations in the 10s of thousands to 100 thousand plus; global, local, whatever. In legal, from strictly a size standpoint we’re mostly small to mid-market in comparison. Multiple cultures, countries, global offices are a given in this day in age; and certainly within our client’s organizations. If the world is getting smaller through social media, what about our industry, and what are the ramifications? There is no reason this type of business evolution could not, and should not permeate our industry. In my opinion, the potential of Google+ integrated within the business has the potential for an evolution in the way we approach business, connectivity and touch within our industry.
So what’s actually going to happen though, really…
Now, is Google going to integrate any of the above? I have no idea, but I certainly hope so, and if Google does not, I hope emerging competitors will. To reach 2020, our industry needs a kick in the pants to re-shape our vendors to meet our competitive strategy needs. As the next few years go by I would love to see vendors begin to integrate this kind of technology within their platforms, and seamlessly integrate with others that do. I’d love to see competitors to Google with this model, as the competition would only benefit our industry. [2] Behavioral and organizational change are tied to these emerging technologies, but so is change management, project workflow and the merging workplace and consumer identities.
Search, advertising revenue and innovations in knowledge sharing, behavioral change and connectivity seem to be at the heart of Google’s, Facebook’s and Microsoft’s vision moving forward. We call it the ‘cloud’, but it’s truly hosted integration with the innovations and movements of the marketplace. Bottom line, the competition between all three is good for business.
I write a lot about Google, but my main focus in doing so is to hopefully communicate and debate emerging concepts that may resonate regardless of vendor. As an industry, emerging concepts will drive us towards law2020, whether we’re on board or not. We will argue over the legality of hosted systems, where data resides, what is appropriate to outsource or share, and what is not. But these conversations truly miss the mark of how we can integrate business, workflow, emerging social media technologies, organizational management, knowledge sharing, merging identity and competitive strategy. Either we move first, or our clients will. These trends will affect our industry, but they are not industry specific.
If you’re nervous about any of the potential trends discussed here, just remember: “Don’t Panic!” – Some friendly advice from the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 🙂
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About the author: Eric Hunter is the Director of Knowledge Management and Technology at Bradford & Barthel, LLP, where he is currently integrating a Google driven collaboration platform within the firm’s 12 office environment. Eric speaks and writes on competitive strategy and collaborative cloud solutions globally. He is the recipient of ILTA’s 2010 Knowledge Management Champion Distinguished Peer Award. Eric can be reached at ehunter@bradfordbarthel.com.

The saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. The same could be said of information/media/current awareness in a law firm. We can lead our lawyers to the content but there is no way to ensure they read …or is there?

We are currently in the process of evaluating media and social media aggregators, some of which include very savvy dashboard platforms and delivery mechanisms. Others of which, include sophisticated social media analysis tools. Some of the products that we or others I have spoken to are considering include:

The evaluation criteria we have mashed-up includes but is not limited to:

  1. Easy to use interface for publishing/editing 
  2. Users (or their proxy) can manage own profiles
  3. Content can be pushed to email, RSS or Microsoft SharePoint
  4. Content is archived and searchable for later use
  5. Aggregators incorporate public info, paid subscriptions, social media and internal commentary
  6. Provides free content or access to content 
  7. Offers a trial 
  8. Price – is it by topic, by firm size, # of curator or another other mechanism 
  9. Provides training 
  10. Has a good industry reputation 
  11. Has other law firm clients 
  12. Provides on going support 

Firm needs will determine the weighting of these criteria but is there anything we’ve left out? Are there other products or issues to consider? And if we provide it, will they read it??