Jordan Furlong added an excellent comment on a recent post and followed up with a personal note encouraging me to expand and define the idea of a cost rate versus a billing rate for a lawyer, or any other time keeper. So here we go.
There is an old Rule of Three that generally applies to non-partner time keepers that says the billing rate of a time keeper should be three times their hourly compensation. Looking at it from a profit perspective, this rule suggests that the hourly billing rate of this time keeper has three portions: The first is compensation. The second is overhead (benefits, office space, computers, software, admin support, etc.). The third is profit (a.k.a. partner comp).
Implied in this rule is a cost rate (composed of the first two portions) that is about two-thirds of the billing rate. As noted above, this is a general rule. Cost rates can actually vary from the 67% of billing rates quite a bit. So what becomes important is the difference between the cost rate and the billing rate. This really determines the profitability of a non-partner time keeper on an hourly basis. And this becomes important when a firm starts discounting billing rates, since a 10% billing rate discount would actually be a 30% reduction in profits under the general Rule of Three.
Where do cost rates come from?
At the highest level, an hourly cost rate equals the overall cost of a time keeper divided by the number of hours they bill (or should bill). If their comp is $100k per year, their overhead is $100k per year and their billable hours are at 1800, then their cost rate is $111 per hour (200k / 1800 = 111). Some firms use two cost rates – one based on a projected number of hours billed (e.g. the 1800) and another based on the actual number of hours billed. If the actual number is higher than the projected number, then the “actual” cost rate is lower than the “projected” one.
The challenges for calculating cost rates come in establishing the overhead cost number per time keeper (harder than it sounds) and agreeing on the appropriate number of projected hours. Using actual versus projected rates is a point of contention for most firms, as each rewards a different kind of behavior by partners.
Why would cost rates matter for an AFA?
Profit = Revenue – Cost. In a fixed fee AFA, the revenue is equal to the fixed fee, so we need to know our costs in order to determine the AFA’s profitability. The most direct way in a professional services environment that sells people’s time is to add up hours times cost rates to get that cost number for the equation. This means in a fixed fee arrangement to maximize profit you will want to push tasks to their lowest appropriate cost source since that will minimize the cost number in our equation. Having a $200/hour cost rate time keeper do tasks a $100/hour time keeper can do drives down profitability.
As you might guess this type of thinking runs directly counter to traditional hourly billing thinking. Looking at billing rates only, you would be encouraged to use the highest appropriate billing rate time keeper for each task since that behavior maximizes revenue.
This conflict highlights a fundamental challenge for law firms. Most compensation systems currently reward revenue, NOT profitability. Firms looking to embrace AFAs in a profitable way will need to face this question head-on. Taking on fixed fees and other AFAs and continuing with traditional ways of practicing that encourage the use of high cost rate people will lead to reductions in profits and failed firms. Given the nature and significance of this challenge, I expect to see a number of firms fail this basic math test.

