Part 2 of the The Legal Intelligencer’s ongoing series on Law Firm Competitive Intelligence came out on May 13th.  The author, Gina Passarelli, makes a few points that, well, let’s just say I have a different perspective on. 

Let’s start with the firms that were interviewed for this article.  They are AMLAW100 firms with resources and budgets (personnel and otherwise) not found in the vast majority of firms.  Their experiences and opinions are not the norm for the legal industry.  I have found the norm for most firms to be a collaborative process between Marketing and Research Services (aka the Library).  This allows for the use of staff in multiple capacities without incurring the additional personnel cost of a dedicated CI analyst.

This also allows the Marketing Department to take advantage of the unique skills and internal knowledge of the research professionals. These professionals are skilled at finding information efficiently, analyzing it to meet the attorneys needs and packaging it for their consumption.  Despite the implications of the gentleman quoted from Duane Morris,  researchers (aka librarians) are not as a rule “faithful compilers of phone books.”  Merely handing off reams of information (otherwise known as Data Dumps) are not a work product that attorneys have the time or inclination to review in any context, be it legal research or CI.  This understanding of not only what attorneys need to see but how they want to see it adds to the value of the research professional in conducting CI.

It is no accident that many excellent CI professionals have a background and/or training as a librarian. I found it striking how uninformed the author appeared to be regarding the involvement of law librarians in the Competitive Intelligence analysis process.  The inclusion of sweeping stereotypical statements such as “[Librarians] gather the info and the marketing team makes it presentable” and the implications of a Chief Marketing Officer that the Library produces academic studies are not accurate depictions of how this works in the Legal Industry.

Here are three prominent examples of CI professionals missed by Ms. Passarelli:

  • Zena Applebaum, who was quoted prominently in the first article of this series, is not only the Director of Competitive Intelligence for Bennett Jones but is also the award-winning Chair-Elect of the Competitive Intelligence Division of the Special Libraries Association.  Not to mention the excellent post she wrote on CI on Thursday.
  • Jan Rivers, who wrote an article on CI for the National Law Journal, is the Director of Information Resource Services at Dorsey and Whitney LLP and is a well-known CI professional.  
  • Emily Cunningham Rushing, Competitive Intelligence Manager at Haynes and Boone, LLP, has her Masters in Library and Information Science and is also a well-known CI professional

The list above does not include the many other talented research professionals acting in the same capacity for their firm.  In my previous post on the first article of this series, I pointed out that there are over 300 librarians in law firms nationwide currently practicing the art of of CI.  This does not include the members of the CI Division of the Special Libraries Association or the law firm members of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.  Full disclosure here:  I have been a law librarian for almost 25 years and have been practicing CI for 20 of those years. 

The information presented above shows the skills that librarians have in their toolbox .  Of course, this doesn’t mean that every librarian will make a good CI professional or that only librarians can be CI professionals.  However, when looking for someone with the requisite skills for this type of task, the Library (or Research Services) is a good place to start.  By using these atypical examples and statements, Ms. Passarelli paints a misleading picture of how to operate a successful Competitive Intelligence operation.  I guess my question really is…why weren’t mid-size firms that are more representative of the industry (and, yes, as a result rely more on librarians) consulted as part of this article?  They aren’t hard to find.

I recently returned from the 29th annual Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) Conference in sunny and warm Orlando.  The conference was a terrific networking event as per usual. I am constantly impressed, and inspired by the professionals who work in CI across a variety of industries every day.  But I am also intrigued by the questions and concerns that underlie so many of the sessions and the hallway talk afterwards. It seems regardless of the industry, CI professionals share common issues, even if the language or descriptions of the challenges are nuanced.  As a known entity within the CI community, I am often asked for my advice on helping to solve practitioner challenges and rather than answer them one at a time, I thought some 3 Geeks readers might also benefit from the answers and/or be able to contribute and add further suggestions.  To that end, below are five of the more interesting questions that were bantered about throughout the conference and my attempt to answer them.  The questions are in no particular order and my answers are a combination of my own thoughts as well as some of what I heard while at the conference.

1 – Where in an organization should CI sit?

