[Note: This is part two of a three-part guest-series on Practice Support Lawyers (PSL) and the emergence of PSLs in the United States from our guest-blogger, Ian Nelson.]

PSLs in the UK – A Brief History
The PSL role first appeared in the largest UK firms in the early 1990s. These firms gradually built large teams of PSLs to support their various practice areas. Their role was generally to develop standard documents for their particular group, keep the practicing attorneys up to date with key developments and produce practice guides on core areas of the law. The PSL gradually became a feature of smaller firms that came to see the business logic of a team of non-fee-earning attorneys whose job was to make the frontline attorneys as efficient as possible.

The tighter economy in 2008 led firms to look closely at all their support departments, including their PSLs. PSLs were laid off in the same way firms reduced their frontline lawyers and other staff. Some firms were more creative and decided to repurpose their PSLs so they were doing more marketing and business development work.

Therefore, most firms started to, and still do, outsource the creation and maintenance of much of the content (or “know-how”) creation and maintenance to third parties.  (Full disclosure: The company I work for, Practical Law Company, is a leading provider of this know-how in London and the UK.)  This freed up the PSLs to focus on firm and client specific work and the attorneys ended up having more and better resources than before this work was outsourced.  It made little sense for every firm in town to dedicate expensive employee time to creating essentially the same exact resources.

Technology certainly plays an important role in the UK as well.  Most firms have search platforms (like Recommind) that pull up completed deal documents, the PSL work product and the outsourced, or third party created, know-how.
What works about this system is that technology is used to provide the most efficient, comprehensive search.  All of the firm’s precedents are easily found, the PSLs are freed up for high-value projects and the attorneys still have the necessary materials and how-to resources – all of which are always up to date.

This is also a highly cost-effective system.  Instead of employing 50 PSLs, a firm can maintain a smaller, more efficient team that won’t be bogged down with materials that, while necessary for day-to-day practice, do not add to the firm’s competitive advantage.  A PSL team, coupled with a reliable provider of the supporting know-how, has been proven to provide the greatest cost efficiencies and results.

So the PSL role in the UK has survived the last economic downturn but their numbers are smaller and they are one part of a firm’s overall knowledge management strategy.

The third and final installment of this series will suggest an approach in the US to make the smartest, most efficient use of PSLs.

[Note: We’d like to welcome our guest-blogger, Ian Nelson, from Practical Law Company and a former Corporate Attorney with an AmLaw 100 firm in New York.  This is part one of a three-part guest-series on Practice Support Lawyers (PSL) and the emergence of PSLs in the United States.]
The Emerging Role of the PSL in the US
An interesting and recent development in the US legal industry is the emergence of the professional support lawyer, or PSL (some firms are referring to this as a “practice support lawyer”, “practice resource attorney” or “knowledge management lawyer”).  PSLs have been an important part of UK firms for at least 20 years and are now, thankfully, entering the US scene.  Toby dedicated a post to this topic in November 2010 and a recent online search showed at least three open PSL positions at major firms. 
In this 3-part series, I will provide some background on the role of the PSL, a look at the PSL model in the UK and a suggested approach for the US based on lessons learned from the UK.  
A Brief Explanation of the PSL
For anyone not familiar with this function, PSLs play a crucial role in supporting attorneys and firms by creating and maintaining a wide range of practical resources such as practice guides, standard documents and forms, checklists, updates on legal developments, and other materials attorneys turn to on a daily basis.  PSLs also support specific practices with business development initiatives, research and pitch materials.  This is much different than storing and retrieving old work product and completed deal documents.
PSLs ensure that the frontline attorneys are working as efficiently as possible, that there is consistency in work product and that people are not reinventing the wheel on each deal.  With a central collection of up-to-date materials, attorneys will have less need for performing random Google searches or all too familiar “Does anyone have a recent form that does X, Y, Z” email.  Firms also use materials prepared by PSLs to create practical training and professional development programs and junior lawyers have a place to turn to when given unfamiliar assignments (which is most of the time!). 
When I was a corporate associate with Kramer Levin in NY, I spent six months practicing at a UK firm, Berwin Leighton Paisner.  When I was introduced to their corporate department’s PSL team and saw what they produced for the attorneys, I was dumbstruck and realized that the US was missing a huge opportunity to work in a much smarter, more efficient way.  My passion for innovation in the delivery of legal services was born during this time in London, which is why I ended up leaving practice to help start the US office of Practical Law Company.
PSLs in the US – Why Now?
I believe that US firms are now seriously looking at this role for a few reasons.  Chief among them: 
  • Client demands for increased efficiency that resulted from the recent economic downturn;
  • Clients are simply fed up with paying for the time of junior associates that they feel aren’t adding value to their matters;
  • Firms are trying to quickly implement better training programs and develop more resources but don’t have the time; and 
  • Alternative fee arrangements are taking permanent hold in many firms and client relationships, so the need to get deals done faster and smarter directly impacts the bottom line.
Now that the US is starting to employ this model, the real opportunity firms have is to get this right from the outset and apply lessons learned from the UK. 
As Toby’s earlier post points out, the UK has largely taken a human-centric view of this work and the US approach to KM and content has been technology-centric.  I strongly agree with Toby that the answer lies in the middle.  It is unnecessary for US firms to make the degree of human investment in PSLs that UK firms make, but if the correct approach is taken from the start, I believe that US firms can maximize the investments they are making in their PSLs, both for themselves and for their clients. 
In Part 2 of this series, we will take a look at the PSL model in the UK, including a brief analysis of key lessons learned. 

