A metal bucket
By Jon Pallbo (Jon.Pallbo@gmail.com)
(Own work) [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

I recently watched a TED talk by Michael Idinopulos, called Mr. Manager, tear down these (digital) walls!  It’s a great talk and is well worth your while to view the entire 17 minute presentation.  The story he tells beginning at the 2 minute mark has been haunting me since I first watched it.

He tells of visiting his grandfather’s stock brokerage firm when he was a child and seeing all of the desks lined up in the open office space. Then he tells of returning when he was in high school and seeing his grandfather’s brand new big private office. He assumed his grandfather would be happier with the office, but the grandfather longed for the old office layout. The grandfather tells of how new information traveled in the old space.

“You could almost watch… that information as it traveled from one end of that floor to another.  One broker would tell another broker, it was overheard by a third broker, and within 2 minutes flat that information could go from the first broker to the last and we all knew what was going on as soon as any of us knew anything.  Now, we sit in our private offices. We call our clients on the phone, but really, we have no idea what’s going on.”

Idinopulos uses this story as a launching point to tout the benefits of a social workplace and while I wholehearted agree with his point of view (go watch the video), I’m going to use his story to make a slightly different point.  Given the right conditions human beings are pretty good at instinctively managing knowledge within an organization.

Unfortunately, our modern firms do not conform to those conditions. To compensate we have created large KM infrastructures and systems designed to deliver institutional knowledge to employees across the world at the flip of a switch or the push of a button.  We imagine these tools to be delivery mechanisms akin to plumbing or electrical wiring, but knowledge is not a utility like water or electricity.  It can not be generated at a single spot, or efficiently gathered into a reservoir before being pumped down system.  Sadly, there is no fount of ultimate wisdom from which we can siphon gallons of knowledge to be distributed to the great masses of thirsty thinkers. Instead we ask people to help us capture knowledge “for everyone’s benefit”.  Like asking each person to carry one bucket of water up to the rooftop tower so that we can all benefit from running water for the day. And we wonder why it doesn’t always function as we would like it to.

The ultimate key to designing systems that can facilitate knowledge transfer and flow across a global enterprise is not to better incorporate our utility-like systems into existing workflows, or to make them easier to use, or to improve the quality of knowledge they capture (all perfectly fine goals), but to change the metaphors around which we design them.  KM is not a utility, it’s a big open room.  We need to focus on building systems that replicate the open office layout of Michael’s grandfather’s brokerage on a global scale.  We need geographical representations of who is working with whom on what, updated in near real time with a point-to-click and pinch-to-zoom interface that an infant could use.  And that should be our intranet home page!  The user drills down into this slowly spinning globe to get details on individual projects, matters, groups, practice areas, attorneys bios, experience, etc. With a quick tap you can see the public profile and e-social history of each, and then send a message, email, telephone, or instantly collaborate with any individual or group across the world.  The presence and availability of all firm employees are readily visible for all to see, and those with appropriate rights can see graphical representations of Toby’s profit drivers for each matter.  Another simple gesture inverts the globe to show our clients and our contacts in much the same configuration.  Drilling down on this map gets you to client history, financials, news, etc.  All relationships are graphically represented and previously hidden connections become obvious at a glance.

All of this technology and the data backing it up already exists, but it’s in a hundred different unrelated, utility-like systems, each of which requires extensive training and the occasional bucket to be carried to the roof.  THE knowledge system, the KM holy grail, is the system that gives Michael’s grandpa the feeling he had in the open floor plan while he’s sitting at his desk behind his closed door in one regional office of his multinational firm.  Just imagine…

“You can almost watch the information as it travels from one continent to another. One lawyer tells another lawyer, it’s noticed by a third lawyer, and within 20 minutes flat it goes from the first to the last. We all know exactly what is going on as soon as any of us knows anything.”

As I was riding back from Austin, Texas yesterday afternoon, looking out the windows at the remains of the Bastrop fire from two years ago, I got the first news of the tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma. It brought back the thoughts of me hunkering down in the basement of the Oklahoma City University School of Law fourteen years ago. My fingers danced across my phone going back and forth between social media sites, CNN, and KFOR television’s web broadcast looking for more information on what was going on. The sickening combination of déjà vu and helplessness started drifting over me in waves.

