Toby, Lisa and I had a great time presenting to the National Bar Association-ABA Law Practice Managment Section Joint Technology Program. The audience was engaging and had some great questions about the issues we covered. We want to thank Delores Pegram Wilson for allowing us the pleasure of presenting, and to Beverly McQueary Smith for all of her efforts in promoting this program. And, a special thank you to Kiera Brown for all her assistance to the panel!

As promised, we are posting the slides from the presentation, and in the Blog posted earlier today, we list all of the sites mentioned in our presentation. If you have additional sites, or comments, please feel free to post them by clicking on the “comments” link below.

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by glambert9

Didn’t catch all those sites we threw at you at the National Bar Association Meeting? No problem. Here they are:

Advertise Your Business:Google AdWords
Google Custom Search Engine
Hosted Apps:Google Apps
Email Large Files:

Remote Access:

Hosted App Storage:

New PR Model:

Online Networking:

Presentations on the web:

Washable Keyboards and Mice:

Blogging:

Email Marketing Sources:

Client Extranets:

VoIP:

 Author! Author!

Event Registration Tools:

Online Conference Tools:

King Charger:

Windows Shortcut Keys:

Create Training Videos:

RSS Feeds Converter:

Big Brother:

Library Resources:

Quick & Dirty Research 2.0:

New Tools/Old Media:

Computer Date Encryption:

Expand the Traditional Tool Kit:

Legal PDF Resources:

Guess the Password:

Calendars over the Web:

Money – Pink Floyd
So just how much are your friends worth? Seriously.

This was a question posed by Gary Stein, a columnist for the The ClickZ Network, in his post Monetizing the Social Networks: “Should LinkedIn set up a system by which I could get paid to advertise a product to my social network?”

As an avid blogger and internet marketer, this is a question that I have been grappling with myself.

As Gary points out, and as I, too, had recently observed on my own LinkedIn profile, we have some great contacts. Contacts someone would be willing to pay for.

But the question is, how much integrity do I have? Am I willing to sell out my friends just to make a few bucks? Naah.

Well, maybe.

Just a few days ago, I spotted Obama advertising himself like crazy on the family-friendly social networking site, Multiply. After conferring with my good friend and colleague, Toby Brown, he said he spotted McCain on Facebook.

Which raised a question for me: just how are they buying ad space? Are the politicos’ internet marketing managers buying ad space based upon demographics of subscribers or are they just blanketing these sites? Are they marketing to areas of interest, based upon group membership? How sophisticated are the tracking mechanisms behind these social networking sites?

I am willing to wager that these sites are only in their infancy in capitalizing on their constituency. I suppose if our little blog is gaining any sort of popularity, I may be giving some of those developers out there a few ideas . . . shame on me. Selling out my friends like this . . .

I love useful tech tools, and this product is definitely useful! By using Dapper, you can turn static webpages into dynamic RSS feeds. And, it also fits my budget (that is “free”, of course). Take a tour of the video demo I created, using CamStudio – a product I’ll review in a later posting – and you might want to be a “Dapper” Dan man, too.Sample DAPP for geeklawblog:

Add to your site powered by Dapper

At the core of the law firm knowledge management (KM) challenge is the problem of unstructured data. Since KM is storing useful information such that it can be easily retrieved when needed, unstructured data presents significant challenges. To clarify, ‘unstructured’ means you don’t know what it means. For instance you don’t know if ‘brown’ is a name or a color.

So why does this matter?

Law firms have never worried much about structuring their information well, so it isn’t. This means it’s difficult to search and retrieve law firm knowledge. Thus the KM challenge. But even more challenging is getting lawyers to change what they do so that data is captured in structured form. As previously noted on this blog, lawyers resist change, especially change that competes with the billable hour.

Fortunately on the horizon are semantic search engines. These tools bring structure to unstructured data – which makes them magic. These tools can apply meaning to words based on their context and usage. But these tools only go so far.

Looking to the future – what makes sense is a balancing act between technology and humans. We need to make some efforts to get lawyers to change their processes. And at the same time we should apply new technology effectively.

