Image [CC] by Mr. Ush

You’ve probably heard the saying that “Youth is wasted on the young.” After seeing the list of participants in the program, “The Future of Law Libraries: The Future Is Now?” put on by Harvard Law School’s John Palfrey on June 16th, the thought of “Idea generation and future planning of law libraries is wasted on the Academics,” crossed my mind. Now, before Academics get their noses bent out of shape, bear with me for a minute because I’m going to take the law firm librarians out behind the woodshed as well.

Take a look at the participants for this collaboration who were there to “discuss and critique blueprints for the next iterations of our future.”

  • Academic librarians: 107
  • Gov’t/Court libraries: 13 
  • Vendors/Stakeholders: 10
  • Firm Librarians: 7
  • Corporate Librarians: 1
These were the participants. When it came to Firm Librarians actually sitting on panels or presenting at the meeting, that number drops to zero. That is a serious shortcoming of the meeting, and causes the end results of such a meeting to be unfairly skewed away from an important subset of the profession.
As someone that has worked in the Academic setting (twice), the state court and county system, and at an AmLaw 100 firm, here’s my take on what each of these subsets of the law librarian field brings to the party:
  • Courts – “Where the story begins”
  • Academics – “Where the ideas roam”
  • Private Law Firms – “Where the money is”
Each piece is important, but as many of us know, it is the Academics that really are designed to think about the process of law librarianship and develop theories about how to improve processes and procedures so that the profession continues to thrive and be relevant over a long period of time. The academics are truly those that like to toss out ideas, develop theories, and predict the future, and debate all of these among each other to see which of them hold water as judged by their peers. The only problem is that they are predicting the future using a formula that is missing a significant variable … the Private Law Firm Librarian’s perspective.

It is not totally the Academics’ fault for this missing variable, however. At least half (probably more than half) of the blame rests on the shoulders of the law firm librarians. Here the Private Law Librarians have a chance to really participate and leverage the strengths of their Academic brethren, yet without fail, I usually hear one or more of the following excuses on why they won’t participate in these types of future planning meetings:
  1. My firm won’t pay for it, therefore I can’t attend
  2. I’m too busy billing work and can’t afford to take time off
  3. The ideas that come out of these meetings don’t work in my specific situation
The first two excuses I can somewhat forgive… that last one really pisses me off when I hear it. And I hear it a lot! One of the biggest problems I’ve run across in the Private Law Librarian field is that there are those that believe that when they go to a conference or meeting that they have to come away with a specific answer to a specific problem that addresses their specific need. If they don’t get that specific answer, then they gripe about what a waste of time and money it is and how it “failed” them by not giving them the answer they need to take back to their boss. I think I’ve written this before… what these people are wanting is a consultant, not a conversation. These types of meetings/conferences are set up to bounce ideas off of one another and to debate the validity of the ideas within the three major subsets of the law librarian profession. If you don’t participate, then you’re causing the results to shift toward the subsets of the profession that do participate.

Now, back to the Harvard meeting.
These types of meetings need to continue, but they need to be better balanced when it comes to the subsets that make up the law library profession. Academics talking to Academics is not the way to define the future of the profession. I’m going to challenge John Palfrey that when he sets up 2012 edition of  “The Future of Law Libraries” that one in five (20%) of the speakers be from law firms. I’m also going to challenge the Private Law Firm Librarians, especially those in Chief or Director levels of large and mid-sized firms, to answer the call when Palfrey asks you to participate. If you really care about the profession, then find a way to contribute to meetings like this so that Private Law Firm Librarians aren’t left out of the equation.

Short quiz: what’s the difference between -, –, and —?

If you said length, well, yeah, size does matter. Kinda. But it is more about how you use it, of course!

The dash [ – ], which is created by typing the “minus” key, is used in compound words. Like in the sentence, “Toby is quite good-looking.” Or “Greg is awe-mazing”. You get my drift.

The ndash [ – ], which is created by typing the CTRL + number – or ASCII code “&#150” (ALT+0150 on number pad) or HTML code “–”, is used between a range of numbers, values or distances. For instance, “Lihsa could easily pass for 30–40 years old!”