It’s been over six months since I first warned of the coming Corporate Technology Apocalypse on this blog. In the last few weeks, I think corporate IT has gotten a couple of new nails in its coffin.
The first came in the form of a splashy infographic from Unisys called The Great IT Freezeout, which got some coverage from GigaOm last Monday and was brought to my attention by geek number 4 (and my boss), Scott Preston. In my original post on The End of Corporate IT, I touted the consumerization of IT as one of my three pillars of the coming apocalypse. The first point on The Great IT Freezeout is that the “Consumerization of IT is ACCELERATING”. (Their CAPS, not mine.) They show that 53% of workers who use PCs, smartphones and/or tablets for work, claim that mobile devices are their primary work tools, up from 44% in 2010 and that the percentage of the same workers who think that PCs are their most critical devices for work has fallen to 35% from 51% in 2010. That’s a huge change in just a year. I’m not going to list all of their numbers. Go check out the infographic for yourself, but I do want to point out a couple of other areas of interest.
  • IT’s awareness of personal devices used for work is about 50% of the levels that workers self report actually using personal devices.
  • IT rates their own ability to support these consumer devices as low
  • “70% of IT rate their organizations a late/last adopters of new tech”
As the Unisys graphic puts it, “IT risks IRRELEVANCE”.
The second nail was a little less obvious and came in the form of two announcements. One from Microsoft announcing availability of their License Mobility through Software Assurance plan and one from Amazon announcing that they were supporting the Microsoft License Mobility plan on their AWS EC2 hosting platform. This will let companies who have server application licenses like Exchange, Sharepoint and SQL, migrate their existing licenses to a cloud host, rather than forcing them to purchase additional licenses. I know, it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it removes one more barrier to moving IT infrastructure to the cloud. Corporations spend millions in supporting and maintaining a physical IT infrastructure in-house every year. The costs for servers, cooling, power management, and support staff are huge. A large chunk of that expense can now be easily transferred to a service provider. Maintaining hardware will go from being a semi-cyclical refresh expense, with periodic, unexpected, emergency expenses to being a fixed monthly cost that can be budgeted into the foreseeable future, with 99.9999% uptime and extreme flexibility. Management can increase or decrease capacity near instantaneously with a phone call. How can we justify maintaining a server farm in-house when such things are possible? The short term answer is security. But security concerns will not ultimately save IT. Security concerns have a tendency to be mitigated, especially when they stand in the way of profits.
Now, Corporate IT does a lot of things, I’m not saying that they will be replaced overnight, but two of the big things they do are maintain and support the technology infrastructure and maintain and support end-user technology. IT is currently being squeezed on both sides. Short of a brand new justification for their existence, I think you will eventually begin to see large corporate IT departments replaced with a handful of IT Integrators acting as liaisons between management and technology service providers. The fact is, most companies aren’t in the business of technology services and they’re about to realize it.

Recently Donna Seyle posted an article on the lack of a Bright Line for what is the unauthorized practice of law (UPL). I offer some additional thoughts on the subject here.
First off – the LegalZoom battle is a losing one for regulators. As noted in the article, this provider and others have been around for some time now. The only real recent issue is that the market for legal services has become truly competitive, so now lawyers are actually worried about competition. So crying wolf once it hits your pocket book, but draping your argument in the “sheep’s wool” of protecting clients seems a bit wrong to me.
LegalZoom’s argument that they are providing a service not previously offered by lawyers rings true to me. I worked for a mandatory bar and have some front-line knowledge on this subject. About 15 years ago a senior lawyer called me up all mad at the state courts since they had just released a document generation system for use in divorce matters – primarily targeted at low income citizens. He wanted me to have the Bar sue the courts for UPL. I understood his logic – as he was a self-professed “bottom-feeder” who served low income clients and saw this as a threat to his business.
I suggested it was unlikely the Bar would sue the Court. And I told him if he thought it was such a competitive and valuable offering, there was nothing stopping him from providing the same. In the end, he started sending clients to the court’s online system to generate their own filing documents. He would then give them advice and help make any needed changes to the document. I applauded him for being smart enough to realize he was a lawyer, not a software developer, and for finding ways to profit from the advance of technology instead of trying to fight it. He finally agreed that such a system was providing services to people who had not been getting them.
Towards the end of this dialog, I made the prediction that if a mandatory bar ever decided to pursue a case like the LegalZoom one, they should be prepared for a bad outcome. Even if the case is won, legislatures will not be warm to the idea of protecting lawyers’ market over the needs of constituents and businesses who generate jobs and valuable services. So you would expect some weakening of the laws that support the regulation of UPL.
With this rant behind me – I’ll move to what I consider to be the bigger question here: The Bright Line. Every state has different rules and very few resources to pursue UPL violations. This creates a very blurry line which is an open door for new competitors to enter the market. I have previously given examples in the IP Disputes market, but much broader and better funded providers have recently appeared and no one is raising the UPL flag.
Another prediction: no one will raise this flag until their business feels it and then it will be too late. Much like the LegalZooom situation, the market and government will ask why no one said anything before, and as a legal market our only fall-back will be some variation of clients being injured by the new providers. Too little – too late.
So what is a reasonable response?
If lawyers want to protect their market they would do well to come up with a Bright UPL Line now. And as importantly, they should start innovating and finding ways to provide better, faster, cheaper services to preempt new competitors from entering the market. Without these two efforts, they can just sit back and watch the future happen around them, while their island of protected space grows smaller and smaller.
Back to my original story – that lawyer and I kept a dialog going on the topic for a few years. We finally came to the conclusion that the only real protected space for lawyers was court appearances since the courts can be an effective gatekeeper. Everything else was open to attack.