Everyone has an opinion here. Some believe that CI should always and only report to Marketing, others to the CEO, others to finance.  Research &Development was another reporting option, and I even heard one practitioner suggest that sales was the only appropriate place for CI to report.  Since law firms don’t have sales departments I think we can safely rule sales out. But lawyers, specifically partners who interface with clients on a regular basis are similar to sales people in many respects. As CI practitioners in firms, its important to always maintain a good rapport, even develop close relationship with partners to keep the lines of communication open.  It will aid with HUMINT collection, but it will also provide a window into the issues facing lawyers and clients in the course of daily business.  But CI in a law firms can’t report into the partnership at large, so the function does need a home.  Some law firm CI practitioners report to Marketing, others to the Library, KM or some hybrid of the above just as our colleagues in other industries.  The bottom line is:  it doesn’t matter much where you report, so long as you are providing excellent service in meeting intelligence needs in anticipating surprises for your firm and its clients.  In ideal world, a law firm CI function is so highly collaborative between the various administrative groups the reporting becomes only a formality for booking vacation (what is that?).

2 – Do hiring managers prefer CI practitioners with CI certification, or industry knowledge?

This one’s a bit trickier. I heard Directors of CI two Fortune 500 companies say the opposite where this issue is concerned. Its seems the response is both culturally and hiring manager specific.  But one element of the hiring process was clear:  soft skills are as important as the hard skills.  For those of you looking to transition into a CI role, or increase your responsibilities in a current one, brush up on your networking skills, practice your elicitation, develop your analytical fitness and never stop being curious or creative.  These are the essential qualities to a perfect CI practitioner – certified or otherwise.

3 – How do I merge a competitive intelligence practice with a Library function? Or a KM function?

See the note above about collaboration. In the three short days of the conference alone, I saw the “C” of CI referred to as Collaborative, Cooperative, Collective, and I am sure if I attended a few more sessions, I am certain I would have seen a few other permutations.  CI is at its root an information-based vocation. Information needs people. People need a great many things, you can look to Maslow’s hierarchy or the more recent 10 Demandments from Kelly Mooney to understand people what people need and getting various information brokers together – whether from the intelligence community, the KM community, the Library, Marketing or anywhere else requires a nurturing of those same needs.  Get people engaged and interested by gaining their trust, but giving them the space to control how they contribute at the same time. It’s a fine balance but if you can manage to work to individual strengths in both the hard and soft skills of CI (which ever “C” you choose) the end result will be better than the sum of the parts.  After all, intelligence comes from the interpretation and analysis of information and what better way to analyze a situation than with multiple perspectives, educational backgrounds and strengths attacking the business problem.   

4 – How do I market the CI services within my organizations?

First of all, this is a great question, posed the right way.  Its not asking “do I need to market my service”, or “why do I need to market”, but rather “how”. The question assumes that the person/people asking already understand the need for Marketing, and so the battle is at least half won. 

The easiest and best way to market the CI services within your organization is to do great work, amazing work and then get repeat clients.   I remember an old boss of mine suggesting that I need not hang out a shingle and wait for people to come, because once I started to provide value, it would be a bouncer I needed not a shingle. Three other easy and quick ways to market the function are to:

  1. Tell people about it. Sounds simple enough, but it means that the CI team needs to be visible and participate in organized activities like product launches, social events and just get out of their offices/cubes/ or libraries and walk around to meet the people they are serving.
  2. Prepare and practice your elevator speech so when you get asked what you are up to in the elevator or waiting at the coffee machine, you have a 30 second sound bite ready to roll.  You can talk about a project or the impact you are making and thereby selling your services.  Remind potential clients within your organization that CI is an active for both tracking future engagements and helping to set strategy or plan for the future.
  3. Be consistent with deliverables.  This need not mean a template approach, but make sure that what you deliver to all clients, at any level of the organization is polished, proofed and perfect.  Consistent work product will go a long away to promoting the function and helping it appear as professional and needed service. Once you have a key process for proofing and polishing down among your CI team, you can start to explore the notion of marketing your function with a brand and series of on going reports. But that’s a blog posting for another time.

5 – How can I evolving a competitive intelligence practice to become even more relevant, useful and perhaps add some measurable ROI-type “returns”.

Measureable returns can be hard to define.  Especially if the CI function is removed from the decision making process and your reports/suggestions are taken but results are never returned.  First and foremost, where you can, establish open lines of communications with Partners so that you can ask the difficult questions around whether or not a new file was opened or a new client retained. Then, track the client matter number as it goes through your firm.  While you may not be able to directly attribute that new client directly to the CI that was provided, you can indicate that CI had a role, perhaps a 5% or 20% role in helping to secure that new client.  Use this information as an ROI for the service you provide.  Other forms of measurable ROI come not from new engagements, but from time saved or efficiency increased. Start to think about the CI function in terms of how having a CI team or individual contributor of CI added to the bottom line by taking research and analysis off of someone else’s plate and/or provided a service that wasn’t there before that allows for better use of time, smarter client engagements and a well turned out organization.  It may not be measurable in the truest sense, but certainly it add to the relevance of the function and of the firm in the eyes of its client.  Client surveys time and time again suggest that firms are chosing outside counsel based not on fees or expertise alone, but that clients want to work with firms who understand their buniess, their risks and their challenges. Who better to keep your lawyers and other practitioners informed than a CI?  Relevancy is CI currency.
 
