At TECHSHOW last week, I kept hearing the phrase, “Clients have gotten smarter.” This was typically in relation to the law firm fees clients are paying and how things are changing. The presumption is that clients figured out law firms weren’t treating them well on price (a.k.a rates and hours) and are now holding them accountable. On the face of it, this ‘smarter’ statement sounds right. Everything we see and hear seems to confirm this assumption.
But have they become smarter?
A colleague recently attended an in-house counsel conference on getting more for less. With few exceptions, the attendees commented on how their CXO (replace “X” with appropriate letter) directed them to cut internal and outside legal spend and that they would now be treated like every other department in the company. The bottom line: legal departments no longer get a pass when it comes to cost management.
So what has really happened is that instead of getting smarter – clients have gotten accountable. They are now in reaction mode trying to figure out how to pass that accountability on to their law firms. And in this process the great majority of them are asking for discounts and then managing to the hours, since this is what they know.
I’ve previously used this Einstein quote: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Clients tinkering with rates, hours and expenses are only pushing on the edges. Working within the traditional hourly billing model will not result in the big changes everyone wants. In other words – it’s not smart.
When I see clients moving the fee discussion (versus rates and hours) to the beginning of the engagement to establish a price-to-value proposition up front, then I’ll believe the whole smarter thing.

I received an interesting email this morning from Bloomberg asking me to participate in their “Bloomberg Law Litigation Survey.”  Seems that Bloomberg is wanting to query its Bloomberg Law customers on their opinions of current litigation issues and see who we think will prevail.  I thought I was super-special, until Toby told me that he got the same survey.
This is a very, very interesting idea.  I’m not sure if there is a place for those not using Bloomberg to sign up for these surveys, but maybe one of the Bloomberg Survey Gurus could let us know.
Here is a sample of one of the survey questions:
Again, I thought this is actually a pretty good use of Bloomberg’s customer base, and a way to basically crowdsource some information from them and determine if the crowd’s answer matches the eventual outcome of the litigation.  However, one of the big failures of this survey is the format.  First of all, you have to open the PDF file and read the survey.  If you want to answer the survey, you have to print it out and fill out the form.  Then, perhaps the biggest problem in my opinion, you have to FAX the survey (two-pages, mind you) back to Bloomberg.  What is this??  1991??  Here’s a snapshot of the “legal” language of the survey where you have to actually take out a pen and check the box, sign your name and date the form:

So, Bloomberg gets an “A” for idea, but a “F” for execution on this one.
Here’s my suggestion to Bloomberg to raise that “F” up to at least a “C”.  Use a web-survey tool! Heck, have Mike go out and buy a web-survey company… he can afford it.  With a survey tool, you make it easy for someone like me to answer your survey in about a minute or two.  The tool should already have my personal information build into its database, so I won’t have to fill out those personal sections of the survey.  Basically, I open up the page, check the box, click submit, and then back to work.  If you make it easier on your users, you’ll definitely get a higher percentage to answer your survey.  Make it look good (and maybe enter me in a chance to win one of those new iPads), then I may even bump that “C” up to an “A-“.

