I remember in the period following 9/11, I was making a killing on eBay.

I don’t mean to sound crass or opportunistic. It is just the truth.

I remember sitting on my couch for days, tethered to our newly bought television (not so fortuitously purchased on 9/10) and drenched in the despair and sadness of our country.

And something made me look at my newly opened eBay account. I couldn’t believe it. People were buying up a storm. Buying crazy stuff for insane prices.

Remember that time? People were afraid to leave their houses. Afraid to go to malls. People were just afraid.

Fear does funny things to people. Some people lock themselves in their house. Some people shop. Some people do both.

I watched in fascination as I saw the backlash of 9/11 on eBay. It created what I will call the “fly or buy” mentality.

And I am seeing this again today.

People are afraid in this economy. Maybe even more afraid than they were after 9/11. Because today this “economy thing” is so much more personal. The fear is palpable: anyone can be let go for any reason at any time. People’s sense of security is non-existent.

So what do people do when they are afraid? They spend money–the “Fly or Buy Phenomenon” rises like a phoenix in the ashes of our country’s woes.

I saw it over and over again when I worked in retail. Who do you think goes shopping during the day? You would be surprised. More often than not, when I was working at antique stores and retail shops, half of my customers were unemployed. I would hear them tell me, “I shouldn’t be buying anything right now. But I am going on an interview today/tomorrow/next week/sometime soon o I should be ok.”

It is human nature: when you are afraid and insecure you need to have something, hold something, be something to get that confidence back.

So what does this have to do with legal marketing, you ask? Fear is a very strong motivator when motivating someone to purchase legal services. I learned this a long time again when I was an AG. You want to negotiate to win? Scare the crap out of opposing counsel and your client.

In fact, my philosophy for all marketing efforts? Incite the seven deadly sins because underneath it all is the core feeling of fear. If I can scare someone into needing legal services then I have succeeded. Diabolical? Yes. But too often true. Human nature being what it is, scare tactics are often required to motivate individuals into doing what they need to do. And this even more true when dealing with the sale of legal services.

Sure, legal marketers dress it up and make it look like a Tiffany’s gift box. But inside, once you peel back the tissue paper and open the velveteen jewelry box, inside lies a poison ring. You have a legal problem? Don’t want to face it? We can make it all better for you …

What’s that famous Jack Nicholson line I love so much?

“Truth? You can’t handle the truth”

Elaine Dockens, Library Director for Tressler LLP in Chicago, collected survey information from a small group of law firm librarians regarding their firms’ policies on computer usage. The 27 law librarians that took the survey help give us some insights on what is, and what is not acceptable usage as defined by the law firm IT or computer usage committees.

Listed below are some of Elaine’s results. She will have a more complete survey report later in October. That survey will include a number of comments made by the law librarians that explain some of the reasons for the policies implemented by the firm. We’ll put a link to that final report when it becomes available. I look forward to seeing the full report.

Question Yes No
Law Firm attempted to control computer use 20 7
Law Firm had different rules for different groups 10 17
Law Firm had an Acceptable Use Policy 24 3
Law Firm blocked porno and gambling sites 14 13
Law Firm blocked specific URLs 7 20
Law Firm blocks personal email 6 21
Law Firm blocks Social Networks 8 19
Law Firm blocks Streaming Media 9 18
Personal email used for Law Firm business 5 22
Social Networks used for Law Firm business 13 14
Streaming Media used for Law Firm business 9 18

According to the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics survey on what companies are doing with social networking compliance, there are over 50% of companies that either do not have a social networking policy for their employees to follow, or do not know if they do. After running across a couple of law firm client alerts on this very topic, I thought I’d take a quick look and build an ad hoc bibliography on what attorneys at major law firms are saying lately on this topic. [Big thanks to MyCorporateResource.com for helping track down a few of these]

What are the best practices for companies in creating and implementing policies regarding their own and their employees’ use of social networking sites and Internet forums?