Ron Friedmann and I ran a point-counter point post a while back on Bet-the-Farm versus Law Factory models for law firms. The dialogue was intended to generate some thoughts and ideas on the future shape of law firms.
In this post I take a tangent on that topic and explore whether firms should or could be General Contractors, versus legal-only niche players from the prior dialog. I think the ramifications of this concept extend deep into the future role and shape of firms, but in a different way.
General Contractor (GC)
Law firms have been tempted in the past to play a GC role but haven’t done well in executing on this. I’m using your traditional definition of GC here, whereby the GC plays the primary role in a project, using sub-contractors for various aspects of an engagement. The obvious GC example is construction, where the GC contracts to plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc for each piece of the work. Two important points to note here: The construction GC is THE relationship point in the engagement, 2) The GC stands to make the highest return on its time/investment.
Ten years ago firms were acting as GCs (and some still do this) sending e-discovery work out to sub-contractors and passing that expense along to the client. This has not been going well since: 1) The firms didn’t manage the costs well, leading to clients taking these efforts in-house and 2) The firms didn’t make any margin on the work, meaning they were happy to let it go. Unfortunately, this also meant the coding and first review work would now start going to these third party providers.
What could the GC role look like?
An entrepreneurial firm could take a strong GC role, establishing itself as a cost-effective, low-burden provider. It would be cost-effective, since it would use its market position to secure the best rates from qualified sub-contractors. It would be low-burden, as it would remove the administrative and management burden from clients who are currently managing these sub-contractor relationships. These are the primary reasons you use a GC for any work. You want them ensuring the project is getting done right, on time and within the budget.
In a recent client meeting this concept came up. The client was asking why law firms are apparently unwilling to take a GC role. The client was not happy that it had to take on the GC role and especially not happy when they were able to easily realize significant cost savings from the sub-contractors. The list of potential sub-contractors discussed was surprisingly long. E-discovery providers were mentioned, but also included were copy services, court reporters, and even included contract lawyers (think on- and off-shore).
After the discussion and some time thinking about this idea, I came to the conclusion that the reason firms have not taken on this role is that they consider sub-contractor work to NOT be lawyer work. Being non-lawyer work puts the efforts beneath lawyers and not their concern. The vast majority of AFAs I have seen specifically exclude “expenses” as fees not worth including in the arrangement and not the law firms’ problem.
Recommendation
Law firms would be VERY smart to take on the GC role. In addition to bringing more value to clients, it will keep them in the primary relationship role with clients. I am already seeing legal spend decisions shifting to business units (versus in-house counsel) so ignoring this need and opportunity will come at some peril. Admittedly certain states’ ethics rules may present some challenges, however that is no reason to sit on the sideline and watch your business be pulled away by third-party contractors who take on primary relationship roles.