Legal Project Management (LPM) is a very hot topic. Everyone (including me) is writing and talking about its potential role in helping transform the legal industry. Aside from the various debates on its value and role, out of curiosity (and need) I started asking around for sample job descriptions. This request has gone out to law firms, consultants, vendors and even good ole fashion project managers.
The result: No one has a working LPM job description to share. I have found standard project manager ones (no surprise there), I have seen “analyst” type position descriptions, but no true LPM job descriptions.
My read on this: A) they don’t exist, or B) people are unwilling to share them. If it’s “A” then that is telling about the state of LPM’s evolution – that it is still all talk and no action. If it’s “B” that would speak to people thinking this type of knowledge gives then a competitive edge.
I’m guessing it’s more likely “A” but am happy to be proved wrong.
So – if you have an LPM job description, feel free to pass it along. Or, if you have one and prefer not to share it, I would appreciate hearing about that too.

A wise man once said, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”. Today I’m introducing my own corollary to that maxim. “Sometimes it’s worth the risk of proving you’re a fool in the hope that you might learn something from the backlash.” About a month ago I accepted a Knowledge Management position at my firm. My first task? Define Knowledge Management. In the last few weeks I have read several books, many Websites, and a handful of White Papers. I have spent a great deal of time lurking on KM blogs, forums, and LinkedIn groups, and I’ve asked everyone I know how they would define KM. All the while I’ve been only too aware of the above aphorism and largely kept quiet for fear of removing that last bit of doubt. The one thing I have definitively learned is that a coherent definition for Knowledge Management is an elusive beast. So, the time has come to risk looking foolish. A few weeks ago Ayelette Robinson addressed this issue in a post here on 3 Geeks about her KM elevator speech. That was a great post. I’ve even used her elevator speech a few times since then. (Thanks, Ayelette. The check is in the mail.) Unfortunately, while “I do for my firm what Google did for the web” is descriptive enough to get the concept across to the casual inquisitor, it doesn’t help me much when I’m trying to determine what I should be doing at any given moment. Stopping to ask myself, “What would Google do in this situation?”, just doesn’t provide many relevant answers. Probably the most concise definition I’ve gotten is from one of our resident 3 Geeks, Toby Brown. (Although, I’m going to mangle it Toby, so please correct me in the comments.) He said something like, KM is making sure that people can access the knowledge they need, when and where they need it. Good, simple definition, but again, it doesn’t help me understand what I should be doing on a daily basis. So after several weeks of research, and reading and speaking to people much smarter than I, I have a good understanding of what KM is – like Justice Stewart’s famous opinion, ”I know it when I see it” – but I still don’t have a definition against which I can weigh my actions or judge my ideas. So like any good physicist I approached the problem as a thought experiment and turned it on it’s head. (And no, I am not a physicist.) Can I imagine an organization that would NOT benefit from Knowledge Management? It’s a difficult question and I think a good argument could be made that absolutely any organization could benefit from KM of some kind. Of course, it all depends on your definition of KM, so, that doesn’t get us very far. Still, I can say with a fair amount of confidence, that a very tiny company with a handful of