The NYTimes reports that Virginia Democrat Representative Rick Boucher, who now chairs the House Subcommittee on telecommunications, technology and the internet, wants to write a law to require web surfers to “opt-in” to share personal information with trafficked web sites.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t think that is necessary.

Think about it: less than 10 years ago, people were spooked because Amazon knew their book selections and was suggesting related books. Now-a-days, if a site doesn’t have the “suggested items,” users get really crabby and want to know why the site is so “unsophisticated.”

In fact, according to a TRUSTe survey, site visitors are getting less paranoid about online tracking: last year, 57% found online tracking “disturbing”. this year, it dropped to 51%. OPA Intelligence Report, 3/16/09.

Sure, people are “saying” that people are squeamish about Google tracking social behavior to figure out what ads are more interesting to them.

Interestingly, though, Yahoo! rolled out their own version of social behavior targeting called “Search Retargeting” on February 24 with barely a whimper from privacy advocates.

Think about it: its no different than merchandising at a grocery store. Kroger’s and other grocery stores display the Kraft’s parmesan cheese next to the frozen pizza. Nobody’s griping about that. Kroger’s and other grocery stores have their little “frequent flyer” cards hooked on shoppers’ key rings to get “substantial savings” in exchange for letting grocers know what kind of food shoppers are buying. Nobody’s griping about that.

So go ahead, make our overworked, over-bloated, nothing-better-to-do government wrangle over this “privacy” law that requires all of your favorite ISPs, search engines, e-mail accounts and web sites to post little check boxes so that you have to click to allow them access to your online excavations.

But I can guarantee you that in 5 years or less, you are going to be clicking every single one of those boxes because, doggone it, it’s a hassle to reload your personal data into each of your favorite sites.

Because I can guarantee you that Google and all the other search providers–Sear’s included–is going to figure out a way to make you WANT to give them your personal surfing information. Maybe something like, if you follow the scavenger hunt from Sears to Disneyto Netflix, you will get a free movie. Or if you go from Google to NASCAR to ticketmaster, you will get a 3% discount.

Or, even better, if you go to Google to Medweb to your doctor to the hospital, all of your medical files will follow you.

Just imagine the future. Do really you want to slow it down?

Besides, Rick Boucher’s busy trying to convert all of our TVs to digital right now. You don’t want to stop him from working on that, do you?

On Monday, TweetDeck released a Beta version that now includes a way to monitor both Twitter and FaceBook all in one interface.  Watch the little video below to get an introduction.

(More on how I made this video in a later post)
I’ve been very impressed with how TweetDeck has managed to create a program that allows me to manage the large number of people I follow on Twitter.  I’ve never really been a big FaceBook user, but I do follow some old High School friends, monitor my son and his girl friend who are both in college in Memphis, and a few close professional colleagues.  
For a while now, I’ve been updating my FaceBook status using the Twitter App that is a part of FaceBook.  However, this has probably caused more confusion from my FaceBook friends than it was worth.   So, each time I put something on Twitter, it would automatically show up on FaceBook.  What it ended up doing was confusing my FaceBook friends (those that weren’t on Twitter.)  Especially if I “ReTweeted” something that someone else on Twitter posted.  
 The Twitter app on FaceBook was a good idea, but wasn’t really ready for prime time.
The TweetDeck “Twitter/FaceBook” option is a much better way to monitor and update both platforms.  First of all, it allows me the option to update either or both using a simple checkbox option on which platform I wish to update.

The view of the FaceBook status updates is also very clean.  When you compare it with the web version, it is very similar.  So, even for novices, there isn’t a big learning curve.
Get out there and test out the new TweetDeck Beta and enjoy the ability to use one tool to monitor and update two social media platforms.  It is very easy to install (you’ll be prompted to approve the application within FaceBook, and asked for your FaceBook credentials, and viola, you’re ready to play.)  The FaceBook checkbox is not checked by default, so when you’re ready to update FaceBook, you’ll need to make sure it is checked.  BTW – “Direct Messages” in Twitter will not go to FaceBook, even if you have the FaceBook checkbox checked (great proactive catch by TweetDeck!!).
Enjoy, and let me know what you think!!