In light of the clear and significant increase in both the number of employees using social networking sites and the amount of time spent by employees on such sites, employers must consider whether a policy on such conduct is appropriate. The content, application, and tone of a social networking or related policy, of course, will differ depending on the employer and its preferred approach to human resources/employee relations issues. Additionally, as with any policy, an employer should only adopt a social networking or related policy if it is prepared to police and enforce the policy, and do so consistently among all employees.

Employees might make that assumption if the employer does not have any policy addressing Internet use generally or social media use in particular, or if a general Internet policy permits incidental non-business use of the employer’s Internet access. An employer can defeat the assumption without blocking access to social media sites by specifically informing employees in a policy that use of the employer’s electronic resources to access social media sites for non-business purposes is prohibited.

The Internet is an invaluable tool for companies but also can work against them. Employees use blogs and social networking sites and engage in other Internet-related activities to vent frustrations to the public detriment of employers. Employees who post information may raise copyright or trademark infringement issues and even put their employers at risk.

Hogan & Hartson (9/24/09) – Navigating Social Media in the Business World

Entities who have not yet adopted a social media policy need to realize that many of their employees are already using social media, possibly at work, and in ways that intersect with their professional life. Some companies have tried to rein in social media use. Others have accepted the inevitability of social media in the workplace and are guiding the interactions with carefully developed policies. Some entities will go further, encouraging certain employees to become Web 2.0 representatives of the company. It should always be clear to employees when they may identify themselves as representatives of the company. When participation is at the behest of the company, the employee must understand and learn to distinguish between communications that are the employee’s own and those that are official communications from the company. The employee then must clarify that distinction in public communications.

McDermott Will & Emery (9/09) – Heard on the Tweet (CFO Magazine)

David Cifrino was cited in a September 2009 CFO Magazine story about companies that use the Twitter social networking site for communication. He urged the creation of effective policies that clearly state who has authority to speak on behalf of companies, particularly publicly held ones that are subject to Regulation FD’s requirements about disclosing material, non-public information. Mr. Cifrino suggested that, given the potential liability of disclosure problems, companies should only use Twitter if there is a compelling business reason for doing so.

Protect your organization from Fair Labor Standards Act claims and lawsuits from non-exempt employees by implementing wage and hour policies and practices that conform with federal and state wage and hour laws. Moreover, in this down economy, learn about what your organization can do to prevent non-exempt employees from working overtime.

The surging popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others creates a host of legal issues for employers. Many employers have already adopted policies governing social networking by employees on company computers, on company time. But what are the risks arising from an employee’s social networking activities after hours?

[I]n addition to the invasion of privacy and Stored Communications Act claims at issue in the Pietrylo case, employers should also be aware of other potential legal concerns that could arise in the context of social media in the workplace, including state “off-duty conduct” statutes, federal anti-discrimination laws, and trade secret laws.

[E]mployers should consider crafting internal policies to define the types of off-duty conduct that will not be tolerated – provided the employer is prepared to fairly and consistently enforce such policies. By having the right policies in place, and seeking counsel prior to taking the employment action, many employers can help protect themselves against liability for taking action against an employee based on off-duty conduct. Such foresight and planning is needed in the age of Facebook and other social networking sites when employers too often become aware of conduct unbecoming of their employees.

Organizations need to get on top of this trend now, rather than waiting for circumstances to force the issue. As with all new technologies, communications via Web 2.0 systems like social networking sites will be used by your organization, will be recognized by the courts, will be subject to regulation and will be sought in discovery. The best strategy for any organization is to proactively adapt to this evolution and invest in the proverbial “ounce of prevention.”

Whether to prevent employees from engaging in inappropriate activity or to use social media as part of a wider marketing strategy, the most important thing is to make the organization’s intentions and expectations clear, according to the article. Stephens said social media policies bleed into other issues as well, including personal use of practice-owned computers and intellectual property protections. Rules covering these aspects also should be updated to reference social networking. It’s probably a good idea to send notices to everyone on staff explaining the rule revisions, he said. How policies are enforced likely will reflect the established practice culture.

