First Thought: Honestly – who would actually read a book on such a tiny screen?

Reality: Chapter 23 and counting …

As soon as they announced the Kindle for Blackberry (BB) was available (for free for all you Greg wannabes) I promptly went to download it. Once I figured out I needed to use the Blackberry Browser, the download went smooth and quick.

Next I signed up for an Amazon account. I wish that had gone as smoothly. I had to do that on the laptop instead of the BB and it took a few frustrating tries to get it done.

Moving right along, I was able to easily surf and search the book list on my BB and found a freebie book to try it out. The pages obviously are short on the BB screen, however it’s easy to adjust the font size to meet your eyesight needs.

I started out quite skeptical about the value of this, but had some time to kill on a flight to Ohio. When the plane landed I was on Chapter 9. It was such a good experience – that evening I picked it up again and continued reading. Now it’s my current ‘night stand’ book.

Judgment: Kindle for Blackberry works much better than expected (even off-network) and doesn’t burn a lot of battery. Feel free to share any Kindle book recommendations, as I plan to keep using this.

Well, if you’re going to plunk down a cool million dollars to have your website redesigned, you might as well make sure you make it ugly, and slow. Apparently, that had to be the goal of the Morrison Foerster (AKA MoFo) website redesign.

I actually spotted this a few weeks ago and sent it around to some friends of mine for their feedback.  The usual comments were “Good Lord!! What were they thinking???” and “Oh my… as soon as I got on it, I couldn’t wait to get out!” But the universal comment was “God, it is so slow!!”

Never mind the fact that it looks like whoever they paid to design the website appeared to be “print media experts” and not web designers, this site loads like it is running on an old 486 processor.  Why on earth would a site that is basically two colors, run so slow??

I went to IWebTool.com to see if it was really as slow as I thought by comparing it to some other law firm websites.  Sure enough, it was.  On average it took over 1.5 seconds to load the initial webpage.  Click on some of the links and it sometimes took 3 seconds to load.  When I compared it to Skadden’s website, or DLA Piper, the MoFo site was significantly slower.  Skadden’s and DLA Piper loaded 1kb of data in .05 seconds or less compared to MoFo’s site taking 1.26 seconds.  That’s means it takes MoFo 25 times longer to load the page!!

MoFo may want to go back to the drawing board on this one.  Maybe they have a money-back guarantee from whoever convinced them to go with this design.

For a brief moment I thought that the folks over at Bracewell & Giuliani had a competitive advantage over the rest of us.  When scanning the titles of the Bracewell’s “People Search“, it appears that Bracewell has someone with the grand title of “Master of Everything“.  Unfortunately, it turns out that the position is currently vacant.  That’s too bad.  I’d have really like to have gotten to know this person and ask them what is the meaning of life.

It actually reminds me of a position I applied for around 10 years ago.  They were looking for a “Director of Knowledge” position at the time. I joked with some friends that the position reported directly to God. Seems they’ve upgraded that position since then!!

On the plane ride back from New York, I came across this little gem of a mixed message, so I snapped a picture of it.  Smoking on domestic flights has been banned since the late 80’s, but the ‘resources’ still remain.  Twenty-plus years later, here is a sign explaining to use the ashtray, right above an actual ashtray, right above a sign telling you that smoking is not allowed.

The existentialist part of my brain kicked in and I started wondering what process the airlines took to come to such a mixed message.  Perhaps they just said that it would be cheaper to slap a no-smoking, “Ghost Busters” style sticker on the door rather than remove the original smoking sticker, and replace the ashtray with a dummy insert.  Then I started thinking more diabolically.  Maybe the airlines and the FAA split the fines when people are caught smoking or tampering with the silly smoke detector in the lavatory. Place the picture of a lit cigarette carefully above the temptation of an ashtray might be too much for a smoker to resist.  Heck, I was thinking how cool it would be to have a smoke at 38,000 feet, and I’ve never been a smoker!!  I even got Samuel L. Jackson’s voice stuck in my head saying “Ashtrays on a mother[blog edit] plane!!”  Then I got to thinking of how many times I’ve heard of passengers getting caught smoking on a plane.Since I couldn’t think of one specific incident I’ve ever heard of, my diabolical side gave up and I just decided it was probably just plain laziness and cheapness on behalf of the airline industry that created such a mixed message.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably asking yourself what does ashtrays on a plane have to do with law firms, libraries, technology or anything else I normally write about?  Truth be told… not much. I’m pretty sure that you can think of a number of mixed messages the legal industry (especially large firms) put out.  Such as buying high dollar legal research tools with the hopes of recovering that cost from our clients.  Or, how about the whole idea of putting out annual announcements of revenue and profits with the hopes that clients will be impressed with how much we charge and how large our profit margins are?  Makes my existentialist/diabolical side start wondering if clients are talking about our ‘mixed messages’ in the same way I just describe the airplane lavatory ashtray.  Now that I think about it… I bet they are.

