By now, you’ve probably seen the new social media experiment that is Skittles.com

Although the site developed by Agency.com is still a little rough around the edges, this experiment is widely viewed as a social media success story because it allows the user to interact with the product, thus producing a way for the end-user to promote (or critique) the product.  At this point, the message has been pretty positive.  

But, enough of Skittles!! I’m a Hot Tamale man myself….
This idea of social media, using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, along with traditional web content is not only a great idea for marketing products, but I think one of the biggest benefits could be experienced by using this type of resource for big conferences.
Imagine that you’re attending a conference (say last month’s LegalTech conference.)  We’ve seen how social media has inspired people to blog and tweet about what they are listening to at the conference, why not take a tool like this and make it really work for the conference??
Here’s a quick breakdown on how I think this type of resource would benefit a conference:
  • Traditional Web Presence: Conferences usually have information posted about the conference posted on a traditional website.  Sticking with the LegalTech, the traditional web site gives the organizer the ability to promote, inform, and distribute information about the conference.  Let’s face it, most conferences end the “official” flow of information at this point.  But, taking the Skittles model, let’s expand.
  • Twitter Feed of the “#” Hash-Tag: They’re going to do it anyway…  so, why not take advantage?  Whenever you have more than 5 people going to the same thing, one of them is going to create a hash-tag about it, so that they can get more people to join in.  Heck, if Congress is going to Twitter while the President is speaking, you can bet your techie attendees will be Tweeting away as well.  So, why not put that information out there along with your traditional web page and make it easy for folks to see what others are talking about?
  • YouTube – “Show ‘Em What You’ve Told ‘Em”: Expand your reach through the simple use of video.  This give the organizer a chance to expand the information being distributed, and if done right, can allow your attendees to add content.  
  • Flickr – “We’re at ‘X’ Conference Having a Ball….  Wish You Were Here!”: As people take pictures at the event, enable them to share them in a central location so that others can see what’s going on.  Make people feel like they are there, even if they’re not! (Maybe next year, they’ll attend!!)
  • Facebook – Allow Your Attendees To Be Your Friends and Promoters: The Facebook angle allows you to build upon the past conferences.  Think of it as the ability to take your attendee list and keep them up-to-date throughout the year.  Allow them to tell you what was good (and bad) about the conference, and suggest what to do for the next one.  Allow others to see the comments, and contribute as well.  
I’m sure additional social media tools could also be integrated into a conference to allow the connection of people to people, and people to content.  So, if you have more suggestions, please comment below!
Using social media as a tool for a conference isn’t without its risks.  Even the Skittles site has a potential down side which Stan Schroeder points out in this blog post.   But, I believe that the upside has such potential, that the rewards tremendously outweigh the risks.  

Earlier in February, I sat in on a webinar provided by Altman Weil on Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFA). I had planned on getting a bunch of work done while I listened to the same ideas I’ve heard numerous times before. Fortunately, I didn’t get much work done since the program had some excellent content.

Two Stats

A recent review of large firm web sites (the AmLaw 100 per my notes) noted that only 23% mentioned AFAs. Compare that to 87% of the program attendees reporting that clients have asked about AFA options in the last 6 months. (Personally I was quite surprised this number wasn’t 100%.) The moral of this story is clear: Let clients know you are willing and (hopefully) able to address their requests for alternative fees on your web site.

One of the anecdotal stories shared was of a client asking one of their panel firms to share their AFA options with them. The firm dutifully provided an extensive list of options they would be willing and able to provide. Contrary to what you might predict, the client was not happy. She wanted to know why the firm, if it had all these abilities, had not offered them up sooner. I suppose this takes us back to our prior moral: Don’t wait for clients to ask. Instead proactively offer them AFAs.

The “Painful” Stat

A November 2009 survey shows that in-house counsel were being directed to reduce their budgets by 11.5% – on average. The presenters commented this number is probably higher now. 60% of these budgets go to pay law firms. The impact here is also obvious. However, the smart firms will see the opportunity here.

First – you need to know the pain. Imagine you are the GC and your job is dependent on you cutting the budget. Your choices are, 1) cut law firm fees, or 2) fire someone who has worked with you for 12 years. So this is real pain. The GC can only squeeze so much out of outside counsel and still protect the company. And the GC does not want to look a friend and colleague in the eyes and terminate them. This high level of pain presents an opportunity. The GC needs help and a law firm is in the best position to help them. So become a trusted-advisor in a whole new way. In partnership with the GC, help them respond to the needs and demands of the client – the company. Of course AFAs will play a prominent role in this effort.