It has been almost a month since my trip to Philly for the 2011 annual SLA conference and INFO-EXPO. Over the course of the month, I have been thinking about what lessons I learned, and what I took away from the conference, and after letting it all stew, I am ready to share my thoughts. First off, I am not a librarian. I feel like I say that a lot, and I definitely had to say that and explain it a great deal at SLA – but I digress. Despite my being a member of the non-librarian, non-library technician crowd at SLA, I still find the conference one of the most satisfying events to attend. SLA 2011 is an important conference for professionals like me who are entrusted to have the right information, insights and trends to make good decisions and gain competitive advantage. SLA is many things to many people. It allows me to be targeted and specific in the type of sessions I attend, but it is also far reaching in its scope and divisions. I can take advantage of sessions in CI, KM, portal development, information management, as well as those hosted by the Legal Division and Business and Finance Division. So what did I learn in all of this goodness? Here are my top five musings:

  1. The jury is still out and will likely be out for a long time in determining if CI is a set of competencies, or if it is in fact a profession. The discussion of this topic never seems to get boring and for good reason.
  2. The Pecha Kucha presentation tournament hosted by AuroraWDC at the CI Dvision open house was a very fun event that introduced some great topics in a creative and quick format, which I believe has been discussed on 3 Geeks in the past.
  3. CI is all about framing and context. This is likely my favourite.
  4. I learned that many law firms still think they are the only ones doing CI. Since the conference, a new LinkedIn Group has been started to address this faction of the population and hopefully stimulate some good online networking and sharing of best practices.
  5. Social media, ethics in primary source collection, trend forecasting and evolving information needs continue to be the cornerstones of what the CI community is currently discussing.

Addressing these issues from a law firm perspective continues to be a challenge. Some food for thought for the 3 Geeks and subscribers.

Projections for 2011 were that the legal market would be stagnant.  We thought we’d ask if you are finding those predictions to be true. From those that I’ve talked to, it seems to depend upon what part of the industry you are in. If you are in the state government sector, it seems that the cuts everyone else felt in 2008 has caught up, but the work is still there (but the money isn’t.) If you are in the private sector, however, it seems that business is back up… but everyone is having to do more work, with less people.
Thanks to everyone that contributed their perspectives on this question. We do it all again next week and ask if you will share with us some of your secrets on how you prepare for a public speaking gig. So, read through and digest this week’s Elephant Post answers, then get ready to add your perspective to next week’s question.
Zena Applebaum
Intelligence & Intranet

From a CI perspective, demand for our services within the firm have increased tremendously.  It seem that following the recent downtown the community has come out a more competitive place than it was in 2010.  There has been economic recovery to some extent and companies are doing business again.  The key to competing and winning, is be smarter and better prepared and we are the resource they need to be both of those things.

Sarah Mauldin
Librarian

I feel like we’re busier and that I’m getting questions from more of the practice groups than I have before.  That may be because they’ve finally figured out that there is a library and that we’re here to help, but I think it has more to do with having more work.  I’m also seeing projects that associates were hoarding to keep up their billables coming my way.  I’ve also been working more closely with Marketing, which keeps me nice and busy.

Jodi Triplett
LSAT prep company

From a bit of a different perspective (pre law students hoping to become lawyers), we’re seeing fewer students taking the LSAT and those that are are becoming increasingly cognizant of the reality of repaying law school loans in a flat legal market.  It’s actually making prepping top scores even more competitive as students realize they need to attend a good law school to land a high paying job/parlay a good offer into scholarship money lower down the rankings.

Toby Brown
AFA

AFAs: Demand continues to grow.  And the role for AFA staff within a firm continues to expand.  Previously it focused on process, review and approval.  Now pricing is becoming and art and science across a firm’s operations, including traditional hourly billing.  Legal Services: Demand is flat, with some variations.  The predictions for a flat or slightly growing market seem to be playing out.  Of course certain practices are down and others may be up some.  But generally for a firm to grow it needs to be taking market share from competitors.

Stephanie Kimbro
Lawyer, Author

I provide unbundled estate planning services online.  For the past couple years, it seemed like my client base was putting off getting their estate planning needs met unless there was an urgent need.  They would register online and start working on the process and then find reasons to put off completing it. More than once it was work or unemployment related reasons.  However, this year it seems like clients are more motivated to have their estate planning handled, but at the same time they also are expecting flexibility in the way that they pay for those services.  Most of my online clients are now expecting payment plans that help them budget for legal expenses.  I’m fine providing these even if it does mean a little more administrative work in following up with balances owed.    I’ve also noticed this year that there is an increase in the number of baby boomer generation clients who are retiring or moving to my state who are deciding they need their documents updated.  So far, 2011 is looking good. It is just a different type of online client base than last year and certainly from when I started in 2006.
Next Elephant Post

How Do You Prepare For Public Speaking Engagements?