So that’s my five question, answer and response from the 29th annual SCIP conference & trade show. I encourage anyone else out there who wants to take a stab at answering to please leave a comment.  As I gear up for the Special Libraries Association 2014 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO June 8-10th in Vancouver, I can’t wait to see what the questions around CI and its role in and with the Library might be. I suspect many of the same themes will be repeated and I welcome the discussion.

For those of you who have been under a rock for the past few weeks (like me), you may not have heard of the changes that Lexis Advance is making to the look and feel of the product next month. Lexis is calling this a “New, Cleaner Look” that doesn’t change the steps you take to research, but changes the way the results appear on the screen and how you navigate those results.

The biggest change is that the results are now “Tab-less.” If you have used Lexis Advance in the past, you know that the tabs that ran across the top could quickly become unwieldy. In fact, I asked one of my research staff last night to jump out of Lexis Advance and into another Lexis platform in order to do some fact finding for me. This created an immediate plea for me to wait until they were completely finished with their current project because they would lose their – and this is a quote – “precious tabs.” This immediately made me think of Gollum, and a few images later, I sent the researcher back the picture to the right.

Here’s a video that just came out for the Academic users, but it shows some of the streamlined changes, and the new tab-less results. The new look is to launch next month, so start getting the word out now.

I found the story in today’s Legal Intelligencer on Law Firm Competitive Intelligence interesting. 
I noticed a few points (yes I know, surprising isn’t it?) after reading this that I think bear a bit of discussion.  Here are my perspectives, which are based on 20 years as a CI professional as well as the Co-chair of the CI Caucus of the American Association of Law Libraries.

First of all, CI in law firms is not dumpster diving or spying.  Anthony Pellicano did not practice CI.  The art of CI (and yes, I consider it to be an art form) is to find available information, analyze it based on the strategic and cultural context of the firm and provide conclusions that enable the firm to be successful operationally as well as in acquiring new business.  Since this context can vary between firms and from moment-to-moment, the same information can have different meanings in different circumstances.  It’s up to the CI professional to provide the interpretation.  Information can be obtained in many legal ways, ways that don’t require wiretapping or reconstructing shredded information from the trash.  It is, first and foremost, an ethically driven process.  In fact, the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) emphasizes the ethical nature of CI here.

Second, CI in law firms is not new.  As I said at the beginning, I am proud to have been a CI professional for about 20 years, 14 of them in the law firm environment.  In 2006, an article discussing CI in law firms was written and published in the National Law Journal by my colleague Jan Rivers.  The over 300 members of the Competitive Intelligence Caucus also indicates that this is much more established in the legal industry than is commonly thought, at least as indicated by the Legal Intelligencer article.

Third, CI is often confused with Business Development or the acquiring of new business.  However, this definition ignores the most important part of CI, the competitive in Competitive Intelligence.  CI is the part that focuses on identifying your competition and determining how best to position the firm to compete with them.  Without this piece, the firm cannot ultimately be successful in acquiring new business.  As ably pointed out in the Legal Intelligencer article by my colleague Zena Applebaum, CI in Law Firms became more important in 2008 when it started to become obvious with firms that they needed to compete to survive.

There were also concerns expressed in the article about the quality of the legal industry data available.  The fact that this was expressed concerns me.  In my experience, the data quality isn’t any different from the data relied on by corporate decision makers.  As I mentioned above, the CI professional’s role is to evaluate and interpret the available data.  All data, regardless of quality, can provide useful indicators and should not be written off.  Robust and useful CI is not dependent on data quality.  Rather, it is dependent on analysis and interpretation.

CI in law firms is an established part of the operation of the law firm business.  As in most business, the importance of knowing your competition and industry at more than an anecdotal level has made CI integral to this business. 

