After years of listening to my friends tell me why they “looooovvveee” their Macs, and how it is “sooooo” much easier to use than a PC, and that I’m an idiot (not a Mac/PC issue apparently), I think I’m finally feeling some empathy for them. Not because I’m going to rush out after 20 years of using a PC, but because I went out traded in my old Windows Mobile 6.0 phone (BlackJack I on AT&T) and bought an Android phone (Samsung Moment on Sprint).  All of those times I had to listen to “when are they going to port that to Mac?” or “but my Mac can run that 50 times faster than your PC!” or “Geez, Greg… you’re a frickin’ idiot!!” (again, apparently not a Mac/PC issue), I’m saying the same thing to them about my Android versus their iPhones.

So, in the SmartPhone world, here’s the breakdown of how phones compare to computers:

  • iPhone = MS Windows
  • Android = Mac
  • Blackberries = Mainframes
  • Palm OS = Linux
  • Windows Mobile = OS/2
It’s like the SmartPhone version of Bizzaro World!!
Now, I’m the whiny person that’s going around checking off all the reasons why an Android is so much better than an iPhone (multitasking, better camera, not locked into AT&T, more memory (and expandable), open source, yada yada).  And what do I hear back from my friends???  “Dude, we got more Apps!!” and “Greg, you’re a frickin’ idiot!!” (you know, now that I think about it, I need nicer friends!).
Apps!! Apps!! It’s all about the apps. Which ticks me off until I remember that I have been using this same argument against my Mac friends for 20 years.  “Uh, that video editing software is really cool and all, but don’t you still have to go into your PC emulator to do some ‘real’ work??”  Seems that the chickens have come home to roost.  
Some call this new era of SmartPhone App development as the “Splinternet.” Now apps will have to be developed for multiple platforms (similar to video games) and it appears that we consumers are going to demand that businesses that develop apps now have to develop them across platforms in order to reach us on our SmartPhones.  What a nightmare this is going to be!!  
I’m only hoping that the talk Android getting Adobe Flash 10.1 later this year is true and that the iPhone (and it’s larger cousin iPad) refuse to integrate Flash into their product.  Then I will feel much better as I hold up my phone to my friends while it is playing the latest episode of Family Guy on Hulu (not because I watch it, but because I know they do), and then I walk away with my hands in the air and declare victory!! Even if this scenario never comes to fruition, I still know that my Mac Android is better than their PC iPhone.  And, that apparently can keep me going for years to come (or until my contract runs out.)
[gl]


Jim Hassett’s post on Keys to New Business finally put me over the top on the whole Loss Leader thing (Jim was actually quoting a lawyer – so these were not his words). In my AFA role I have seen numerous examples of low-ball bids from law firms desperate to get the work in the door. These deals are consistently referred to in the market as Loss Leaders.

What is a Loss Leader? Originally this term applied to advertising items at a price below the actual cost (thus the loss) to ‘lead’ customers into the store and sell them other products. One example of this is the car advertised with monthly payments of $229. There’s one car on the lot that with $4000 down you can have for that payment (subject to your credit). The car you actually want (and end up purchasing) has a $500 payment. This concept was eventually renamed more appropriately as the “Bait-and-Switch.”

The Loss Leader concept then evolved to include pricing certain commodity items at a loss, with the full intent of having the customer simultaneously purchase other, high-in-profit products to offset the loss. Grocery stores do this with eggs and milk, which are placed in the back of the store, forcing customers to pass by and pick up the high margin items.

So how are law firms actually treating the Loss Leader concept? By pricing the non-commodity, high-end stuff at a loss. I would argue that M&A deals and complex, large dollar litigation cases would not technically fall into a Loss Leader category. This is akin to the car dealer selling Escalades at a loss, hoping you’ll buy … maybe some nicer wheels? Law firms using this technique are expecting the customer to be so happy they come back next year and buy another Escalade – at full price. The likelihood of this: Zero.

What law firms are actually doing is getting into price cutting wars. And they will be much better off if that see it as such and treat it accordingly. In the words of Yogi Berra, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” We’re not going back to full rate deals. Smart firms will face up to that – dropping the whole Loss Leader charade.

Sticking to our recruiting theme for this week, I thought I’d address the issue of recruiting lateral partners.  According to Vivia Chen at The American Lawyer, during the first twelve months of the Great Recession there was a movement of “2,775 partners [who]  left or joined the biggest firms in the country.”  That’s a 10.7% increase from the previous twelve months, and a trend that many in the industry think will not slow down for some time to come.  Gone are the days where a firm brings in a first-year associate and grooms them to become a partner at the firm.  To borrow a baseball analogy, it seems that firms are bringing on partners through free-agency rather than through the farm system.  Sometimes that works out great, but many times the firms discover that this lateral partner looked a lot better on paper than he or she did in action.