The mdash [ — ], which is created by typing ASCII code “&#151” (ALT+0151 on number pad) or HTML code “—”, is used to set off a phrase or paranthetical—instead of actually using a nerdy pair of parantheses.

Note: you can use two ndashes––or two dashes–in place of the mdash.

But, please, leave out the spaces before and after the mdash. Otherwise, you lose all grammar-street cred if you don’t.

Have a fantabulous grammarous Friday!

Image (CC) by ecreyes 

Almost without fail, whenever I bring up the issue of Client Relationship Management (CRM) tools with others in the legal industry, the conversation ends up talking about what an overall failure the CRM resource ended up being, but because the firm invested so much time, money and people into the project, they aren’t willing to admit   that they need to cut their losses and move on to something else.

The whole internal CRM tool project is a lesson in insanity – doing the same thing over and over, yet somehow expecting a different result this time around. Lawyers don’t like sharing their information (contacts), they don’t like doing administrative tasks (entering contact information into the CRM), and most will fight you if you want to set up something to automate those tasks. Most law firms with CRM tools have gone down the path of “Data Stewards” to try to make sense of all of the mis-matched CRM information (multiple entries, misspellings, company names entered twenty different ways, etc.), but after a couple of years, these Data Stewards are usually let go or reassigned to other work because the CRM tools are just too unwieldy and the data is just too disorganized.

So why are firms still hanging on to these money pits? Should we jettison the idea of building an internal CRM tool and start leveraging external products such as LinkedIn to help us better understand the relationships between our lawyers and our clients? That’s the questions we posed this week. Although we only received a couple perspectives this time around, you can still chime in with your comments on where you stand on the whole CRM issue.

For the next Elephant Post, we ask you to let us know what legal product (database, legal platform, collaboration tool, book, etc.) over the past year or two do you think is something others should check out.) Scroll on down and let us know what you think is worth a look.

Simon Ellison-Bunce
IT

I think it’s undeniable that the rise of social networking will significantly change how firms approach CRM – but there are some fundamental tensions at the heart of the issue.

One is the difference between the interests of the firm as a whole and the interests of individual lawyers. LinkedIn is a fantastic tool for individuals, but from the enterprise perspective it presents a number of challenges currently, in areas such as brand management and relationship risk for example.

Another tension is around control of the data on social networking platforms. To start with, not everyone who a firm might want to engage with is on LinkedIn; and of those that are, not all of them will be actively using it or keeping their information up to date. Of course there’s no way to add or “correct” someone else’s profile because that information isn’t in your control! Also, there’s no obvious way currently to combine information from your LinkedIn network with other information you might have about those people or their companies in your own systems, which rather limits it’s usefulness for business development.

This is clearly an ongoing debate. I believe the way forward is a new approach that combines the best of both worlds, effectively putting a social networking wrapper around a more traditional CRM core. If you’ll forgive the plug, look about for more about this on our blog at http://blog.fellsoft.com or follow us @fellsoft.

Law Librarian
CRM’s are a waste of time and money (at least the way most are set up.)
I’m able to pull more relevant information from my LinkedIn connections than I am from the CRM on almost all of our contacts. I would rather the lawyers connect via LinkedIn (or something that ties into LinkedIn) and allow us to monitor any changes in the contact’s profile. The CRM data is almost always ‘dirty’ and many times is so out-of-date that it is not only useless, sometimes it actually causes more problems than if we didn’t have the data in there at all.

What New Legal Industry Product Do You Think Others Should Take a Look At?

We’ve touted a few products on 3 Geeks over the past couple of years, but we’re always looking for other perspectives on great products released for the legal industry that we should check out. Just off the top of my head I can think of a few products that I think are worthwhile… Kiiac is a great product (and one that we’ve talked about a lot), the book Typography for Lawyers is one of those rare products that takes a basic process (writing legal documents) and explains it in a way that helps you understand why certain writing and typographical processes are the way they are. 
So, think about something you’ve started using in the past year or two and let us know why you like it, and why we should take a look at it. Fill out the form below and share your perspective.