Jacked In – You have to look serious
when exploring the Matrix

So, I’ve had a lot of people asking me about Glass over the last few weeks.  How is it?  What do you think?  Should I get one?  My answers have generally been: It’s interesting, I think I like it, and No, you definitely should not get one. There is one caveat, however.  If your idea of an enjoyable Saturday morning is firing up a new LAMP Stack, pouring over GitHub to find new Open Source packages to install, and troubleshooting them for hours, then you might be interested in Glass.  If that doesn’t sound like fun, hold off for a little while longer.  If you don’t know what any of those words mean, then any time someone mentions Glass, stick your fingers in your ears and hum The Battle Hymn of the Republic until they are done speaking. Listen very carefully and take this to heart…Google Glass does not yet exist in your world.

From a geek perspective there is something undeniably cool about putting on Glass, plugging one end of the USB cable into the earpiece, and the other into the back of my computer. This creates the physical sensation of jacking in to the Matrix. I feel powerful and connected. My wife, on the other hand, says it reminds her of a scene from Douglas Adams’ and Terry Jones’ novel, Starship Titanic.  The characters of Lucy and the Journalist are trying to get amorous as the Yassaccans are invading the ship, but third-wheel Dan keeps interrupting. The Journalist hands Dan a virtual reality helmet and tells him to put it on.

“Wow!” he exclaimed. “I see what you mean! I’m right in the ship… Hey! This is great! I can get into the consoles! Wow! Now I’m running along the wiring! Hey! The circuit boards are like vast cities!…”

Meanwhile, the Journalist and Lucy go at it.

…then she suddenly pulled away, and glanced anxiously over at Dan, who was climbing some invisible stairs in his virtual reality and then turning around and handling invisible objects and letting out delighted yelps.

“Oh, don’t worry about him!” panted The Journalist. “He can’t hear or see us. We’re still MatterSide.  He’ll be totally absorbed in that thing – it’s always the same – first time you put on one of those you’re usually off for five or six hours!”

I’m not sure whether I should be concerned about what my wife is up to while I’m exploring the Matrix, or just be extremely proud that I married a woman who effortlessly references Douglas Adams and Terry Jones.

After mining the Glass forums, and Googling for APKs that have been updated to run on XE16 (See, doesn’t that sound like fun!), I have found a few apps that, if not yet consumer ready, at least point to the promise and potential of Glass.

Word Lens translating a French sign.

Word Lens – This app is truly awesome, in the “worthy of awe” sense. Word Lens is one of the apps that is available through the MyGlass site, so no need for side loading .apk files, and I think it is the closest that Glass gets to a killer app. You look at a sign in a foreign language, and the app manipulates the pixels of the image to rewrite the sign in English. The translation is only as good as Google Translate, and it’s a little slow, but… Holy freakin’ cow, man! That’s awesome!

PhotoGlassic Memory – This app allows you to say, “OK Glass, Remember where I left my keys.” Glass takes a picture of the keys in their current location, grabs GPS coordinates and stores that information. Later when you’ve completely forgotten where you left your keys, you say, “OK Glass, Recall where I left my keys.” The picture and a map showing the location of your keys pops up.  I’m sure there are better uses for PhotoGlassic Memory than the keys example and I only have an 850 square foot apartment, so the GPS coordinates don’t help much.

Viewing the PhotoSphere Demo as I edit this post.
(That’s Sergey Brin in the blue shirt in front.)

PhotoSphere Demo – There is an “Easter Egg” hidden in the Glass settings that displays a 360 degree picture of the Glass team.  You can turn your head all the way around to see all of the people developing for Glass at Google. Some enterprising developer has made it much easier to access that picture, and to upload your own PhotoSpheres (360 degree pictures). People using this app for the first time closely approximate Dan’s experience in the Starship Titanic excerpt above. They immediately become oblivious to anything around them and are transported to the world of the picture. They spin and contort their bodies to look up at the ceiling and down at the floor, and strangely enough down under their armpit. ?? Unfortunately, if you run this app for more than a few minutes, Glass gets hot and you get the “Glass must cool down to run smoothly.” message.  There is another Google application that uses PhotoSphere technology, it doesn’t take a genius to see where that is going.

Glass Calculate– This is a Glass implementation of Wolfram Alpha. There is nothing really Glass specific about it. The amazing part is Wolfram Alpha itself.  I hesitated to mention it at all, except it’s really cool to ask your glasses “OK Glass, Calculate how many teaspoons are in Lake Michigan?” and have it come back to you in seconds with an authoritative answer, including charts, graphs, and comparisons to other bodies of water.  (A: 988 quadrillion.)