I had the privilege and pleasure of serving on the “60 Sites in 60 Minutes” closing panel for the 2010 TECHSHOW held last week in Chicago. This 60 Sites session is always fast-paced, fun and funny. Along with Debbie Foster (TECHSHOW Chair), Adriana Linares and Ernie Svenson, we dashed through web sites ranging from hard core legal tech to just plain funny. Check out the TECHSHOW site in the next few days for the complete list. For now, here’s my 15:
Above and Beyond KM is a blog about how law firms work and how knowledge management (KM) can help improve their efforts. Mary Abraham’s observations are based on her experience practicing law and then practicing knowledge management in a New York City firm. A “go-to” legal KM blog.
Steven Levy’s blog covers the emerging and dynamic legal project management space. For lawyers and firms looking to understand and incorporate project management into their practices, this blog is the one to watch.
Originally a legal marketing/selling blog, Jim Hassett has taken on Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs) in a big way. After surveying a large group of managing partners, he has produced the “The LegalBizDev Survey of Alternative Fees.” His blog posts include excerpts from the survey, making it a premier site to stay current on AFAs.
The legal research space is experiencing a dynamic shift. This site will keep you more-than updated on the current trends and resources in legal research. Joe Hodnicki has an interesting sense of humor and keen insight into what matters for legal research.
In the Fall of 2009, Google unveiled its free legal research offering, which got everyone’s attention. The site contains case law back to 1950 and you can even search by jurisdiction. For those times you just need to “pull a case” this is a simple and free site to do it.
Too often IT projects are all about technology and not about the business. InformationWeek is a great site that brings the business issues up ahead of the IT answers. It is self-described as covering “The Business Value of Technology” and does that very well.
The next time you need a basic understanding of a technology, come to this site. Or better yet, check it everyday to stay up on all the newest stuff. Additionally the site has excellent How-To Tips and Technology Guides.
Bruce Schneier on Security
When it comes to Security, Bruce Schneier is The Man. His site and blog give excellent threat updates, tips and ideas for staying ahead of the security game.
Free CLE is popping up in a number of places. One site for finding these programs is 4FreeCLE. The site indexes free offerings from numerous providers. The existence of this site highlights the trend and availability of free CLE from a number of sources.
American Marketing Association: Especially the Houston Chapter
Lawyers do well to look outside the profession for tips and ideas. One great source related to growing your practice is the American Marketing Association (AMA). A great example of an AMA chapter is Houston’s. The quality and number of resources and events is staggering. As well participation provides networking opportunities outside the legal market.
Did you know you can access the entire archive of Law Practice Magazine issues online? This treasure-trove of practice management articles has what is likely the most comprehensive list of law practice management resources any where.
Humanity produces some VERY interesting stuff. And OffBeatEarth is the site to see it. Check in everyday to see some of the oddest displays of human creation. You’ll find everything from “Awkward Family Portraits” to the art of dirty car windows at “Wash Me.”
Pretty much any question you might have about Internet stats will be answered at Royal Pingdom. This site captures all of the interesting internet trends and demographics. Questions answered: How much email traffic is spam? How does Facebook traffic compare to Google’s – world-wide? And, What are the age demographics for social network sites?
10 Minute Mentor from the Texas Bar
This site contains about 400 10 minute videos on a variety of legal topics. Although some substantive law topics are Texas-based, many are not. As well, more general topics like law practice management and technology are covered. And the best thing about these high-quality mentoring videos: they are free. [Hat tip to Jim Johnson for this one.]
Significant Cases Analyzed: Wikipedia
Next time you need quick access to an explanation of the law and issues involved in a major court decision, look no further than Wikipedia. Most major decisions have been fully explained, including the legal issues touched on, the lawyers involved, commentary and even links to relevant follow-up decisions and articles.

The Law Librarian Blog’s (LLB) Joe Hodnicki pointed out the newest National Jurist’s academic law library ranking and what a colossal waste of time it was for everyone involved.  Joe warned his readers that it wasn’t even worth browsing the results because the way the schools were scored were out of whack with what really makes a library great.  Currently, National Jurist uses the following scoring methodology to determine “who’s got the best law library.”

Using data gathered by the ABA:
   50% = Number of volumes and unique titles
   20% = Ratio of library study seating to enrollment
   15% = Ratio of full-time professional librarians to enrollment
   15% = Number of hours open per week

I haven’t been an academic law librarian in over ten years, but I’m a little disturbed by the definition that the National Jurist used to describe what makes a great law library:

“What makes a good law library in the 21st century includes a variety of factors: comfort, accessibility, convenience and most of all, availability of the latest technology tools.”

This definition is mentioned, not once, but twice in the article.  I’m thinking this describes what makes a Barnes & Noble good, not a law library.  I understand that this is a survey of how National Jurist thinks that law students like their libraries to look and feel, but do we really want a definition of a ‘good library’ that doesn’t include any mention of ability to retrieve relevant legal materials in an expedient manner?  Call me old fashioned, but I thought the main objective of a law library was to point its users to the best resources to answer their legal research needs.  I could care less if there are twice as many seats available for me to sit in than there are students enrolled at the school.  I’d rather have access to legal databases over access to an onsite Starbucks.
When I go into a law library, there are five things I’m looking for:

  1. Legal materials (be they print or electronic) that I can access easily and quickly
  2. Reference librarians that can assist me in my search for resources I cannot find on my own
  3. For items that are not available within the law library, I want the law librarians to tell me where I can locate it (either by driving to another local library, or through an Interlibrary Loan)
  4. A chair and table to sit down and read (basic wood works fine for me)
  5. A copy machine or copy shop that takes a credit card and gives me a receipt
Again, I’m not a student, so my objectives for a law library are different from someone that is looking for a quite place so I can brief a case for my Con Law II class.  But really…  comfort, accessibility, convenience and latest technology tools should be further down the list for anyone that is making the practice of law his or her profession… shouldn’t it??

 

While cleaning up my twitter account this week, it dawned on my that something has been missing from my daily stream of twitter information… that nasty twittergiest, @hklawtwits that was constantly telling me how bad the law firm of Holland & Knight was.  The last tweet was posted back on November 29, 2009, and quite frankly wasn’t @hklawtwits best work at all.
I mentioned this twitter account last summer (along with the previous @hklaw account that was doing the same bad mouthing tactics.  Could it be that this angry person just burned out on all that hatred they had built up against what I’m assuming was their former firm? Has he or she just taken a hiatus?  Or… Oh no… could it be that @hklawtwits actually got a job???  This last scenario is the one that seems most believable.  It’s amazing how gainful employment can keep angry people occupied.
I’ll keep a special place in my twitter heart for @hklaw and @hklawtwit and their super-sized anger tweets against Holland & Knight.  We can only hope that someday they are fired from their current law firm and can refocus all that anger toward someone new.  Until then, I guess I need to seek out some other angry twitter’ers out there in the vast twitterverse.

Dear “New Lexis.com”,
I know that you are still in the gestation stage of your life, but I thought I’d write you a letter to help you enter the world on a better footing than your cousin WestlawNext did.  Let me start off by saying that we’re all excited to see what you look like, and we’re all hoping that your delivery goes without complications.  But we all know that most newborn legal research products can sometimes be extremely stressful on your parents, and you children aren’t always as wonderful as your parents tell everyone you are.  Let’s take your cousin WestlawNext (WLN) as an example and learn from what his parents did, so your parents don’t make the same mistakes.
First of all, let everyone know exactly who you are, what you can do, and how much you are going to cost us.  Don’t play with phrases like “modest premium” or “we’re still working on the pricing” as you enter the world.  Come out with a price based on what all of us know.  We’d all love to have you as part of our families for no additional cost, but I’m sure your parents are extremely proud of you and like any good parent/manager, will want to get the best return on their investment by charging as much as they think they can get out of us.  If that is the case, then just come out and tell us.  Say something like, “To have my Lexis.com over at your house will cost you 5% (10%, 20%…) extra from what you’re paying to have our older kids play at your place.”  Just let me know a price and I’ll let you know if I think that’s reasonable enough to come play with my family of lawyers and researchers.  If you cost me too much, then tell your parents that they need to be willing to negotiate from that price. And, whatever you do, please, please, please, don’t have your parents turn their sales force relatives loose on us with the directive to ‘get as much as you can from all of them.”  To be honest, we simply don’t trust that they have our best interests at heart. We would all like to have you come over, but some of us just aren’t willing to pay a high premium for the privilege.  No offense, of course, I’m sure you’re a wonderful resource.
Second suggestion, tell your family to be nice… even if we sometimes say things that make them angry.  Whenever there is a change in the family dynamic, some of us can get a little… shall we say, cranky.  It doesn’t mean that we think you are a terrible product, mainly it means that we’re nervous about allowing a new member into our fold without knowing what we’re getting into first.  Let me give you a simple example using your cousin WLN.  One of my friends, Lisa Solomon, was a little shocked that in order to have WLN over at her place, she’d have to pay an additional 68% premium for the privilege.  She’d had WLN’s older brother over at her place for years along with some of his siblings, like “ResultsPlus” and she was quite fond of each of them.  But she knows that children grow up and go out on their own eventually and we’ll need to replace them if we want to continue our relationship with their parents.  But, one of WLN’s uncles got a little snarky when Lisa asked if the 68% premium was worth it.  Seems that Uncle Rick, who is WLN’s Chief Technology Officer, is very proud of WLN, but apparently seems to think that WLN’s brothers and sisters have just been “messing around” for years now and need to be kicked to the curb by anyone with a brain.  Here, let me show you the conversation:

So baby Lexis.com, let me give you a word of advice that you should tell your family.  No matter how snarky your customers get when they talk about baby Lexis.com, do not, under any circumstances, get snarky back.  It just doesn’t do anyone any good to have grown-ups acting like children.  
Third word of advice, think creatively on how you want to compete for attention against your cousin WLN.  Family rivalries are bound to happen when you are competing for attention from the same group of people.  Some are going to say that WLN is their favorite, while I’m sure others will like baby Lexis.com better.  It’s been that way between all your older siblings going all the way back to, God rest their souls, your terminal brothers and cousins.  Now that I think about it, I guess “terminal” was kind of a mean name to give them…. but, I digress.  
Since you know there’s going to be some rivalry, you might as well play it up, and I’ve got a great suggestion for you.  How about you make a deal with some of the folks that want to have you over at their house by paying them to not play with your cousin?  Tell them that if they get rid of WLN and his sibs that you’ll give them a “rebate” after a year of playing with only you?  Yes, I know that it sounds a little like bribery, but it won’t hurt to ask them.  Here’s what I suggest.  If they promise to only play with you and not let your cousin into their house, then you cut them a deal… say ‘no increase in current subscription price.’  If they keep WLN out for a year, then you might want to give them a 2%-3% rebate on what they paid you for that year.  To sweeten the pot a little more, tell them that if you can advertise that they don’t play with WLN and can use their name and image in magazine and web ads, you’ll give them a 5% kick-back, er, ‘rebate’ at the end of the year.  You might be surprised at how many of your friends will jump at the chance to get rid of WLN if you sweeten the pot for them.  
Well, that’s my advice for you at this time.  I’m hoping that you grow into all of the wonderful things that your parents have been bragging about.  Remember that a good first impression is important, so think long and hard about how you would like to present yourself to us for the first time.  Your cousin, WLN, gave us all a bit of a roller coaster ride in his first few months of life, and although he is impressive to look at, all that other baggage of uncertain pricing and mixed messages from his immediate family has left many of us a bit hesitant about inviting him into our homes.  Here’s one last bit of advice for you.  If there is one thing we want from you and your cousin, it is ‘certainty.’  We want to know what you do, why you are better and how much you will cost us.  Give us those three things right up front, and I’m sure we’ll be friends for a long time.
Yours truly,
Greg

Interesting discussion going on over at Law Office Management Assistance Program (LOMAP) today regarding low-cost legal research providers Fastcase and Casemaker.  Casemaker lays out a claim that Fastcase is chock full of missing case citations, and even gives out a list of the first 50 cases missing a correct citation (A.3d, P.3d, ect.) from all 50 states. This would mean that if you searched by citation in Fastcase, these cites would not show up at all (even if the actual cases were in the database.)  It also means when you cross-check cases using Fastcase’s citation system, those cases would be missing from the results as well.  Casemaker claims to have a list of over 100,000 missing citations from Fastcase.

Ed Walters responded that he could probably show as many errors in Casemaker’s database and that Fastcase is better than Casemaker because Bob Ambrogi said so in his review, and Oregon switched from Casemaker to Fastcase.  Steve Newsom from Casemaker counted that Ambrogi’s review was not a deep dive and focused on user interaction and not quality of the information contained within the databases.  As many of you remember, I actually picked Casemaker over Fastcase (and even Loislaw) as far as having the most case law content.  The fact that Casemaker also has a group of former Michie Company editors on staff to oversee operations is a big plus in my book as well.

The part I like the most was that Newsom offered Walters the entire list of 100,000 missing citations if he could show that Casemaker was missing as many citations as Fastcase is missing.  It will be interesting to see if Fastcase scrambles to clean up these errors.

Here’s the claim (Casemaker), response (Fastcase), and counter-response (Casemaker).

Casemaker Claim

“How Far Back in Your State to Miss 50 Case Citations? 