[Guest Blogger Emily Rushing]
I made a (very) quick stop through a record heat wave in New York for a short CI conference presented by the Ark Group. (For y’all Yankees, when a Texan says it’s too hot…it’s really too hot.)
A link to the conference agenda can be found here (PDF).  My notes from the great panel discussion are below. The panel included:
  • Jennifer Manton, Chief Marketing Officer, Loeb & Loeb LLP
  • Jean P. O’Grady, JD, MLS, Director of Research Services and Libraries, DLA Piper LLP
  • Philip Bryce, Director of Professional Support, White & Case LLP

Panel Q&A

Where is CI in your firm?
  • Some firms have library and CI integrated in an overall “Knowledge Department”.
  • Knowledge Depts can include Project Management (PM), Library, Knowledge Management (KM), Docket maintenance and research, CI, BI.
  • BD is among the users of the CI services but not always the owner of the CI function.
  • Sometimes the Library and BD overlap, with both doing analysis and research, although library typically does more research.
What are CI services and tools do you offer?
  • Law firm industry newsletter to firm mgmt, topical monitoring and alerts, docket monitoring, group by topics of litigation and then ID relationships in the firm to either side parties
  • Rankings, Capital IQ, MergerMarket, OneSource, Thompson, Lexis.
  • Specialty journals
  • Standardized CI report templates
  • Client briefings, mainly in support of proposals or targeting. Looks at competitors, relationships, past work, about the company and news.
  • Weekly industry newsletter on top clients and industries
What has changed for CI services in the modern law firm?
  • Increased availability of accurate information. That used to be hard but now that’s an easier part of the CI process.
  • The average user’s research skills have increased as has their sophistication.
  • Firm management is increasingly professionalized and accountable.
  • Library, KM, BI, CI, IT increasingly have a set at the strategic table.
How do we standardize content and licenses?
  • Firms are trying to get more proactive and strategic, less reactive. KM and library need to be at the acquisitions table, not just to buy what attorneys ask for.
  • Firms are using OneLog to calculate cost per product and cost per use.
  • Moving to library help desk software to help determine amount of time and primary users of CI work. Also how often specific content is used and how.
  • Some libraries/intel groups are hiring project managers and practice managers.
Jean O’Grady reminded attendees that libraries have to continue to adapt and learn new skills, become more efficient, and find new ways to add value. This “Future Ready” attitude is also the theme for the #sla2011 conference this year in Philadelphia. I look forward to continuing the conversation about the future of information/intelligence roles in law firms – preferably in the a/c with a nice glass of iced tea! 

As I was writing a piece on the partnership of BigLaw firm White & Case and Indian Law School Jindal Global School a couple weeks ago, I thought that this is one of those posts that will get a lot of reaction from our readers. We all know that the world is flattening, but to see a firm step out there and build a tight relationship with an Indian law school seemed to really display just how flat the legal market is becoming. I was expecting a reaction that ran somewhere between “OMG!! How greedy can BigLaw Partners be that they are now actually planting the fields of cheap lawyer labor” to “get ready… India Law Schools first, China next, then on to any other cheap market that will pump out lawyers willing to do work for $10 a day.” Instead, what I got was the loud sound of crickets chirping in the background of the blog.

So, that didn’t get your attention?? Well, maybe a little article in the ABA Journal posted on Friday afternoon might pique your interest in what the Jindal Global School is aiming for. Seems that Cornell Law School is following White & Case’s lead and has signed an agreement to establish a collaboration between Cornell and Jindal Global. Just what exactly is the Jindal Global School’s objective?? Some would speculate that they are aiming at eventual ABA accreditation, and State Bar acceptance for their graduates to take the bar and practice law within the United States.  The ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has kicked this issue down the road for the past few years, however, it seems that they will eventually have to issue a statement of allowing foreign law schools full ABA accreditation. With the world’s economy becoming so intertwined, it would seem inevitable that foreign schools will eventually receive accreditation.

Although the Cornell/Jindal Memorandum of Understanding is labeled as a way to “promote global legal education in India”, it seems that this is just one more step in the direction of breaking down barriers placed by the ABA and the individual state bar associations. BigLaw Firms and Ivy League law schools see the writing on the wall… how long will it take for the Bar Associations to join in on the collaboration movement?