There is a well documented tendency for human beings to over-value things that they pay way too much for. With that in mind, take what I’m about to say with a huge grain of salt. I like Glass a lot. No, it is not ready for the consumer market, and after having spent time with it, I think a consumer version is further off than most people think. A friend of mine said he was waiting to get Glass until they released the $500 version this Holiday season. It’s not going to happen. Maybe next Holiday season, in 2015.  Maybe. I think a real, viable, easy to use, and affordable consumable product is 3 to 5 years off. But I’m keeping mine. It’s not going back to Google for a refund, unless I find out my wife is up to no good while I’m lost in the Matrix. Thankfully, there’s a very good chance she’s busy re-reading one of the five books in The Hitchhiker’s Trilogy. I’m a lucky man.

[Ed Note: Terri Gavulic, Director, Legal Support at Fisher & Phillips, is our guest blogger today.]

The ABA recently published “The Power of Legal Project Management,” a robust how-to guide for firms looking to implement project management programs. I’m leading that effort at my firm, and have already found this handbook to be more useful than anything else out there on the topic. What this “practical handbook” (as the cover touts) has that some other LPM guidebooks lack, happen to be the exact kinds of things I was beginning to research for our program.

When the book arrived on my desk, I realized it was going to save me scores of hours of research. Specifically, the book includes 17 case studies that are written almost like stories, and share each of the profiled firm’s paths to their LPM programs. This is helpful to avoid some of the same pitfalls they experienced and to leverage their successes, as well as to give me an idea of which firms are similar enough to my firm that I might contact them with questions.

Everyone in this burgeoning space seems really willing to share information and advice, but sometimes it’s not relevant if the firm is significantly different in size, scope or practice than ours. I also appreciated a section of interviews with the top LPM technology companies. We’ve been meeting with many of these companies, and the profiles in the book have been great preparatory reading for our firm’s management.

Also in the book, there’s a unique discussion about lawyer personalities vis-à-vis LPM, by the always-insightful Dr. Larry (Richards) of LawyerBrain. So far, in the two weeks that I’ve had the book, I’ve turned to it multiple times a day – I’m really grateful. We have an internal LPM blog as part of our training and education efforts in this space so we’ll be using the ABA handbook to help keep our blog current and practical.

Kudos to the authors, Susan Lambreth of LawVision Group and David Rueff of Baker Donelson, as well as their many experienced contributors, for writing the definitive handbook on developing and implementing successful LPM programs.

Image [cc] Rusty Tanton

The term “Access to Justice” (A2J) is tossed around a lot in the legal world, but as the old saying goes, talk is cheap. It is common for state bar associations to step up and use another phrase to shoot down A2J projects or non-lawyers’ attempt to fill a gap in the legal process that is underserved. In most cases, it is seen as a ploy to protect the Bar Association’s members… at the expense of those needing help with a complicated legal system. One of the most contentious issues is on basic legal forms. Companies like LegalZoom have stepped in to create forms for the individual citizen, and have found many states are very reluctant in approving of their products and services.

This morning, LegalZoom launched a press release that announced that the South Carolina Supreme Court approved of their business model and that its services of providing legal forms for individual citizens to use is not the unorthorized practice of law. The original lawsuit of T. Travis Medlock v. LegalZoom, Inc. brought the action requesting declaratory relief, injunctive relief and disgorgement of revenues, among other measures. This isn’t the only UPL action that LegalZoom is facing, according to their SEC Filing, they are fighting UPL claims in Alabama, Ohio, Arkansas, Missouri, and North Carolina. On March 1, 2013, Nelson Mullins attorney, B. Rush Smith III, filed a pre-hearing brief that lays out what LegalZoom is doing is simply being “an online scrivener for a customer purchasing an online automated legal document.”

Looks like, at least in South Carolina, LegalZoom has prevailed. The press release is listed below.

SOUTH CAROLINA SUPREME COURT APPROVES LEGALZOOM BUSINESS MODEL .
Apr 22 2014 11:00:10
 
South Carolina Supreme Court Approves LegalZoom Business Model

Demonstrates Commitment to Increase Access to the Justice System for all South Carolina Residents

GLENDALE, Calif., April 22, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The South Carolina Supreme Court reviewed LegalZoom.com, Inc.’s business practices and, in an order issued on March 11, 2014, found that LegalZoom does not engage in the unauthorized practice of law, ensuring South Carolina residents the continued ability to access LegalZoom’s services.
“We are pleased that the South Carolina Supreme Court has approved LegalZoom’s business model allowing access to online legal documents,” said Ken Friedman, Vice President of Legal and Government Affairs at LegalZoom. “As with many state bars, when a record is made about LegalZoom’s products and services, the result is that our fundamental business model is found to be legally sound.”
“Everyone deserves access to the civil justice system. We look forward to continuing to serve our many customers in the State of South Carolina,” added Friedman. “Whether our customers want one of the products reviewed by the Supreme Court, such as documents related to business formation, estate planning documents, or real estate leases, or they want the help of licensed South Carolina attorneys associated with LegalZoom’s legal plans, LegalZoom will continue its business practices in South Carolina and all 50 states in which LegalZoom operates.” The announcement follows the resolution of the lawsuit of T. Travis Medlock v. LegalZoom.com, Inc.