Stephens suggests that a first step is to “assess the company’s culture, because the company has to decide what its core values are,” and whether it wants to encourage employees’ use of social networking sites. Next, “understand that there is only a certain amount of control that a company has over its own endorsed social media applications, and especially away from the workplace,” he said. Then, assuming the company has one, “convert your existing policy to cover these social networking applications,” Stephens suggested. “Many companies have already addressed electronic communications, specifically e-mails, and likely have already addressed Internet use at work.”

In these challenging economic times, public companies should be applauded for their creative efforts to sell products and services through the social media. In undertaking such efforts, however, companies should consider two critical areas: Is it time to update our internal corporate policies? Do our policies take into account the potential uses of social media? Is it time to retrain our employees? Our employee training already covers appropriate inbound communication, but should we implement additional employee training regarding outbound digital communications?
Debevoise & Plimpton (4/21/09) – Tweeting, blogging and social networking (TheDeal.com)

A comprehensive set of disclosure policies will need to address these issues and a host of others, including issues that will arise in connection with securities offerings and the risk that employee or third-party communications could be deemed to have been made by or on behalf of the company. In the face of these challenges, companies should consider whether the time has come to adopt or update policies regarding the use of emerging Internet-enabled communications channels as part of their investor relations strategies.

In light of the potential risks and pitfalls associated with monitoring applicant or employee blogs and social networking sites, employers should initially consider whether the benefits of information derived from these sources are worth the potential liability, advises Perkins Coie labor and employment lawyers Vickie Wallen and Brian Flock.


Previously on 3 Geeks we discussed how Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs) might evolve on the law firm side of things. This post explores a possible evolution for how AFAs might evolve on the client side. Whereas law firms will need to insure profitability as they embrace AFAs, clients will need to solve the value-to-price equation – so the evolution is a path to that end.

1 – Understand Costs. Right now clients are struggling to embrace AFAs. Their stated goal (generally) is managing costs. Before they can manage costs effectively, they will first need to understand them. Most clients I talk to and hear about are trying to jump to #2 on our list before they do #1. Utilizing my usual car analogy, this would be equivalent to an effort to lower the total cost of ownership per mile of a car by haggling on the sales price. Yes – a lower sales price will be helpful but it doesn’t tell you the cost per mile or how the sales price impacts the per mile cost. Haggling over hourly rates (which is where most AFA discussions end up) will not tell you what the fee per matter will be which is a better level to manage costs. Of course firms and clients have some historical billing information, but this information was not captured or structured with a ‘fee per type of matter’ approach in mind. Therefore this knowledge has limited value in establishing a baseline to understand costs on a per-matter basis. This means in-house counsel will need to start now at viewing costs on this fee-per-matter basis and shift their mindset so that they begin to understand their costs at that level.

2 – Manage Costs. Once in-house counsel understand costs at a matter level, they can then actually begin to effectively manage them. Now they will be able to compare fee-against-fee at this matter level. This will empower in-house counsel to do more effective price shopping. My prediction is that this liberation will bring on more competitive pricing by law firms as an obvious response. We will likely see more creative AFAs at this stage as well. A potential dark side of this liberation will be swinging the pendulum too far – resulting in measurable impacts on the value side of things. Like any other market, given a chance buyers will be tempted and encouraged to price shop to the lowest provider. This brings us to Stage 3 in our evolution – Focusing on Value.

3 – Manage to Value. As this market evolution matures, buyers will become more sophisticated and move to a value-to-price approach. Although it seems obvious (until you live with the consequences) selecting the low-price provider isn’t always the best option. But with pressures on controlling costs there are many incentives for buyers to go with the low-price provider. This is especially the case for in-house counsel. For the majority of these folks, the financial consequences of low-value service hit the bottom line of someone else’s budget. Settlements and judgments, for the most part, do not come off the General Counsel’s budget. Instead they come off a business unit’s numbers. So once the consequences of low value-to-price AFAs become apparent, reason will kick in and drive the fee decisions to more balanced ground. At this point, in-house counsel will be in a position to solve the value-to-price equation.