Eventually I will blog on my Case Study on The Evolution of Pricing in the Patent Litigation Market. One reason I keep putting this off is that this topic continues to evolve – quickly.
Over the past few weeks a number of news items on this topic caught my attention. Adding them together highlights how pricing and competition is evolving in the market for patent disputes. I chose that market for the case study as I believe it is an indicator of things to come in other markets (which I am already watching happen). My thesis is that the market is searching for pricing mechanism to determine fee-level pricing. One consequence is that in markets with imperfect pricing, new competitors will likely emerge. The recent news items highlight some disruptive players entering and expanding in the market.
RPX is a patent aggregator focused on serving the defense side of the market. I have previously posted on this player, noting their innovative model and the fact that they are taking market share from law firms. They went public at $23 a share and are now trading at about $28 a share with a market cap of $1.3B. I would call that a market force.
“These new agreements are specifically designed for companies currently in litigation with Walker Digital and provide the purchaser with the ability to eliminate the uncertainty inherent in litigation and to effectively manage their corporate risk.” “The sale of the Round Rock Research Covenant Not to Sue demonstrates a need for operating companies to efficiently, and anonymously, eliminate the risk of patent litigation,” Another reduction in market share for lawyers.
A judge ordered IV, considered to be a “non-practicing entity”, to reveal the names of its investors as they are “interested entities or persons” in an ongoing case. To give you an idea of who is on the list, both Apple and Google are there. Further market encroachment.
“Through the new service, Article One identifies pre-litigation patents and distributes requests to over one million scientists and technologists to research the validity of the patents.” This is a crowd-sourcing approach to finding prior art in order to invalidate others’ patent claims. The term “litigation avoidance” clearly identifies this provider as a disruptive player encroaching on lawyers’ services.
When I started writing this post, I had a general impression of how things are changing in the patent disputes market. After researching the information behind the press releases and articles, I am truly impressed by the speed of change occurring. Brings to mind the classic farewell words of the roller coaster operator, “Keep you hands and arms inside the car at all times.”
[Image CC by nhanusek]

This week’s Elephant Post question on Project Management (PM) centers around the concept of is PM conducted in a law firm setting significantly different enough from PM conducted, say in a Fortune 500 company, that it deserves its own classification? Is it Legal Project Management (LPM)? Or, is it simply Project Management conducted within the confines of a law firm… and the “Legal” prefix is simply a marketing ploy to get lawyers to buy in?

Some of the top people in the PM/LPM field chimed in this week, and I think you’ll enjoy the banter that goes back and forth. We thank all of those that contributed, and we’ll do this all over again next week with a new question that asks if law firms should just give up on Client Relationship Management tools (like InterAction), and just outsource the CRM using social media tools like LinkedIn? I actually know of some that are… but I imagine this question would cause minor strokes in some law firm Partners and some of you that actually manage your firm’s CRM tools. So, if you have a perspective, scroll down to the bottom of this post and fill out the handy-dandy form we’ve set up for you.

Steven B. Levy
Author, Legal Project Management

There absolutely is a difference. Traditional project management is designed for construction, aerospace, manufacturing, and other such areas with horizontal and vertical task stability — you know in advance each of the tasks (vertical) and you know in advance how long each will take within a narrow range of variability (horizontal). Legal does not meet either of these requirements. The profession is getting noticeably better on the vertical axis, clear identification of all of the tasks along with clear separation of them. However, in legal, as opposed to construction, say, you have a human adversary expending considerable effort to disrupt your plans. (E-discovery is a special case that comes closer to mapping to traditional project management techniques and tools.)

That said, the principles are the same.

Thus Legal Project Management is the application of the principles of project management to legal cases or matters (a/k/a projects).

Also, consider that there are three levels of “project management” — project administration, project management, and project leadership. Project administration isn’t much different in the legal world, and need not be done by attorneys. Project management currently, where it’s being practiced, is usually done by attorneys, but over time there’ll be a balance between attorney and non-attorney PMs. However, project leadership, the most critical aspect of PM and LPM, will remain an attorney role for the foreseeable future.

Legal Project Management makes a difference in the practices that adopt it. Project leadership can make an even bigger difference — for clients, for the team, and for profitability.