I’ve been discussing this with a number of people lately and one of them said that in a market that is built upon recruiting talent from other firms, you have to be careful not to recruit the “third-stringers”.  By that, they mean that there are a number of lateral partners that are riding the coattails of others in their firm, getting their names on important matters, or assigned to important clients, but haven’t really done anything great on an individual basis.  This sort of thing happens in almost all industries.  Where you bring someone in during an interview, they look and sound great, have an impressive resume, tell you all of the people they’ve worked with and all the deals they’ve worked out, only to bring them on board and discover that they don’t quite live up to your expectations.  These third-stringers hint that they will have a number of people that will follow them to your firm and that the clients will jump ship from the previous firm and rush to bring all their legal business to your firm.  Six months after the lateral joins the firm, you look around and the only person that followed them was a secretary (whom you didn’t really need.)

So how do you avoid these third-stringers?  One answer I got said that you could cut through the smoke by asking just a few questions and watch how the potential lateral partner answers those questions.  When a potential lateral starts mentioning all the General Counsels (GC) they’ve worked with, ask this simple question – “Have you ever had [name of GC] over to your house for dinner?”  Watch to see the expression on their face.  If they answer ‘yes’, then see if they begin telling you about the experience, why they had dinner, and what their current relationship status is.  If they fumble around on this question, then perhaps their relationship isn’t as close as they are saying.

I also saw a series of questions posted on the Lateral Attorney Report back in November 2009. These are much more straight-to-the-point questions to back up the statements that the potential lateral partner has made.  Dan Binstock uses the phrase “narrow-pause” to define that period of time when the potential lateral is trying to conjure up an answer for which they were not prepared.  Questions like “How were your reviews?” or “Were you asked to leave your current firm?” and how they react to those questions can let you know if this is a quality lateral, or a third-stringer.

One thing you should probably keep in mind during this era of ‘free-agency recruiting’ is that all of those partners that you’ve managed to push out of your firm because they either didn’t fit the personality of the firm or didn’t create the book of business that he or she should have given their position, they usually wind up somewhere.  So, for all the times you thought “thank goodness we off loaded that partner”, or chuckled when you read on law.com that a peer firm “raided” one of your third-string partners, someone else might be chuckling and saying the same thing about that third-string partner you just brought in to your firm.
[gl]

I remember reading Thurgood Marshall’s comment of sitting in his first day of law school and hearing Charles Hamilton Houston tell the class “Look at the man on your right, took at the man on your left, and at this time next year, two of you won’t be here.”  This was an extreme version of the Harvard Law School (HLS) model of “Look to your left, look to your right, because one of you won’t be here by the end of the year.” Of course law schools, even Harvard Law School, no longer takes this extreme approach to teaching law school.  Now, it is a matter of doing well as an undergraduate, doing well on the LSAT, and having the funds to go to law school.  Law School administrations determined some time ago that raising the bar to get into law school creates an environment where there is no longer a need to dismiss one-third or two-thirds of your students in order to have graduates ready to enter the profession.  Not only that, but let’s face it, if law schools kicked out a third of its students most of them would go out of business.
When I read Toby’s post from yesterday on hiring the ‘C’ students, it got me to thinking about the type of first-year associates that firms hire and whether we should bring back the old HLS model for first years.  Imagine the situation where on the first day of starting a firm the associates were told by the Managing Partner that a third of you will not be here this time next year.  That would be a scary thought for most associates, perhaps preventing many from even taking a job with a firm if they knew that they might be cut after a year. It might, however, be the best thing that a law firm could do.  It could also open opportunities for graduates that would never be on a law firm’s radar. Perhaps the firm refers to this first year as a ‘clerkship’ thus creating a way for even those that get laid off to spin this as ‘experience’ rather than not making the cut at a firm.
My thoughts behind implementing the HLS system in first-year associate hires would go something like this:

  1. Cut your current associate wages by at least one-third.
  2. Hire one-third more associates than you planned. (This could get you some of those ‘C’ students that Toby mentioned.)
  3. Assign the associates to a group of partners that will mentor and monitor them throughout the first year.
  4. Set specific goals for the first year’s.  The goals should surround all facets of law firm life… traditional legal work (hours or projects worked), training (both mandatory and voluntary), research and writing skills, and pro-bono work, just to name a few.
  5. All first year attorneys would be ‘staff attorneys’, and would not be called ‘associates’, or put on ‘partnership’ track until after they make the cut at the end of the first year.  
  6. At the end of the first year, make a decision on who stays and who goes.
This is a harsh system, but one that would give more law school graduates a chance at not only landing a job right out of school, but would expose more potential associates to the firm, including some of those ‘C’ students that would have never been looked at before.  By letting the first year associates know that they are on a one-year probationary period, then they know they have to make an impression that first year or they will be finding themselves looking elsewhere.  Perhaps there would still be room for them as staff attorneys and not associates, or perhaps you just send them along their little way to seek employment elsewhere with a full year’s worth of experience and training that they may not have gotten anywhere else. In the end, the firm should have a better level of second year associates through the attrition of those that just didn’t match up to their competition.  
[gl]

A chance conversation with my AFA counter-part lead to a dialogue on the suitability of lawyer personalities to a successful law practice. In part, this was out an outcome of Lisa’s post on the sales skills of lawyers. In our conversation, we decided that to be truly successful these days a lawyer needs 1) Technical skills, 2) Leadership/Business skills and 3) Relationship (a.k.a. sales) skills. Without too much thinking, it’s obvious these are typically three distinct and mutually exclusive skill-sets. Finding a lawyer who has all three of these is rare at best (think Lisa’s super-model). Then our conversation turned to law schools and the types of personalities and skills they are designed to attract and build. One of my favorite quotes on this subject is from a law school dean, “We are academic institutions, not vocational schools.” Which is to say, law schools focus exclusively on technical skills. And even then, it’s more on the academic side of technical skills – and not much of hands-on, practical skills. And what’s worse, when law firms recruit from law schools, they want only the best … technicians. As we talked through this subject it became apparent this is yet another aspect of the profession that needs to change. In the past, legal technical skills were all that was needed to succeed. But now in the days of price competition and utilizing what everyone else calls a “business model,” firms need broader skill-sets from their partners. Harry S. Truman said “The ‘C’ students run the world.” The gist of that statement in our context is that C students are the ones with the relationship skills. For them school wasn’t about getting the best grade. Beyond learning, it was about enjoying the people you met. These C students are the ones that make business happen It’s their relationship skills that get and keep clients and make the business a success. Firms recruiting at law schools might want to keep this concept in mind. The Law Review students may make the best technical lawyers, but they likely won’t be the ones that will drive the success of your firm. Perhaps George W. Bush said it best. “To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you, too, can be president of the United States.”