AFAs for in-house counsel are quite a challenge. There has been no fee-level market for clients to use in determining price-to-value. For now hourly rates are market driven so price comparisons and costs controls are focused there. However, as many have opined, this hourly rate approach is not the best method for managing costs. As clients come to grips with matter-level fees, they can then move through an evolution to better manage costs and ultimately drive value. Although everyone talks like they can jump right to #3, I think we’ll see some market education drive people through this type of evolution before they reach value billing nirvana.

My good friend Emily directed me to a fascinating Forbes.com article called “The Odd Clever People Every Organization Needs.” As I was reading it, I was thinking that the type of person the authors were describing either fit me or were describing Sheldon from “The Big Bang Theory.” As I was reading this from my laptop while seated on my designated corner of my couch, I thought it was absurd that I was even making this connection. Then my second thought was “oh no… I hope my ‘clever’ outshines my ‘odd’ to those that I work with.”

In the article the authors have an excellent definition of the clever people we need in our organizations:

Clever people are highly talented individuals who have the potential to create disproportionate amounts of value from the resources that an organization makes available to them.

I like this definition!! I’m going to put it on a shirt (maybe a series of 3 shirts with 9 words on each, with a superhero logo on the front and the saying on the back, then wear them over a three day period of time.)
However, apparently clever people like this are also difficult to work with. Really?? Here are some qualities they point to as being difficult:
–They know their worth (their skills are not easily replicated). –They ask difficult questions. –They are organizationally savvy. –They are not impressed by corporate hierarchy. –They expect instant access to decision makers. –They are well connected outside of their organizations. –Their passion is for what they do, not for who they work for. –Even if you lead them well, they won’t thank you.
Well, “thank you very much” for pointing out these flaws. And, did you notice that I said “thank you”? I think that disproves some of these points right off the bat.
I’ve actually seen organizations treat ‘clever’ people two distinct ways. In most situations, they are identified as ‘loose cannons’ and need to be monitored carefully so as they do not destroy something important. Many times this type of reaction is caused by a manager that doesn’t want someone they supervise to “outshine” them. This type of approach usually ends with the clever person leaving to take an opportunity elsewhere. Not to worry, though… the manager will remain to drive away the next clever person that comes along.
The second approach, and the one that the Forbes article suggests, is to be the “benevolent guardian.” Giving them just enough freedom to allow them to be creative, with the structure needed to keep them on task. I’ve had to do this with some of the brilliant Techies with whom I’ve worked. Tell them what the goals are, allow them to come up with their own ideas on how to achieve those goals, then monitor them from time to time to make sure they keep on task. Clever people can become distracted by something ‘cool’ that can take them off on a tangent. If you do not monitor them as they are progressing on your task, you could end up with something truly fascinating, and completely worthless to the task you assigned them.
The tenor of the Forbes article sounds like they are discussing young workers. However, ‘clever’ people can be any age. I’ve worked with people in their 70’s that are creative ‘outside the box’ type thinkers who have the same issues as 20 year-old creative ‘outside the box’ thinkers. Hopefully, as these creative thinkers get more experience, they can self-regulate their need to follow those tangents and stay on task.
Clever people also do not have to be geeks, although they do seem to filter toward the geeky side of things. In fact, you can probably look at a roster of people in your different Practice Groups, or Administrative departments and quickly identify those ‘clever’ people in the bunch. They are generally the ones you go to when you have to have something now, and don’t have time to go through the normal channels in order to get it. They may not be the best people to manage, but they sure are nice to have around when all you other ideas don’t seem to be working.

It all started as an innocent project to find a cheap way to conduct an online panel discussion, but it turned out to be a lesson in work place rules that left me shaking my head. First, the backstory.

