If you ever want to have some fun at the expense of a law firm librarian, just go up to them and “I have some lawyers that want us to buy a firm wide subscription to Law360… is there anything I should know before doing it?” Then step back and watch them spit fire as they talk about all the things they hate about Law360’s business practices and subscription increases. Once you got them red in the face and dropping a few inappropriate phrases, smile and say “I was just kidding.” Then step back out of punching range.

Now, go ask an attorney what he or she thinks of Law360 and you’ll get a completely different response. I usually get something along the line of “This is the only email that I actually read when it comes in with the daily updates.” That is actually a pretty impressive response from the attorneys, and it is one in which it is very difficult to then tell them that we need to cut the product.

What makes Law360 so valuable to the attorneys? Most of us know that the content is eventually available in other places. The writing isn’t always the most professional. Other products, like a CCH or BNA report tend to be much more thorough in their reporting and linking to relevant legal materials. So what is it about Law360 that is so attractive to the attorneys? Here’s my thoughts:

  1. It is written much like a tabloid. Nice, easy to read headlines with just enough information to invite the reader to click and want to read more.
  2. The practice topics are broken out into nice groups that make sense to the attorneys.
  3. Attorneys are often asked to write articles for Law360, and they know that peers will notice they are writing an article.
  4. Law360 knows what strokes the egos of lawyers, and at the same time, what piques their curiosity through placement of law firm and company names in articles, and inviting others in their firm to read articles the lawyer has written.

To me, number four is the key to success. Lawyers are typically insecure, especially those in BigLaw firms. That doesn’t mean that they are bad lawyers. In fact, they are the top lawyers in their fields, otherwise they wouldn’t be creating the PPP levels that BigLaw firms make (even during the “end of lawyers?” days.) They are insecure because they think that their peer at another firm knows something they don’t, or that they have a process or software or plan that gives them a competitive advantage over them, and they always want to know what the other firms are doing, who they are representing, and who is joining their team. Law360 understands this insecurity and leverages it to their advantage. In a way, it is pure brilliance.

My favorite tactic is when Law360 gets a lawyer from a firm to write an article, and then they place it in a section of the Law360 topics that the firm doesn’t subscribe. Then sends an email to attorneys within the firm giving them a teaser to the article, and a link that then asks them to sign into the platform. Lawyers see this, then call the librarian to get a copy of the article. Since Law360 has been very, very diligent on calling out people on listservs that ask for copies of the articles (because the licensing agreement restricts sending articles outside the firm), librarians then have to tell the attorneys that they cannot get a copy of it because of Law360’s licensing agreement forbids it. As you might guess, the next question from the attorney is “Well, how much does it cost to subscribe?” At that point, the librarian, who has been told not to order any new subscriptions by the ultimate powers-that-be, is now stuck in between a rock and a hard place. The options are to see if they can get this one article somewhere on the Black Market, tell the attorney “Hell No”, go to the powers-that-be and ask for an exemption, or attempt to sneak the subscription through and hope that no one notices the increase in the annual budget. None of these options are very appealing to the librarian, and the results are usually more bitterness directed at Law360.

Quite frankly, the Law360 model is pretty brilliant, even if it causes the average blood pressure of law librarians to increase 10% at the mere mention of their name. Get attorneys to write articles, charge them and their peers to read those articles, and then stroke their egos while simultaneously playing on their insecurities. I can’t think of a better business model. Factor in some of the outrageous price increases they have charged to law firms, and you’ve got something that Steve Jobs would have been proud of.

To be fair to Law360, and its now parent organization, LexisNexis, they do put out a very good product. I would bet that if you did a cost analysis of what you pay per article read by a lawyer, that the average cost per article for Law360 is significantly less than what you pay per read article from BNA or CCH. I don’t have hard stats on that, so I’m going with my gut and my previous experiences. I’ve heard many librarians say that they tell their attorneys that most of the articles (or at least the substance of those articles) they see in Law360 will show up in the next few days in other publications, so that they can wait until it shows up in either a free product or a subscription that the firm already owns. As many of us know, lawyers don’t usually like being told to wait a few days. In those few days all of their peers at other firms (who obviously already subscribe to Law360) will gain a competitive advantage over them and will steal all of their clients away because the peers know something that they don’t!! Wait?? If we wait, we lose!! We need to subscribe now!!!