employees probably wouldn’t derive much value from KM initiatives. So the next question is, how large can I grow my small company before it would ABSOLUTELY benefit from KM? I spent a lot of time thinking about this one. I came to the conclusion that once the organization grew to a size that their entire staff could no longer operate in a single large room, then they would definitely benefit from KM. What does a company working out of a single room have that a larger organization doesn’t? The word had been bouncing around in my head for several days, and then my friend Steven Savage mentioned it in a recent email, and then Ayelette Robinson talked about it in her latest Elephant Post. Something clicked, my weeks-long search finally culminated in a single, simple concept…Transparency. The employees of my fictitious company operating out of a single room would have no walls blocking their view. They would personally know all of their colleagues, and their skill sets, and their responsibilities. They would know when someone entered the room, generally what they wanted, and when and why they left. They would probably know all of the products that their company sold and know who all of their company’s clients were. Or at the very least, they would know where to find that information. If something important or urgent was happening on the far side of the room, those on the near side would be well aware and able to help. Spontaneous and serendipitous connections would happen regularly. Of course, the employees might all be at each other’s throats, stuck in the same room day after day, but that’s an HR problem. 😉 From a KM perspective, a single open room would be Nirvana. Unfortunately, large modern corporations and law firms can’t even fit in a metaphorical “single room”. There are a million examples of things which need to be walled off and unavailable for common consumption. The role of KM is to figure out where those walls need to be and to shore them up, making sure that everyone who needs access to the information on the other side is aware that the information exists and has the keys they need to get to that information. And then to tear down all of the extraneous walls in the company so that everyone can share who they are, how they fit in, and what exactly is going on. That is something I can weigh all of my actions against. Does this initiative increase transparency within my organization? If so, it’s probably Knowledge Management.Of course, this might be obvious, or completely wrong, in which case, at least you can all help me prove my new corollary in the comments below.

In a flurry of emails one day, one of my peers sent me a short message that said he talked to one of his junior partners at the firm blurted out that in a meeting that “Blogging is sooo 3 years ago.” After what I imagined was a serious “eye-roll reaction,” my friend tried to explain that there are many successful blogs out there that kept their content fresh, substantiative and interesting. However, my favorite reaction came from someone else on the email chain who pointed out just how dumb the overall statement was. I found it to be funny and thought I’d share it with everyone that still reads blogs.
Saying something is so “x” years ago  is so “y” years ago so dates yourself.

Why do so many people have an issues with blogs?  What if I call it a whitepaper (oh wait, that is so 25 years ago), an article (nope, that is +100 yrs ago), a stream of consciousness (too 60s), musings (too 80s).

My take on blogs (at least good ones) is that they are:

  • Informative
  • offer a unique point of view
  • thought provoking  

Just to name a few points.

So if these concepts are of no interest to you then you are so yesterday’s news.
I’d like to step off of my soapbox now, but that term is so 50s!

Well said, my friend… well said.