I really enjoyed watching an online panel discussion that Brian Cuban did last week called “So You Think You’re a Social Media Expert.” The topic was interesting, but what I found more interesting was how Brian was conducting the panel. Using a mixture of UStream and Skype and a couple other resources, the four member panel was able to rant, and I was able to watch and listen. It was like being at a conference and watching a panel go at it. Actually, it was like being in a restaurant and eavesdropping in on a really good conversation. However, there was a technical problem that with the audio feedback that caused everything to be repeated three times, and was very, very annoying. Thus, I started my innocent project of trying to find a way to replicate Brian’s online panel format, without the feedback (still a work in progress.)
As I was working out the details, I needed someone with Skype access that would assist me in curing the feedback issue. This is where I got a rude awakening. Turns out that six of the seven people I contacted were not allowed to use Skype at their workplace. SIX OF SEVEN!!! I thought this was an anomaly, so I started asking around and found that almost everyone I knew that worked for a law firm or corporation or school district or government entity told me that Skype was banned where they work (along with a number of other Internet resources.) When I asked why it was blocked, the universal answer was “Security Reasons.”
Now, I’m not a network specialist, so maybe Skype burns up bandwidth on the office network, or maybe there is some ultra dangerous virus that gets through when I use Skype. So, if you are a network specialist and know why Skype would be banned at most workplaces, please fill me in. But, I’m thinking that “Security Reasons” really means “Time Wasting Reasons.” In other words, products like Skype are really banned because someone at the C-Level believes that you will be wasting precious firm time calling your buddy in Germany instead of billing time to the client.
When firms worry about “time wasting” that tells me two things right off the bat. First, whoever is supposed to be supervising is not doing a good job. Whether this is the Partner supervising the Associates, or the Manager supervising the Staff, there is a failure in managing your people. Second, it means that the management is telling their people “We Do Not Trust You!” If the answer to the issue is an all-out ban because it “wastes time”, then that means that the people that work for the firm are not trustworthy enough to make good decisions on their own. If that is true, then my gut reaction to those implementing the ban is “Wow, you have made some really poor hiring decisions.”
Again, maybe I’m just ignorant of the true meaning behind “Security Reasons” when it comes to outright banning of products like Skype. If so, then please forgive my ignorance. But, if you are banning products like Skype because you don’t trust your people to make good decisions… then I have to say that your people aren’t the problem.

I’ve been wondering how law firm summer recruiting programs are faring this year.

I wonder how closely partners are scrutinizing this year’s crop of summer clerks for their ability to generate revenue rather than fighting other firms for over what was once perceived as a limited pool of talent.

I suspect that prior years’ rush-type recruiting seasons are gone for ever more and that this year’s young legal eaglets are competing with one another for diminishing spots.

Just a few years ago, many of us stood back in disbelief as we watched new lawyer salaries peak at $160K a year. I, for one, was horrified because I remember how wet behind the ears I was the first day I stood before a judge in a court room full of onlookers. I just wanted to fall into a hole. Forget getting paid. I simply just wanted to disappear.

I tell ya, kids today . . . I had to walk through ten miles of mud up hill–oh, wait, that’s another story. Sorry, got side-tracked.

What I am trying to say is that sometimes the ones left behind are just as hungry and just desperate enough to risk it all.

Because I am convinced that people that do well in law school are good at being in school; they have always done well in school and love being in school. We all know those kids and how they do in real life. Yeah, they may be the next brilliant geek that will brew up a million dollars in his or her garage. But the rest of us lawyers had our first real taste of losing our wits.

And from that experience, the rest of the class learned to cope with fighting and losing over and over again. Because, as any good wrestler knows, as long as you are still standing you cannot be beat.

So invoke my principle when reviewing resumes. Check that they are graduates of an accredited law school. Set aside any resume that indicates a steady work history and solid scholastic achievement. It is a given that my “interview” pile indicates the characteristics of a lawyer: positions of leadership, civic pride and community activities. It is assumed that all of these kids are bright–they have all passed the LSAT and were all admitted into law school.