As I mentioned yesterday, a group of bloggers traveled to ThomsonReuters (TR) in Eagan, Minnesota earlier this week to get a first-hand look at WestlawNext (WLN) and talk with the Project Cobalt team, meet briefly with TR’s CEO of Legal, Peter Warwick, and discuss the the functionality of WLN with Westlaw’s Reference Attorney staff. There are a number of articles that are out from other bloggers that a range of issues from Lisa Solomon’s discussion of Product & Pricing; Jason Eiseman’s video interview of myself me, Tom Boone and Jason Wilson; Robert Ambrogi’s discussion of West Search functionality; Betsy McKenzie’s view of WLN from an academic perspective; Ken Adam’s survey on CALR value in contract drafting; David Bilinsky’s Top 10 list about WLN, and; Simon Chester’s discussion of WLR from a Canadian perspective. I wanted to take a different approach and talk about the back-end structure of the new West Search Engine and how they have used Knowledge Management theories to create an algorithm that looks to be much better than the current Westlaw.com search results.
WestSearch – Leveraging 100+ Years of Knowledge
Westlaw has compiled millions of pieces of value-added information through editorial analysis of its research attorneys, but that information has been compartmentalized into individual databases and has had a slow transition from the traditional print uses of this information to the computer database search engines. Even when West created KeyCite as a competitor to Shepard’s, it was pretty much still a stand-alone citation system that added-value to the individual cases and statutes, but not really a great enhancement to how searchers retrieved results from their searches.
WestSearch
Now WLN has finally seen the value of four distinct products/processes that not only help as individual value-added products, but actually determine search results rankings, pushing better results to the top based on past knowledge rather than by simple algorithms of term location or dates. Here are the four products/processes that now affect the ranking of search results:
1. West’s Key Number System
2. KeyCite Citation System
3. West’s Secondary Catalog
4. User Searches & Resulting Actions
The first three categories are really no brainers when it comes to leveraging related pieces of ‘information’ on a similar topic. Now, instead of just getting results that have a term frequency that matches the words in my search query, WLN literally runs an algorithm of over 60 queries that determine alternative words that may apply to my search, top cited resources on that topic, and resources that are deemed to be authoritative through secondary resources. I like the fact that the Project Cobalt team stuck to the term “algorithm” and shied away from “artificial intelligence” (although Peter Warwick did let the AI term slip in his talk.)
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the change in algorithm of WestSearch is number four – “User Searches & Resulting Actions.” This is something that those of us interested in improving Knowledge Management resources see as the holy grail of KM. If we could create a system that leveraged the experience of everyone in our firm in a way that allows our KM tool to become “smarter” we’d jump at that chance. From what I saw, it looks as if WestSearch is making a strong run at making their search algorithm smarter through adapting results based on previous users key actions. In a way this is crowdsourcing on a very high level.
Crowdsourcing the Researchers
I’m a fan of crowdsourcing, and of knowledge management. Combining the two is like putting peanut butter and chocolate together and coming up with a two great things that work well together. WestSearch crowdsources the WLN users by monitoring key actions after the search results are returned. WestSearch takes actions like ‘print’, ‘save’, ‘folder’, and ‘view’ that a searcher performs and logs that information for future reference. If another researcher runs a similar search later, the actions from the previous users is taken into account and the results are influenced by those previous user actions to potentially rank items higher or lower in the results list. The thoughts behind leveraging previous user actions against search results is that the ‘crowd’ will tend to identify and use the same documents when searching specific legal issues. When pressed on this, the Cobalt team said that actions like ‘print all’ or ‘save all’ are not logged because they are looking for specificity over generality. Also, because it is a ‘crowd’ based view, the law student that doesn’t understand the issue and picks less valuable documents will have little influence because the majority of the crowd will choose the ‘best’ documents over and over again, thus improving the algorithm.
What’s the Future?
It will be interesting to watch as this rolls out and WLN adds more and more databases to the system. I will be really interested to see what happens when the “news” portion is integrated and how that will affect the WestSearch algorithm on ‘new’ or ‘hot’ topics that pop up from time to time. I look forward to watching this approach of leveraging existing knowledge in an advanced algorithm to see if it does get ‘smarter’ over time. I’ll also be interested in seeing if WLN can improve its existing West km product (which will still work with WLN), and the ‘foldering’ features that could actually make WLN an additional in-house KM resource.
[gl]
I just got back from ThomsonReuters HQ in Eagan, Minnesota (or as I like to call it – The Coldest Place on Earth!!) I met up with a group of great bloggers and legal publishers like Jason Wilson, Lisa Solomon, Tom Boone, Jason Eiseman, Carolyn Elefant, David Bilinsky and many more. I’m currently compiling all my notes, asking for screen shots, and drafting my response to the WestlawNext product and should have something for you tomorrow. However, there are two things that I wanted to share with you while I’m getting that post ready:
  1. My post on January 8th (the one I pulled down because they told me it was full of factual errors) wasn’t very far off the mark (and I was a little miffed that the Project Cobalt team made all of us sign a CDA and then gave “exclusive” interviews to the ABA Journal and the NY Times about the product. But, the CDA has expired and you’ll now see great things from those of us that took the trip to Eagan to talk with the Cobalt team. [Note: my apologies to Bob Ambrogi for listing him earlier, he was under the same CDA, but was notified it was lifted before he posted yesterday.]
  2. This one is actually funny. When I get back to the office this morning, I see a package from ThomsonReuters that looks a little… shall I say, weird, and a little beat-up. When I look inside the package (which was supposed to be some Louisiana resource materials) I find horseshoes. Now, I’ve gotten a lot of SWAG from the folks at ThomsonReuters in the past (see all those calendars behind the horseshoes…) but this was probably the best! Not only were they horseshoes, but they were used horseshoes to boot!! Nails and dirt and probably horse sh… er poop all ground in the grooves. I’m assuming that this ‘package’ got misdirected by the USPS, because the package had obviously been opened before it arrived at my office. So, I’m thinking this was someone’s idea of a joke… at least, I hope this wasn’t the calling card from someone up at ThomsonReuters…. or was it???