Jeffrey Brandt
CIO/CKO/Consultant

There is absolutely no such thing as ‘legal project management.’  You can start with my post here!

Project management is project management.  To label it with the industry it is being used in hyperbole.  Good project management adapts to the project at hand.  How much and what kinds of project management tools you use are as varied as the nature of the projects themselves.  Legal has nothing unique in it that would require a special prefix on project management.  While project management may have had its start in heavy industry and manufacturing, progressive service industries have also engaged and used it.  Have you ever heard of a small company called PricewaterhouseCooper?  What about another small company called Bank of America?  Of course you have.  Have you ever heard of FPM or financial project management?  What about BPM or banking project management? I doubt you have.  I certainly haven’t.  PwC and BoA have been using PM for ages on their projects.  Is it the exact same kind of PM that law firms use or that NASA uses to build the next generation space shuttle?  No. Does that mean they need to prefix PM in order to make it relevant?  No. The basics processes and benefits of project management are solid without being dressed up.

Toby is right that there has been progress on the PM front in the legal vertical and that is great news.  I look forward to more and more PM processes and tools being used in legal.  The bad news is that either legal feels the need to engage in self-aggrandizement, or the industry vendors or consultants feel the need to prefix plain, old PM in order to sell it or charge more for it.

Thanks for listening.  I’ll let you go now.  You probably need to get back to check your legal email on your legal mobile device or your legal PC running your legal Windows 7.  Or maybe you need to make a legal call on your legal telephone.

Sorry folks but the Shark Repellent Bat Spray is just plain, old shark repellent.  And that’s ok, because shark repellent is great!  It can come in very handy when you accidently get dumped in the water and no amount of fisticuffs (or booticuffs?) will get that shark off you before it explodes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_B_n-Rbros

Eric Elfman
LPM Vendor

I think that LPM exists and is different than PM, but not for the same reasons as Steven.

Although Steven is on to something in his reference of who PM was designed for and where it came from. If you are building freeways or nuclear submarines, then you need PM the way that Microsoft Project defines it: top down, rigid, hierarchical and complete. LPM is not that.

I believe that LPM is closer to a “lean” project management that we use in the software industry. In lean PM, you can’t plan to the end of the project, you have to be flexible (or iterative), status meetings and updates and collaboration is key. I believe that LPM is really “Lean Project Management,” but from my experience, the legal market doesn’t receive that message well.

Ben Wightwick
“Legal” IT PM and BA

This will be a short post to the previous additions, as I’m no expert.

You don’t hear BPM (Banking project management) or IPM (Insurance project management). I think (an this is where I get myself into trouble) lawyers like labels, and need something that uniquely defines them/firm/program of work. The fact it’s based on facets of existing solid and sensible project management practices is neither here nor there.

LPM or PM (with a legal component slant) – it’s the PM that’s important and it’s not rocket science.

Toby Brown
AFA

Is there really such a thing as Automotive Design?  Isn’t it really just “Design?”

My point is that if an industry needs to add its name as a prefix to a valuable idea in order to adopt it, then go for it.  Legal Project Management may just be a flavor of PM.  So what.  If adding the “L” gets law firm partners on-board, then it makes sense to me.

David Whelan
Manager of Legal Information

Project management is project management.  There are going to be nuances depending on the organization and the type of project but I don’t think there is a fundamental need to call it “legal” project management.  Law firm IT already does project management and, while the subject matter is different, I’m not sure that the project management concepts are.

However, the legal world seems to have two recurring themes.  First, in order to sell the lawyer (partners, faculty, members), you need to have a lawyer doing the work.  Calling it Legal Project Management will make it feel better for the audience and for the lawyers who are going to do it.  Second, we like to create silos.  Calling it Legal PM enables  the creation of a second project management nexus (PMOffice, whatever) in organizations that might already have the basic infrastructure, if not necessarily the right knowledge base, to provide project management support.  The upside is that creating a new silo is probably easier and the downside is that, in about 3 years when this has proven itself as either a fad or a staying trend, you may need to figure out how to merge multiple project management units.