So when I interview, I interview for character. I seek to find the character of a man or a woman that makes a great lawyer: an innate drive to fight for justice, a need to to help others and the ability to lead a battle. These types of individuals are the sorts that we need now: men and women of character.

So don’t be so quick to judge a feisty kid from a lesser known school and so-so grades–they just might have the drive and the ambition to be everything you wished you could be. Let them in and show them around. You just may be introducing one of the next greatest lawyer of our times.


Having spent considerable time working with Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs), I am starting to see a more defined path for how AFAs might evolve within law firms. So based on my experience and all I have read about AFAs, I predict the following evolution for law firms:

1) Setting Price. Lawyers and firms are currently struggling with setting fees based on work (and value) and not hours. These prices are ultimately guesses (like all prices are), with some being more educated guesses and some just coming from the ‘gut.’ At this stage lawyers are learning that even with a wild guess, they are not risking the entire fee, but only the margin of error.

The knowledge systems involved at this stage of evolution include time and billing, as that is the primary source of information on which to base good guesses.

2) Tracking Profitability. Once a firm has a number of AFAs in place – time will pass. And with the passage of time they will begin to see how good their guesses were. As expected, some engagements will be more profitable than others. As this knowledge source grows, patterns will emerge as to which types of matters and fees are more profitable than others.

As previously noted on 3 Geeks, there is an emerging market for systems that address the question of profit tracking. These knowledge systems, as advertised, will allow firms to create, model and monitor matter budgets. As their use becomes more wide-spread, it will become apparent that firms can actually impact the profitability of engagements through-out the life of the matter. Red flags will come up during an engagement that will signal the need for altering behavior – which brings us to our third stage of evolution.

3) Project Management (PM). Once a firm sets a price and can carefully monitor performance-to-budget (a.k.a. price or fee), they will want to improve that performance. Here is where PM will come into play. Good lawyers have skills at case management, which involves managing to legal outcomes. In contrast PM is managing to a defined scope of work with known resources within a given time frame. This approach allows for changes in any of those aspects, but fees are then typically revisited.

Currently PM resources within a law firm (if they exist) are either in IT or in some form of practice support. The challenge with utilizing these PM resources is they lack the technical/legal knowledge related to case management. What is needed are project managers with the technical expertise to manage legal matters (both litigation and transactional). This begs the question: Where will this PM resource come from?

