Don’t tell me you didn’t see this one coming a mile away. When the Cruise Missiles started landing in Libya, it was almost a given that one of the most popular URL Shorteners would take a direct hit. For those of you that didn’t already know this, the “.ly” is the Libyan domain name, and the “bit.ly” URL shortener (which has no connection with the Libyan government, other than paying for the domain name), is scrambling to avoid any more strikes from the US Government.

Starting today, if you use the “bit.ly” shortener to shorten a “USA.GOV” link, you’ll notice that it no longer shortens it to “bit.ly/shorturl”. Instead, you get the “1.usa.gov/shorturl”.

So, I guess it’s “yay!” for patriotism” but “boo!” for short URLs. Right off the bat, anyone can see that the URL shortener is now three characters longer!! Couldn’t they have at least set it up as “us.gov/shorturl”?? I mean, really??

Now that the boys and girls of “Bit.ly” have opened the gates to changing USA.GOV links away from the taint of the Libyan domain name, I’m sure the state governments will be lining up to do their patriotic duty and ask that any links to their state websites also be changed to something different (and probably longer, as well.)

See the Talking Points Memo article for additional details on the 1.USA.gov launch.

Tell me if you’ve heard this (true) story before… A Partner calls up the Marketing team and says that he is going to be attending a conference this weekend and wants to get some background information on a small group of General Counsels (GC’s) that will be attending. Immediately, Marketing calls the library and asks to have a basic competitive intelligence report drafted up on those ten GC’s — using one of those magical database that we must have.

In the not-so-distant past, we would have gone to the basics of looking up the person’s profile on “magical databases/print resources” like  Martindale-Hubbell or Chambers, and then researched their company websites for profiles, and then conducted a news/information search (sometimes referred to as “I Googled Them”.) However, one of the best resources that we have at our disposal today is the information that the GC’s put out themselves on LinkedIn.

The LinkedIn research works really well if the person you’re looking for is “within your network” (no further than 3 connections away.) If the person is more than 3 connections away, then you usually don’t get to see the full profile, or take advantage of some of the searching features that are available for those within your network. So, the key is to work your connections in such a way that expands your network to include as many GC’s as possible. The best way to do this? Get your firm’s Partners connect with you on LinkedIn. Make it clear to each and every partner that doing so is in their best interest and makes it easier for you to track down information on the potential clients.

Also, don’t forget to connect with your Marketing team. If they rely upon you for competitive intelligence research and analysis, then they too would benefit by connecting with you on LinkedIn and sharing their network with you. Hopefully, your Marketing team is already connected with all the firm’s Partners (if not, then suggest that they start doing so!) Adding a few more connections expands your CI capabilities exponentially, and that can make you the hero when it comes to getting relevant information back to the Partner so he can better prepare to talk with the GC and bring in some more business to the firm.

Back to the story I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Out of the ten GC’s, nine of them had LinkedIn profiles. Out of those nine, eight of them were in my network. The end result was that I was able to pull relevant information on these GC’s and get it into the hands of a partner in just a few minutes. Now I have to go out and start tracking down those other Partners at the firm so that I don’t miss out on that ninth GC the next time around.

Andy Selsberg’s op-ed in The New York Times this weekend got me thinking about the difficulty of professional writing in the age of Twitter. As someone that was taught the standards of a five-paragraph essay, or a 500-word report paper, the modern style of professional writing simply doesn’t fit this mold any longer. Many will blame Twitter for the reduction in the length of communications, but as I think about it, this has been an evolving process for a number of years… most likely starting with the boom in e-mail communications starting in the mid-1990’s.

I think back over the years to the memos I’ve written for bosses, judges, professors, deans, associates, and partners and I’ve recognized that my writing style has gone from lengthy paragraphs (five-paragraph essay), to bullet-point sentence fragments, to what it is today; a short, concise sentence or two that explains the situation and either leaves an open-ended question to be answered, or points to another document that gives a further explanation. Sounds almost exactly like what I do with my Twitter messages.

Let’s face it, writing isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do for many of us. Most of us have been able to establish a formula for writing (again, usually based upon a variation of the five-paragraph essay), and can “fake” our way through it by following that formula. Unfortunately, many of the people that are reading what we have to write don’t have the time or the interest to read your introduction, explanation of ideas, and conclusion, so they tend to skim through and pick out the highlights of what you’ve written. So, like it or not, your writing is already getting scaled back by the reader, and hopefully they haven’t missed the real highlights that were shrouded in those 15-20 sentences.

