NOTE:  We welcome our first Guest Geek Blogger, Laura Walters.  Don’t let Laura’s well-written post fool you, she’s just as geeky as any of the 3 Geeks!  
I was rereading a favorite book recently that seemed even more appropriate given the recent economic news and general upheaval in many industries, Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese? I was struck by the timeless message but also by the realization that the legal industry could use a refresher (or introduction) as we attempt to reconcile the dramatic rate and pace of change we are facing.

Knowing how the legal eagles love all things unique unto their worldview, I decided to outline the core messages of the original story as they relate to our current challenges in the hope that firms can apply the concepts more expediently. For those unfamiliar with WMMC? it is a simple parable about mice (Sniff and Scurry), little people (Hem and Haw), and a maze in which they all live containing much sought after Cheese (success/fulfillment/comfort/etc.) that mysteriously keeps moving about. For our purposes, you can imagine a two associates, two ostriches, and a court house (if that helps).

Let’s hit some highlights from the story and see how they apply to the law firm:

1. Cheese (Briefs) Happen – They Keep Moving the Cheese (or Washing Your Briefs)
Change is a given in any industry, but especially so for us legal folks. Recently large-scale change has been visited upon us in terms of our clients, the economy, and our internal organizations. Some firms seem surprised – they shouldn’t be. Even if you are blessed with a steady stream of work and a stable partnership structure, change still can (and will) make its way to your door. The current changes are affecting law firm personnel across the board – from the receptionist to the most tenured partner – reminding us that we are all in this one together.

2. Anticipate Change – Get Ready for the Cheese to Move (or Your Briefs to Get Washed)
Many law firms operate day-to-day on a fairly reactive basis. We say this is the nature of our service industry – we’re here for the clients and they drive what we do. Well…yes and no. The interesting thing about clients is that they expect their professional service providers to be proactive, not reactive – and assume that firms operate as such. A proactive approach to most anything – client service, firm strategy, changing market conditions – beats a reactive approach 99% of the time.

Being proactive in our business model and operations also allows for employees to feel more in control of their environment. No one enjoys being a firefighter all the time. When firms operate reactively, employees expect change to happen “to” them, instead of being the orchestrators of change solutions.

3. Monitor Change – Smell the Cheese (or your Briefs) Often So You’ll Know When It’s Getting Old (or Needs A Wash)
How to be more proactive? Glad you asked! Proactive strategies are the result of knowing your market, your clients, and your industries inside and out. Could the firms who have been serving the financial industry all this time really have been so blindsided by the current financial crisis? Probably not. Even the financial institutions themselves predicted the bubble would burst more than a year ago! But how many of law firms adjusted their internal organizations proactively to prepare for the recession? Firms need to be better educated about – and entrenched in – the industries and markets of their clients in order to provide top quality counsel and to run their own practices most efficiently.

Internally, firms need to be more vigilant as well. There are always ways to streamline, manage costs, operate more efficiently. Does your firm have a system in place to be proactive in finding those optimal solutions on an ongoing basis – or just when the monthly revenue and expense reports begin to look grim?

4. Adapt to Change Quickly – The Quicker You Let Go of Old Cheese (or Wash Stale Briefs) the Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese (or Fresh Briefs)
This is huge. Adapting to change is key to long-term success. Ostriches need not apply. As President Eisenhower used to say, “Plans are useless, but planning is everything.” Too often firms go through an elaborate and sometimes painstaking process of planning – strategic planning, practice group planning, individual attorney business plan planning, administrative planning. You’d think with all this planning going on the adaptability rate would be high. Wrong. I like to better refer to all this planning as “Admiring The Problem”. There are a lot of plans, but not a lot of action. The point of creating a plan, as Pres. Eisenhower points out, is to go through the creative process of situation identification and problem solving. In working with attorneys and practice groups though strategic planning I often tell them I care less about what the final plan actually says than about what you went through to get there.