Law360… you are brilliant!

This is the point at which the law librarian opens the side drawer on his desk and takes his blood pressure medication and counts the days to retirement.

I have spent the last two days at the ARK Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession conference in Midtown Manhattan.  It was a very good conference, as usual.  I very much enjoyed listening to and meeting with many brilliant and fascinating people to talk about KM in legal.  However, after this conference I have come to one inescapable conclusion.  Knowledge Management does not exist in the Legal Profession.

Now, before everyone I met tears up my business card, un-invites me from their LinkedIn network, and crosses me off their holiday party lists, let me clarify.  KM clearly exists, but I am no longer sure that it is A thing. The sessions were all over the map, touching on nearly every aspect of the practice of law.  We had a couple of master classes on the “new normal” business environment, we had an introduction to Lean, a CIO roundtable, discussions about change management and practice innovation, and a talk about what’s happening in law schools and how what we do affects them and vice versa.  There were a couple of people yammering on about Social Networking, some freak was showing slides of dissected brains, and this one guy was completely obsessed with pricing.  (It was like, ALL he could talk about. Leverage this. Utilization that. I was like, “Dude, enough already, go get your own conference!”)

I am pretty sure the words “forms and precedents” were only uttered once, in passing, on the first day, but I’m a little deaf and they may have actually said “worms for presidents”. (Although, that makes even less sense now that I’ve actually written it down, than it did in my head.) My point is, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find anything in the legal profession that you can point to and say with any certainty, “THAT is NOT, in any way, shape, or form, KM related.”

I was reminded of the old story/myth/parable of a philosophy professor standing in front of his class with a large glass jar.  He fills the jar with golf balls and asks the class if the jar is full.  When they all agree it is, he pulls out a bag of pebbles or marbles and dumps them in the jar too.  He asks again, the students again agree it is now full, and he pulls out a bag of sand and repeats the process. After the students declare the jar finally, absolutely, 100% full, he opens a couple of beers and pours them in the jar. His point is something about filling up your life in the right order.  Maybe you should focus on golf balls, before beer?  (Questionable philosophy at best.)   But if we imagine the jar is a law firm and the golf balls are all of the people in the firm and the things that they do, then KM is the marbles, the sand, and the beer.  KM is expanding, branching out, and filling up all of the empty spaces in firms.  I think my new definition for Legal KM might be, “All of the things for which responsibility is not otherwise immediately clear, plus all the things that marketing doesn’t want to do.”

Which brings me to an open question for my fellow KMers: If you were building a taxonomy for your firm, would you put Marbles, Sand, and Beer beneath Knowledge Management, or would they each be their own top level categories?

One of the best member benefits of a State Bar Association is the ability to access Casemaker or Fastcase (or InCite for Pennsylvania). However, sometimes it is confusing to keep up with which product each state offers. Luckily, the kind folks at Duke University’s Law Library have mapped everything out for us. Many law librarians have been promoting these services to the lawyers that want good research functionality, but don’t want to either pay a high price for an individual subscription, or don’t want to pass any costs along to clients for firms that do cost recovery.

If you’re unfamiliar with any of these products, go sign in at your state bar association and find out more. In some states, even paralegals and law librarians can use these products without actually having to be a member of the state bar association.

Image [cc] fbpa.wayne

In the 19th century one of the big business revolutions was the adoption of a new technology called “Railroads.” Of course when railroads were first proposed, two things happened. The first was a general uprising from the establishment about why this was a bad idea. This push-back came from those you would expect – the ones with a financial interest in keeping things the same way.

Although the first railroads were successful, attempts to finance new ones originally failed as opposition was mounted by turnpike operators, canal companies, stagecoach companies and those who drove wagons.

