I was read that Weil, Gotshal was going to be opening a new Middle East office in January. It got me wondering: how many of the top 50 AmLaw Firms have Middle East Offices?
11.
Oddly, top ranking Skadden does not.
The most popular location is Dubai, with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi tying for second place.
I speculate this because the ones that do have ME offices are heavily invested in their energy and project finance practices. Although some may be handling corporate work, I would hazard to guess that the work is so specialized that it would require solid ME legal expertise, which is very hard to come by.
Also, setting up office in the Middle East is complicated: it requires assocations with local firms. And don’t forget integrating into the rest of the firm’s technology.
Recently the NY Times was advocating that employment-challenged lawyers may consider looking to the Middle East for their next gig. Apparently, there is a wealth of vacancies if you are willing to adopt a new culture.
If you are interested in the full list, shoot me an e-mail.

[For those who arrived here from the bit.ly shortcut, sorry for the confusion. Twitter and other sites truncate the link and brought you here. If you’re interested in great discussion on legal technology, then welcome. We’d love to have you subscribe to the blog and the podcast. – GL]

This week, we’ve been listing all the large law firms that we could find that publicize the fact that they have attorney written blogs. We broke it down into those that were proud of their blogs vs. those that seem to be luke-warm to the fact that these blogs exists.  There are a few more categories we could also cover, such as those firms that would ban blogging by their attorneys, or attorneys that have stealth blogs that either haven’t been discovered by their firms Marketing Department or Senior Partners, or are just plain ignored by the firm’s upper echelon. These would be interesting (but difficult) lists to compile, but what interests me the most is the attorneys that have blogs, but don’t necessarily want the firm to have anything to do with them.

There were a few comments on the previous posts that said that they actually wanted to keep their personal blogs, well… “personal.” And, they had a number of reasons to keep the firm from taking ownership of the blog:
  1. Personal blogs do not have to be “screened” by anyone in the firm before being posted. This allows for attorneys to post quickly to breaking news, or just whenever the mood hits them.
  2. If I move to another firm, I can take my personal blog with me. It would tragic to have to leave something that you feel is your own and turn it over to others to manage (or destroy) when you move on to another firm.
I’ve also been thinking of what are the benefits of having your firm taking ownership (or at least promoting and supporting) a blog.  So, I came up with this list:
  1. I have a multi-million dollar organization with thousands of clients and a global (or at least national) reach supporting my efforts.
  2. Others in my firm can team with me to work on a specific legal topic blog.  Spread the effort of maintaining an up-to-date blog across the Practice Group, thus making the blog more diverse and current.
  3. I feel somewhat less guilty if I blog between the hours of 8-5.  Hey, it’s for the Firm!!
  4. Hopefully there is someone in Marketing that can help promote the blog.  A kind of built in Search Engine Optimizer and editor right on staff.
  5. My blog can lead to me being asked to speak at conferences on specific topics and the firm will see it as professional development, not just personal gratification.
I’m sure there’s more, but I thought I’d leave a little something for all of you to leave in the comments section below.
To spruce this post up a little bit, I thought it would be interesting to survey the readership to see what they think about the relationship between a law firm and their attorney blogs.

What Type of Relationship Would You Want Between Your Blog and Your Firm?

Well, the visits to 3 Geeks and a Law Blog shot into the stratosphere this week with our posting of Monday’s List of Large Law Firm’s “Officially Sanctioned Blogs”. With help from the ABA Journal Online and Above the Law, we’ve had thousands (yes, thousands!) of visits to what we believe to be the best Legal Blog covering Technology, SEO, Competitive Intelligence, and Law Library issues on the web.

In part II of our study on Big Law Firm Blogs, we wanted to see how it “appears” to the casual viewer on what the firms actually think of their attorneys’ blogs. As we stated in part I, the firms that had blogs tended to fall into two camps:
  1. Blog-Proud: These firms actually make it very easy to find their attorney’s blogs. Either by putting it in the “publications” section of their web page, or listing it in some other very visible portion of the blog.
  2. Blog-Tolerant: These firms look like they would rather bury the attorney’s blogs and not have anyone view them. Perhaps that really isn’t the case, but if the only place you can find a mention of an attorney’s blog is by finding the specific attorney and then searching for the term “blog” or “blawg”, then it sure seems to be something that the firm isn’t very proud of.
I’m going to go through the list alphabetically, and give my personal observation of whether a firm is “Blog-Proud” or “Blog-Tolerant”. But first, let me share a little bit of my methodology with you, so that when you say to yourself “what an idiot for missing this popular blog”, you’ll at least know why I missed it. I have literally gone through each of the websites for the NLJ 250 to see if they list their Blogs somewhere on the site. I start by browsing the Home Pages and the Publication pages. I’ll skim the Practice Group page list to see if it is listed there, but if it isn’t obvious, I assume it isn’t there. The last process I do before giving up is to search the web site using the firm’s search tool (or Google if the firm doesn’t have a search tool.) I find a lot that way, but it isn’t a perfect research method, so I may have missed some, too. So, if I did miss some, kindly let me know and I’ll correct that portion of the list as needed.
So, here we go:

Akin Gump
Blog-Tolerant
The blogs were so hidden that I missed some of the most well-know blogs out there. I even got comments from people that thought I was “absurd” for not listing them. When in truth, the blogs were very, very difficult to find.
Alston Bird
Blog-Proud
Blogs were easily found on the Home Page under “Resources”
Arnold & Porter
Blog-Tolerant
Had to search to find the blog listed under the Consumer Protection and Advertising page
Baker & Daniels
Blog-Tolerant
I needed to find an old press release in order to uncover the Benefitsbiz Blog. The B&D Consulting link came from a comment.
Baker Hostetler
Blog-Tolerant
This blog was mentioned on Paul G. Karlsgodt’s bio page. I had to use the search option and then skim through the results to find it.
Balch & Bingham
Blog-Proud
Found it very easily under the “News, Events & Publications” drop-down menu. Took me straight to the blog.
Bracewell & Giuliani
Blog-Proud
Listed right under the “Highlights” portion of the home page. In fact, somehow I missed their Financial Industry Task Force Blog the first time I visited the page. I’ve since added it to the list.
Butzel Long
Blog-Tolerant
Had to search for the blog and found it under Christopher B. Hopkins’ Bio page.
Carlton Fields
Blog-Proud
Class Action Blog Logo listed right smack-dab on the home page.
Cooley Godward
Blog-Tolerant
The blog was listed under the Practice Group page rather than under the publications tab. Again, I had to search for the blog and weed through the results to find it.
Davis Wright Tremaine
Blog-Proud
No problem finding the blogs here. Found it easily under the aptly named “News, Blogs & Awards” Section on the firm’s home page.
Dechert
Blog-Tolerant
With Dechert, I actually had to do a Google search using “Blog” site:dechert.com to find the results as the firm doesn’t seem to even have a search tool for its own site.
Dewey & LeBoeuf
Blog-Tolerant
To find the blogs from Dewey, you have to search the site, and then go through the bios in order to find them. Michael C. Dorf and Lyle Roberts blogs were not easily found, which is too bad.
Dorsey & Whitney
Blog-Tolerant
Dorsey surprised me because I hear they are launching some new blogs in the near future. At this time, however, you have to search and find Roy A. Ginsburg’s bio to find the existing blog.
Edwards Angell
Blog-Proud
The blog was pretty easily found under the Newstand link on the home page. Listed in the types of publications was a “Blog” list.
Foley Hoag
Blog-Proud
Very Blog-Proud in fact. Big and bold under the firms “News & Resources” link there is a “Blog” Section all to itself.
Fox Rothschild
Blog-Proud
Fox Rothschild puts its link to the Blog section right on the home page, top-center. This is one of the easiest blogs to find out of all the firms listed.
Frost Brown Todd
Blog-Proud
Just like Fox Rothschild, Frost Brown Todd puts the blog information right on the home page with a link in the “Resources” drop-down. Very Blog-Proud.
Holland & Hart
Blog-Proud
H&H also list their blogs on the home page under the “In Focus” area.
Howrey
Blog-Proud
Howrey lists its blog directly under the “Resources” drop-down list. Very easy to find.
Hughes Hubbard
Blog-Tolerant
In order to find the blog on Hughes Hubbard, you have to search for blogs and sift through the results to find the blog.
Ice Miller
Blog-Proud
Ice Miller’s blogs are listed directly on the home page.
Jackson Walker
Blog-Tolerant
Jackson Walker really surprised me that they promote their Twitter micro-blog, but make it difficult to find their “macro”-blog.
Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro
Blog-Proud
Jeffer Mangels lists their blogs on their “News/Blogs” section of their home page.
Jones Day
Blog-Tolerant