We want alternative fees! This has become the new mantra of clients. Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs) are all the rage now and rightly so, given the state of things.

But …

I’ve previously noted that clients, in addition to law firms, will need to change to adapt to AFAs. I’ve come to realize this is a deep-seated challenge and one not to be written off lightly.

The Hypothetical: Law firm offers client a fixed fee (the holy grail of AFAs) of $100k for a litigation matter. Client agrees, thankful the law firm is taking the risk on this matter. A week later the matter settles, based to a good degree on the law firm’s efforts. Should the firm be paid $100k? For all the talk about how fixed-fee AFAs will benefit clients, this scenario presents a challenge. From experience … the client is going to ask why they should pay the whole $100k fee. The law firm barely put any time into the case. How could they deserve that level of fee?

The point here is that clients have an implicit understanding that time equals value when it comes to legal services. This understanding exists based on years of experience. On an academic level, fixed-fees make perfect sense. But your gut may tell you something different when push comes to shove, like in our example above.

My read is that clients are really wanting efficiency in the short-run. They equate time with value, but they want to make sure that the value and therefore price equals the right amount of time. For the time being, this means they will almost always want to know “how many hours” did it take (and as an extension of hours “what is the rate?”). That’s the measure of value they have known and trusted for years.

I recommend law firms keep this deep-seated mindset in mind as they approach AFAs. A short-run focus on demonstrating efficiency will probably go a long way to keeping clients happy on the path to AFAs. As clients come to trust that AFAs equate value with price, then fixed-fee and other aggressive AFA engagements will become more palatable.

Two articles in yesterday’s Financial Times struck my fancy:

Retailer buys ‘social’ search engine

Google to match online adverts with web users’ viewing habits

What Google and Sears–yes, Sears, the seller of all things American–are heading towards behavioral search engines that look at a person’s online activity and social networking profiles to determine their interests and thereby producing more customized search engine results. And, consequently, more tailored ads to serve up items that the user may be more likely to buy.

Now what is interesting to me is that “privacy” groups (isn’t that an oxymoron?) are outraged that these ISPs are going to be tracking online activity.

Hello?!?

First of all, nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING, is free. You think Google is free? You think they just let you use their search engine out of the goodness of their heart? That they are the benevolent oracle of all known human intelligence? Umm, no.

Your privacy is the price you pay for using Google. When you decided to use Google, or any other search engine for that matter, you clicked a little box, ignoring that plain-text box that contained 20 scrolls worth of legalese, because you were in a hurry to find out last night’s football scores, tonight’s TV schedule or the cheapest deal for those dozen roses that you had to send to your mother/girlfriend/wife.

So if you don’t want your privacy invaded and your interests assessed, don’t use search engines. Or Amazon. Or Netflix. Or Blockbuster. Or Victoria’s Secret.

Let’s see how long that boycott lasts.

Spotted this on Wire. Google Turns Voicemail Into E-mail. What I’m waiting for, tho, and was just thinking about this morning is a voiced version of my text messages? Do you know how hard it is to read text messages when you are driving?? 🙂

I was on my way to work and had 225 tweets from 5 of my favorite twitterers that I HAD TO READ. And I couldn’t. Not without wrecking my newly purchased used Volvo.

So what, Google has figured out how to transcribe VM to e-mail. Who needs that?? I need text to Vmail!!

I’m waiting, phone guys . . . (tapping foot, impatiently)

I read two completely unrelated things yesterday that made me think of how, in our efforts to become efficient, we have lost something very important along the way — relationships.  

First, I was reading Jenn Steele’s “Leading Geeks” blog where she was commenting on the lack of communication between Geeks and Users.  Then, on the way home, there was a sentence in the book I’m reading (Geraldine McCaughrean’s The White Darkness) that spoke of how one of the characters and Death were on a “nodding relationship.”  
The issues that Jenn mention in her post between end-user and “Geek” seem to result from a general lack of communication between the two parties.  That made me realize that in our quest to centralize, compartmentalize, and to get more from less, we’ve somehow lost our “nodding relationships” with those that help us.
Here’s a quick example:
  • Quick – say the name of the person that answered the IT Help Desk phone the last time you had a problem.
  • Now – say the name of the IT person that used to drop by your office to install hardware, or upgrade software, or check to see if things were running properly.