Selsberg nails the modern writing style when he hints that we’re not talking about dumbing down the way we write, but rather shortening the way we write by “learning how to write concisely, to express one key detail succinctly and eloquently.” He makes his students write these short, concise, succinct and eloquent assignments explaining YouTube videos, writing a review on Amazon, or an eBay ad on the clothes they are currently wearing. In the professional world, we have similar items that we write on explaining a newspaper story, a recent court decision, or synopsis of a competitive intelligence report. Just like with the classroom assignments, the short message is meant to give the reader enough information to either lead them on to something else, or to move them away from the topic because there is no need to go any further.

I just noticed that my explanation of modern short writing style has resulted in a basic five-paragraph (520-word) essay. It is still the main formula I use for blog writing, but I’ll shorten it up when I link to it on Twitter, or when I send out an email to my friends and colleagues pointing them to the post. Of course, now I’m wondering how much of this you’ve skimmed over just now trying to pick out the highlights?

When lawyers talk about Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs) they usually want to know: 1) Which one works?, and 2) What is the number? When I get this “silver bullet” question, I always reply with the same answer. There is no silver bullet AFA – the real secret of AFAs is talking to the client. This conversation needs to be a give-and-take dialog, where firm lawyers actually do most of the listening.
As you might guess, lawyers don’t like to hear this answer. They want something simple and straight forward. Peeling back the layers, the main reason they want a simple answer is because they don’t like to talk to clients about fees. This type of conversation is outside their comfort zone, in part, since it makes them feel they are in an adversarial position with the client. The reality is that these conversations put them in full alignment with the client’s best interest. Failing to talk about fees is a recipe for conflict and problems with your client.
This is where the non-lawyer, fee expert can have their highest value. Including them in the conversation with the client can erase the fears of talking about fees. First off, a non-lawyer is in a position to freely discuss fees and fee concerns with the client. Not being the client’s advocate allows a more open and straight-forward discussion about fees. Questions focused on fee concerns and fee pressures the client has are easy to surface. Just as importantly, a non-lawyer brings a second set of ears to the discussion. It’s been my experience that in these conversations I hear different aspects of client answers to fee questions, and many times catch nuances of their concerns that lawyers miss or don’t see the importance of.
The lessons here are two-fold. First, there is high value in having these fee conversations with clients. Since many of these clients are lawyers by training and experience, they have not been engaging in these dialogs. As such, they greatly appreciate the concern and conversation. Second, bringing someone to the table without an interest in the legal issues and with an ability to discuss this subject, makes these open conversations possible.
Any firm or lawyer wanting to prosper in this emerging, competitive environment would do well to include non-lawyers in fee conversations with their clients. Even separate from alternative fee situations, this proactive approach will impress the clients and give your firm new insights into clients’ buying decisions.

Very interesting article written by Phoebe Connelly at the Atlantic on “SXSW 2011: The Year of the Librarian” where she discusses the librarian micro-track at SXSWi where the discussion didn’t focus on tech for the sake of tech, but “rather, it was about processing data with a purpose; data for a greater good.”

Whether it was the work conducted in search of open government standards, rural librarians and lack of Internet access in American homes, or the effects of data visualization on how to manage the vast amounts of raw data that is hammering our society right now, it is librarians that are out in front of these issues to discuss what the can be done with these topics. As she quotes Justin Grimes, “Librarians are the boots on the ground. We don’t care what the tech is, we care about what the user actually needs. That’s our mandate.”

So, thank you Phoebe for helping spread the message that librarians are out there working between tech and the needs of the users and helping both sides find each other in a way that makes a difference.

First off, let me say that I am not a social media fiend. There are some social media tools who’s value I see and there are others that I just don’t get. Out of fear of being labeled a luddite or a relic in my generation, I am trying to get to know social media, to embrace constant connectivity and the perceived need to always tell someone what I am doing and getting over the assumption that no one cares. Then, I discovered Quora.

Until last week, Quora was, far as I knew was a high end purveyor of beauty products in Calgary. Quorra, with two rs has a beautiful store in the building in which we have our offices. Quora with one r, is quickly becoming a key tool for me in doing competitive intelligence inside those offices. Let me explain. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Quora, it is defined on its site as “a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.” It’s a giant online Q&A site about everything you could ever imagine. People ask questions and other people respond with their answers, or opinions. The Q&A audience, can then rank answers, comment on answers and collaborate to make each Q&A page the best it can be. And of course, you can link your own questions or answers to your Twitter pages and other social media tools. Quora is like the love child of Wikipedia and Ask Jeeves. Some savvy social media people might be wondering how that is different from the Q&A on LinkedIn. The primary differentiator as far as my two week experience with Quora is concerned is that in Quora, any question and any answer is open to anyone. And while that may lead to some ill informed responses, such as one would find on a traditional message board, it also opens the collaboration for those who may be knowledgeable about a topic to respond to something they otherwise wouldn’t have replied to. For example, a friend who I am following on Quora, answered a question about the city in which we live. He is a Director Insights for a local market research firm and he has lived in several world class North American cities so his response has value. But as I read the string of other answers, it occurred to me that there were several other things about our city that were being missed by those responding. I don’t at all consider myself an expert on the city, I would never join a LinkedIn Group for urban theorists nor do I follow the tweets of Richard Florida, but I did chime in with an answer and felt I had contributed in a meaningful way. Okay that’s lovely for me, but how can we use this tool a competitive intelligence capacity?
The following week, one of my lawyers asked me what we knew about a certain topic – aside from responding with our traditional sources, I checked out Quora. I simply put the topic keywords in the search box and got back a sampling of chatter . I was able to read through all kinds of questions and answers relating to the topic at hand, and while some of the Q&A was more helpful and on point that others, it certainly provided a snapshot of the current issues related to the topic and what the “water cooler” type conversations centered around a particular question or issue were.