The second reaction was an “irrational exuberance” over the potential profit to be made and the speed at which change would occur. Mass quantities of speculative dollars were thrown at building rail lines from here to there to everywhere. Which of course resulted in much lost money when change didn’t come that fast.

Obviously railroads did not fail in general. I understand we still use them. But what did happen? It took about 50 years for railroads to fully embed in the US economy. From then on, this new way of doing business was considered business-as-usual. So instead of a quick revolution, change came about incrementally over a much longer period of time.

In the 20th century something similar happened with TV, only the commercial adoption was shortened to about 20 years. This highlights the accelerating rate at which new technologies are being adopted. For tablets, I think it was 3 years – although I just made that stat up.

The obvious conclusion, according to this history and everything I read about BigLaw, is that we have about 10 minutes left before BigLaw collapses and the Phoenix of the New Normal rises. By the time you come back from the bathroom, it will all be over.

For those of you who followed my suggestion and are now back, you will notice my predictions were proven false. Not much has changed.

As an alternative, I suggest the revolution in the delivery of legal services will take a bit longer to occur. Now I am not suggesting it will take 50 years. But I do suggest it will not come as fast as many might predict. We all know things need to change. And many see financial opportunities in that change, as they well should. However, I have been feeling a bit of irrational exuberance lately about how this will all play out.

So don’t look for BigLaw to collapse or for new-style providers to sweep through the market in short-order. Instead watch for steady, incremental changes in the way law firms function and deliver their services. Next generation providers will continue their growth, law firms will merge and things will generally keep changing. Much like the railroads, change will come, just not all at once.

59 cent coffee
Image [cc] sweetmandy

I got a LinkedIn email last week from someone that has taken a path very similar to the one I took twent-some years ago. Same Army M.O.S., same college, same law school, so far, not interested in the library portion. He’s a 3L and about to enter the workforce as an attorney, and he asked if I had some words of advice. Of course, you know I’m pretty easy when it comes to doling out my opinions, wrapped in the guise of advice.

The advice I gave isn’t very unique… in my humble opinion, it is really just common sense. I’m sure there are additional things that could be said (such as “be a good lawyer”), but I thought a few short words would be better than a five paragraph blog post. That said, I thought it would be easy to turn it into a blog post, so here it is:

My advise is to get you foot in the door and do good work. Take the time to build relationships with the folks you work with, and build good relationships with the folks that hire you to represent them.

Never eat lunch alone. Get involved in you community doing something you love, but that affects others at the same time in a positive way.

Don’t be afraid to step out and try something new. Don’t be afraid to ask others for help.

Treat everyone with respect and keep all of the staff members happy and engaged with the work you do.

It’s a tough market out there, but hard work, smart work, and good relationship building will help you succeed when others might not.

Best of luck.

Image [cc] Ozzie Davis

At the recent (and extremely successful) P3 Conference last week, a comment really stuck in my head. There was a panel on Show Me the Practice Innovation and the final question to the panel was to point out any true innovations in legal services over the past 25 years. The panel included three of the smartest people I know: Kingsley Martin, Keith Lipman and Michael Mills.

The consensus from these big brains: What innovation?

Michael Mills from Neota Logic said online legal research was one innovation, which he acknowledged did improve efficiencies some, but it didn’t really change the core delivery model.

So where am I going with this? Not where you might expect.

Many of the next-generation law firms (and non-law firms) hold themselves out as “innovative” and in fact win awards for said innovation. But when you peel back the covers, where is the innovation? Are they using next generation technologies like Neota and KM Standards? No. Are they building out process maps and reengineering how matters are managed and handled? Not that I can see. Are they employing project management people, principles and tools across the board? Well .. some are using them in document review, but otherwise – not so much.

What they appear to be doing is hiring BigLaw trained lawyers and utilizing significantly lower overhead. Some do it via onsite client secundments. Others do it with less expensive office space. All seem to do it with lower lawyer compensation. But this is merely doing it the same way – only cheaper.

Is this approach a smart idea? Absolutely. Many times I kick myself and Number 1 for not thinking of it first. But is this approach a real transformation to the way legal services are delivered?