The economic downturn presents numerous opportunities. Firms and in-house counsel are now willing to embrace ideas and approaches they would have never considered in the past. Law firms and their clients both want and need AFAs and are apparently ready to embrace them (per our stats above).

So as Ron Baker says, it’s time we “Just do it.”

I know this fellow who is so cheap (everyone: “How Cheap Is He??”) — he is so cheap that he hasn’t had a real home phone (AKA “land line”) for almost 8 years now.  Okay… it’s really me, but, anyone that knows me, knows I’m cheap.

Last week, I went out and bought myself one of those “Magic Jack” devices that I’ve seen on TV, and have seen reviews online.  At $40.00 for the device, and $20.00 for a cheap cordless phone (on clearance, of course), I came away with a new “land line” for my house for an initial annual cost of $5.00 a month (that’s $60 / 12 months).  I’m going to pony up for the 5 year subscription to the phone for another $60 bringing my average monthly cost over the next 6 years to a whopping $1.67 a month.  This makes me want to get up and do my cheapskate happy dance (lucky for you this isn’t a v-blog!!)
This got me thinking of the potential that Magic Jack could have in reducing costs beyond the personal level.  So, here are a few that I thought of off the top of my head:
1.  Corporate Travel – There have been a number of times that I’ve travelled to places where there is spotty cell reception in the hotel or conference center, but I got Internet reception.  Plug in the Magic Jack to my laptop, and viola!!  instant phone service.
2.  International Travel – Got Internet access??  Then you’ve got a US phone number.  Give one of these to someone that is going to be staying overseas for months, and you’ve enabled them to talk with their families back in the States for no additional costs.
3.  International Friends and Family – Got a friend or relative in a foreign country?  Give them a Magic Jack as a gift, and now you have a way for them to call you, or you to call them with no phone cards or high long-distance charges.  This would have been a great idea to do when the Au Pair we had with us last year went back to Germany.  My kids would love to call her at 2:00 AM German time to tell her about their day.
4.  Extreme Business Phones –  If you’re just starting a business and you spent all your money on computers and Internet service, try using Magic Jack phones for your business lines.  There are some drawbacks, to be sure, but it would be a great money saver until you get enough to pay those huge monthly phone bills.
5.  Connect via 3G Internet Card – I haven’t “Googled” it yet, but I’m pretty sure that some smart guy figured out a way to hook a laptop w/3G Internet card + Magic Jack up to a regular phone, and make calls.  I’m just surprised that it – (a) wasn’t me and (b) I haven’t seen this geek on my bus ride home!
Of course, some of this is Pie-in-the-Sky, Polliannish thinking on my part.  But, there does seem to be a lot of potential in using a product like this to save some hard earned cash.  There are some drawbacks to Magic Jack, such as – you have to have your computer on and connected to the Internet.  But, even then, your calls roll over to voice mail (free voice mail!!), or you can have it automatically forward to another phone using call forwarding (free call forwarding!!)
Let me know if you also use Magic Jack and have some additional ideas on how to use Magic Jack to save some serious money!!  Also, if you see the guy with the laptop, 3G card, and a regular home phone making calls on a bus…  email me the pictures!!!
NOTE:  It came to me in an epiphany!!  – I’m going to buy a 1968 Dodge Dart convertible, and install my wireless Internet connection, Magic Jack, and the classic rotary phone! Then I’m going to pretend I’m Mannix from the old TV Show!!

The past few weeks have been pretty hectic with all of the BigLaw layoff news.  We thought we’d graph out some of the changes that have occurred.  
Using IBM’s Many Eyes project (which we reviewed a couple weeks ago) – We put together a few different views of which firms were moving attorneys in and out.   Whether or not this actually tells you anything about the trends in law firm layoffs is our secondary purpose.  Mainly we just wanted to remind you that even during times of mass layoffs, we still find a way to geek it up around here.   

Bubble Graph:

C1e69328-ff6c-11dd-98dc-000255111976 Blog_this_caption

Block View:
Word Cloud:
Pie Chart:
Network Diagram:
Stack Graph:

A web site is not to be read. It is to be scanned.

Studies show that visitors spend less than 4 seconds on a web page.

With that in mind, search engine optimization is vital. Putting your most important words at the front and at the top of pages, paragraphs, sentences, and lines should be a part of any good web design.

Because, in the end, what is your site’s purpose: attract the right visitors and generate business.

SEO is a combination of art and science, images and text, algorithms and keywords. SEO relies upon word usage, word placement and formatting.

And, as an SEO expert, if you are really good at your craft, no one should be able to tell what your doing.

In other words, if you are an SEO craftsman, your work should be invisible.

So. Here I am: an invisible artist at the mercy of verbose lawyers intent upon displaying their masterful grasp of the English language.