I have fallen for Quora. It’s a great way to find out what’s going on, who’s asking what questions and then to pin point issues or answerers (people) worth following in your industry, city, profession, etc. or in a client’s without having to join groups or pay membership fees or otherwise commit to anything. As for Quorra, I will still visit the lovely store whenever I am next in our Calgary offices.

Between last Thursday’s Elephant Post and today, the BigLaw firm of Howrey ceased to exist. In talking with some of the people at the local Houston Association of Litigation Support Managers (HALSM) yesterday, I heard the local office of Howrey changed all of the computers, telephones, login, and email accounts overnight to Winston and Strawn. It’s amazing how quickly firms can change after something blows up… but how slow they tend to be in adapting to changes in the way they conduct day-to-day operations.
So, as we bow our heads and remember what was Howrey… we ask to predict if this was a one-off situation, or if we should be expecting “change” to bite a few more firms in the next few months.
Next week, we escape the macabre topic of dead law firms and get back to asking simple technology questions of what programs do you use that you really wish you didn’t have to.
Toby Brown
AFA/KM
The most telling thing I read from the Howrey implosion came in this quote from the CEO: “What we found is that partners at major law firms have very little tolerance for change and very little tolerance for fluctuation in profits.”
This quote describes the situation in every firm I have ever dealt with.  Lawyers have this unrealistic expectation that they can keep doing things the same way (with some minor, tolerable adjustments) AND continue to get paid the same way.  Cost cutting measures have bought them some time, but time is running out on that effect.
I’ll more more surprised if “Change” doesn’t kill more firms.

Greg Lambert
Law Librarian
I just read where Jon Bon Jovi said that Steve Jobs and iTunes killed the music business and thought that this sure sounded a lot like how alternative fees and outsourced e-discovery killed Howrey. Times change, people change, business models change, and if you don’t understand that, then you will get left behind.
There are many firms that don’t understand that… They think that 2008-2010 was just a dip in the road, and not a fork in the road. As I’ve heard many times before, however, it is hard to tell millionaires they are doing something wrong. But, there were probably a lot of millionaires at Howrey.

Brian Rogers
Lawyer
It’s hard to see how law firms can avoid being affected by “change.” My sense is that most industries have done a better job than law firms of reacting to competive pressures by engaging in strategies such as adopting technology, rationalizing pricing models, and incentivizing desired employee behavior. As a result, two new categories competitors are quickly moving into our market: non-law firm vendors and our clients (vendors by doing things that lawyers have traditionally done and clients by pulling more work in-house). If the two combine effectively, the results could be disruptive to law firm business models.

David Whelan
Information Pro
Change will continue to impact larger law firms but not necessarily kill them.  I think we are coming to the end of law firms failing and floundering due to change catalyzed by the financial crisis.  But other change, like outsourcing core functions and the ongoing absorption of large regional firms by mega global firms will mean there will be fewer firms.  Solos and small firms will continue to adapt to change – increasingly cloud-based, SaaS technology, increased numbers due to large law firm departures and new graduates, greater expectation for specialization – but I don’t think it will kill them either.
Next Week’s Elephant Post Question:

What Software do you use in your firm that you really wish you didn’t have to (or you wish the developers would make easier/better)?

I was talking with Kingsley Martin this week about extracting text from PDF documents when he mentioned that law firms have locked in many of their documents into this platform with no really good way to extract that data cleanly if they need to do so later. He noted that this will eventually catch up to these firms and they’ll pay a price for relying so heavily on a proprietary software without thinking of what will need to be done with that data at a point down the road.
So, taking Kingsley’s advice that this topic would make a great Elephant Post, we’re now turning the question to you. I’m pretty sure that anything in the “Microsoft Office Suite” would make the list. How about any other programs you have to deal with at work? Anything you’d like to erase from your desktop but can’t because it’s the “standard” at your firm and you’re required to use it?