Judge for yourself.

There has been a lot of discussion in Law Library Land lately about the use of the term “Librarian” to describe the staff that curates and researches in a private law library. The discussion, which has taken place in both blogs (Here is an excellent post) and on AALL listservs, has been lively and interesting. 

As a brand, the term is unparallelled in its universal recognition.  However, the connotations associated with the term may not be of a dynamic and forward-thinking professional. Just try telling someone you’re a librarian at a social function and watch their eyes immediately glaze over from boredom. 

As proud as I am of being a Librarian (note the capitalized first letter of the word), I am at heart pragmatic when it comes to my career and have no problem with labels like Research Specialist, Research Analyst, Information Manager, Technical Services Specialist, Director of Information Services or Lord Emperor of Research (cue the Darth Vader music).   My self-worth isn’t tied to a label. I’m sure that the Librarians of Ancient Babylon were not called Librarians.   Labels and professions evolve over time and, just as in Darwinian evolution,  those who can adapt will succeed and those who can’t will be left behind.  In the end, I will do what I need to in order to succeed. How successful I am is shown by being the go-to person people turn to when they need assistance.  A label doesn’t affect that one way or another. 

Some of us have noticed a vacuum in the space where the prolific Law Librarian Blog once stood. Anyone that has been in the law librarian profession, and hasn’t lived under a rock, is familiar with the posts that come mulitple times a day from Joe Hodnicki and Mark Giangrande (well, mostly Hodnicki). The blog went dark after the September 3rd post of The (Un)Availability of Tribal Law. I thought this was a pretty strange ending for the blog that is known for not holding back the punches when it comes to legal publishing vendors, or AALL Board Members (myself included.) Never fear, it just seems to be an offshoot from the Law Professor Blogs Network change in ownership when Joe Hodnicki sold his share of the LPB to Paul L. Caron.

Starting October 1st, Hodnicki and Giangrande move over to the blog “Law Librarians” with the subtitle “Thinking Out Loud in the Blogosphere.”

I’m sure the post entitled “Test” is simply just a test… if fact, I’m pretty sure that we’ll see some of the same ole’ Joe firing off posts on a daily basis starting tomorrow.

Welcome back Joe!!

“Better Call Saul!”

I’m watching the Breaking Bad marathon last night when a commercial comes on mentioning a familiar company. Although I couldn’t find the 30 second spot telling me to go to BringAClaim.com, I did find the 2 minute video from the firm behind Bring A Claim, San Antonio based, Watts Guerra, LLP, that describes the settlement agreement that entitles, “more than 100 million Americans who could be entitled to statutory damages of $100 to $1000 for each proven willful violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.”

It seems that Lexis wasn’t just having a problem with this issue, but according to KrebsOnSecurity, was hacked by a serious cyber criminal organization, along with Dun & Bradstreet, and Kroll Background America, Inc., where millions of social security numbers and business information were stolen and sold. The KrebsOnSecurity report, based on a seven month long investigation, reports that the Lexis breach seems to have been one where someone on the inside installed a program called NBC.exe in order to gain access to the system and download the personal data.

Perhaps the most alarming thing that Krebs’ reports is that there are over a thousand “customers” (AKA, Bad Guys) going through the hacked data:

The database shows that the site’s 1,300 customers have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars looking up SSNs, birthdays, drivers license records, and obtaining unauthorized credit and background reports on more than four million Americans.

Seems that Walter White wasn’t the only one having a bad year. But, remember, you may be entitled to damages, so you better call Saul… er, Watts Guerra.

The race for state bar partnerships between Casemaker and Fastcase took another step toward Fastcase this morning. New York, which has been somewhat of a holdout on the free access to legal research benefit, is partnering with Fastcase to provide its members with free access to the product via the Bar’s website, www.nysba.org. I believe this brings Fastcase up to 25 state bar associations, and puts the momentum squarely on Fastcase’s side.

The formal announcement will go out in a few minutes from Fastcase and NYSBA.