Having experience working both as the IT guy (aka “Geek”) and the End-User (aka – “loose nut between the chair and keyboard”), I understand the reasons of why we are where we are today.  In the same respect, I also have a keen understanding of what the savings in time and money have also cost in the ability to better understand what are the real problems that the end user is experiencing.   

Over the years, we have worked very hard at creating a situation where tasks are “automated,” “performed in the background,” “seamless” and “invisible” to the end user.  We’ve done this to minimize the amount of time the technology is unavailable to the end user, in order to keep the end user as efficient as possible, too.  However, this has had a side-effect of also causing the people performing these tasks to also become “automated,” “in the background,” and “invisible” to the end user (and vise-versa in a limit way.)   
Don’t get me wrong, there are lots and lots of things that should be invisible to the end-user.  My complaint is that the pendulum has swung so far to the “automated” and “invisible” side, that we have taken the human portion with it.  In my view this results in  two major flaws:
1.  The Columbo Effect –  There have been many times, both as a techie and as a user, where in the process of solving one problem, another problem is unearthed.  You know… you’re about to walk out of the room when the other person says, “Oh, just one more question.”  Granted, most of the time, this means more work, but there were many occasions where that “one more question” lead to proactively solving major issues before they became major issues.
2.  The Chilling Effect – Because we’ve so separated the user from the techie, we’ve created a situation where most users find it too difficult to ask for help on what they consider “minor issues.”  Or, we’ve created a situation where we’ve inadvertently promoted “work-arounds” that the end user is taking to solve the problem on their own.  Granted, a lot of the time, these work-arounds cause little to no harm, but every once in a while, you have some creative user that finds a way to shut down a shared resource because their work around had unintended effects.
I had a professor in college that used to say that “Computers are the dumbest thing on campus, because they only do exactly what you tell them to do.”  In a way, we are using this same approach with those that support our technology.  We call in, we say what our problem is, we are asked a few questions, a “ticket” is created, someone works on the problem from an undisclosed bunker somewhere, and then we are emailed that the problem is solved or sent to a higher-level of support.  Somewhere down the line we are issued an email that says the problem is solved unless we email them back and say it isn’t.  All automated, efficient and clean.  No nodding necessary.
Doug Cornelius commented on Jenn Steele’s blog that web 2.0, and some transparency tools would help bring back in the nodding relationship.  I think he’s onto something there.  Bring back the “Geek” into the process, even if it is virtually.  I’m pretty sure I can find a nodding emoticon to send a virtual nod to my far away Geek.

Everybody loves to bash BigLaw. Admit it. It’s like making fun of Microsoft and all of the security “features” built into its software. You see it in the growing number of Blogs who love to talk trash about the foibles of the AmLaw 100. Big law firms are easy targets since they are visible and what they do tends to get picked up by the press and the blogosphere.

Enjoying the Washington Post on Monday morning, I noticed this gem about how the smart lawyers are leaving BigLaw. The lawyer noted in the article was smart enough to leave DLA Piper and join Virtual Law Partners, a small telecommuting firm. He cut his hourly rate by 25% and reduced his overhead by a much larger number. The result: he has more time for his family (he even works out of his home) and he makes more money. Wah-laa – he is smart. BigLaw is not so smart.

If you really look at it, he is smart because he took all the benefits of BigLaw and left behind the baggage. He’s what you call a beneficiary. My point is that BigLaw, like another institution, has its good and bad. And BigLaw has been doing pretty well so far. It’s hard to argue the profits and growth BigLaw has seen to-date. Lawyers who work for these firms handle large scale, complex, bet-the-company types of cases and transactions. Lawyers who leave can take that pedigree with them and then profit from it.

Well down into the Post article (buried so-to-speak) I noted this statement: Virtual Law Partners “expects to make a profit once it has 50 lawyers.”

BigLaw is an easy target, but maybe its earned that rank given its success. Whatever happens in this time of change, I don’t expect BigLaw to be going away any time soon. Big companies tend to prefer big providers. It’s more a matter of how BigLaw will transform as a group. Of course, I’m still hoping alternative fees will play a core part in that transition.