It is strange how we are so connected these days to others around the world. Almost no place seems to be foreign to us any longer. We could track our friends through their posts on Facebook, and fear for those that hadn’t yet updated their status to let us know they were okay. We could hear from old friends who had long since moved away from Oklahoma, relive those past tornado experiences, and send prayers, best wishes, and contributions to their friends that remained and were currently affected by the latest storms. I reached out to my cousin in Boston to determine if his sister in Moore, Oklahoma had contacted him yet to let him know she was okay. The connections were both comforting, and unsettling. I felt like I could know exactly what was going on at any moment, and frustrated by the reality that I really didn’t have that power.

After 20 minutes, I received a message back from my cousin saying that his sister was fine and that the tornado went south of her existing home, and just north of the home she and her husband were building. They were thankful to have been spared, once again from the third F4 or F5 tornado (May 3, 1999; May 8, 2003, and May 20, 2013) to strike the Oklahoma City suburb in fourteen years.

I turned back to Facebook to track other friends (mostly librarians) in the area.
 
My good friend, and fellow AALL Board Member, Katie Brown, was having nearly the same experiences I had back in 1999. She posted on Facebook that she was:

In the basement of the law library stay safe people!

She was actually with some of the same people I sat with in that very basement. I could picture sitting along the walls of that lower level looking back and forth between the doors of the bathrooms, the other library staffers and a few law students that were there for their final exams, and the doors that went in both directions toward the serials collection and the National Reporter sets. I’m sure the building has changed with the renovations over the past dozen years, but I still see the old layout as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. In 1999, my pregnant wife and two-year old daughter were on the opposite side of the damage. In 2013, Katie’s husband and kids (well, cats) were also on the other side of the destruction. It was bizarre watching the updates and understanding what would happen next as she made her way back across a broken terrain to reunite with her family, just as I had done so many years ago.

As a librarian in Oklahoma, there is kind of a trend of living in Norman, and working in Oklahoma City. The idea is to enjoy the college-type atmosphere and more liberal settings of Norman, and actually make a living in your profession in the more populous OKC region (that is, if you absolutely can’t find a job in Norman that pays a decent wage.) The drive each day takes you up I-35 via Flood Ave or  24th Ave and you pass through Moore each morning and afternoon. I’ve been gone from the area for more than 10 years now, but can still remember taking the 25 minute drive every day from my North Norman residence to the Administrative Office of the Courts building just blocks away from the State Capitol building. Moore wasn’t a place we went to… it was a place we drove through.

As I watched update after update come in from friends, I started remembering how difficult it was to drive back home to Norman that night back in 1999. That 25 minute trip became a five-hour journey. My Oklahoma librarian friends were having to make that same journey last night.

One friend posted:

I am going to take Sara Road down to Highway 9, then back up into Norman. If anyone knows why this won’t work, let me know.

Katie posted:

Just got the all clear to leave the basement. But there is a tornado between my work and my house so I am staying in okc for awhile.

Then the wait began to see the next post, knowing it would be hours from now, to confirm that they made it home safely. Four hours later, both had confirmed they made it. My initial reaction was relief… then I had a twinge of jealousy that they beat my travel time by an hour. I chalked that up to having a cell phone, social media and GPS to guide them around the roads they had most likely never traveled before.

Like I said earlier, it is strange at how connected we are these days. You feel empowered, yet helpless at the same time. I’m not sure if it is a good thing or bad thing, it’s just a thing we all have to get used to. Now time to go back to Facebook and check in to make sure everyone else is okay.

One of the very first things you hear when you attend a Competitive Intelligence (CI) seminar is that CI is the ethical gathering of intelligence. The reason that ethics is stressed so highly when discussion CI, is that if your CI team is dabbling in unethical behavior (and that gets exposed), it reflects upon your whole organization and casts a shadow upon everything you do.

It seems that there are some reporters at Bloomberg L.P. may need to sit back in on some of those classes on ethics. The report in the New York Times states that reporters used information found through Bloomberg Terminal usage from banks and traders to break stories on certain people being fired from those companies (based upon users that suddenly “went dark” … i.e., were no longer logging into their Terminals.) That type of information, while effective, falls squarely on the unethical side of the ledger, and as a result gives all of Bloomberg a black eye.