In this recent ABA Journal article, the co-CEO of Pangea3 is quoted as saying, “No law firm should be doing commoditized work.” The assumed intent of this statement is to ease concerns that Thomson Reuters (TR) / Pangea3 is competing with law firms (a.k.a. customers). On its face, this statement may provide some reassurance. But after thinking about, I’m not so assured.
At first blush you might agree with the statement above and conclude that Pangea3 services are “low-level” and not work lawyers “should be doing” anyway. However, this all spins on the definition of “commodity” as it relates to legal services. Having analyzed and modeled 100’s of AFA deals, my view is that almost all legal work includes some commodity aspects to it. Large complex matters contain within them commodity-level tasks. And there are some recently complex types of work that are becoming commoditized. For instance, class-action certifications may be heading in this direction. Is that the “commoditized work” Pangea3 means?
More likely Pangea3 is pointing to work like first document review or coding in discovery. Much of this work is moving off-shore and already labeled as commodity. But looking back just 4 or 5 years ago, this work was done by associates at law firms.
What appears to be the likely evolution of this model, is to start by taking on work that is currently accepted as commoditized work and then moving on to other, traditionally complex services over time.
My prediction: With the TR brand and deep pocket, clients will be much more willing to send work directly to Pangea3. This will give Pangea3 a seat at the client relationship table. Once these relationships are secured and become trusted, a broader range of services will be offered and work will flow in that direction … away from law firms. As any work approaches a commodity definition, it will shift away from law firms.
Economics tells us all products and services tend towards commodities over time. So my prediction is not very novel. What is different in this scenario is that clients will be sending work to a corporate entity and not a law firm. A new type of competitor has entered the market and its validation via the purchase by TR will accelerate its growth into traditional law firm delivered services.
Having worked for a mandatory Bar for 18+ years, I suggest not much will be said or done about this shift, even though one might argue this is the unauthorized practice of law. Historically, when competitors encroach on the legal market, lawyers and their bar associations label the work “commodity” and walk away. One example is residential title work, west of the Mississippi.
So instead of alleviating concern, I think the Pangea3 statement actually elevates it. I know who will be defining “commodity” in this situation and it won’t be the lawyers, law firms or bar associations.

First of all, I need to apologize for the technical difficulties. I attempted to live stream the Houston Area Law Libraries panel on Alternatives to Westlaw and Lexis, but the results were horrible. The audio from one of the speakers was too garbled to understand, and I was too busy moving back and forth from the computer to the podium that I didn’t see the stream of complaints coming in about the audio. Chalk it up as “lesson learned.” Next time, I think I’ll just record the presentations on a real camera and then transfer it over to the web for later viewing. Again, my apologies! Now, for what you missed.

The idea behind the panel discussion was to get an overview of a few legal research products that are outside the large Westlaw and Lexis wings of the industry. We had Sharon Kube and Karen Ditsch from Loislaw (Wolters Kluwer), Ed Walters from Fastcase, and Dave Harriman from Casemaker. It wasn’t set up as a bash Wexis session, but rather to highlight what’s good about the alternatives, and what factors may exists that would encourage law firms, law schools, and court law libraries to use these products. The format was pretty straight forward; five-minutes each on discussing the products, followed by a scenario, then field questions from the crowd.

Product Intros
Sharon and Karen discussed the value of Loislaw as a flat-rate subscription with a wealth of primary law material, but also highlighted the ability to add in up to 200 treatises from the Wolters Kluwer collection, that integrates the Loislaw collection through hyperlinking of caselaw and statutes. Loislaw has a citation system that allows you to see the cases cited and any cases that cite to this case. There is also a find and print type option in Loislaw that allows you to pull all the citations out of a brief or document and then read or print any of those cases or statutes.

Ed Walters of Fastcase took a broader method with his five-minutes of discussion of his product. He discussed the issues of having large conglomerates of Thomson Reuters and Reed Elsevier controlling such a large percentage of the legal publishing market. Walters says one of the biggest problems is that law firms and law librarians are not speaking the “corporate” language of the big vendors. If you complain about the service and products, but re-up your subscriptions at a 12% increase, the message that the vendors hear is “they are willing to re-up at 12%.” A combined tweet from Carl Malumud and David Curle, may have said it best on what Walters was doing:

RT @davidcurle: @EJWalters is holding up a mirror to the audience. #alt2wexis [they have met the enemy and they are them!]