The blog that is linked to one of their partners, isn’t even linked on the page that it is listed. Seriously blog-tolerant.
K&L Gates
Blog-Tolerant
In order to find the list of blogs, you have to find the RSS feed option then backtrack to the blogs themselves.
Lathrop & Gage
Blog-Proud
Lathrop & Gage posts a large icon linking directly to their blog directly on their home page.
Lindquist & Vennum
Blog-Proud
Lindquist lists the blog on the home page under the Practice Groups News. I’m afraid that once it falls off the news section, it will be hard to find.
Luce Forward
Blog-Tolerant
This was another firm that buried the link to the blog in the attorney’s bio. This time I had to search until I found Eric L. Lane’s bio to find the blog link.
McGlinchey Stafford
Blog-Proud
McGlinchey lists the blog in two places on its home page. Once under the NewsResources drop-down, and again as an icon at the bottom of the page.
McKenna Long
Blog-Tolerant
The blog is not easily found, which is a shame (since I’ve been researching RFID for years.) To find, you must search and dive into the results.
Morrison Foerster
Blog-Tolerant
Buried deep on David M. Lynn’s bio page. Search and sift.
Nixon Peabody
Blog-Proud
Nixon Peabody is attempting a full-blown Web 2.0 experience. Listed prominently on the top of the home page. Very Proud!
Pepper Hamilton
Blog-Tolerant
You have to search and go through the Practice Group page to find this blog.
Perkins Coie
Blog-Proud
While not listed prominently on the home page, the blog is easily found on the NewsPublication page.
Porter Wright
Blog-Tolerant
Although the blog was announced in a press release, once the release drifted off the headlines, it made it difficult to find.
Powell Goldstein
Blog-Tolerant
PoGo hid this blog on Robert Clifton Burns bio.
Proskauer Rose
Blog-Proud
Loud and Proud right on the home page. Somehow it was in such plain sight, that I missed one of them.
Quarles & Brady
Blog-Tolerant
Another “search and sift” firm.
Reed Smith
Blog-Proud
Although not listed directly on the home page, it is easily found on the Publication page.
Reinhart
Blog-Tolerant
You’ll need to search to find this one.
Saul Ewing
Blog-Proud
Found on the Publications page.
Sheppard Mullin
Blog-Proud
The Blog link is listed right at the top of the home page.
Shook Hardy & Bacon
Blog-Tolerant
I had to search and then read through Kevin Underhill’s bio to find this blog mentioned.
Sonnenschein
Blog-Tolerant
This one was listed on the Practice Group page, but not very easily discoverable if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for.
Stoel Rives
Blog-Proud
Easily found on the home page tool bar as “BLOGS”.
Strasburger & Price
Blog-Proud
Not directly listed on the home page, but easily found under the Publications and Presentations page.
Sutherland Asbill & Brennan
Blog-Tolerant
I needed to search until I found the Practice Group page to find this blog listed.
The Cochran Firm
Blog-Proud
Listed directly on the home page.
Thompson & Knight
Blog-Proud
Easily found on the home page under the Publications drop-down.
Waller Lansden
Blog-Proud
Listed directly on the home page as “Visit Our Blogs”. Not much easier than that.
Williams Mullen
Blog-Proud
Blog link is placed at the top of the home page. Although it could be a little bit bigger, it is still front and center.
WilmerHale
Blog-Tolerant
You have to search for these blogs. And, the results seem weird because these are recruiting blogs, not legal topic blogs.
Winstead PC
Blog-Proud
I’m giving Winstead a pass here because they have a press release on the home page announcing the start of this blog. I hope they continue to keep it listed where people can easily find it.
Womble Carlyle
Blog-Proud
Womble displays the link to the blog section prominently on the home page.