I know that I should always remember this, but there are times when I start talking to someone proficient in technology about social media, and I can watch as a their eyes gloss over when I ask about integrating social media resources into existing technology. Now, to be quite fair, I get the same effect when I start talking to those proficient in social media about the steps it takes to integrate social media tools into the current technology.

So, just off the top of my head, here’s some signs to watch out for to determine if you’re talking to someone that is a technology person versus a social media person:

  • If you say “RSS” and they correct you to tell you it is “CSS” – Tech person
  • If you mention “Facebook” and they tell you how they are promoting their firm’s Facebook page – Social Media person
  • If you mention “Facebook” and they say “My Mom keeps trying to get me to join” – Tech person
  • If you mention “Twitter” and you get a five-minute commentary on its value – Social Media person
  • If you mention “Twitter” and you get a 140 character response on how who cares if you’re eating lunch?? – Tech person
  • If they say “Quora” is a great community Q&A site – Social Media person
  • If they reminiscent about how CompuServe BBS was a great Q&A site – Tech person
I’m sure there are a hundred different ways to tell the difference, but I have to tell you that sometimes I just forget. Now I have to go back and write “I must remember to not confuse “tech” skills with “social media” skills… and vice-versa” one-hundred more times on the blackboard.

An unspoken, unasked question of the Howrey dissolution is: Who will be left holding the bag? It’s the old “last one out, turn off the lights” situation. Only in this scenario, the last ones out also get stuck with a very expensive light bill.
There has been of a feeding frenzy by other law firms to swoop in and scoop up the best lawyers from Howrey. And by best, I mean those with profitable practices. Even Winston & Strawn did not appear willing to take on the whole Howrey package (although some of that was related to conflicts).
My counsel to any firms that were looking at lateral groups from Howrey would have fallen right on this approach.
The result of all this activity is that the partners with no “books of business” will not be courted much by other firms. Acquiring firms likely already have an existing contingency of “Service Partners” who may be great at practicing law, but have no substantial clients of their own. These partners have value in firms, but nowhere near the value of rainmaker partners with transportable books of business.
So what is very likely, is that these partner are in trouble. Two to three years ago they were riding high, with excellent incomes and no worries. Now, with few suitors in the market, they will struggle to find a place to land.
The lesson here for service partners is: Don’t get too comfortable. If your fortunes are dependent on another rainmaker partner or on the benevolence of your firm’s management, it’s time to pay attention. More firms will follow in Howrey’s footsteps. Better to be doing something about your role as a service partner now, than when your firm closes its doors or gets acquired by another firm and you get stuck with the bill.

Mary Abraham at Above and Beyond KM suggests that “the current approach to legal research is fundamentally flawed”, and should be turned on its head. While lawyers skills rests within their ability to negotiate, write, analyse and advise, the way Westlaw and Lexis (Wexis) research is conducted, it turns the process in to “a frustrating game of ‘find the needle in the haystack.’”

The approach that Abraham suggests is that Wexis should basically do a reference interview of the researcher before asking the researcher to start entering in his or her queries. Such things as:

  • what are the pertinent facts of the case?
  • what jurisdiction?
  • what procedural approaches?
The idea (which hopefully Mary Abraham is apply for a patent as we speak) shifts the idea that the lawyers should change the way they work to fit the way Wexis databases are structured in an attempt to devise the best query search language. Since research these days is set up much more “Fact Specific” (as was stressed in Law Librarian of Congress, Roberta Shaffer’s talk at the AALL Colloquium), it make sense that legal research tools adjust to that style of research, rather than making attorneys fit inside the four-walls of the data structure in “hit-or-miss”… “needle in the haystack” method currently conducted in generic search technology found today in Wexis databases.
It is good for someone like Abraham to come in from time to time and ask the essential question of “why are we doing it this way?” I’d like to see some of the vendors take a look at these suggestions and see if research could be turned inside out and upside down in order to fit the natural skills of the researcher. I’ve had conversations with people like Jason Wilson about the idea that vendors should start taking into consideration things like geo-location for things like pushing court rules to lawyers who walk into a courthouse with their iPads, laptops or smart phones. Or, leveraging the work of a group of lawyers working on the same matter so that duplication is reduced, and that one researcher can perhaps see a different strategy of researching a topic by evaluating the strategies of his or her peers. 
I’m also sure that some of the vendors have probably started implementing some of these ideas. If they have, then it would be nice to have those pointed out to us. Maybe this is where a Fastcase or a Casemaker could come in and fill the need. Of course, if the vendors build upon Mary Abraham’s suggestions, I wish her the best of luck in getting those royalty checks!