The answer, according to Walters, was that if the community wanted to really change the way things are with Wexis, then “you got to build it… you got to invest in it.… Complaining on the [law library] listservs is not going to do it.” Walters did go on to talk about Fastcase and the way they are building the interface to be “easy, powerful, compelling, beautiful.” They are building iPad and iPhone apps; building free access to limited portions of the collection through the Public Library of Law; and, the Forecite tool built in to Fastcase to point out cases that might be overlooked through traditional search methods.

Dave Harriman from Casemaker took a much more traditional approach of explaining his product by talking about his background of 40 years of legal editing while he was at Michie, and was the President of Michie Publishing when he left after Lexis acquired Michie. Harriman pointed out that when it comes to primary law, Casemaker compares very well to products like Lexis. Harriman’s biggest point of why Casemaker is a great product is that they are focused on the editorial process. Casemaker also has a citator system, called CaseCheck+, for some states that works like a Shepards or Keycite. They also have a case summary resource that produces summaries for newly released cases in some states. Of course, the biggest draw is that Casemaker is free for those states where the bar has purchased licenses for the members of those bars.

Scenario
I had given each of the panelist the scenario I was going to ask previous to them appearing on the panel. The scenario was this:

My boss came to me and said that they were looking to reduce our current Westlaw and Lexis subscriptions down to one vendor only. I was given the names of the three vendors (Fastcase, Casemaker and Loislaw) and was told to investigate if any of these would be a good alternative to the product we are dropping. The panelists’ should give me some good talking points to take back to my boss on why we should bring in their product as an alternative to the product we are dropping.

Loislaw’s panelists went first and explained that Loislaw is a flat-fee product, so you pay one price, and no surprises. One benefit of Loislaw, over some of the other non-Wexis products, is that all the materials are housed within the Loislaw databases. This means that their citation system, Global Cite, (which is not a Shepards or KeyCite replacement) works extremely well because all the material is there. If portions of the state statues are not housed within the system, then a citator system like this is basically useless. Sharon Kube also mentioned the ability to pull all of the cites out of a brief or document, and the ability to add in treatise materials that integrate into Loislaw (at an additional fee.) The biggest pitch was that Loislaw is affordable when compared to Wexis.

Once again, Ed Walters took a unique approach to answering the scenario. I think Jason Wilson may have said it best in his tweet about Walter’s opening remarks:

Smart approach by @ejwalters. It’s the ol’ Macy’s/Gimbles approach. “Hey, we may not be right for you.” #alt2wexis

Walters started discussing the user experience that Fastcase brings, more than how it battles head-to-head with the Wexis products. Fastcase is designed to get researchers focused on the tools, and not attempting to get bogged down in the different databases. This is done, according to Walters, through smart sorting tools, research options, data visualization tools, and through new search results options that Fastcase’s “ForeCite” brings to the final results. The pitch for Fastcase was what Walters mentioned in his introduction; Fastcase is “easy, powerful, compelling, beautiful.”

Dave Harriman from Casemaker finished up the scenario by focusing on Casemaker’s content, and editorial production team. Casemaker uses a combination of editorial staffers based in Mumbai, India (Indian based lawyers) and Charlottesville, Virginia (former Michie editors.) Whereas, Fastcase discussed its interface, Harriman talked about Casemaker’s content, and the ability to keep things like state and federal statutes updated as soon as laws are signed. Since Casemaker is only available through the state bar, if your state bar has an agreement (the Texas Bar does, by the way) then members of the bar can have access for free. So, if cost is a factor, and your bar has an agreement, then that may be the big selling point to take back to your boss.

Are the non-Wexis products viewed by Courts as a “trusted source?”
This question actually came in from an academic law librarian, but it really had a Court librarian angle. The vendors talked about how they work very hard to make their products dependable and trustworthy. Loislaw pointed out that they include pagination on all of their resources; Fastcase talked about the fact that over 500K lawyers had access to Fastcase; and, Casemaker said that they are a trusted sources because they supply the material to the state bar associations.