About LegalZoom.com
LegalZoom is the nation’s leading provider of personalized, affordable online legal solutions for families and small businesses. Founded more than 12 years ago by attorneys with experience at some of the top law firms in the country, LegalZoom has helped over two million Americans become protected with binding legal documents. Although LegalZoom is not a law firm, it can help people access an attorney through its legal plans. The company has offices in Austin, Glendale, and Mountain View. For more information, visit  www.legalzoom.com.
CONTACT: Johanna Namir, (323) 337-0022

OK. I’ve had a couple of days to experiment with Google’s Glass technology. It’s still very early days, and I haven’t come to any firm conclusions yet, but I’m ready to give my first impressions.

First, the bad. Glass is definitely not yet ready for Prime Time. To be fair, Google has never claimed otherwise. I am pretty sure they are doing this ridiculous expensive and slow roll out, because they don’t want your average consumer to purchase a Glass thinking it should be something more than it actually is.  At $1500 only developers, or Google Fans, or die-hard geeks, will be likely to shell out the cash and each of those populations will be relatively understanding of the device’s limitations.

There is no Glass app store.  After you register your Glass with your Google account, you get access to the MyGlass site.  Most of the setup, including wifi setup and app installation, is done on this site or on an Android or iOS mobile app. There a few dozen Google sanctioned apps that can be sent to your Glass with a simple authorization from this site. The apps vary greatly in usability and utility and there really is no “killer app” as yet. In the last few days, Google has added several new apps to this list, so I’m hopeful that that trend continues and is not just Google throwing a bone to all of the suckers new Glass owners who purchased a Glass last week.

If you are a developer or a die-hard geek, then you are probably fairly comfortable with a unix command line. This is where the interesting stuff is happening with Glass. If you turn on Debugging, and plug your Glass into your computer, you suddenly have the ability to install non-Google sanctioned apps.  These can be found on a number of sites dedicated to cataloging new Glass apps.  There is some “danger” in this process. You may install something that causes problems with other apps and you may have difficulty uninstalling some apps.  In my experience a lot of available apps simply do not work at all. (I suspect that’s because Google updated the software version on Glass last week and a lot of apps have not yet been updated.) Thankfully, Google made it very simple to restore Glass to its factory settings.  I’ve already done this twice. This manual process reminds me very much of the early days of iPhone Jailbreaking.  It’s easy to forget now that Apple has more than a million apps on their app store, but for the first year if you wanted the device to run more than the few included apps allowed, you had to do a little simple hacking.

Second, the ugly. This was the most surprising thing for me. I don’t think they’re ugly at all. I kind of like the look of them. Granted, I’m not exactly a fashion plate and I normally wear glasses so they just looked like glasses with a chunky right temple piece. I didn’t get the day glow orange color, so I think my Charcoal Glass looks fairly classy (IMHO) and if I wear a ball cap, you can barely see it. I did wear it out for a walk on Saturday with my wife and she was only slightly embarrassed.  I went into a Starbucks and no one seemed to notice I had it on at all. Although, I live in Manhattan, and we tend to not look at each other much, so your mileage may vary. While I wasn’t accosted by angry anti-tech mobs, or feverish fan-boys, I found I was still quite self conscious while ordering my latte. I didn’t want anyone to see me. I’m not a flashy, out-going, look-at-me type, so maybe I had a look on my face that said, “don’t you dare ask me about this stupid thing on my face!”

Finally, the good. I had a revelation on day two of playing with my Glass; my title from last week, Getting Google Glass All Wrong, was a little prophetic. I’m starting to think that everyone has Glass wrong. (Maybe someone else has said this, though I haven’t seen it, so if this is not an original thought, please feel free deride me in the comments and send me links showing how derivative I am.) Google Glass is not a wearable smartphone, or Personal Electronic Device (PED) at all.  And I don’t mean, it’s not there yet, I mean, I don’t think that’s what this will ever be, or even what it should be.  I think Glass is the world’s first Personal Internet Peripheral (PIP).