I face a daunting task.

In 1996 I was asked to speak for the Great Lakes Organization of Bar Executives (GLOBE). The group was meeting in Park City and I was a convenient geek to present to them (living in Salt Lake at the time). I was tasked with talking about the future of legal technology and how it might impact the legal profession. This was a fun challenge and my presentation was titled, “Staying Relevant.”

The bottom line for that presentation, which I ended up giving again to numerous bar associations present at the meeting, was:

  1. Self-help is (and continues to be) a strong trend.
  2. Clients are able to find the legal information they need online (forms, checklists, even advice)
  3. Interactive systems will help clients build their own legal documents (document assembly)
  4. E-signatures and electronic documents will enable clients to directly file with government agencies (e.g. tax returns, corporate filings, court filings, etc.)
  5. If lawyers want to stay relevant, they will need to fit into this new approach, otherwise the river will flow around them.

Oh … and I added at the end of the program, “If all this technology and trends threaten to make lawyers irrelevant, what will that make a bar association?” Needless to say, I got their attention.

Fast forward to the present and these ideas are coming to roost. They may be best captured in Richard Susskind’s new book, The End of Lawyers?.

Mr. Susskind goes in to some detail about how these trends are playing out. Disruptive technologies, evolving dispute resolution paradigms, pressures on in-house lawyers and other factors are finally driving change in the profession. Even BigLaw is feeling the commoditization effect, driving business to smaller firms with lower price points. My recent posts on Alternative Billing are one example of how this is all playing out.

If you want a more direct view of Mr. Susskind’s prognostications, you should check out ABA TECHSHOW 2009 as he is the feature keynote. TECHSHOW has a lot of other benefits and value to offer beyond this great speaker and topic. I recommend you check out the program and consider a spring trip to Chicago to catch all the sessions and exhibits.

As to what the future holds, I agree with Mr. Susskind. Lawyers, if they chose to, can play an exciting and frankly more interesting role in this evolving market. It will require change, which is likely the biggest sticking point for the industry. In my 1996 presentation I referred to the problem as the “Paradigm of Precedence.” Lawyers drive the boat by watching the wake. Apparently we have reached that point in time where they better turn and look out over the bow.

Otherwise …

On Friday the 13th at at 23:31:30 GMT, Unix computers using ten-digit clocks displayed 1234567890.

Computer geeks around the world saluted that night. Twitterers tweeted the party rally: “1234567890”.

But apparently the party of geeks ushering in this new era must now turn their programming prowess into another type of number crunching: switching for 32-bit integer counting system to a 64-bit integer system.

Now I’m no programmer and I barely understand what I’m talking about, but the gist of it is that a number of our current programs used in air traffic control and the like are programmed using Unix timers that are based on 32-bit integer systems and, as a result, running on a limited clock.

The Unix clock counts up to only a finite number of seconds: 4,294,967,296, to be exact.

Taking into account “leap seconds”–yes, just like leap years–that’s about 136 years. So we are looking at the Unix clocks running out of time around the year 2038.

Remember the millenium bug (Y2K) everyone was panicked about when the clocks struck 2000? I had friends that had pulled out wallets full of cash and hid it behind paintings . . . (no, it wasn’t me, I swear. It was a friend!).

So now our dear programming friends are frantically–ok, maybe not so frantically–making the switch to 64-bit integers that can count up to 293 billion years into the future.

Bear in mind that these are all only displayed in binary codes so the non-programmers among us are for the most part completely unaware of this problem.

So for us commoners, we must proceed with caution and ask our IT staff the delicately framed question, “so, tell me, IT God, what integer system are our servers running on?”

(When approaching the inner sanctum of IT, it is always best to go bearing gifts. Cookies work for me.)

I swear, with all the economic doom and gloom going on, I’m just waiting for the Mayan calendar to run out. Maybe we just won’t have to deal with any of this anymore. **heavy sigh**

Last week, DLA Piper announced that they were laying off 80 attorneys and 100 staffers.  Over the past week, we’ve tracked DLA Piper to see which attorneys have been coming and going, and we’ve found some interesting trends that we thought we’d share with you.