What about proprietary citations that Westlaw and Lexis use when citing to new decisions? Will an increase in non-Wexis provider usage break the court’s reliance upon these? 
This was an interesting question on the issue of those ____ WL ____ or ___ LEXIS ____ cites that go up on new cases until a print version of that case appears in the National Reporter System (sometimes months later.) This question got Ed Walters back up on his soapbox about how there is a need for libraries, librarians, researchers, lawyers, and the associations that represent them to stand up and demand a neutral citation system. No one said that the “WL” or “LEXIS” cites were going away anytime soon, however.

The conversation did expand to include the issue of the copyrighting of the “catchlines” (titles) of state statues. In some states, the actual title of a statute is copyrighted by the vendor that prints the official state statutes. I ran into this problem in Oklahoma when it came to Westlaw claiming copyright. Ed Walters discussed this about Lexis owning the copyright to the Georgia state codes. Walters said he was stunned that when he asked Lexis to license the catchlines to the statutes, he was told that they would never do that… at any price. Casemaker’s Harriman added that when Michie was publisher of the state codes, they gave the copyright of those catchlines back to the 26 states that they covered. Harriman explained that publishers had to create those catchlines, and thus claimed copyright on them, but in Michie’s case, they wanted to give that back to the states to build goodwill. Walters said that the copyright should be viewed as a “work for hire” and should never go to the publisher. I think that everyone in the room agreed that the issue of catchline copyrighting is one that no one (except the vendors that hold that right) view favorably.

How about mobile versions of your products?
I think this question may have made Ed Walters squeak out a little cheer of joy. Walters jumped in and discussed the free iPad and iPhone versions of Fastcase (both the app and the content are free.) Harriman was not sure of the mobile apps that Casemaker offers, but since I had written about this before on this blog, I mentioned that Casemaker’s approach was to build a mobile web version of their product that would work on any mobile device, not just the iPad or iPhone. Kube from Loislaw said that they were about to beta-test a new mobile version in the next few months and something should be out later this year.

What about court briefs? Are you going to offer those?
Casemaker works with specific attorneys to put their briefs on their system, but is not working directly with the courts to pull that information. Ed Walters mentioned that Fastcase is working with the Law.gov folks on the 9th Circuit briefs. Loislaw (from what I remember) didn’t have any plans to put those on because of the issue of trying to obtain them from the courts. The issue of copyright was brought up again by Walters about the use of these briefs without getting permission from the lawyers that actually wrote the briefs. Harriman said that all of the copyrights of the briefs on Casemaker were cleared by the authors directly. There was also some murmuring about the coziness that courts have with the Wexis vendors on briefs, especially from courts where you cannot get access to the briefs online from the court themselves, but you can through the paid services of Wexis. We left it an open issue.

Any chance for International Materials?
Kube and Deitch from Loislaw said that international materials are part of the overall Wolters Kluwer collection, but currently not available directly from Loislaw. Casemaker is currently discussing the idea of adding international and foreign materials, but does not have any at the moment. My notes actually fail me on what Fastcase’s answer was to this. I don’t believe they currently have foreign or international materials, but Ed Walters may clarify that with me if I am mistaken.

End of Panel
It was a great panel discussion, and I was glad that Ed, Dave, Karen and Sharon took the time to talk with us. I wished that the audio on the livestreaming wasn’t garbled… but hopefully, this round-up of what was discussed makes up a little for that technical difficulty.

I’d love to see something like this as a discussion at AALL or at other local events. In fact, discussions like this shouldn’t be limited to the law library world. Legal research, its costs and contents, are issues that effect everyone that faces a legal issue. That includes lawyers, paralegals, legal administrators, corporate counsel, clients, all the way down to the Pro Se client. I’d really love to see this discussion happening outside the law librarian world. If you’re a member of an organization that has to deal with the cost and effectiveness of legal research, then I think having a panel discussion like this would be of value to the members you serve.