Creative thinking, brainstorming, and new perspectives are underutilized in law firms. Being able to adapt quickly to change requires all of these. I’ve heard it called “swarmability” – the amount of time it takes you, your practice group, your organization to recognize change opportunities, mobilize yourself(ves) in response, and then act. Even administrative departments in firms get caught in this trap – often creating excellent strategies only to offer them up to the sacrificial altar of committee review and approval process.

*Bonus Points – Noticing small changes early helps you adapt to bigger changes later on.
Briefs getting tight? Elastic starting to give around the waistline? Remain alert to small shifts in industry trends, client projections versus results, competitor firm movements, internal shifts in morale or culture, etc. It’s tempting not to go looking for trouble when the sailing is smooth, but keying in to early warning signs makes adapting to change much easier.

5. Change – Move With the Cheese (or Wash Your Own Briefs!)
Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines had the greatest strategic plan ever devised for his organization – he called it “Doing Things”. This execution step is often where firms get bogged down, side-tracked, waylaid, or otherwise derailed. Attorneys are hardwired to get things right the first time, to have the correct answer, definitively, before proposing a solution. In legal matters this is important. In business development and change management, this is suicide. Adapting to a quickly changing marketplace means acting even more quickly. Being first is good (great), being second or third is okay too. Early adapters survive and often thrive – capitalizing on new opportunities.

First is an uncomfortable position for many firms when it comes to change. Precedent is more reliable, previous results can be evaluated and then benchmarked or tossed out. Unfortunately, the changing economy will reward those firsts (and seconds and thirds) far more readily than the wait-and-see firms.

*Bonus Points – Old beliefs do not lead you to new cheese. Doing what we’ve always done and expecting results – different or otherwise – is treacherous in today’s marketplace. “Because we’ve always done it that way,” isn’t going to cut it anymore. Even what works can be reviewed, revisited, tightened up and tweaked. There’s always room for improvement. If you don’t think so, attend process improvement training (Lean Six Sigma for service providers is being offered now for law firm administrators) and see if there aren’t areas you discover can be adjusted.

6. Enjoy Change! – Savor the Adventure and Enjoy the Taste of New Cheese (or the Feeling of Fresh Briefs)
The freeing part of embracing the notion of “doing things” and perhaps even being “first” is that is can be great fun. Change always gives us the chance to stretch a bit – to step outside of the comfort zone and realize new potential for ourselves and our organizations. Law firms have enjoyed a fairly tried and true business model for many years, but this doesn’t make it the best or the only model.

The recent economic shift has forced many attorneys and clients to re-examine the nature of their working relationship. This can be a frightening prospect, although in many cases a more collaborative and interesting partnership has resulted. Since change is inevitable, doesn’t it benefit us to find a more positive way to face it? Try embracing change in your firm. Put a positive spin on change announcements – look for the silver lining and encourage your employees and colleagues to view change as a creative opportunity.

7. Be Ready to Change Quickly and Enjoy It Again – They Keep Moving the Cheese (and Washing Your Briefs)
As in most important aspects of life, practice makes perfect. Becoming successful at managing and capitalizing on change is difficult, but it becomes easier with practice. Even in times of stability and status quo, stretch a little. Be vigilant about getting yourself, and your firm, out of that comfort zone and test new ground. Sea change can come when you least expect it, so you don’t want to get out of practice. (Think this sounds difficult? Try taking a new alternate route home tonight. You never know when you just might need to know one or what you might discover along the way.)

*Bonus Points – Attorneys and firms don’t have to wait for change to arrive. When you get really good at practicing, try instigating change in your industry – find blue ocean versus red.

Laura Walters is the Director of Practice Group Management at Foster Pepper PLLC in Seattle, WA. Laura has spent more than 15 years specializing in change management, business development, and competitive intelligence for both law firms and corporations.

The media has been making the comment that Congresses working on the $800+ billion stimulus package is a lot like watching sausage being made.  That very thought came to me while I was looking at some of the big law firms’ websites over a period of time.