Recently I posted on the User Agreement for LinkedIn. And now LinkedIn has decided to make some changes to this agreement. The first curious thing (a.k.a. red flag) was the site let me know when I logged in that changes had been made to the User Agreement. This is not normal. The second thing – apparently France has some laws that presented some issues. Here the changes are in their full glory:

Summary of Changes to LinkedIn User Agreement

LinkedIn has revised its User Agreement as of November 14, 2008. LinkedIn did not materially alter the user agreement, but revised it to provide more detail and clarification in certain provisions and added certain disclosures required by French law. This summary page is intended to facilitate your review and understanding of the changes to LinkedIn’s user agreement. However, you should read the full user agreement, as you will be bound by its terms when you view, access or otherwise use LinkedIn.

Following are highlights of the revisions to the user agreement:

In Section 1, under the heading “Your Obligations—What You Must Do: License and warrant your submissions”, you agree to inform LinkedIn of changes to your registration information and to inform LinkedIn if you believe someone is misusing or otherwise appropriating your information. We note that we do not independently identify users when they connect to the site or supervise the content provided by users. Finally, we remind you that information you reveal on LinkedIn is available to its entire community of users.

In Section 1, under the heading “Your Obligations—What You Must Do: Privacy”, we recommend that you read our full privacy policy before deciding whether to become a user of LinkedIn. In Section 1, under the heading “Your Obligations—What You Must Do: Export Control”, we make certain required export control disclosures.

In Section 4, under the heading “Disclaimer”, we explain that we do not have any obligation to verify the identity of persons subscribing to LinkedIn services and we remind you that we are not responsible for the actions of other users. We further advise that we do not make any guarantee that our services will function without interruption or error and so we disclaim all liability in that regard.

In Section 11, under the heading “Claims Regarding Copyright Infringement”, you consent to our use of the content you submit for display on LinkedIn.

At the very end of the document, we added certain disclosures which apply only if your country of registration is France, you are using LinkedIn from France and you are using the French language version of LinkedIn. In that case, you have certain rights of retraction and agree to refrain from “snowball” sales or services.


In my never ending EULA search, I came across this interesting and entertaining EULA language. Now instead of reading EULA’s I’m going to start writing them.

There are a number of large law firms that have officially sanctioned blogs, and we’ve compiled a list of those that we could find. Out of the National Law Journal 250, we found 136 141 blogs from 53 56 firms. Now, let me explain what we mean by “officially sanctioned blog.” We are stretching this phrase to mean that the blog was mentioned somewhere on the firm’s website. Some of the blogs are featured jewels of the firm, and are proudly displayed. Others, are hidden so deeply, that you might think that the firm tolerates some of their attorneys having personal blogs. We’ll follow up with some additional blog postings to break out the firms that are blog-proud vs. blog-tolerant. [click here to see Blog-Proud v. Blog-Tolerent Firms]NOTE: We looked at each of the firms’ websites to see if they listed any blogs in their publications or other obvious places.  We’d also use the search function to see if we could find any blogs listed by the firm.  If we missed some blogs, please let us know.

NOTE 2:  Kevin O’Keefe just put out an AmLaw 200 blog list that is great.

Akin Gump

ClimateIntel
SCOTUSBlog

Alston Bird
Baker Hostetler
Class Action Blawg
Butzel Long
Florida ADR Law
The Cochran Firm
The Cochran Law Firm Blog
Dechert/Jones Day
Drug and Device Law
Jackson Walker
HIPAA Blog
Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro
Class Action Defense Blog
Hotel Law Blog
Jones Day/Dechert
Drug and Device Law
McGlinchey Stafford
CAFA Law Blog
McKenna Long
RFID Law Blog
Pepper Hamilton
IP Spotlight
Powell Goldstein
Export Law Blog
Proskauer Rose
Privacy Law Blog
Sutherland Asbill & Brennan
LNG Law Blog

The evolution of the Internet has pushed the ideas of smaller, faster, lighter, and cheaper.  For the relaying of personal knowledge via the Internet (which I’m shortening to RPK for this post), the same model seems to apply.  The evolution of dissemination of personal knowledge currently has us using Twitter as the medium of choice.  

I asked one of my Twitter mates (Kevin O’Keefe) the question this morning of whether Twitter is the final evolution of Blogging, and his response was yes –  “Unless we get to to mental telepathy via the keyboard.”So, that got me pondering where we go from here.  Which, in turn, got me trying to recall how we got to this current part of the RPK model?  
My personal memories take me back to the Gopher days (skimming over the Archie and Veronica period).  I’m thinking that the first generation of “blogs” probably started out when you used to put the “~” sign in front of your web address to show that this was your “personal page.”  I didn’t become aware of Blogs until around 2002, and didn’t start really paying attention to them until a couple years later, and didn’t start contributing for another couple of years.  Once, I jumped in, however, I was hooked, and was enjoying contributing to the RPK using my blog.  