I attended a wonderful conference in New York yesterday (and am subsequently writing this post from LaGuardia airport during a snowstorm and hoping to make it back to Houston today.)  The Ark Group/Managing Partner Magazine’s 4th Annual “Best Practices & Management Strategies for Law Firm Library & Information Service Centers” focused on topics ranging from Libraries getting back into Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives, unique ways to enhance research training techniques, to high-level management skills needed in today’s large global firms.  As you can see from the topics, you probably guessed that this conference was focused on the BigLaw environment.

There were a few comments made yesterday that I thought were worth sharing:

  • Law firm librarians that are just reactive in their services won’t be here in 10 years.
  • Remember that analysis and adding value to the information you provide is the new mission critical model for Libraries and KM.
  • Libraries and KM need to help integrate the ‘practice of law’ and the ‘business of law’.
  • Taxonomies are important to enterprise research.  Don’t just expect your lawyers to research using the “Google” method.
  • Upwards to 80% of attorneys use Westlaw or Lexis, but almost 100% of them use Google when conducting legal research.

The presenters were excellent, and gave us all some insights on some of the projects they have managed.  Steve Lastres of Debevoise presented on how Libraries must get back in the Knowledge Management initiatives.  I have mentioned before that I thought that if IT keeps completely managing KM initiatives, that KM would slowly die a painful death.  Although Lastres didn’t come out and say it that bluntly, he did think that over the past few years that KM suffered from the lack of ‘creativity’ and ‘understanding’ that most IT departments don’t have.  In a very polite way, we were told that KM needs a blending of the IT and Information Services groups in order to succeed.  IT provides the plumbing (infrastructure), and Information Services provide ways to improve the overall process and results of KM initiatives.  Julie Bozzell of Hogan & Hartson aptly reminded us that human intervention in KM is critical, and that KM is not all about IT (to which I said “Amen!!”)  Alirio Gomez of Milbank, Tweed mentioned that Libraries and KM initiatives should remember that the facilitation of the information should not end with the user, but rather the users should be enabled to share that information with others after he or she receives it.

Not all way peaches and cream on the Knowledge Management front, however.  There were a couple of comments made throughout the day that showed the cracks that are in the KM foundation at law firms.  One of the most telling comments was when a couple of people mentioned that when they work on KM initiatives, they do not mention the phrase “KM” or “Knowledge Management” to their attorneys.  KM has suffered from being viewed as an “IT Project” where the goal is to “complete the project, and check it off the list.”  The other telling comment was that when Jean O’Grady from DLA Piper surveyed the firm’s associates, 33.5% of the attorneys didn’t even know that the firm had a KM resources at all.  In addition to this, almost another 16% said that they didn’t use KM resources because they had bad experiences with them or didn’t understand what those projects did.  So, it sounds like KM might need to repair its image within the firm.
[Note: My apologies to Jean O’Grady for leaving out her name when I initially posted.]

Librarians are also struggling to ‘prove their worth’ within the firms and trying to figure out the best way to add value while at the same time reduce overhead costs (whether that cost is subscriptions or salaries.)  Gitelle Seer of Dewey & LeBoeuf reminded the audience that the library should be ever vigilant in teaching attorneys and researchers the most cost effective methods of legal research.  I actually got to expand this by demonstrating how to use research capturing resources like Research Monitor or others we reviewed here to make researchers better by exposing them to how they currently conduct research.  The library can potentially bring enormous value to practice groups by identifying trends in how they conduct research, and potentially working with the groups to produce practice checklists or best practices documents.