Immediately, we all started wondering what exposure law firms had to this type of research, and if there were additional issues that were at play. According to Jean O’Grady’s blog, Dewey B. Strategic, the Bloomberg Law platform was not included in this type of internal research strategy. O’Grady contacted Greg McCaffery, CEO of Bloomberg Law, and got confirmation on that point. However, as Jean also points out, many law firms have the Terminals as well as Bloomberg Law access. It brings up ligitimate questions like the one Ed Walters of Fastcase asked on Twitter yesterday:

Alledgedly, Bloomberg reporters where systematically using this type of research on a regular basis. Hundreds of reporters used the technique according to the NY Times article. It simply makes Bloomberg look bad.

In this age of instant communications, hacking, and whistle-blowers, unethical behavior is very difficult to keep covered up. This should be held up as an example to others in the world of information gathering, that if you are performing unethical practices, you should expect that eventually those practices will be exposed. When they are, you will need to spend years repairing the damage.

This same type of damage can happen with Competitive Intelligence research. Be very careful how you conduct your gathering processes, and ask yourself what would happen if those practices were exposed to the public.

I usually put some of the non-legal (but fun) things on Friday posts, but today I am leaning toward more of the “Geeks” side of the blog than the “Law” side. Last week I saw a tweet fly by that mentioned GeoGuessr, so I had a few free moments to go try it out. I’ve probably spend a good couple of hours playing it over the weekend with the family, and found it to be a really fun (and somewhat educational) game to play.

The concept is pretty simple, yet very challenging at the same time. The game puts you on a Google Street View somewhere in the world. You get to move around on the street view, and attempt to figure out where you are based on the landmarks and other visual clues you see. Once you think you know where you are, you zoom in on the inset map and plunk down a marker. The closer you are, the more points you score. The game lasts five places, and you combine the scores for all five guesses.

I usually have three windows open at the same time to help me along:

  1. GeoGuessr
  2. Google
  3. Google Maps

There are times when it is really easy to figure out your location. Last night, GeoGuessr placed me between a What-A-Burger and the South Padre Island Water Tower. Other times it is very difficult to find out where you are. The Outback in Australia is pretty non-descript, and there aren’t a lot of road signs to help you out either!

The game uses a lot of deductive reasoning. For example, are the cars driving on the left or right side of the road? Are the signs in English or Japanese? Is it an arid climate, or are the Royal Palm Trees lining the boulevard? You use anything you can find to help you isolate where you are. For example, there are times when all the signs are in Tamil, but the phone numbers are still Arabic, so I have Googled the prefix to isolate what area code it falls in. I’ve seen delivery trucks with company logos on them and found where those companies are located in order to narrow down where I am. It is like a mix of being Doctor Who stepping out of the Tardis in the wrong location, and Sherlock Holmes using visual clues to determine where I might actually be.

If you’ve got a few free minutes, go try out GeoGuessr for yourself. However, remember it is Monday, so you probably need to quit after one game if you plan on getting any work completed.

Image [cc] Salem State Library

Maybe I’m reading a bit much into this announcement from the Dorraine Zief Law Library at the University of San Francisco, but, the fact that Westlaw has decided to allow graduating law students access to their law school Westlaw IDs through the end of November seems to be a sign that even the folks up in Eagan, MN know it’s a tough market for law grads.

Graduates that go to extend their passwords by May 30th can have access to Westlaw classic and WestlawNext through their student logon. According to the USF post:

Graduates who extend their password will receive access to WestlawNext and Westlaw Classic through November 2013 instead of just through July.  The exact number of monthly access hours is not available, but is at least 40 hours per month.

Graduating students who have already extended their access don’t have to do anything further to get the extension through November.  There’s a link to the extension site in an  e-mail sent to graduating students.  Students may also click the “Need Westlaw this Summer?” ad on lawschool.westlaw.com.

I’m glad that Thomson Reuters decided to allow grads to keep access to this very expensive resource to help keep their research skills fresh as they are hunting for work. Of course, I’m wonder who will be the first grad to put on his or her resume that “if you hire me, I’ll have 40 hours of free Westlaw searching I can bring with me”?? Please, don’t be that person!!
 
Is it live, or is it Memorex iPad?