I think finding this balance will be the key to successful KM for law firms.

I’m hearing some rumors that Lexis is finally going to integrate the analytical tool Redwood with their law firm competitive intelligence tool, AtVantage. If this becomes reality, then Lexis may have a chance at building a stronger CI tool in AtVantage by finally leveraging some of the internal information that a firm collects and comparing it to competitior information.

One of the most facinating things I’ve discovered in the land of the major law firms, is the fact that internal information (hours billed, client information, billable rates, expertise data, CRM, DMS… blah, blah, blah….) Is such a hodge-podge of information that is scattered all over the place, and no one seems to know how to throw a net over it and bring it to shore. That is a shame, and it really shouldn’t have come to this point.

In an earlier posting, my good friend Toby Brown attempted to define what Knowledge Management (KM) is. I offered my opinion and said that KM has kind of lost its way and has focused on product support. This has created a situation where keeping a product from crashing is the main goal of the department, rather than using products to leverage our internal experience and expertise to help us face future challenges. So, I offer this challenge to my KM, IT, Library, Marketing, BizDev, CI, Client Development friends….

Get the information out in front of the attorneys so they can have a measuring tool showing them where they stand in their firm. How? By creating dashboards.

Mason White, former VP of Lexis’ AtVantage product, said to me once that attorneys without dashboards are frustrated that they have to request the most basic of information. However, attorneys with dashboards can see where they are, and where they need to improve. It can also spur insights into their practice and create attorneys that are better prepared for the business development side of practicing law.

Dashboards can also create better opportunities for Marketing, Client Development, and BI/CI teams to approach attorneys with plans to extend business with existing clients; to show opportunities for new clients; or, even show attorneys that it is time to get rid of existing clients in order to open up opportunities for better clients.

Dashboards are like leading a horse to water. They may drink, or they may not, but I think that most of the time, you’ll see that they will stick their nose right in there and start taking big gulps (of course, some will choke on the information — that’s just a side benefit!.) So, if you are not coordinating with your KM/IT/Library/Marketing/CI/BI/BD/Client Teams to build dashboards using internal and external information, then you can’t even say that you’ve lead the horse to water.

Recently I spoke to the Texas Society of CPAs (TSCPA). A friend had passed this opportunity along to me, given my geographic position. The topic was Tech Toolbox and was your standard hot geek-stuff presentation to a solo/small firm crowd. I covered everything from cool gadgets, to hosted software applications.

My first observation came from an audience response. They wondered why someone from a law firm was talking to them about technology. Once I got into the subject matter though, it became apparent they are likely behind the solo/small firm lawyer crowd with technology. This became apparent went I asked the barometer question: “Who knows what metadata is?” With lawyers I get about 40% hands-up these days. With this group – 2 hands out of 60. There were some exceptions to this case, especially when it came to securing communications. But overall, I would put this group behind its lawyer equivalent demographic.

Why should we care?

In a flattening market, competition for legal services comes from many places. The top one cited is usually accountants. Although I am personally more concerned about banks, I suppose lawyers can find some comfort knowing their closest competitors fall behind them in technology (but only in the small firm category).

I wouldn’t suggest using this as a reason to sit back and relax. Keeping up with change is an imperative in any business these days. This may be one area where accountants should take a chapter from the solo/small firm lawyer playbook.

The WSJ’s Jason Fry asked an important question in his Real Time column: Should you have a personal web page?

I say a resounding and uneqivocal “YES”.

Of course, I’m biased. The internet is my daily sustenance.

But when I thought about this question, I recalled a book I read some time ago, called Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Written in 1985–keep this year in mind– it opened with a scene I have never quite forgotten, and am reminded of, everytime I blog.

Opening with a real-time conversation between a number of highly intelligent writers who are communicating via computers, they discuss the political environment of their galaxy. Two of the writers, obviously brilliant, state their cases, make their points and, ultimately, one of them wins the debate.

They are 10 and 12 years old.

The older girl tells her brother,

“Peter, you’re twelve.”