Anymore we tend to think that information that is presented on the lawfirm’s website has been pulled from many different places —  Human Resources; Marketing; Information Technology; Knowledge Management.  But, we also hope that there are certain things that make the information… shall I say, “stable” once it is online.  
You hope that computer databases and web page programming will number things in order, place things in alphabetical order, and/or put correct dates on the corresponding information.

Well, apparently, you’d be mistaken!
I continually come across lists of names, that for no apparent reason, are in correct alphabetical order one day, and out of order the next:
Or, titles of employees that are numbers, rather than the actual title:

Phone numbers that seemed to be garbled by some magical computer gremlin:
Names spelled incorrectly:
Big Named Attorneys’ names missing one day, and back the next:
You get to see when people prefer one name over another:
And, one of my favorites – a strange word like “bulldog” suddenly shows up on every page:
Of course, these types of errors aren’t limited to law firm websites, but since this is my industry, I gotta play to my strengths!  In a way it is kind of heartening to remember that there are actual people behind these websites, and that the computers are still the tools rather than the providers of information.  It also shows that glitches – like information displaying out of order – means we haven’t quite chased all of the ghosts from the machines yet.

I’m not so sure about this Kindle Kraze.

See, despite my long-held love affair with all things online, I just can’t bring myself to jump on the Kindle bandwagon.

Why? In short, I’m a bibliophile. I own well over 200 books; half of which are either first editions or signed–some, even both. I have read, I am certain, well over 1,000 books in my life time (I catalogued my massive reading list on Shelfari.com, a social networking site dedicated to readers that is now owned by Amazon).

Oh, I’m sure that the publishers and authors are lovin’ it–the Amazon business model requires every reader to buy his own book. No more sharing, giving or selling used books.

But, I wonder, what kind of cut the authors get from the publishers? I wonder how much money the publishing companies are saving from printing? I wonder how many print houses will close down, following the path of our newspapers?

At least the publishing houses are a few steps ahead of the newspapers: might save a few more jobs.

Toby, Greg and I were discussing Amazon’s business model at lunch the other–yes, we do actually meet in person–and wondered if Amazon would change its business model to allow for monthly subscriptions so you could rent a couple of books per month. Or maybe sell household accounts.

Personally, I won’t even consider buying a Kindle until they display in color, include easy e-mail access and phone capabilities and, essentially, replace my phone. If you knew me, you’d know I’m the same way about computers and TVs–I’m waiting for one machine.

Amazon will get there, I’m sure, within the next 5 years.

The upside? In five years, the value of my book collection will have doubled 🙂

I came across this PC World article highlighting Google’s Latitude. The title, “Spy on Your Workers,” caught my eye so I checked it out. It explores this new offering and some implications it may bring.

Since KM is about capturing knowledge and then making it easily accessible, Latitude falls squarely on the KM dime. It combines Web 2.0, with social networking with cell phone tracking. The result: you can see where your friends, family and co-workers are at a given time. It works for both cell phone locations as well as computer locations (based on where you connect).

As long as you trust Google not to become or enable Big Brother type uses, you may choose to see Latitude as a ‘little brother’ or maybe ‘social brother’ application.

Beyond a certain ‘cool’ factor to check out where your friends are at anytime, it has business KM applications for employers needing to track locations of employees. To its credit, Google in its normal fashion leaves control in the hands of the user. You can hide yourself and/or expose your location as you see fit.

As with a number of new technologies, I am mixed with a sense of ‘that’s cool’ and ‘this is freakin me out.’ My uber geek friend Lincoln has already sent me a Latitude invite. As an old friend of mine he already knows where numerous bodies are buried (and vice versa), so I accepted his invite to check this out. I’ll need to give this more thought, especially after playing with it a bit. I’ve already set it up on my laptop and will do so on my Blackberry to see how it works and feels.

KM implications? Numerous. Latitude adds a unique layer of knowledge that has a value-add potential we shouldn’t ignore. But still … it’s freakin me out.