Timothy B. Corcoran
Legal Technology & Marketing Executive

Legal Project Management is the application of standard project management concepts and techniques and tools to a legal practice.  Simply re-labeling or packaging the core concepts differently doesn’t change the discipline, but it may make it more palatable to lawyers.  Having spent several years conducting LPM trainings and workshops, I can confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that lawyers will not embrace concepts and techniques that appear to be designed for other disciplines.  On multiple occasions a law firm hired a “specialist” from another discipline, only to reject all the examples and case studies that were culled from industry, so I was asked to deliver a version customized to the legal field, and all of my anecdotes and case studies were from actual matters at actual law firms… so same concepts, different context.

I’ll also add that while lawyers generally “get” the analytics that are so important to good project management, they embrace this only after they’ve understood the underlying business concepts.  For example, diving right into process mapping to inform budgets will falter unless the lawyers first understand the critical importance of predictability to clients.  Also, lawyers often don’t readily acknowledge that there isn’t infinite variability and “art” in their legal work, and much of what they do in matter A is applicable in matter B, and so on.  They tend to equate repeatability with commodity, and few lawyers believe s/he practices commodity law.  So one area where LPM must be adapted from general PM concepts is to differentiate between those processes that are “routine” and those that are truly innovative and creative.

Pam Woldow
Lawyer

As a lawyer who has used LPM in her own legal practice, and in the last four years has taught it to thousands of lawyers in law firms and corporate legal departments, Legal Project Management is a significant and independent variant of standard PM due to the legal environment in which lawyers operate.  Equating the two would be like saying that since a horse has four legs and a dog has four legs, a dog is a horse.

One of the primary goals of PM is to reduce variation.  That’s perfect for turning out car fenders on an assembly line.  PM is also aimed at collaborative efforts to achieve goals set forth in a Project Charter.  So, it is excellent for planning linear processes, like software or systems development, where a team is working toward a singular goal.

For those of us who have practiced law, those PM goals don’t work in real-world legal trenches.  Law is inherently different from manufacturing and IT.  In litigation, for example, you have an opposing counsel whose efforts, intellect and time are spent trying to frustrate, defeat, and unseat all your efforts.  There is no single team all working to create a fender or a software installation.  Instead, you have clashing, opposing forces that are paid (handsomely!) to think of and effect ways to undo the gains of the other side.  In a software installation, for example, this would be like having someone erase programming code and toss the computers out the window every night after a day’s work.

And, transactional work has the same tensions.  In mergers and acquisition deals, there are fleets of brainy folks trying to move the price point in favor of their client.  All the while, business folks, shareholders, the press and others are bringing unique pressures to bear on the chess pieces that the lawyers are moving on the board.

Moreover, the players – the lawyers – have very specific personality traits that have been tested and written about many times.  They tend to be extraordinarily autonomous and non-collaborative – markedly more so than the general population and other professionals.
Lawyers work very independently.  In fact, we’re trained to do so from law school onward, and the compensation structures in law firms intensify and reinforce that tendency.  So, in law firms you have a boatload of autonomous, intelligent folks engaged in ritual warfare on behalf of clients who pay them to achieve certain goals.  This is not an environment where standard PM is going to play well.

That said, there are processes that can be improved and made more efficient.  There are patterns in matters or parts of matters that can be flow-charted and for which some parts of traditional PM approaches make sense.  The push towards sharing information and collaborating that LPM supports absolutely enhances the efficacy of strategizing, staffing and managing legal matters.  But, a dog is NOT a horse.

Next Week’s Elephant Post:

Is It Time To Outsource Client Relationship Management Tools to Products Like LinkedIn?

Perhaps your firm is the exception and you have somehow got your CRM tool to work properly and get everyone in your firm to share their contacts, and keep all that information up to date. For the rest of the world, however, it seems that no one has a success story to talk about when it comes to the data found in their CRM. Is it time to just give it up and admit that CRM is a pipe-dream? Can the information that is found in external products like LinkedIn actually work more effectively than trying to keep up with all of those relationships internally?? Let us know your perspective.