By internet peripheral, I mean, this device is a new method of interacting with the internet (obviously). But specifically, Google Glass has more in common with the computer mouse than it does with the smartphone. I don’t mean that as an insult, I think that is actually quite brilliant. While there is some storage and processing ability within Glass, the real brains of the device are in the cloud and Glass requires an internet connection to do much of anything useful. And while the camera and the display will get smaller, and the storage will get bigger, over time, I don’t see Google ever putting the brains in the device itself.  Why would they? They are an internet company and persistent connectivity will only become more common.

Most computer mice (mouses?) today use lasers to determine cursor coordinates, but they still work essentially the same as the old mice with two wheels turning at right angles to each other, to move a cursor on a screen in two dimensions. In the days of DOS, the mouse was of little use, but the Graphical User Interface quickly became the norm and computing changed forever.  In the same way that the mouse opened up new ways to interact with computers, I think Glass and its descendant technologies will create new ways to interact with the cloud.  Google Glass is an eleven dimensional mouse on the two dimensional web. It seems of little use now, but just you wait until the eleven dimensional online user interface becomes the norm. It’s definitely not what I thought it was, but I am much more impressed with Glass after two days than I expected to be.

More to come…

Image [cc] – Tedeytan

Last year it seemed everyone was gaga for Google Glass.

“Ooooooh, it’s a computer for your face!  It’s got a camera and can give you directions! It’s just like your phone was permanently positioned 3 feet in front of your right eye! Woo hoo! I can’t wait to get one!”

I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t jump on board. I just didn’t see the utility. Yes, it’s a cool concept, but the functionality wasn’t there. Maybe in a few years it would become something functional and interesting, but I certainly wasn’t going to waste my money on something that was little more than a half-baked concept.

A week ago Google announced that they were opening up Glass sales for one day only. On Tuesday, if you were willing to shell out $1500 dollars, this pre-beta, sub-functional, ugly cyborg technology could be yours! The one day sale was met with a barrage of negative press. Journalists and bloggers across the world almost universally decried this Google foray into wearable tech as not yet ready for prime time, or elitist technology, or as little more than a toy for wealthy geeks. One Business Insider journalist told his harrowing tale of being assaulted on the streets of San Francisco for wearing his Glass in public. Glass has been banned in some coffee shops and bars. Most tellingly, the term Glasshole has graduated from Silicon Valley/Northern California in-joke to official entry in the American Lexicon. I even heard Michael Strahan say it on Live! (Kelly was aghast.) Boy, when the pendulum swings, that sucker swings hard! By Tuesday morning, it was clear to me that everyone in the world finally agreed with my original assessment of Google Glass. So, I bought one.

You’ve heard the phrase “that many people can’t be wrong”? Well, any time consensus holds that I am that right about something, you can be sure I’m going to seriously question that assessment. The “wisdom of the crowds” does not refer to the crowd’s purchasing prowess after all. If that many people, most of whom have never tried or even seen the technology, hate it with such a viciousness, that is a sure sign that there is something there worth exploring.

So Hello World! I am about to become a Glasshole.

Now, I don’t intend to wear the damn thing around all the time.  Mostly because I don’t want to be beaten up by the poor disadvantaged proletarian children carrying their 1970s-era super computers in their pockets instead of wearing them on their face. (“Down with the face computers, long live the pocket!”) But also because, I suspect they will make me look even dorkier than usual. And also, in a nod to all of my privacy lawyer friends who just crossed me off their Christmas Card list, because there are some real, gray area, privacy concerns surrounding wearable technology in public. Our social norms, let alone our laws, have not yet assimilated wearable, always-on, camera computers.

That said, this is happening people! Wearable computing is here. It will only become more prevalent, and we have to learn to live with it.  More to the point, we will have to learn to work with it. While I can imagine any number of futures for Google Glass and its like – everything from laws preventing its use in public, to public distribution for all school children – I have no doubt that one day I will start my working day, not by logging into my desktop computer, but by physically putting my computer on my body. And I would bet that that day is closer to 2020 than it is to 2030.

I understand that Google has a 30 day money back guarantee, so if it turns out that my original assessment (and the rest of the world’s since Tuesday) is right, maybe I’ll ship it back to Mountain View in the next month. In the meantime, please don’t worry about people calling me a Glasshole, I’ve been called something very similar for most of my life and I probably won’t even notice.

There was an interesting question asked on Twitter this morning by Patrick DiDomenico (apparently preparing for an ITLA presentation on the topic.) At first blush, it seemed to be phrased a bit on the negative side, but it really is something that those of us in law firm libraries do need to ask from time to time. “Tell me what’s wrong with law firm libraries today.”