When I worked in academia, we used to joke that universities were great places to work — except for all the students.  We loved the ability to work along side bright people, and contemplate new ways of addressing old ideas.  The same is true for Social Media.  It is a great resource to contemplate new ways of addressing old ideas —  now, if we could just ignore all the people out there.

There is an inherent problem with Social Media tools (in this post, I’ll limit my discussion to blogs and Twitter.)  It was apparently glossed over yesterday at Legal Tech, but was astutely picked up by Ohad Reshef after the presentation.  Very soon, spammers are going to make some of the best parts of social networking tools worthless.  
Currently, those of us that are pushing the benefits of Twitter, or the comment strings on blogging, are telling our colleagues that this is a wonderful resource where you can truly get a water cooler topic going on a global scale.  I can post this blog, and someone in Australia can comment almost immediately.  I can follow a discussion on Twitter by searching for a hash tag topic (such as #LTNY) that is being used.  It is truly a great process of sharing ideas and having that global conversation.  Unfortunately, it is also ripe for being crushed by the very openness that makes it so great.
Consider this –  If I were a spammer, or someone with malicious intent, I could practically disable a Twitter topic with very little effort.  For those of us that every used Yahoo or AOL chat rooms, you remember the chat bots that would inevitably come in and take over a room?  Well, unfortunately we face a similar fate with Twitter topics.  All it would take would be someone to start blasting hash tag comments on four or five automated Twitter accounts to make the effort of following the topic too difficult.  So far, we’ve lucked out that this hasn’t happened…  but it will.
As for blogs, we already see that one of the most popular legal blogs, Abovethelaw.com, has had to adjust its comment viewing policy due to the fact that the openness that allows everyone to comment, has become so inundated with trash and obscenities, that it makes it virtually worthless to monitor anymore.  And, the sad thing is that the readership of this blog is very bright, but apparently so caught up in the “game” of creating noise on the comments, that I seriously doubt that half of the commenters even read the story.  Even on this blog, we’ve had to remove comments because they are comment spam.
I’m dreading the day that we have to “monitor” or “hide” the comments because half of them are either spam or trash.  I’m dreading the day that I can no longer monitor Twitter comments because half the comments are spam.  In the meantime, I’m enjoying the social media honeymoon while it lasts!

We are watching the beginnings of the media giants taking over social networking.

I got an inkling of this when I heard that LexisNexis, an online research service, bought Martindale Hubbell, an online legal directory, who in turn partnered with LinkedIn, an online networking site.

Lexis has partnered with Chambers Global, a UK business that ranks lawyers and law firm’s proficiency, to display the Chambers rankings on Martindale. Lexis is owned by Reed Elselvier, one of the world’s largest providers of online information. RE employs 35,000 around the world and reported revenues of £4,584m/€6,693m/$6,625m.

Which brings me to my story.

Flickr has censored a Spanish psychologist’s collection of photos and art because of his offensive content.

He was told, “Use your common sense to determine if your content is appropriate or not to a global audience (emphasis added) … you must know that if we receive another report about your content or conduct, it is very likely to cancel your account.”

The offending content?

Smoking.

Now, certainly, we should be outraged at the topic of this censorship; it is as offensive as it gets no matter what side you weigh in on.

But let us, instead, look at the larger issue.

The authority, and the manner in which Flickr–now owned by Yahoo–weilds its authority, in determining what content is acceptable to a global audience.

I ask you: who is this site to determine what is globally acceptable? How can one online community, scattered hither and yore, determine what is globally acceptable?

Flickr’s solution–more rightly, Yahoo’s–is to establish an indiscriminate discriminating program that automates the intake of complaints, then sends out an automated warning to the content holder to straighten up and fly right. If they don’t, they are censored to an “adult-only” section. If they receive too many complaints, they are booted.

It is nearly impossible to appeal this process to a human. Its like spotting a unicorn–rumoured to exist and any successful attempt is regarding as myth.

With these sorts of problems, I have witnessed another solution: have human admins troll the site.