As I was walking through one of the libraries at the firm, I started looking around at all of the books that still remain on the shelves. Some are battered, but most are in pristine condition with spines that would make an audible snapping sound if you were to open them for the first time. Some are primary law, while others are secondary resources dedicated to specific practice groups. Most of them we have through our multiple online subscriptions and databases. Some will soon be packaged as eBooks. Nearly all of them are expensive (costing $100+ per volume or more.) Yet, the rate of which these physical books are going away is not nearly as fast as I predicted ten years ago when I wrote a couple of chapters in a book about the Futures of Law Libraries. It seems some of us are going to be stuck with these for many years to come.

Then a thought hit me… a crazy thought, yes, but a thought. For about the cost of three of these books, I could actually buy a lower-end iPad and place on the shelf. Could I replicate a reporter set and make it easy for the researcher to ‘flip’ through the online version of the material on the iPad? Could it be set up to replicate the ‘feel’ of a book (which is kind of what the new eBook sales pitch wants us to believe)? What if I told the attorney that, just like with the books, if you use this format, we won’t bill the client for any of the usage? Would that do the trick? Could we get attorneys to use some of the online content that they don’t even know exists (cough, cough, IntelliConnect, cough, cough.) Could everywhere we had a law review section, place an iPad connected to HeinOnline there instead? Instead of a library copy of all those personal desk copies, could we have a pre-loaded iPad available in the library instead?

Is there a way to ween lawyers away from all these books that fill up shelf after shelf? Is that even something we really want to do? I’d really like to test out the whole ‘replace books with library iPads’ idea. Just for the simple reason that even if it failed… I’d at least end up with a number of iPads to play with in the end.


You could be forgiven for believing that I am anti-IT. I have written about the End of IT. I have called IT people names. I have generally been pessimistic about our ability or desire to change.  I stand firmly behind all of the things I have written, but I am absolutely not anti-IT. (Some of my best friends are in IT.) I am, however, terribly afraid that IT as it is currently practiced is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the business. Whatever business your company happens to be in.

To that end, I’ve been working on an IT evaluation exercise. The idea is to evaluate each of the services that an IT department provides and begin to have conversations around the specific value that those services bring to a firm or company. This is built on the premise that IT provides the most value when it is actively supporting the business rather than “keeping the lights on”.  That is not to say that there is not value in keeping the lights on, just that in many cases there may be other less expensive, more reliable, and more secure ways to do that.

This exercise is intended to give context to the ongoing conversation about what IT should be doing and where IT should be investing its time and money. This is not guaranteed to provide any clear or easy answers to those questions. The example below is focused on Legal IT, but you could replace the word “Legal” with your industry of choice, and “Firm” with your company name and I think it would work for any IT department.

I would like to open-source this concept. By which I mean, I want someone else to try it out and let me know how it goes. Suggestions or recommendations are very much encouraged and welcome. 

Ryan

********************************************************************
All IT services fall into one of three categories: 

  1. Universal IT: Technology, infrastructure, or functionality that every Information Technology Department in every company in the world provides.
  2. Legal Specific IT: Technology services that are specific to Law Firms.
  3. Firm Specific IT: Technology services that provide a unique value to our firm and our attorneys.

Enter each category as a heading in a table and list each IT service as an entry beneath the appropriate heading (like below). 

Universal IT
Legal Specific IT
Firm Specific IT
1.
2.
3.
1.
2.
3.
1.
2.
3.

  1. Evaluate each service and articulate the specific value that the service provides to the firm.  If you cannot define the value provided, cross out the service.
  2. You want to try to move as many services as possible to the columns on the right. If you believe you can enhance the service in any way that would provide greater legal or firm specific value, then move it to the appropriate column, make note of the potential value add, and underline the service.
  3. Add any NEW services that would potentially provide legal or firm specific value and place an asterisk on either side.
  4. Circle any services that an outside vendor could potentially provide at an appropriate service level AND the entire Universal IT column.
  5. Draw a box around any service in the Legal Specific or Firm Specific columns that is not crossed out, underlined, asterisked, or circled.