Do you spend hours and hours preparing for a 20 minute speech, do you just show up an wing it, or do you have some other way that you prepare for a pubic speaking engagement? Share with us a few of your processes that you use to get you read to dazzle the crowds.

Last night in its 120th annual meeting in Vail, Colorado, the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) passed the Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act (UELMA) in order to provide a set of rules for states to follow to establish “an outcomes-based, technology-neutral framework for providing online material with the same level of trustworthiness traditionally provided by publication in a law book.” Many in the legal publishing industry, as well as law librarians, have worried how electronic media will change over the decades, and UELMA takes on some of the key elements that keep many of us up at night. According to the statement from the ULC, the Act requires that official legal material be:

  • Authenticated, by providing a method to determine that it is unaltered;
  • Preserved, either in electronic or print form; and
  • Accessible, for use by the public on a permanent basis.

The Act puts the responsibility on the States to name an “official publisher” from the ranks of their own state agencies or a state official. One that designation is assigned, the official publisher is the one in charge of authenticating, preserving and providing access to those electronic documents. In addition, if the material is only available in electronic format, then the official publisher may also take the additional step of certifying it a the “official” document as well as the authentication, preservation and access elements.

The Act makes it clear that this doesn’t affect any of the current contracts or relationships that states currently have with vendors such as Westlaw or Lexis. However, as we’ve recently seen in Illinois, those publication deals for state materials, coupled with the shrinking state budgets, have pressured states to transition from print publications by vendors and go straight to self-publication through electronic means.

Of course, this is just the beginning of the process. A lot depends upon what the individual states do from here. I had an email exchange with Phil Rosenthal, President of Fastcase, who was an observer on the committee and he points out three potential challenges that are being left to the states to decide:

First, the Act requires that the legal materials be “reasonably available for use by the public on a permanent basis,” but does not demand that access be free, define what cost is reasonable, or demand that the law be bulk-downloadable.  Second, the Act allows a state to choose to offer the official version of legal materials in electronic form only, but  then choose to preserve it only in another form such as paper.  Finally, the Act does not address whether a state can assert copyright in its law or claim to grant the asserted copyright to a commercial publisher.

Rosenthal points out that many of these issues were outside the purview the ULC committee, but that if states made “the wrong choices, public access will be more limited than in the old world of books, and competition will be severely hindered.” He went on to give a specific scenario where a state creates a process where its official laws are online, but the preservation portion of the process is stored only in paper:

In the old non-digital world, there would be copies of the legal materials in many libraries throughout the state, both public and private.  Access to archival materials could be achieved in many different ways.  In the new world, because the law was available online to all, there was no incentive for libraries to build archives.  When the law is taken offline by the state to be preserved in print, suddenly there may be only one or two copies in the world, available to the public only when and at the cost deemed reasonable by the state.  This would actually be a step backwards from the days of many paper copies in multiple libraries.  

Rosenthal pointed out many other issues that are hanging out there for the states to determine. Issues such as the availability and affordability of bulk downloads for vendors; issues of ensuring quality control; and, what happens if state budgets don’t support the costs of preservation; states once again claiming copyright to this new format and bringing back ghosts of “official pagination” claims once again. “If the right choices are made, having official online authenticated law will do wonders for public access, preservation, and competition. If the wrong choices are made, access to historical materials may be reduced to a level below where it was in the print-only days, and competition and innovation could be significantly stifled.”