“Not on the nets I’m not. On the nets I can name myself anything I want…”

These two munchkins were making cogent arguments that were influencing the political landscape. And just like our own little Dynamic Trio here, these two kids were always looking to see who cited them, inordenantly pleased when their verbiage shows up on the “prestige nets.”

I see life imitate art. In fact, Card’s work is cited in a scholarly paper entitled, “‘I’m Blogging This, A Closer Look at Why People Blog,” written by Bonnie A. Nardi, Diane J. Schiano, Michelle Gumbrecht, Luke Swartz.

So, back to the original question: why have a personal page?

I think having a personal web presence and blogging goes much deeper than all of this. I think all of these individual pages, blogs, profiles and sites, as they increase exponentially in number, signal the collapse of the current structure of our society.

As we see web pages–be they LinkedIn or Face Book profiles–become ubiquitous, we are witnessing the devolution of public relations. Traditional channels of media are more fractured than ever more, turning to individual blogs, twitters and YouTube for breaking news. Future thought leaders and visionaries are emerging from the blogosphere, identifying trends, busting through social barriers and creating new business models.

When the web truly becomes integrated into our way of life, it is going to literally, break down all the walls.

Think about it. Why would we need schools anymore? We could “virtually” eliminate property taxes if all schools went online.

Why have a work force go to work? It would eliminate commutes. Talk about saving gas money; the only people who would have to drive would be … who? Doctors? Sales people? But then, in true Obi-One-Kanobe fashion, there are always holograms . . . I can just see Judge Judy’s avatar now . . .

It would wreak havoc with the internal revenue system, tho. Until Congress and Senate realized that they could work from home . . . in their p.j.s. Then that would be the end of that.

So what exactly are we waiting for?

“The many truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view.” — Obi-One-Kanobe

Well, I just got back from Portland, and I can tell I am way behind on my number of tattoos and piercings.

When you put about 1900 law librarians in the same building, it can get surprisingly loud. But, add a high-profile techie like David Pogue and the real party begins. I’ve watched David’s presentations on TED, but nothing compares to seeing someone with such wit and humor live.

There were a lot of websites and new tech products that David mentioned, but the one that I went out that night and used immediately was a ready-reference service called 1-800-2ChaCha. In the “library world,” we call a lot of our reference work the “quick and dirty” reference service. Well, this 1-800-2ChaCha service is even quicker and dirtier than that. (I’m sure my good friend Toby has some type of rude comment on “quicker and dirtier research.”)

Okay… so, let’s say your out at dinner with some friends and you’ve finished that first glass of wine. We decide to order the big ocean platter with oysters, fish, calamari, clams, prawns, and another glass of wine. When someone picks up the prawn and asks: “What the heck is a prawn, and why does it look exactly like a shrimp??”

Since I don’t have my reference staff tethered to a blackberry (yet…), I can’t email them and ask them to compile a report for me on the differences between shrimp and prawns. Instead, I pick up my cellphone and call 1-800-2ChaCha (which is difficult on my BlackJack since it doesn’t have the 2 = ABC buttons. So, after figuring it out that in the real world it is 1-800-224-2424 (or you can text 242 424)…. I call in and leave a voice message that asks: “What is the difference between a shrimp and a prawn?). About 2 minutes later, I get a text message back on my phone that says “They are basically the same, prawns are just jumbo shrimp. Thanks for using ChaCha!”, along with a link to the webpage that someone found that gives the answer.

And what did I pay for this?? Not A Thing!! (I love free!!)

Although David mentioned a number of cool items, this ain’t his first rodeo, so there are plenty of other blogs that have posted his tech tool list before, such as this one. However, there is one other site that David mentioned that was rather sick (both literally and figuratively.)

WHOISSICK: A Mash-Up that allows you to post your symptoms online when you or especially your school aged children are sick. This is supposed to counter the times you go to your doctor and he says that “Oh yeah, this is the 15th case I’ve treated this week from your school.” Again, a sick site, in so many ways.

If you get a chance to see David Pogue live, I suggest that you do it.