It was interesting listening to comments mentioning some important aspects of the law firm environment that tend to get ignored.  For example, Jean O’Grady mentioned that in the past most firms didn’t worry about what was going on during the ‘non-billable’ time as long as there was plenty of ‘billable time’ on the books.  In other words, when times are good, firms didn’t exactly work to become more efficient.  However, as I’ve mentioned in previous post, the time of passing costs on to clients is a business goal that cannot be maintained. Cost recovery is still a business goal of firms (and will be for the foreseeable future), but if your firm’s cost recovery goal is “don’t loose money,” then you need to seriously rethink that goal.

As I mentioned earlier, Librarians are constantly being asked to prove their worth to the firm.  It seems that the universal consensus amongst the group was that in order to do that, you have to have “The Metrics” to back it up.  At first I was excited, but then I realized they said “The Metrics” and not “The Matrix”.  Proving ROI and overall value to the powers-that-be in a law firm means that you need statistics and solid numbers backing your department.  This isn’t a new game in the library world, but it may be the most important one that you at least know the rules to.  The library management team should also understand what data needs to be captured in order to make the metrics mean something to others.  Specifically it was mentioned that there are certain pieces of information that is needed for cost recovery, and that the information may be different from client to client.  If the information isn’t captured at the library level, that cost may not be recoverable at the finance level.  The other hint was that librarians need to work closely with vendors and leverage that relationship to realize better cost recovery methods.

It was nice listening to what others are doing during this time of significant change that is affecting the law firm environment.  It wasn’t a giant pity-party at all. Instead it was a rather valuable insights into a few of the great minds of the large law firm libraries.  Listening to how others handle similar challenges is a great motivator for the participants to go back and modify what they learned to their own situation.  I hope I get a chance to attend the 5th annual conference next year… this time without the giant snowstorm!!

Have you heard of Mint.com? If you haven’t, its an online budgeting tool that tracks your accounts, loans, investments and assets online. I have been testing it out to see how well it rides for personal use. Then I got to wondering about how it would work for a virtual law office. Owned by Intuit, the same company that runs TurboTax, you can count on it for privacy, security and good sense (little pun there …). With its account notifications, transaction lists, budgeting capabilities and trending information, I think it is a natural fit. One of my favorite features is the trending information. The site grabs an entire month’s transactions, which has been categorized for you, and creates either a pie chart or a columned-graph to show you where your money’s gone. The transactions list works like an online check register. Mint.com makes an intuitive guess as to how a transaction should be categorized–it is pretty good. But sometimes it is way off.
A good example is when I bought concert tickets from the Toyota Center. Mint.com categorized the ticket purchase as an auto expense (Toyota) when it more accurately should have been categorized as an entertainment expense.
If you don’t like how a line item is categorized, it is easy to change to pre-set categories or to a custom category. You can also split a transaction like you can on Quicken and other finance software; for instance, if you wrote a check to your printer, you can split amount into half towards your non-profit work and the other half to your business.
You can also indicate that a transaction should be flagged for tax purposes. Plus, since it is an Intuit product, you know it will dove-tail nicely with Turbo Tax. But the last and, coolest feature of Mint.com are the e-mail notifications. I love these! Mint.com will give you a heads up when you are getting within a certain percent of spending your budget in any given category, when you are over-budget in a category, when a deposit shows up. Sometimes it lags by about 24 hours but it is still a really nice feature. And with the budgeting tool, you can set up any type of budget for continuing education, business travel, etc. So, although the site is intended for personal use, I think the site would be perfectly adaptable for business purposes.
Just think, if you have PayPal, Mint.com and TurboTax all working together you may never have to step foot into a bank again.
That in itself is worth the price.
By the way, did I mention Mint.com was free?

One of the ideas behind hiring consultants is that they bring experience and expertise into your organization and help guide you to where you need to go.  Many times, however, we end up using consultants to verify what we already know, but cannot get others within the organization to trust in our decisions.  Sometimes we come out of meeting with consultants and tell each other things like “see, we’re not that far off.”

Of course consultants also give us a view of ourselves without the veil of our internal biases.  Sometimes it is good to hear someone ask us “why are you doing that?”  If the answer is “because we’ve always done it that way” then it gives us a chance to either justify our processes, or be made aware of the bad processes so that they can either be changed or eliminated.

Consultants can also be a wall that we can throw spaghetti at and see what sticks. Sometimes the consultants are the ‘spaghetti throwers’ by making suggestions that we may not have thought of on our own.  It is this quality that exposes the previous experience and expertise that we want our consultants to bring to the table.  Many times the spaghetti slides off of the wall, but sometimes it sticks and gives us a fresh approach on how to solve a problem or accomplish a goal.