This year, I’ve been hooked on latest RPK tool, Twitter.  In the era of instant gratification, Twitter has to be one of the best tools.  I post, I follow, I get followed, I create searches, I follow some more.  All using 140 characters or less, and I view hundreds (if not thousands) of little messages each day.  I’m able to make connections with interesting, and sometimes influential people in my profession, that I might never have been able to before.  After a short period of time, it feels like you are truly friends with some of the people you’ve never personal met or talk to before.  As strange as it sounds, it is pretty exciting.
Of course, this all brings me back to my initial question of, “Is Twitter the Final Evolution of the Blog?”  Where in the world could we advance the RPK model from here?  It doesn’t seem that we could advance any further on our basics for Internet evolution of “smaller, faster, lighter, and cheaper.”  
“Smaller” – Twitter is 140 characters (SMS limitation is 160)
“Faster”  – As far as I can tell, it is pretty instantaneous
“Lighter” – It works on any Internet medium (even my wife’s old cell phone can Twitter via SMS)
“Cheaper” – Free (although, I’m wondering if that will change)
What other options are there out there?  What adjectives am I missing on my list that could influence the evolution of RPK?  
“Better” seems to be too subjective – Is Blogging Better than Tweets? – that seems to be dependant upon what your goals are.  More “Interactive” doesn’t seem to work either.  Proper use of URL shorteners, such as tinyurl, allows you to link out to what you want the Twitter community to see.  So, interactive seems to be already there.
After a couple of minutes of meditating on the idea, I could only come up with one adjective that hasn’t taken hold in the RPK arena – “Predictive.”
Now, before we get all carried away on “artificial intelligence”, I want to step back and explain what I mean by Predictive.  I also want to concede that a tool like Twitter may be the final evolution for “pushing” RPK out to the public, but it is not the end of the end of the evolutionary chain when it comes to receiving RPK.  
Back to Predictive — Currently, we can track trending on Twitter by viewing what are the hot phrases being discussed on Twitter.  But, unless I’ve missed a tool out there that can do this, we cannot trend specifically those that we follow, or specific groups within those that we follow (let me know if there is a tool that does this already.)  At this time, I use tools like TweetDeck to monitor certain phrases that people Tweet about.  This has allowed me to stumble upon a few people with some interesting Tweets, but 99% of the results I get tend to be relevant to what I’m tracking.  When I focus the search on those that I follow, the relevancy rate goes way up, but it is still limited to my search terms, and I wouldn’t say that any type of search that I could set up in TweetDeck could give me any trending details.
In order to be Predictive, I’m thinking that there has to be a mash-up of different tools to get us there.  Some type of combination of the vary tools we’ve reviewed here on this blog, combined with blogs and tweets, that can first establish trending data, and then help us predict what these trends are leading to.  Something that will expand our perception of when, how, where, who and why the RPK is being disseminated.  There are some tools out there that do portions of these tasks, but nothing that seems to pull it all together in a way to help track or predict trends.  Based on the resources that I’m familiar with, I’ll try to explain what I mean:
1.  When – 

I reviewed an Outlook plug-in product called Xobni a few months ago that does the “when” portion of email pretty well.  There should be a tool that can show you when you are posting, and when those that you are following are posting, so that you can see the details of the time of day that is most active for your community.  I would like this expanded to include both Tweets and Blog postings of those that I follow.
2.  How – 

Dovetailed with the “when” portion, I’d also like to see what tools people are using to post their RPK.  If using Twitter, how are they posting — if blogs, what tools are they using.
3.  Where – 

By this “where” I am talking geographically.
  I love Twittervision, but think that there should be a tool out there that takes the Twittervision concept and produces a TweetDeck type environment for it to live it.  
That way, I can get a global look at those I’m following, and be able to add that additional piece of information into my reading of their RPK.
4.  Who – 

Of course, we usually know “who” we’re following, but what I’m looking for is a way to quickly match some of the information that those that I’m following either post on their own bios, or allow me to add some metadata to their bios based on what I know about them.  Then, when I start looking for trends, can I also match up some trending information based on “who” is posting.
5.  Why – This is probably the most difficult portion on my wish list.  But, not impossible if you look at it from the perspective of “why is this trend occurring” rather than “why is this person posting this RPK.”  
Now that I’ve laid out the guide to the perfect world of relaying personal knowledge, I task some ingenious programmer and thinker out there to pull it all together for me. 

As you probably know by now, I like to see different approaches to the way we normally do things on the web. This weekend, I was doing some searches on my favorite new addiction (you know it as Twitter), when I came across a search tool called Quintura. I thought I’d test it out and see what it has to offer, and I came away fairly impressed with the concept.