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 25, 2013
New York State Bar Association Partners With Fastcase
to Provide Free Access to Legal Research Library
Access to Smarter Legal Research Tools Now Available for State Bar Members at No Cost
Washington, DC (September 25, 2013) – The New York State Bar Association and legal publisher Fastcase today announced a partnership to provide 76,000 members of the association with free access to the New York libraries in Fastcase’s legal research system.
The nation’s largest voluntary state bar association is offering access to online legal research for its members in New York, 49 other states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and 113 countries.
Beginning this week, members will gain free access to Fastcase’s New York libraries by logging on to www.nysba.org, going to Practice Resources and clicking on Fastcase. The free benefit includes judicial opinions from New York State courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. It also offers access to New York State Consolidated Laws; New York Codes, Rules and Regulations; and the New York Constitution. 
As part of the benefit, members may subscribe to the nationwide Fastcase premium subscription for $195 per member per year—which normally costs $995 per year, a discount of $800. In addition, a specially tailored benefit will help new attorney members gain professional and financial footing during their first two years of practice. They qualify for free access to Fastcase’s entire federal and 50-state library, which will be available to them in October.
“We are pleased to provide the Fastcase online legal research library as a benefit to our members,” said New York State Bar Association President David M. Schraver of Rochester (Nixon Peabody). “The legal community has been conducting legal research online for decades. Now we are able to bring our members unlimited access to one of the largest law libraries in the world as a member benefit.”
This member benefit provides NYSBA members with access to one of the largest law libraries in the world, training webinars and tutorials, and free reference assistance. The member benefit is unlimited – with no restrictions on time or number of transactions, unlimited printing, unlimited reference assistance and unlimited customer service included for free.
“This is the new normal, when New York firms are absorbing their legal research costs as overhead, and firms of all sizes are looking to add a nonbillable ‘house account’ for legal research,” said Fastcase President Phil Rosenthal. “This partnership makes the NYSBA and Fastcase a better value than ever for New York firms, because they can reduce the costs of legal research and they can do so with the world’s smartest legal research tools.”  
Over the last few years, 24 state bar associations and scores of the nation’s largest law firms have subscribed to Fastcase, which now has more than 600,000 subscribers.
Fastcase has gained very strong momentum in the legal research market and continues to challenge traditional legal publishers. Fastcase was voted #1 in Law Technology News’s inaugural Customer Satisfaction Survey, finishing first in 7 out of 10 categories over traditional research providers Westlaw and LexisNexis. The American Association of Law Libraries named Fastcase for iPhone the 2010 New Product of the Year. In 2011, Rocket Matter named Fastcase’s apps for iPhone and iPad the Legal Productivity App of the Year, and Fastcase was named to The Best of Legal Times in multiple categories in 2012. Three times the company has been listed in the EContent 100, the most influential companies in the digital economy, alongside Google, Apple, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  And the 2013 ABA Tech Survey reports that Fastcase’s mobile apps are by far the most popular app for lawyers, more popular than all other legal research apps combined.
“When bar associations subscribe to legal research for their members at a volume discount, everyone wins,” said Rosenthal. “One of the most valuable bar memberships in the country just got better.”
About the New York State Bar Association
The New York State Bar Association, with 76,000 members, is the largest voluntary state bar association in the country. The organization has been serving the legal profession and the community since it was founded in 1876. To learn more about the NYSBA, visit www.nysba.org.
About Fastcase
As the smarter alternative for legal research, Fastcase democratizes the law, making it more accessible to more people. Using patented software that combines the best of legal research with the best of Web search, Fastcase helps busy users sift through the clutter, ranking the best cases first and enabling the re-sorting of results to find answers fast. Founded in 1999, Fastcase has more than 600,000 subscribers from around the world. Fastcase is an American company based in Washington, D.C. For more information, follow Fastcase on Twitter at @Fastcase or visit www.fastcase.com.

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Media Contacts:
For Fastcase:
Jennifer Brand 202.731.2114
jbrand@brandsolutionsgroup.com
For the NYSBA:
Lise Bang-Jensen
518-487-5530
Lbang-jensen@nysba.org