This is yet to be seen. However, I predict that when this resource comes into play, we will be witnessing the actual transformation of law firms that everyone likes to talk about. PM in play will be a recognition that law firms need to function like a business, to both their benefit and their clients’.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Most of the alternative fees posts on 3 Geeks are penned by Toby. However, after reading the articles on Seyfarth Shaw implementing a Six Sigma method; O’Melveny Myers’ leaked alternative fees memo; and Mayer Brown and Reed Smith’s discussion of alternative fee agreements, I wanted to jump in on how these changes in how the firm generates revenue affects the three-way relationship between the online legal research vendor, the law firm, and the client. Over the past 25+ years, the model of passing through the expense of online legal research to the client created a system where operating profits for the vendor were over 30%, and law firms felt immune to the total costs of using online research. Clients were paying the majority of the costs of online research, but had no voice in setting the price negotiated between firms and the vendors. Clients were told that online research created a more efficient way for lawyers to conduct research on their behalf. The idea presented to the client was that online research costs saved the lawyer time, and thus saved the client money in the end. Law firms and online legal research providers were so comfortable with this model, that many signed multi-year contracts where the vendor would build in automatic price increases of more than 10% a year. At one time, it was common for firms to charge clients more than they were paying the vendor for the online research product, and were able to make an additional profit. When the Model Rules of Professional Conduct prohibited these charges with Rule 1.5, many firms implemented a 100% recovery model where online resources could only be used if the charge could be passed to the client. That meant when a lawyer needed to do business development research, pro-bono research, or professional development research, they had to go to the books, or other resources where the costs of these resources were not passed along to clients. Although there are still a handful of “100% Recovery” firms out there, most firms now isolate “client charges” separately from “firm charges.” Out of the librarians I (unscientifically) surveyed, most say that over the past 10 years, the percentage that the firm is paying out of pocket has steadily increased from under 10% out of pocket costs, to now almost 50% out of pocket cost. Firms are now scrambling to cut costs of online resources by either cutting subscriptions, or going back to models requiring that online resource tools only be used when that cost can be passed through to the client. With firms now considering alternative fee arrangements with clients, the model of passing online research costs to clients will come under even more scrutiny. As firms start negotiating alternative fee agreements with clients, one of the items on the table is going to be online research costs. I imagine that firms will attempt to set up the agreements with the costs of online legal research being a variable rate outside the base cost of the agreement. In other words, keeping the status quo. Clients are going to want to see these costs built into the agreement as a set amount, a capped fee, or will demand that the firm include any necessary legal research into the agreement with no dollar amount listed at all. Alternative fee agreements and the general move away from the generic hourly-billing rate will mean that firms will need to have a different negotiating strategy with the online legal research vendor. No longer will online research be seen as a pass-through cost to the client. Because the client will not be paying the attorney by the hour, they will not buy the idea that online charges are saving them money because it saves the attorney time. Clients will say that firms will need to bear the burden of the online research because, if it truly saves them time, then that means they should be able to spend less time on the client’s matter, thus the savings is really a benefit to the firm. For the vendors, the fact that firms are seriously considering changing the methods of how they generate revenue means that vendors have to reevaluate how they negotiate the next contract. As clients bear less and less of the cost of online research, vendors cannot come to the negotiating table with the underlying idea that their service saves either the firm or the firm’s clients money. Those 30% profit margins are not sustainable as alternative fees become a larger percentage of how law firms generate revenue. Firms will finally come to the negotiating table willing to cut services, and demand that the built in annual increases end. The days of online legal research contracts based on the idea that the costs will be passed along to a third party are numbered. It is going to be interesting to see how it all unfolds.

While skimming through my RSS feed this morning, I ran across Scott Greenfield’s post called “This (pointing) Is A Book”. Scott discusses the issue of libraries slowly disappearing and being replaced by technology like the Kindle. He also mentions that the Millennial Generation has a general distaste for physical books, that this is a major flaw in their development, and that those that have electronic collections rather than books have no soul.
I don’t know, Scott… a lot of the books I have on my shelf, I “intend” to read some day (especially those from the Dalai Lama and former Presidents), whereas all of the books I have in my Kindle I “have” read. Don’t get me wrong, as a librarian and a GenX’er, I do appreciate personal library collections, but I’ve found that many (especially people with large personal collections) view their libraries as piece of art rather than information resources. Judging a person’s soul by the library they collect is like judging how good a lawyer is by the suit they wear to court.
Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital, told a story at the TEDxTO conference last week about his meeting a Rhodes Scholar from Florida who told a panel of University Presidents that he “doesn’t read books.” Although, this was a gross overstatement (he ‘skims’ books by using sources like Google Books to find the core information, or he flips back and forth from the index to portions of the book to glean the relevant information… or as we call it in academia — “Research.”)
The language of information is changing and Don Tapscott refers to this as Generation Lap where the way information is being created and distributed is changing. It is similar to children of immigrants who learn the language before their parents. So, when you see statements like Mary Grabar’s saying that Millennials made comments like “the teacher thought she knew more than the students,” you have to think of it in the same way that the immigrant children who think they know more “about the new language” than their parents. If you take the comment with that background, the statement isn’t as asinine as it seems on the surface.
Take a look at Don Tapscott’s interview about the “Grown Up Digital” generation and I think you’ll gain a better appreciation of what really is the good and bad about how this generation learns and contributes. Those that you are categorizing as “Slackoisie” may be reading, learning, understanding, and contributing more than you give them credit.