I guess time will tell…

Nick Milton at Knoco Stories has a great post today on KM and the coffee machine metaphor. It’s a commonly used explanation of KM and it’s often used to justify Social Media adoption. The idea is that SM will facilitate the transfer of knowledge like the coffee machine does. People bump into each other serendipitously as they go to get coffee, they make nice, “How are you? Whatcha workin’ on? Oh really, I’m doing something along those lines, maybe we can collaborate.” Then they go off together arm in arm, having formed a new social bond that will propel their collective careers to new heights. He’s right. The analogy doesn’t work. Most interactions at the coffee machine are stilted, formal, and forced by proximity and politeness. There is very little knowledge being transferred. Although, as a long time IT guy and a bit of a coffee addict, my experience at the coffee machine is somewhat different. I have always tried to help people with their computer problems whether they’re work related or personal and I think I’ve developed a reputation for being helpful and friendly. Getting to the coffee machine can be like running the gauntlet. It is rare that I get in and out of the coffee room without having someone say, “Let me ask you a question.” I shamefully admit that I have on occasion abruptly turned and bypassed the coffee machine if there are more than two people in the room. Not because I don’t want to help, but because invariably I’ll be there for 20 minutes explaining the benefits of one operating system over another, or the difference between virus protection and a firewall. I’m usually happy to do it, I just don’t always have the time. Most of the interactions over coffee are short and polite because employees are generally isolated and focused. They’ve momentarily escaped from their veal cube to imbibe a mild stimulant. They don’t want to be bothered, and frankly, they simply don’t know many of their fellow co-workers well enough to sustain a longer conversation, let alone engage in actual knowledge transfer. However, in the event that two close co-workers find themselves at a coffee machine simultaneously, a lot of real knowledge transfer can take place. Similarly, if someone known to be knowledgeable on a particular issue or subject enters the room (like the IT guy), it can quickly become a feeding frenzy of knowledge. Most of the people I meet at the coffee machine won’t call me directly to ask their particular question because they feel it isn’t that important, or if it is about their personal computer, they fear it isn’t appropriate to ask during company time. I suspect that when they see me, coffee mug in hand, standing in line, those questions become acceptable because I’m on a break and they’re not keeping me from my “real work”. Leaving aside for a moment the question of my personal break time, I am known to be knowledgeable on the subject of technology, and the perception is that I am available in that situation to be asked just about anything technology related. It seems to me that two things that Social Networking can do well are establish reputations and make people accessible. So can we change the metaphor from “KM and Social Media are like the coffee machine” to “KM and Social Media are like the IT guy entering the coffee room with an empty mug”?

Over dinner with a colleague, the question of where should law firms invest their change dollars came up. The basic concept is you divide a firm’s lawyers into three groups: #1 gets it, and is already making changes to the way they price and practice. #2 is somewhere in the middle, perhaps willing to embrace some changes, but not really taking proactive steps. #3 is oblivious to the need or unwilling to make changes, since the old way has been working fine for so long.
So the question is where should a firm commit resources to improve its operations and bottom line? Which “third” of the firm will generate the highest return on investment in change? Here are some pros and cons for investing in each group:

#1 Pros: This group is already well on their way and will quickly adopt any changes that help them improve. In the classic style, this is investing your dollars on the highest performing part of your business.

#1 Cons: This group will keep adopting change no matter the investment. Spending money here may well have low returns, since the group is already well on its way to the New Normal.

#2 Pros: This group is generally amenable to change and likely just needs some encouragement and exposure to new thinking. Dollars invested here will likely return immediate value.

#2 Cons: The return on investment from this group may not be as large as #1, since this group may be willing and able to only go so far. So although quick returns may be seen, they may not be deep and sustainable.

#3 Pros: This group has the most ground to gain and any adoption of change will bring significant returns.

#3 Cons: With a history of inability and/or unwillingness to adopt change and improve performance, group #3 seems the least likely to embrace new ways of thinking and doing.