This isn’t about bashing Patrick for asking the question, quite the opposite actually. It is a legitimate question to ask. This is more about addressing what is wrong, while also addressing what is right in law firm libraries today. After batting the question around with some of my law library and law firm administrative colleagues, we thought that this question could be asked of any of the law firm administrative departments. The Library and the Knowledge Management (KM) groups are probably the most venerable to this issue, but all departments, including IT, Marketing, Accounting, Human Resources, Records, and others are under constant scrutiny from law firm leadership to prove our worth to the firm. If we aren’t challenged, we become complacent. If we come complacent, we fail to see those changes we need to make until it is too late. It could be asked of any department, but this morning, it was asked of us in the law firm library. So, let’s address it.

In defense of those of us that lead law firm libraries, as with most law firm administrative problems, there tends to be a lack of direction in the library as to where it fits in the overall strategy of the firm. For example, the push to “go online” has been the biggest issue for the past 15-20 years, and it has put the library leaders and staff in a situation that is unclear, and quite frankly, unobtainable without 100% of the partners all agreeing to go in one direction. We suffer from the “one-veto” effect of the partnership in that everyone can agree to go with or without a service, but if one partner votes the other way, we tend to get stuck supporting a service that is expensive, time consuming, and duplicate.

 
Hopefully this sets up the stage for a list of (very generalized) things that are wrong with law firm libraries today:
  • We are still debating formats within the library and keeping outdated formats in support of a minority of attorneys (example: formats now include print, e-books, online, databases, and on-demand… each with its own individual cost and demands from individuals within the firm.)
  • Law Firms have not decided how to bring the law library into the modern day structure of a 21st Century firm
  • The primary demands on librarians are to keep costs low, client costs low, and to watch out for the firm’s best interest
  • Librarians are not given the final word on what to buy and what to keep (that causes problems with the previous point)
  • Librarians tend to be the first to feel the cuts when times are bad, and the last to feel the benefits when times are good
  • Librarians tend to be team players and are willing to take a larger percentage of “taking one for the team” than other departments, this leads to libraries becoming easy targets
  • Librarians tend to be very tough on each other (publicly), yet very defensive when attacked from outside (think of it as “I can call my sister a name, but if you call her that, we’re going to fight!)
  • The current Directors of law libraries failed miserably in succession planning. We’ve been waiting for 25 years for the next group of leaders to bring in fresh perspectives and what resulted was the whole library structure got tossed out with the bathwater
  • Libraries (and Librarians) generally have a problem when it comes to the Return on Investment (ROI) piece of justifying their existence

What’s right with Law Firm Libraries?

  • Librarians are constantly looking out for the best interest of the firm
  • Librarians have kept very good control on overall costs (most libraries are less than 2% of revenue, some are less than 1%)
  • Librarians keep costs down to the client (usually by assisting attorneys that forget about those costs until they see it on the bill and have to write it off.)
  • Librarians are constantly looking for less expensive, or better resources that fit the needs of the firm’s practices.
  • Librarians are extremely good at risk analysis for the firm and help save the firm from itself (costs, copyright, access, correct resources, etc.)
  • Librarians share their experiences with each other. Most librarians do not have to trail blaze into a new product or mission or strategy, as we can stand on the shoulders of others that have tested the waters before and are willing to share those experiences (without exposing anything confidential, of course.)

Someone told me the other day that Librarians have a fear of strategy. Perhaps that is true of some, but no one that I would associate in the law library world is afraid of being strategic. I responded to this person that they were painting with a very broad brush and that the librarians I associate with have no fear, whatsoever, of strategy. However, I think we tend to be easy targets from other departments and law firm leadership, and that we roll over too easily at times. We’re at the end of a cycle where those in charge of libraries for the past 25 years are rotating out and failed to create an effective succession for the library to bring in those with the experience needed to understand the library structure, but with the fresh new ideas of where it needs to go from here. This left the door open for those outside the library to come in and have to start from scratch and think that the library needs to be rebuilt from the ground up rather than expand those processes that work, rework or remove those that don’t, and begin building new processes that make the library and the firm better prepared for the future.

So, what’s wrong with today’s law firm libraries? It’s a question you have to answer and supplement with what’s right. If you don’t, someone else will come in and answer it for you, and they will not be nearly as aggressive on defending what the law firm libraries are doing well.

Thanks, Patrick, for asking the question. I hope this gives you a few ideas to process.