I remember AOL employed such folks back in the day when chat rooms were booming. I saw this type of policing just recently on a LiveJournal site called Vintage Photographs. They employed this method to mediate between posters when the worthiness of a photo was called into question. When a comment fight ensued, the mediator would step in, make a judgment then put the offending participants on a week-long vacation. If it happened too many times, the participant was banned.

The danger in these types of situations is that admins are either too lax or revel in their meaningless authority and go power-crazy.

Meh.

But can’t you see it now? What are the long-term results?

In a Yahoo-type environment, the program becomes the power and Hal2000 takes over.

In a VintagePhoto environment, we end up creating a hierarchy of online judges that fall under no jurisdiction.

My guess? By the year 2020, we will have a virtual jurisdiction. We have to. With the likes of Reed Elsevior and LexisNexis and LinkedIn now entering the arena, social networking is taking a decidedly serious turn.

Lord knows who will rule this virtual world . . .

Online media is replacing print media. It is a fact that PR agencies need to embrace.I hear talk about how PR agencies look to more reputable “papers” before they look to online pubs for the top news stories.But, think about it: where do readers go first when they hear about news while at work?Do they all run en masse to the local news stand 40 floors below them? Do they all run home and turn on their tv? Do they run to their car and turn on the radio?Oh, no, my little grasshopper. . . they go online!It is a fact that was reported by all online mediums. Last week, “Obama Rocked the Web,” according to AdWeek:

On Jan. 20,CNN.com Live served more than 26.9 million live video streams globally and 36.7 million streams overall. According to CNN’s internal data, that figure is more than five times the previous record of 5.3 million live streams set on Election Day last year, which at the time was record shattering.

PR agencies need to wake up and smelled the coffee. Every major paper now has its own blog where they are breaking their own stories.More and more major papers are letting go of their print publications and turning to online media. One of the most well-respected papers in the U.S., the Christian Science Monitor shut down their print publication and are now completely online. Joining the online ranks are the Kansas City Kansan, San Francisco’s AsiaNews and both Detroit newspapers–the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press.Face it, when the advertising dollars flee to online–as they already are–the papers will follow.They already are. The smart news mediums use one to leverage the other. Some are just hanging on to their denial.
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Addendum: one of my online friends–thanks UTROUKX!–sent me this 1981 video.

Having been taken to task on my How To Alternative Bill post by Ron Baker, I have been making some progress on this effort so it’s time for an update. Ron presses the Just Do It approach. When we just do it, we need to be able to do two things up front.

First – we need to build budgets in one sense or another to value bill. This is the case whether it’s a flat-fee or pretty much any other type of value billing since we need to know our costs on some level. I’ve heard numerous partners tell me they know “in their gut” how much a matter or case will cost in fees. This is one approach. But it makes sense to have some benchmarks for how much a type of matter will cost. Of course, all matters are different, but some are actually quite a bit alike. Following Ron’s lead of just picking a client and getting started, you should consider picking a type of matter you know well to handle for this client. Then you can construct a budget without a lot of effort. You can also check the fees from a few similar matters as a reality check on your estimate. So without too much over-analysis, you can have a good, reasonably informed budget to use. The risk factor is low, likely low enough to match the average risk a firm takes on a new matter. So our risk issue is well addressed.

Second – we need to monitor our performance over the life of the matter to see how we perform against the budget. Even if you choose not to share this effort with the client, you will be learning how to manage against the budget. This will tell you how honest your budget was and it will tell you when you need to make adjustments in how you manage the matter. If you plan to continue to value bill in to the future, this information feedback will be critical to your success. It will help you focus your efforts on higher value tasks and to manage your business with profitability in mind.

Both of these efforts can be kept relatively simple. Lawyers do have a tendency to over analyze and cripple their efforts by seeking perfection. Ron’s advice makes sense in that context. And in my recent diggings, I have found that firms can perform both of these tasks. At first they may be very manually intensive, but over time necessity will drive development of automation. And this automation will be laser-focused. Too often large firms serve up great technology that never gets used. In this situation – technology will be highly focused on meeting pressing needs. Thus I see it getting used and being quite valuable.