[Image (cc) quinnanya]
I don’t know who coined the term “Social Media” but I’d love to wring their neck. I think the name single handedly prevents widespread enterprise adoption of powerful tools. In common parlance Social = Party and Media = Entertainment. You might as well be asking your Executive Officer for 200 grand to pay the clown making balloon animals by the buffet. On the other hand, if we call it what it is, “Modern Communications Infrastructure”, suddenly 200K sounds like a bargain!
I know! I know! It is what it is and we’re stuck with the name. I’ll get over it, but here’s the problem. We’re running out of time. More specifically, companies are running out of time. In my first few posts on 3 Geeks, I wrote about the End of Corporate IT or as I called it the CorpTechPocalypse. Two of the reasons I gave were Software as a Service and the Consumerization of IT. These two factors have come together in the phenomenon of Enterprise SaaS companies marketing directly to end users. Their marketing plan goes something like this: 1) Give 80% of your product away for free. 2) Get employees inside the firewall to start using it. 3) Wait for the IT guy to call to find out how to administer/control your product. 4) Charge him a nominal fee for the admin console.
Now, I’m not bemoaning the practice. In fact, I think it’s rather ingenious. Enterprise adoption of software is a huge endeavor requiring a committee of people to develop an RFP, evaluate responses, pick a solution, work with operations and development to incorporate the product, train the users, etc. etc. It can take years to get a new software product up and running. The SaaS Trojan technique completely bypasses the typical corporate BS and goes straight to the people who will ultimately benefit from the product. And It’s WAY more efficient than the traditional process. Within the next few years your company will probably adopt at least one SaaS product this way simply because this is the future of enterprise software. Aaron Levie, CEO of Box.net, a file sharing solution, stated this approach explicitly in an interview with Fast Company last week.
FC: So someone in any department within an organization just decides they need help sharing files, they sign up on Box.net, then that spreads virally for the organization–and then once it gets big enough, you monetize that with premium features?
AL: Exactly. Once there’s a significant population of users in an organization, we’ll usually get a call from the IT buyer. He’ll say: We have all these services. Now, I want a secure way the people can use these tools, I want oversight across the network, I want people to authenticate in ways consistent with other authentication processes we use.
And Box.net is not alone, Yammer and Present.ly do essentially the same thing with enterprise twitter type clients. 37Signals doesn’t have the exactly the same model, but they make enterprise quality software cheap enough that a department head can decide to bypass the IT department and deploy new software to all of her people for the cost of a couple of martinis per month.
I know what you’re thinking. “Man the barricades! Batten the Hatches! Block those sites, we won’t let our users get to them!” Unless you’re going to take the nanagement approach of my alter ego and whitelist your internet access, it simply can’t be done. It’s a losing battle. As soon as you block one, ten more will rise up to take it’s place. This is happening now and you can’t stop it. But there is one way to counteract the SaaS Trojan, at least in regard to social SaaS – get ahead of it. Adopt the tools now. If you provide approved alternatives to your employees, then they will likely use those instead of finding their own solutions behind your back.
I’m not suggesting everyone needs to run out today and spend a fortune on Social Media tools. What you need to do is evaluate and approve a 21st Century Communications Infrastructure, which includes employee profiles, blogs, wikis, micro-blogging, collaboration tools, and whatever else that comes along in the near future. Email and telephone does not constitute a Modern Communications Infrastructure anymore.
Here’s the kicker – and lot’s of people will disagree with me here – you don’t need to decide exactly how you’re going to use the social tools before you adopt them. You need to make them available to your employees, and let your employees decide how and when to use them. Because, once your employees make the decision to use social tools, they want to start using those tools immediately, not in 6 months or a year. The traditional enterprise project based approach to software acquisition takes too long. SaaS Trojans will provide the tools immediately and you will have lost the ability to choose what software is appropriate for your company. The beauty of a SaaS solution is that for a very low cost you can make all of those tools available now, if the usage increases, then and only then will your costs increase. So stop worrying about how to explain “Social Media” to your 63 year old Managing Partner, it’s just a “Modern Communications Infrastructure”. He’s not likely to ever start blogging or wikiing anyway. The kid you hired last week, however, will one day be your MP. He tweets 150 times a day, and he blames the IT department for making it so difficult to communicate at work. He’ll be the first one to sign up for a SaaS Trojan. In fact, he probably already has.