[gl]

As I like to say to my colleagues, making partner at a law firm is no longer the guaranteed “tenured-like” position. In the not so distant past, if an associate was able to make partner and through the good-old-boy network find some sizeable clients, he could count on sitting back and enjoying the fruits of his labor and get by with taking the client out to lunch every once in a while. Well, if no one has figured it out by now, those days are long gone. Now, you gotta hustle. And, I am sorry to say, most lawyers are not predisposed to hustling. First of all, they don’t dance (did anyone get this joke?).
Most lawyers go to law school because they—and I apologize for any stereotyping here but I can be semi-excused since I am a lawyer—are bookworms who either like to study and/or argue. It is the rare exception that was one of the popular kids in high school. If anything he or she was probably doing these kids’ homework for them. So here these lawyers are—in the 2000s and facing a continued recession—and their partnership is telling them not only do you have to practice law, “you have to go out and drum up business.” Or else. Well, I am sorry to say, most of these guys just don’t have it in them. It is no slight to them. It is just a personality thing. You wouldn’t want an extrovert handling your funeral or an introvert planning your wedding. And lawyers, typically the studious types who either love examining proxy disclosures or holding forth on their latest court battles, are not very skilled at up-selling their professional services. Hey, I could be wrong. I have met a few anomalies—lawyers who are great marketers. But these lawyers are usually freaks of nature. Kinda like super-models. But the pressure on these guys to be someone they are not can be excruciating and, dare I say, down-right cruel. How would you like to be told, I know I hired you to be a hair dresser and all you have ever trained to do is to be a hair dresser but now have to be a heart surgeon and I don’t care if you don’t know how, you still have to do it. I think every single one of us would be terrified. My suggestion? Hire people who are skilled business developers, people who make a living every day selling professional services, to help lawyers identify and close business deals. Let them sit at the table and be a part of the conversation. Believe me, in this market, it is going to get worse before it gets better. And since law schools are still not attracting kids with these skill sets or teaching them how to develop them, these business development skills are becoming more important than ever before.

Last week I gave a presentation to the Houston Chapter of the AMA (on a side note – legal marketers would be wise to reach outside the LMA). After the presentation a couple of marketers from the oil industry were sharing recession stories and asked how law firms were doing. The presumption was that work is down at BigLaw just as it is every where. However, as I was explaining the situation at BigLaw it occurred to me we’re in a one-two punch situation. Yes – the downturn has slowed down the amount of work. But I think a bigger impact is coming from the shift in client attitude. We’re seeing a strong shift to a buyers’ market. And that shift is magnified for a few reasons. First, in-house clients haven’t experienced power like this before. In the old days (a year ago) they would be afraid a BigLaw firm might not represent them if they pushed on price. This is no longer the case. Clients are reveling in this new found power, and in many cases taking it to the extreme. Low-ball pricing is becoming an everyday occurrence. Second – standing behind the client flexing this muscle is the Purchasing Department. They have entered the legal pricing game in full-force. And these people are paid to flex their cost-cutting muscles on a daily basis. So maybe what we really have is a one-two-two punch to the gut. The bottom-line is that on top of dealing with the recession, BigLaw is in its first heavy buyers’ market situation. And this situation looks to be one that will endure for some time. Now – you might think if you’re not in BigLaw you’re not impacted by all this. Think again. When pressures push prices down at the top of the market, those pressures filter down through-out the market. If Mercedes starts selling their cars for $30k, Ford will be forced to move its prices down too. As I laid this theory out in a ‘thinking out loud’ conversation with my oil industry friends, the impact of the one-two punch really came home. I saw it in the eye of my colleagues. I was getting that “STBY” look from them.


As many readers of the 3 Geeks know, I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to security. And due to my materials being due last week for TECHSHOW, I’ve decided to weigh in on the iPhone versus Blackberry (BB) debate. Although iPhone gets all the buzz these days (including numerous comments on its lack of security) I still think Blackberry is the smarter choice – especially for lawyers.

As I like to tell my two sons who have iPhones – “My blackberry will do any of the gee-whiz stuff your iPhones will do … only slower. And when it comes to email and calendaring (the core applications for lawyers) I’ll whip your little butts.”

After my recent research on the latest and greatest on the various smart-phone platforms, the BB comes out on top for lawyers for two primary reasons. 1 – BBs focus on the core uses for lawyers. And, 2 – As a mature technology, BBs are stable and more importantly, secure.

Although BB doesn’t have the sheer volume of apps iPhone has, it does have the ones that matter. A quick stroll through App World shows many useful tools, including legal-specific apps like time-keeping. On the versatility side, BBs come in every size, shape and form. You can chose from a flip phone Pearl to the new Storm 2 touch screen. iPhone comes in one form factor.

I will say this for iPhone, Droid, Palm and Windows Mobile; if they figure out how to live behind the firewall and polish up their security and stability, BB will be in for a real fight

So … although my boys can find the closest Starbucks much faster than I can, I’ll stay productive and secure on my BB. Perhaps the technologies reflect the relative generational perspectives. The boys want fun, blingy stuff. And I want something that’s a functional work-horse and drives the bottom line.

[OMG – that made me sound old. Well … unlike my boys I can actually afford Starbucks.]