We have some interesting contributions this week on what the legal industry needs more of right now. I was a little disappointed that my friend Emily didn’t follow through on her dibs on “cowbell” – just because I really wanted her to say something like “The legal industry’s got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell!” Since she didn’t, I thought I’d just toss it in there for kicks.

Just a reminder of why we have the Elephant Posts each week. The idea is that we all have different perspectives when it comes to what we do in the legal profession. Kind of like the story of the blind men describing an elephant by the part of the elephant they are touching. So, although some out there feel that we are asking insipid questions, instead of giving you our original thoughts, we feel that we are expanding our perspectives by asking you to share your own with us.

Next week’s Elephant Post question is listed at the bottom. If you like the post earlier this week about turning an iPad into a mobile phone, then I think you’ll like what we’re asking (and hopefully will contribute one or two apps that you use.)

Juggler of Cats Perspective

Management Training

In a profession where leaders are delegated and not created, few are actually trained in the art of management.
Managing people and their projects takes a special skillset. Talking a good talk is not enough. Managing people takes dedication.
Some people are naturally good at it. But most are not. To be a good manager takes effort, selflessness, and an understanding of all the parts of a business.
I would love to see more management training at the law school level and more cooperation between law schools and business schools. Columbia’s law school is moving in this direction. I am anxious to see how this works out for them.

Law student in waiting Perspective
Cloud

Reason 1: Picture a line graph. Now picture the x axis as servers and the Y axis as problems. Now picture a diagonal line going from left to right. Get it? Mo’ servers, Mo’ Problems. – Notorious B.I.G (Loosely Quoted)
Reason 2: 1992 called, it wants its servers back
Reason 3: “I got 99 problems but a server ain’t one” – Jay-Z (loosely quoted)

Law librarian Perspective
Consumer advocacy

See “Why The Largest Publishers Require Us To Unite Efforts In Consumer Advocacy”

Lawyer Perspective
Business Sense

Too many of us still fail to recognize the “practice” of law as a business.  Professionalism is important, but does not conflict with commonly accepted business practices.

Legal Blogger Perspective
Guts

I had to laugh when I saw that one firm was creating a floor for the amount of legal spend that clients must spend each year, or be cut loose as a client. The issue here is that the firm has turned the responsibility of client-firm relations on its head. Instead of telling the attorneys that their clients have to show profitability, and hold them responsible for cutting unprofitable clients off… the firm has wimped out and created a rule that basically says “Dear Client: You must spend $X per year, or we will unfortunately need to stop doing work for you.” The problem is going to come when the partner comes back to whatever committee established this “line in the sand” rule and says that he or she wants to keep the client because they have a longstanding relationship with them that will pay off down the road. I’m assuming that this committee will fold like a cheap suit and move the line in the sand to a different point whenever someone wants to ignore it.

Knowledge Management Perspective
Elephants

That’s right. Elephants. What the legal industry needs more of is:  elephants.
For those of you who have been reading these Elephant Posts for a while now, you know that elephant is another way of saying transparency. From sharing how law firms work, to how clients work, to how client development works, to how billing works, to how evaluations work, to how partnership paths work, to how negotiations work, to how leverage works, you get the idea.
The more educated junior associates and staff are about the business of law, the better they can support the business, and the better partners and senior management they will become.”

Intelligence and Other Things Perspective
Self-Reflexivity

Self reflexivity.
Is it a business? It is a practice?  There are those who, in the ruthless pursuit of pure academia, see the legal industry as being fundamentally and only about practicing law.  Others, likely those who are more inclined to bow-at-the-feet-of-the-all-mighty-billable-hour, focus on the legal industry as a business. As a result, there is infinite chatter surrounding the profession and what it should do, how it should look and what it should be about – from  legal process outsourcing, to knowledge management, to how and when to recruit to alternative fee arrangements. No other profession I can think of discusses its insecurities quite as openly. Ultimately, what the legal profession really needs is more self reflexivity about who and what lawyers and law firm are in the world and how that plays out in a social or business context. It is time to take a good long look at what the industry is really all about…

Next Week’s Elephant Post

What Mobile App Do You Use For Work?