We have previously mentioned on 3 Geeks the need for effective pricing mechanisms in the legal market at the fee level, versus the hourly rate level. One possible tool to achieve this is using an online reverse auction tool.
We have also noted the increased involvement of the Procurement Department in selecting outside counsel. In following this subject, this blog post popped up on our radar. The blog is a straight-up procurement blog for all sorts of corporate procurement types. This specific post focuses on the use of reverse auctions. The post is actually skeptical of using them as they can focus evaluations of vendors “almost exclusively on price.”
This somewhat harsh evaluation focuses too much attention on the technology and not enough on the procurement process. Like any technology, if used in a vacuum without good process and procedure, of course it will generate less-than-ideal results.
The post generated a number of thoughtful comments, including one from Justin Ergler. Justin has a job title that includes. “Legal Services Procurement,” a unique role for sure. He notes that “Typically, reverse auctions have been thought of as a tool that is only applicable to commodities, but this is not the case.” He goes on to note “that cost should not be the only factor in a sourcing decision.” He describes how Procurement’s job is making sure the right suppliers participate in an auction. “Once you have these defined you can use an auction to get the best price the market will bare from the most qualified suppliers.” And there you have your market pricing mechanism.
Reverse auctions are nothing new. However, online technologies make them simple, accessible tools. From a law firm perspective, such tools will seem scary and intimidating. Will they take hold on a larger scale? It’s too early to tell. My advice: Be proactive. Even if your clients embrace these tools, having deep trusting relationships with clients will continue to be key to a successful legal practice. If you fail on that front, then online reverse auction rooms will indeed be a troubling development.
In any event, at some point law firms will be faced with competitive, fee-level market pricing mechanisms. Online reverse auctions are just one potential iteration to consider.

[Please Welcome Guest Blogger Jeremy Byellin from Westlaw Insider Blog]


Recently, Greg asked me to write a guest post in his 3 Geeks and a Law Blog about my approach to blogging on Westlaw Insider.

Specifically, he wanted me to talk about my process and methods for the blogs I write, which tend to include more legal opinion and analysis than other posts on Westlaw Insider.
So, here goes.
I started writing for the blog back in February of this year.
At the time, the only regular posts were the “Hot Docs” post on Thursdays, which is about recent legal filings found on the Thomson Reuters News & Insight page, and the “Today in Legal History” post on Fridays, which discusses a legal event that occurred on that same date sometime in the past.
Up until I started writing them, the posts more resembled a factual narrative, and didn’t typically include any legal analysis or opinion.
The blog’s Managing Editor, Larisa Tehven, wanted me to take a different approach to the posts.
Namely, she wanted me to integrate more legal analysis (after all, it is a legal blog), and more opinion into them.
In addition to making the posts more interesting to the reader, some sprinkled-in opinion was intended to encourage dialogue with the blog’s readers, and make a shift away from a one-way communication channel.
I was happy to oblige, since I enjoy writing, legal issues, and giving my thoughts and predictions on them.
A few weeks into my writing tenure, Larisa encouraged me to expand to additional topics, and, again, I was happy to oblige.
In addition to posts about hot legal topics and fresh lawsuits, I started doing monthly theme posts, which are a series of weekly posts that share the same theme throughout the month.
In regards to my approach on writing individual posts, there are several important points that I keep in mind while writing.
First, while these are typically posts geared toward a legal audience, the subject matter may not be something that is particularly well-known to many readers, and there are still many readers without any legal background whatsoever.
As such, I include pertinent legal concepts as much as possible and try to simplify those concepts while not doing it so much as to insult the reader’s intelligence.
Next, I try to make anything I write about as pertinent to the reader as possible. 
While I can’t know exactly how every individual reader will find it significant, I do know that the reader is engaged in the contemporary world, at least to some extent. 
Thus, I always try to tie in whatever I write about to something relevant today.  This is harder for some posts than others (i.e. the Today in Legal History posts), but applying this principle to every post also steers me away from going too deeply into legal theories.
Lastly, understanding that readers would attend class if they wanted a lecture, I try to make it as enjoyable a read as possible. 
This translates into making discussion and analysis of the issues the central point of any post, and making these portions, in addition to the facts and law portions, as interesting and easy a read as I can.

And that about sums it up.  
Thanks to Greg for asking me to write this post!”