The outcome of our conversation: My colleague pointed to traditional management theory, which says focusing on the bottom third will drive the entire firm up the change ladder. Although I see some logic to this approach, I couldn’t agree with it. My experience is that the bottom third in a law firm are so entrenched in their thinking and methods that they not only avoid change, they fight it. My gut tells me to invest in the high performance group – #1. It sends a message to them that their efforts and approach are appreciated, and it lets the other two groups know what the future needs to be.
Every firm will need to look at its three groups and decide what works best for them. Whether it’s adopting AFAs, embracing Legal Project Management, or even just implementing process improvement, law firms should consider the “Thirds” question and focus their investments on their highest ROI return lawyers.

Hat tip to Steve Lastres for stressing the upcoming change in AALL’s move away from listservs for its Special Interest Sections (SIS), Caucuses and Leadership listservs, to an online eGroup Discussion List starting on August 1st. For those of us in ILTA, the eGroup platform won’t be a big deal, but for those unfamiliar with the eGroup platform, it may take some getting use to.

However, the most important thing to do right now is to make sure you update your eGroup settings are set up correctly. Currently, the default setting for the eGroups is “Digest,” which means you’ll receive one email a day for all activity on the discussion group. If you want “Real Time” (and you know you do!!) then you’ll need to go in and change the default setting to change it to “Real Time.” You can also set it to either “Digest” or even “No Email” if you want to keep all the communications out of your email (you just have to remember to go to the Community website for any new messages.) One other option to keep it out of your email is that you can have all of the conversations of these groups going to your RSS feed reader.

Here’s the steps you need to do to change your eGroup settings to Real Time:

1. Go to the AALL Community website – http://community.aallnet.org – and sign in

2. In the “Our Community” Section, click on the link to adjust your subscription settings

3. Find the eGroups you want to bet updates from, and select “Real Time” and save your settings

4. You may need to go to your email SPAM filter and add the following two addresses to the white list to make sure they aren’t pushed into your Postini or other SPAM filter files.
  • noreply@egroups.aallnet.org
  • noreply@notifications.aallnet.org

Eventually, all of the AALL listservs will go away and you’ll have to post your messages through the eGroup platform. I think most of the ILTA members will agree that it is a good way to post questions to a list, and a good platform to organize the information.

Remember this is only for those official AALL listservs. So, listservs like Law-Lib or PrivateLawLibraries will continue to be email based systems and won’t change. You’ll still get all those Ron Huttner, Leslie Germaine and ILL request emails in real time, directly to your inbox. 
Here is the email that AALL’s Chris Sawa sent out on the topic:

SUBJECT: SIS Discussion List UpgradeI hope you’ve had an opportunity to explore the new My Communities section of AALLNET. Every SIS community has an eGroup feature that will replace our current discussion list<http://share.aallnet.org/read/> function. On August 1, we will migrate all the main SIS discussion lists to the new eGroups. All of the old messages will remain archived<http://share.aallnet.org/read/>, but the ability to send messages will cease. We will send a follow-up email on July 29 and August 1 to remind everyone that the committee discussion lists will be turned off on August 1.Please note that all other SIS related lists (e.g. SIS committee list) will eventually be turned off too, and the administrators for those lists should create communities for those under the “Member Created Communities” section of My Communities. If those administrators need assistance, I can work with them after all of the main SIS discussion lists have been turned off.All of the main SIS communities are synced with the SIS rosters stored in our membership database, so all current AALL members that are up-to-date with their SIS membership dues can send messages via their SIS’s eGroup now.Please inform your SIS members of the change, and ask them to update their notification settings if they haven’t already.
 1.  To update your notification settings, go to My Communities<http://community.aallnet.org> and click on My Subscriptions under the Discussions tab. Then you may opt to receive notifications in real time, as a daily digest, PDA (real time, but in plain text format for mobile devices), opt to not receive any emails, or unsubscribe altogether. 2.  Please also make sure to whitelist or add to your safe senders the following email addresses:
 1.  noreply@egroups.aallnet.org 2.  noreply@notifications.aallnet.org
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.Christopher SiwaDirector of Information TechnologyAmerican Association of Law Libraries105 W. Adams Street, Suite 3300 | Chicago, IL 60603