The Bottom Line! Firms already have tools to handle value billing. These are likely not the best tools, but they can get the job done. And once you start value billing, you will be motivated to implement better tools and will know exactly what you want them to do.

I have touted the benefits of using MicroBlogging tools like Twitter in the past as a good method of replacing listservs and as a way of creating a virtual water cooler to bounce ideas off of others. MicroBlogging – basically, a method of small electronic message communication – has many ways of streamlining communications in ways that e-mail cannot. I recently learned that one of Twitter’s former competitors, Jaiku, is not being killed by Google, but rather, it is being set free as open source software.

The details are not complete, but I’m going ahead and assuming that when they say open source, they mean that I will be able to load the MicroBlogging software on my own network and create a MicroBlogging service within my own network. Enjoying all of the benefits of small messaging services, with the security of having it behind the firewall. Jason, over at No Option for Law Firm has a great overview of what it means to have this type of service available in a secure environment.  (Note: there is an existing option for MicroBlogging within your organization by using Yammer.  However, Yammer is an external application and may make some IT directors hesitant to try it without having control over the backend of the program.)

Many of us work in environments where we have individuals that are highly intelligent, creative, and inquisitive.  Bouncing ideas off of these people would not only help you better handle the tasks that are set before you, it may also clue them into different ways of looking at problems, and help them handle task better.  Unfortunately, the people within your organization that you could benefit the most from having these “water cooler” discussions with, may be in different offices, or even in different countries.  E-mail just doesn’t give you the ability to toss out an idea to a community, and see if someone picks it up and tosses a suggestion back.  Imagine what would happen the first time you sent out one of those infamous “ALL EMPLOYEE” e-mails.   The other possibility is to try to revive “instant messaging” within the enterprise, but I think that is something that gives every technology leader within an organization a twitching eye.
Having an MicroBlogging resource within the enterprise allows you to start building these relationships without overburdening the email system.  It also allows you to throw things out there like links to a good article you just read, or to a competitors website with a comment of “can’t we do something like this here?”  Some of the messages will never be answered, but some will.  And, answered by someone that you may not have ever had the chance to work with before.  Breaking down barriers within the organization, and allowing the ability to really play off the wealth of knowledge that is contained within the organization.
Of course, there will be drawbacks to MicroBlogging – there’s always someone that decides that it is the perfect place to talk about the concert they went to last night, or how there are cookies in the break room.  But, to be honest, even these things are not all that bad.  IBM has had these Web 2.0 resource internally for over a year now, and they are encouraging any type of communications, even personal activity discussion.  The thought there is that people will better know other workers and feel that there is a true community within the organization.  
We all hear that communications is essential to a well-run workforce.  But, most organizations haven’t really evolved past the e-mail phase of electronic communications.  MicroBlogging within the enterprise can be the next step toward enabling employees to communicate without overloading either the email system, or each other.  I look forward to testing out Jaiku when it is released as open source.

Well I have been out-of-pocket this week since I traveled to D.C. to witness the Inauguration with my lovely wife. We had an incredible time. We had tickets in one of the front sections with seats and actually made it there in time to see the whole thing. We also made it to the reception being held in my firm’s office – on the parade route. When the President got out of the Stagecoach to walk, it was right in front of us. Incredible! One of my lessons from this experience is the value of knowledge. Since we had done our homework well, we had the right knowledge to make our way through the crowds. This meant when the train conductor announced he would not be stopping at the station we selected, we knew of an alternative route. We did so well, we defied The Post. That morning’s edition stated it would be “impossible” to make both the Inauguration and the parade. Yet we did. Yes – it’s stretching the definition of KM, but I had to post about this! [Edit: Special thanks to Ron and Stuart for hosting us!] Here’s a couple of shots taken with my phone. Giving the Inaugural Address The sun sets on the Capitol