All Bad News?  
Turns out that DLA Piper added 11 attorneys during the week.  The Singapore office brought on 6 new associates to bolster their Corporate group.  Five associates were hired in various European offices (Cologne-2 ; Oslo-1; Hamburg-1; Paris-1).  
Who Received Pink Slips?
According to the information we obtained, the layoffs were handed out to 66 associates and 5 Of Counsel.  Interestingly enough, the Of Counsel were equally distributed over 5 offices (Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego and Tampa.)
Amazingly, from what data we could pull, the 66 associates were equally split with 33 being male, and 33 being female.  The Of Counsel were 4 male, 1 female.
Associates Male 33
  Female 33
Of Counsel Male 4
  Female 1
Where Were the Layoffs?
There were 16 offices where attorneys received pink slips last week.  New York and Chicago took the brunt of the layoffs with 14 and 11 respectively.  
Atlanta 4
Baltimore 3
Boston 2
Chicago 11
Dallas 3
Los Angeles 6
New York 14
Northern Virginia 1
Philadelphia 3
Phoenix 2
Sacramento 1
San Diego 4
San Francisco 3
Silicon Valley 6
Tampa 3
Washington DC 5
 Total 71
Which Practice Groups Were Affected?
Transactional groups were hit the hardest by the layoffs.  All but 13 layoffs were in the transactional groups, with Corporate and Finance getting almost half of the total layoffs.  Litigation was not spared, losing 11, and IP lost 2.
Commercial Contracts 2
Corporate 26
Employment 1
Finance 9
Intellectual Property 2
Litigation 11
Real Estate 17
Regulatory & Government Affairs 1
Tax 2
Which Practice Groups in Which Office??
It seems that DLA Piper didn’t make wholesale cuts in specific practice groups within specific offices.  The most any specific group lost in any specific office was five.  The Silicon Valley office lost 5 within their Corporate group, and the New York office lost 5 within their Finance Group.  
Commercial Contracts Chicago 1
  Dallas 1
Corporate Atlanta 2
  Baltimore 1
  Boston 1
  Chicago 4
  Los Angeles 1
  New York 3
  Northern Virginia 1
  Phoenix 2
  Sacramento 1
  San Diego 1
  San Francisco 2
  Silicon Valley 5
  Tampa 1
  Washington DC 1
Employment Chicago 1
Finance Atlanta 1
  Chicago 1
  Los Angeles 2
  New York 5
Intellectual Property San Diego 2
Litigation Boston 1
  Dallas 1
  Los Angeles 1
  New York 2
  Philadelphia 3
  San Diego 1
  Silicon Valley 1
  Washington DC 1
Real Estate Atlanta 1
  Baltimore 1
  Chicago 4
  Dallas 1
  Los Angeles 2
  New York 4
  San Francisco 1
  Tampa 2
  Washington DC 1
Regulatory & Government Affairs Washington DC 1
Tax Baltimore 1
  Washington DC 1
What are the “Trends” Found in the DLA Piper Layoffs?
The trend of this specific round of layoffs was that the pink slips were handed out across a broad range of Practice Groups, Offices, and almost equally distributed among women and men.  From the data we could find, it also seemed that these were more senior level associates, with more than 3 or 4 years of experience.  
The moral of this story?  If you’re a mid to senior level associate in transactional practice groups, it may be time to start updating the resume.

Thursday February 12, 2009, a day that most of us in large law firms will remember for a long time.  Losing over 800 jobs in law firms in one day is a terrible, terrible thing, but we’ve all been hearing that some firms are doing “stealth” layoffs as well.  This really means that there are a lot more than 800 jobs lost.large law firm layoffs by looking at the firms’ rosters and trying to isolate when people come and 

We here at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog thought we’d start trying to see if we could find the trends ingo (or change titles.)  It’s a work in progress, but here’s a rather large sample of the movement in over 90 law firms just this week.  
There’s also some good news hidden in here (althought the big layoff announced yesterday are not all included in this list), and that is the fact that there is still hiring going on in firms (even for associates.)  
Take a look for yourself and let us know your opinion on all the comings and goings in big law this week:
[table]
Note:  Okay…. maybe the initial list was a little too long to digest.  So, I’ve trimmed it back a little to show some of the movement.  I’ll post more information next week detailing some of the findings that I’ve seen in the actual movement of attorneys in and out of large firms.  
If you must have a look at the entire list of this week’s moves, you can shoot me an email, or send me a tweet on Twitter.

I posed this question on Twitter but got no responses. I suppose that answers that.

But, I think I just got lost in the Twittersphere so I raise the question again.

Do “Real” Journalists Twitter?

You see, I have been having this long-standing debate (well, ok, a 4-month debate) with a former reporter who claims that no reporter worth his/her salt would deign to use Twitter as a story source and that there are no reporters at reputable papers using Twitter.

Hmm.

Well, if that were true, I wouldn’t be able to follow @jsnell, @pogue, @Tracyo42, @stephditta, @jenleereeves, @judywriter, @brianstelter and many, many more.

And then on Twellow, an app that works like a yellow pages for Twitter, there is a category devoted to reporters.

I guess for some, ignorance is bliss . . .