Truth-in-advertising: I work at a large firm, which might make me biased. But as a non-lawyer observer who lives more with the frustrating aspects of the model (and less with the financial benefits) I feel I bring an informed perspective.

It is no secret that out of the Three Geeks, I’m viewed as the cheap one (“thrify” my wife calls me.)   It isn’t that I don’t mind spending money, it is just that I hate wasting money.  And, if I find a nice way to save a few bucks here and there, I’d like to share that savings along with you.

If you do research (legal or otherwise), you know that there are resources out there that are directed toward helping you do your research.  Products like Westlaw, Bloomberg, Medline, etc. are premium research tools that allow you to basically do some one-stop shopping within your expertise, and are excellent tools to have.  However, premium also comes at a price, and in these times, cost savings aren’t just for the “thrifty.”
There are many times where I use the local public library resources, without even entering into the library building itself.  I’m pretty lucky that I work one block away from the main Houston Public Library, and can physically be in the public library within 5 minutes (my desk to library door.)  But, within a few seconds, I can access hundreds (if not thousands) of online library resources simply by using my library card.
With access to my public library in Houston, I can take a look at academic, business, cultural, and a long list of other databases from the likes of top-notch vendors like Hoover’s, Lexis, Gale, Morningstar, ReferenceUSA and many, many others.  To see a list of the different databases, you can view the “ALL the Library’s Research Links” page.  In addition to research databases, there are also valuable resources like magazine archives, newspapers (including my favorite of the Houston Chronicle in full Digital Image format), and even a language program like Rosetta Stone.  
You don’t even have necessarily live in a highly populated city to get access to these resources.  A lot of these are negotiated on a state-wide contract so that regardless of the size of your public library, you can still get access to excellent online resources for free.
If you find that your local library doesn’t offer these, you can contact some of the larger libraries to see if they offer “Out-of-State” registrations.  Most will, and from what I have found, at a price of around $40 or so.
Go check out your local library’s website to see what they offer. 

A number of recent posts and articles are talking about the de-leveraging of BigLaw. Many of these predict that the other side of the recession will see BigLaw with less associates per partner.

Say what?

There’s all this talk of alternative billing, leveraging technology and changing the way firms do business and somehow they are going to do this by shrinking the bottom-level of the inverted pyramid they live in … again??? Karl Marx perhaps said it best when he noted that Capitalists (a.k.a. business owners) make money off the sweat of another’s brow and not their own.

Just like the de-leveraging cycle in the 80’s, when hours go soft – Partners hoard. And they do this to their own detriment as the least profitable billable hours of the business are their own. They lose the best billable hours (a.k.a. leverage). Of course this behavior is highly motivated by the compensation systems. And we shouldn’t really be surprised by the fact that history is repeating itself, since these compensation systems have not changed much since the 80’s.

“Fool me once – shame on you. Fool me twice – shame on me.”

Still I am dumb-founded. After seeing so much encouraging dialogue about alternative fees and the subsequent changing of the law firm business model, firms fall right back into their old habits. Although leverage is not the be-all and end-all of profitability, its still a core metric to use. It’s a basic business practice to push labor tasks to their lowest cost source.

It is past time for lawyers and firms to turn and look over the bow of the boat. They need to understand that the radical changes in the market will need to be reflected by corresponding changes in the law firm business model.

Change …? I see a theme developing

Well, look what Apple and Amazon dreamed up!
A Kindle app on the iPhone. Geez louise, I thought it would take ’em 5 years to figure this out. Looks like I’m gonna have to put my money where my mouth is . . .
I wonder how the Kindle app works with the other iPhone features. Can you copy/import text? Can you cite sources in other apps?
Its funny, I was just talking to my cousin–who, ironically, works for Microsoft as an engineer–and he was showing off his friend’s iPhone and explaining all the apps to me.
In the course of our conversation, I was oohing and aahing, but, in the end, I told him, “this really doesn’t work for me. I don’t like the keyboard.”
He said, “yeah, you are a writer. Most people are just readers. But you develop content so this doesn’t really meet your needs.”
Exactly.
So my next caveat would be an iPhone with a Kindle app and a better, more tactile keyboard for us writers.
This time, I will give Apple less lead time. How about a year, guys?