‘How many years back do you have to go in your state case law to find 50 missing case citations?’ After seeing the legal research map posted on 3 Geeks, some analysis was made to do a more complete comparison of the various services. A comparison between Casemaker and Fastcase turned up a large number of missing case citations in the Fastcase system. At first, this appeared to be a hit-or-miss, minor quality control sort of issue. Then it became apparent that this was a much bigger issue. It became a very time-consuming comparison between the two providers in order to see how many years you would need to go back before the number of missing case citations hit 50. In the Casemaker 2.2 database there were found very few incorrect citation postings and, in a rare exception, a duplicated case. In Fastcase, there were a host of missing citations and duplicated cases; it became most alarming.

Casemaker has created a state-by-state comparison for 50 missing citations by state, and also says that they had identified over 100,000 missing citations within the Fastcase database between the years 2000 to 2009. Casemaker has declined to provide the complete lists for each state, saying that the complete list would be very valuable to Fastcase. Casemaker was initially going to provide 100 missing citations per state, but pulled back to 50, noting that, once the information is made public, Fastcase will quickly correct the liabilities in their database. Casemaker did state that under a limited nondisclosure agreement, they would provide the next missing 50 and each week following an additional 50 missing cases for the time period 2000 to 2009. Imagine if this analysis covered the longevity of the entire database (100+ plus years), instead of just the 10 years?

Casemaker and Fastcase are not a mirrored database, and there are clear and vast quality differences when choosing between the two providers.”

Fastcase Response

“Fastcase and Casemaker are both very good services, as Bob Ambrogi has pointed out in an independent, third-party review in Law Technology News. Both have traditionally updated pagination first from regional reporters (such as P.3d) and added parallel citations where necessary from state reporters. It’s an ongoing process for both services, and a process that is nearly complete for both — although the scope of the process is radically overstated by the above paragraphs from Casemaker.

It would be easy for us to derive the same list of missing citations for Casemaker, tit-for-tat. The errors and omissions in that service are legion. But we won’t. Picking their service apart would bepetty, and would demean us both, as well as the bar associations that we both work with. We won’t do it.

Instead, we will let the results speak for themselves. Bar association after bar association that compares both services — including thorough data quality comparisons — selects Fastcase as its partner. This recently has included the Oregon State Bar, which switched from Casemaker to Fastcase after an exhaustive evaluation – and they are thrilled with the change. No bar association has ever switched from Fastcase to Casemaker.

Instead of relying on Casemaker’s evaluation of both services (or even Bob Ambrogi’s), we invite state bar associations to conduct their own, independent evaluation. When they do, we’re confident they will conclude that both are valuable services — and then select Fastcase as their partner.”

Casemaker  Counter-Response
“The devil is always in the detail and we too recognize that there are two rather good but distinctly different research providers.LegalGeekery says, in a blog post on the FastCase iPhone app, that “Fastcase keeps subscription costs low by not hiring researchers to write summaries or manually cite check.” Casemaker invests heavily in quality review of case law and cites and has recently moved its headquarters to Charlottesville, Virginia to take advantage of the quality talents of employees and attorneys from the past Michie/Lexis Company. Fastcase’s Ed Walters mentions tit-for-tat and I so challenge Ed that if he can come up with 100 missing citations within Casemaker for the same time period and scope of coverage, I will give him his missing citation list of over 100,000 so that he can correct the errors in Fastcase. A note on Bob Ambrogi’s article of 8 months ago, which recognizes intuitiveness of the products and in which Bob later states that he did not do a deep dive into the content . . . we believe content dependability and integrity is first and foremost and this will remain our focus as a company.

We agree that bar associations should check for themselves and under a non-disclosure agreement, I am glad to provide the full missing list of Fastcase content for their evaluation. Ed asked the question “How is this evaluation/discussion productive?” My response is that it makes a value statement on the two services . . . Casemaker provides our clients with a high-quality product and traditionally at a higher cost than Fastcase. But make no doubt about it, the content quality and completeness is nowhere equaled.

We welcome competition for it will make both of our companies better . . . 

Casemaker added statutes and codes . . . Fastcase followed; 

Casemaker added customer support personnel and live training . . . Fastcase followed;

Fastcase added a mobile application for iPhone . . . this time Casemaker followed with a full mobile app for all devices and all data fields; 

Casemaker has added quality review staff and editorial services . . . Will Fastcase follow?