I had mentioned in my projections for 2010 that this would be a great year to be a consultant.  Because so many of us need to make changes (sometimes make dramatic changes) to how we conduct business in a recovering economy, having a consultant come in and vet our approach to achieving our goals may be money well spent.
[gl]

With all of the fuss surrounding the launch of new premium legal research tools and the increased pricing, or ‘modest premium’, that comes with these resources, it got me to thinking whether a practicing attorney really needs to use one of the Wexisberg products in order to practice law.  I’m sure there are thousands of attorneys that don’t have subscriptions to these services, but my social and professional circle doesn’t seem to cross paths with these attorneys. I think this is a serious question, and I’d love it if someone has examples of attorneys that practice without specifically subscribing to either Westlaw or LexisNexis.

As far as I know there is no State Bar requirement or ethics opinion that says specifically that not using Westlaw or LexisNexis constitutes a violation of professional responsibility.  One can still Shepardize cases the old fashion way (hopefully your county law library still subscribes to the print version.)  And, although the theory behind having Westlaw or LexisNexis is that it makes your legal research easier, there is also the perception that not having such a tool exposes you to malpractice issues.  But does that perception match up with reality?

Let’s say that instead of spending thousands of dollars for Westlaw or LexisNexis (or Bloomberg), how about if I rely solely on one of the more basic research tools?  In Texas, one of the benefits of being a member of the bar is having access to “Free Legal Research”.  Any problems with an attorney relying upon this service as his or her sole source of online legal research?  Are you already doing this??
[gl]

Two recent blog posts (when combined) make for an excellent observation (indirectly) on the ability of the legal market to compare pricing at the fee level -and not the hourly rate level. I have previously made the point about a how market transition from rate pricing to fee pricing makes sense. Clients have no market price for fees to use in evaluating pricing. But this shift to fee-level price comparison has to start somewhere. By combining the lesson of the two blog posts, you see this happening. Jay Shepherd points out that savings for a law department won’t come from discounted rates. He instead suggests “open pricing” which is another way to say “not by the hour.” His three options for saving on fees are: 1- Buy less, 2 – Buy cheaper, or 3 – Use open pricing. The point to take from this is that clients should look at the whole fee (in terms of his open price) instead of evaluating price at the hourly rate level. The second post (article really) explores how Levi Straus went to 100% AFAs. Fees for 2010 were “determined by a review of historical spending trends and planned work for 2010.” They looked at the legal work they bought last year and how much they paid. Then they projected how much work they would need in 2010. Levi Straus figured it out. They evaluated their legal spend at the fee level instead of the rate level. This is easier said than done. For one thing, you have to free yourself from the ‘hours equal value’ mindset and trust your approach. Levi Straus is not asking for hourly bills to make sure they guessed right. Instead their GC states: “My internal lawyers are the most valuable asset I have, and I felt they should be spending their time creating strategic advantages for the business instead of managing outside counsel.” Perhaps its just me seeing trends I am looking for, but I believe these two posts together demonstrate both the value and the ability to move away from the hourly rate pricing market. Clients can function in a world where they evaluate prices at the fee level. With this fee-level pricing market emerging, more and more clients will feel comfortable comparing price at this level. This will put them in a much better position to manage their legal costs going forward.

Toby and I have talked to a lot of folks about the profits that legal research vendors (AKA Wexisberg™) make and how they are lagging indicators during a down economy.  Mostly because they have locked firms into multi-year contracts –some with built in annual increases.  It seems that our thought were verified today when LexisNexis’ parent company announced it had a “Robust” 2009.  Sales were up 14% and operating profits 13%.  Not too bad in a year that had most of its customers scrambling to slash budgets as much as possible.  Not as good as those 30% profits that ThomsonReuters are claimed to have, but not too shabby.
There were two things that caught my attention with this announcement.  First was the funny comment I saw on Twitter:

And second was the ‘corporate-ese’ that backed up Toby and my beliefs that they are lagging indicators in a down economy.  Take a look at this sentence attributed to Reed Elsevier’s Chairman, Anthony Habgood:

“The late cycle nature of some of our markets makes for a tough environment in 2010.”

How could you not love a phrase like “late cycle nature”???  I’m definitely saving up that phrase for my next contract negotiations!
[gl]