There was a lot of interest in my post this week about turning my iPad into a Phone, so I thought that this questions would dovetail perfectly. We’ve all probably sat through those “60 Apps in 60 Minutes” programs at a conference and watched as a bevy of applications flew past us on the screen. Those are cool, but what how many of those do we actually use when we get back to our office? So, share with us any apps you use for work and why it helps you do your job. As usual, we try to make this as easy as we can for you to contribute, so you can fill out the form below, or if you want, you can DM me on Twitter, or email me directly with your answer. Remember, it is hard to describe “The Elephant” if you don’t share your perspective.

Hello??

I have to say that since I got my iPad, I’ve used my smart phone less and less for its “smart features” and normally just use it as a cell phone. Well, as of yesterday, I might not need to use my smart phone to make calls either. I installed the Whistle Phone app on the iPad and can now call anyone in the continental US (sorry Alaska and Hawaii) for free! Actually, I do have to listen to a 15-20 second commercial whenever I dial out, but for a free service, I can deal with that. You can remove the ads by paying a per minute charge of 1.7¢… but, I’m cheap, so I just listen to the 20 second commercial.

Here’s how it works. You can sign up for a free account after you download the free app. With Whistle Phone, you get an actual US Phone number (I chose the 281 Houston Area Code.) You can call anyone with a US number (again, sorry Alaska (a little high at 33.2¢ per minute and Hawaii a bargain at 2.6¢ per minute) from anywhere in the world, and you can receive calls as well. It will work off of both a WiFi connection and the 3G connection – which must be a little annoying to AT&T. I’ve been testing it out with my friends and family, and so far, it has worked like a charm.

Mac, PC, iPhone and iPod Touch users can also download the Whistle Phone app as well. As with many of these VOIP applications, you can also buy minutes for international calling from your iPad. Whistle Phone also offers a “Follow Me” option for all accounts where you can have your Whistle Phone calls forwarded to up to five different lines, and if you don’t answer any of these lines, it will leave a voice mail on the last line in your list. That’s a pretty cool feature. You can also dial other Whistle Phone numbers, anywhere in the world, for free – also a cool feature! Your contacts from your email are automatically loaded into the Whistle Phone contacts list, and you can conference in up to two different numbers at the same time (as well as a call waiting feature that allows you to answer a second incoming call.)

I’ve really just started playing with all the features, but so far, it has been easy, fun, and cheap. I’m thinking that my children may have to just get an iPod Touch instead of a cell phone now and I can save on those monthly fees… hmmm…

Go check out Whistle Phone and let me know if you think about it.

I’m very excited to be moderating a panel of legal research providers that are outside of the big two powerhouses. This Wednesday (2/9/11) at 11:45, at the South Texas College of Law here in beautiful downtown Houston, I’ll lead the discussion on Alternatives to Westlaw and Lexis. The panelists are Matt Woods & Kirk Sims, Loislaw; Christi Villarreal, Bloomberg; Dave Harriman & Jim Carder, Casemaker; Ed Walters & Chuck Lowry, Fastcase. I think it will be a great discussion, and one that I’ll report back on after the session.

We discussed the topic of alternatives to Westlaw and LexisNexis last year and got quite a number of comments when I asked “Can Attorneys Practice Law Without Westlaw or LexisNexis?” I’ll be going back through those comments (and checking my email archives for all those “off the blog” questions and comments that were sent to me as well) and see what the panelists have to say on that issue. Of course, if there is anything that you think I should specifically ask the panel, feel free to comment or contact me and I’ll pass that along to the panel.

The session is hosted by the Houston Area Law Librarians chapter of AALL. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to record the session and share it with those of you outside of Houston.