Warmest regards to a good friend and competitor, Ed . . . You do make us better, but we are not the same.”

It seems that the first ‘virtual shots’ have been fired in what might become the first big Internet War of the 21st Century.  According to reports from The Guardian this morning, it seems that Google has been hacked, presumably from the Chinese Government, and the bios of Google executives have been converted to Chinese.  Many of you may be thinking that this is kind of funny, or at least not very surprising given the fact that Google redirected its search engine away from the highly censored .CN version to the uncensored version in Hong Kong   earlier this week.  But for information professionals, this type of action by a Government against a corporation should sent some shivers up your spine.

There has been a saying in business for a number of years now – “The Network IS Your Business”.  And for information professionals, “The Internet IS Your Business”.  We’ve become very comfortable in abandoning local collections in favor of having them hosted remotely.  When access is cut off from the information, then work tends to come to a stoppage.  Think of the times that the Outlook Exchange Server went down and you found yourself and others roaming the hallways aimlessly until email was restored.

The uninterrupted access of information has become a core business process.  Many of us have Disaster Recovery (DR) plans that address issues of natural disasters (hurricanes, tornadoes, fire, etc.), but almost all of those are based on the assumption that the events will be localized and can be rolled over to other locations.  Now we have to worry about the potential for state sponsored cyber terrorism and assume that the information that we’ve become accustomed to accessing on-demand, may not be there. Just think, Google probably knew this attack was coming and couldn’t stop it.  Just one more issue for all of you on DR teams need to add to your plan.  Good Luck!!

Okay… stop laughing at the title.  There is a perception of law librarians as being too quite and sitting behind a reference desk waiting on someone to come us and ask a question that they can answer.  But, if you go to an SLA or AALL meeting, you’ll see a different side of law librarianship.  Librarians discussing the hot topics of the day ranging from vendor relationships to workplace rights and even social issues.  I’ve enjoyed sitting at round table discussions where law librarians have heated conversations about how they need to address the issues of staffing reductions, budget cuts, all while having to handle increased demands for the services they provide to their firms, courts, faculty or public users.  However, one firm director I know mentioned to me that law librarians tend to be preaching to the choir, but not doing much preaching to anyone else.  Her suggestion was that those in management positions in law libraries need to expand their professional circles and join at least one other, non-librarian, association in order to have an audience that they need to be preaching to.

One of the organizations that she suggested was the Association of Legal Administrators, but there are numerous organizations out there that would help expand your professional circles.  One determining factor may be to look at the professional organizations that your administrative leadership belongs to.  I happen to like ILTA because I know it is an organization that many of my fellow managers and directors belong to.  Attending these meetings, even if it is just on the local level, exposes me to other leaders in my organization, as well as peers in other firms that I would never see at a law library meeting.  There are probably dozens of other non-librarian associations that are out there that would help you expand your professional circle (feel free to add some suggestions in the comments if you have any favorites to share.)  One suggestion is to ask around at your organization to see if your organization has a blanket membership to professional organization (like mine does for ILTA… remember I’m cheap, so a free membership is something I’ll take advantage of every time!!)

These associations are in addition to your current librarian associations.  For those of you that don’t belong to any associations, or don’t contribute to the conversation of your current association… shame on you.  Remember, if you’re not involved in the conversation of the direction your profession is heading, then you can’t complain when others make those decisions for you.

I thought I’d do a follow up to last week’s post where I crowned Casemaker as the “King of State Case Law Coverage.”  There are two reasons behind the follow-up.  First, Nina Platt brought up an assumption that many people might have about state case law coverage and the idea that the vendor selected by the state’s bar association should have the most coverage.  Although you would think that would be the case, it actually turns out not to be so.  The second reason for the follow-up is that I just like playing with the maps feature in IBM’s Many Eyes program.

The first map is a listing of the main low-cost legal research providers and which one covers the most case law for each state.  The second map is a replay of the map we did a couple weeks ago on who is the official vendor for the bar association.  Since Casemaker and Fastcase are really the only big players in providing their resource through the state bar associations, a third map was created that did a head-to-head comparison of coverage between the two.