Quintura uses the Yahoo XML search results and does some visual markup of the results, which it calls the Quintura Cloud. There are a number of ‘Cloud Results’ tools out there, but I like the method that Quintura uses to view some of the verbiage that appears in the initial results of your search. The idea behind the cloud results is that you can see how the words in your initial search produces words or phrases in the results lists, and you can then begin visually adding or subtracting the results to further define your search. Pretty cool idea.
I picked the search of: “knowledge management” “semantic web”
The search results appear on the right-side of the p age, and the cloud results on the left. In the cloud, I get this look:
I can hover over each of these words to expand my search by including the words, or I can click the (-) sign next to the word to restrict my searches to results that specifically do not have the words or phrases in them.
If I click on “metadata” for example, my search changes automatically and adds “metadata” to the search. thus, I’ve been able to refine the search on the fly, so to speak, with the assistance of Quintura.
I do like the concept behind this, but it still has a way to go before it is ready to come out of beta. One problem is that it is not the most intuitive product to use (but, I’m usually pretty forgiving on that one because sometimes advance searching isn’t always easy.) I really didn’t like the fact that there are times where the cloud gets into an endless loop. In other words, there can be specific words that lead to words already in the cloud, and then those words lead me right back to my initial word, and that keeps going and going.
Despite these couple of minor quirks in the way it is set up, however, I do thing that this type of searching, where you have visual as well as text results, is a wave of the future. For a product like Quintura to succeed, the developers are going to have to team up with the major search engines (or be bought out by the search engines.)
Give Quintura a try. I think you’ll like the concept of visual search results to help better define your search queries.

Google added a new search results feature to its search results page: ranking, deleting and commenting on search results.

Now, thanks to the brilliant folks at Google, ( you can read more about it on their blog), all the hard work that your web team has poured into your search engine results will be all for naught, if the search engine user doesn’t like your site.

See, thanks to a nifty new tool next to each site on the search result page, a searcher can either delete a site that shows up in the search engine results or push his preferred site to the top of the search engine results. The searcher can also comment on a search result, indicating that site is “super cool” or “not so hot”. These comments can either be made private on a personal Google Search Wiki, or made public on a public Google Search Wiki.

True, Google makes it clear that a searcher’s modifications are only viewable to his own personal Google account.

But since these preferences are set in the searcher’s account, no matter how well you optimize your site over his preferred site, your fully optimized site will never top his preferred site. The searcher’s ranking will forever skew the search results for him.

Which only forces the sponsored links and non-organic links to get even better billing. Of course, Google doesn’t mind; they get to make more money.

Yes, these selections only appear on a searcher’s personal search results but you can’t tell me that Google isn’t measuring these deletions and rankings so that if everyone starts deleting spam farms, Google might drop these sorts of pages even lower in the rankings. Conversely, if everyone is picking the same site over and over again for a search, I could only imagine that Google would give this site higher preference.

So the Machiavelli in me thought, “I’ll show them! I’m going to delete all of our competition from our target search terms! Then I’m going to select my site to the top result. Ha!”

But I refrained. Perhaps to my own detriment, because I know that there are others out there who are not so nice.

I envision that people are going to abuse this feature. Call me a cynic, but mark my word . . .

Now I have to worry about yet another factor when optimizing our site.

Bother.

Knowledge Management (KM) in the UK has meant something different than here in the US until recently. My top-line assessment has been that the UK gets the human aspect of KM and the US gets the technology part. We’ve both been working towards the middle with varying degrees of success.

In the UK, the human implementation has manifest most times as a Practice Support Lawyer (PSL). PSLs are SMEs (a.k.a. subject matter experts) on steroids. When a regular lawyer has a question about the law, about a contract clause or about any detailed legal issue, they go ask a PSL. The PSL is completely immersed in their subject of law and need to know it better than anyone else. So though the client interacts with the regular lawyer, the PSL is the holder of the high-value knowledge that will ultimately serve the client. In contrast, in the US when we want an answer about the law we query a system.

This week I saw an online demo from Practical Law which has taken the PSL concept, married it to technology and is offering it as an online service. Thus the post title, PSL SaaS. Under an annual subscription fee you can run searches, browse subjects, compare international laws and even generate quality first-draft documents. And when you hit the wall and need assistance they have a team of PSL-like lawyers available to help you. They’ve termed this approach “know-how” services, which is a UK KM term of art.

Practical Law has been up-and-running in the UK for some time now. This week they launched their first US product lines: Corporate & Securities and Finance. It’s more of a soft launch as they are in the process of rounding out the US offerings.

What impressed me about this offering is that it bridges the UK-Human and US-Technology KM gap. As a devotee of KM and a longtime fan of SaaS (f.k.a. as ASP), I am encouraged to see this development and hopeful for its entry into the US market. When I asked about the market demographics they describe them as quite broad; from solos to in-house counsel. Time will tell if this type of tool falls in the trend category or not.