Any services that are:

  • Crossed-out:  Just because IT cannot articulate the value to the firm does not mean the service provides no value.  Ask other departments, or attorneys, to articulate a particular service’s value to them. If no clear value can be determined, begin the End of Life process immediately.  There should not be many, if any, of these.
  • Circled: Begin looking for vendors to take these off your hands. A circled service should not be automatically “outsourced”, but it is probably a good candidate for the kind of service that can, and eventually will likely, be outsourced. Yes, I said to circle the entire Universal IT column. Not everything in this column will be a candidate for outsourcing, but if it’s in this column, it should be considered.
  • Underlined or Asterisked: These are opportunities to increase the value that IT provides to the firm. Invest in R&D for these enhanced or additional services.
  • Boxed: These are the current services which provide the most unique value to the firm. Focus on these and continue to invest resources here.
Repeat this exercise every six months.
Image [cc] CN Impressions

I read a great interview of an EVP from a major financial institution recently. It had two value points for me. The first was the international economic data he explained. He basically said everything is in place for a major expansion, except nobody seems to be paying attention. Whether that bodes well or ill for law firms is yet to be seen.

The second value point was more pressing for law firms. The final interview question was: What keeps you up a night? The EVP had a succinct and focused answer: Talent. He went on to explain that his senior management team needs to be “best in class.” For him this meant a combination of subject matter expertise, willingness to work hard and the ability to bring in business. Or in other words: Get the business and keep the client happy. He knows these goals will drive his business, both in terms of revenue and profitability.

So where are law firms on such a scorecard?

Traditionally law firms viewed talent as purely subject matter experts. Lawyers would gain a seat at a firm based on law school performance and then rise through the ranks to partner based on their lawyering abilities. So being “best in class” meant you were a high-level subject matter expert willing to work hard.

But that is no longer enough. For starters, keeping clients satisfied is only indirectly measured at firms. When a client goes from being a large one, to a less large one, management does take some notice. But even then, reductions in fees can easily be explained by episodic litigation or any number of other factors seemingly out of the partner’s control.

The ability to bring in business has become a more prominent factor for evaluating law firm partners, but this is still in a transition in terms of being a “best in class” measure. For instance, laterals are evaluated on billings, however the profitability of that revenue is not typically measured.

My 2 cents: Today’s Managing Partners should be “kept up at night” on the talent issue as well. But they should revise and expand their definition of talent at the partner level. In order to do this effectively, they will need to start measuring partners with different metrics.

One of the last things the EVP mentioned was that he knew where he had “best in class talent” and where he didn’t. So he spent his energy on making sure the “best” was happy and was pursuing talent to replace those that don’t make the grade. Another good lesson for law firms.

2013 Conference LogoThe Canadian Association of Law Libraries is holding their
annual National Conference May 5th to 8th in beautiful
Montreal. The conference theme is: Librarian:
a multi-faceted professional, which was inspired not only by the current
demands of our profession, but also by the city of Montreal.

I will be attending the Conference as the representative of
the Special Libraries Association Legal Division, and I couldn’t be more
excited. This is a fabulous opportunity to network with colleagues and friends,
learn from all the fabulous educational sessions and explore a beautiful city.
I wanted to take a quick moment to highlight a few sessions I’m planning to
attend and provide the Twitter information (#callacbd2013) in case you want to
follow the discussion and/or comment.

Date & Time (Eastern)
Session Name
Monday May 6, 2013 @ 9:00 a.m.
Plenary Session: Thriving on Chaos (Winds of Change:
The Future of Law Librarians)
Tuesday, May 7, 2013 @ 9:00 a.m.
Librarians Under Pressure: Stress Management Secrets Shared
Tuesday, May 7, 2013 @ 3:30 p.m.
Librarians as Innovators
Wednesday, May 8, 2013 @ 9:00 a.m.
Plenary Session: Land of Confusion: EBooks’ License Negotiation
Demystified

 

Colleen Cable is a Library Consultant for Profit Recovery Partners bringing the “consultant angle” to Three Geeks.
Image [cc] PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

As I sat through a demonstration of the LexisNexis Digital Library (eBook) platform, there were a few thoughts that crossed my mind:

  • The eBook platform for law firms is inevitable
  • How do I keep from suddenly having (paying for) the same “book” in three formats – print, database, and eBook?
  • Holy crap… I’m going to need a really good Technical Services Librarian to manage this!
Whenever a question came up about actually managing a digital collection, the common response was, “the library can simply go to the [eBook platform/library catalog] and run report X” or “process and distribute eBook Z” or “recall the eBook” or “place the eBook on hold” or “place the link to the eBook in your 852 or 856 fields”, and so on. Again, most of the conversation assumed that your Acquisitions librarian, Serials librarian, or Cataloger would simply do their job, but the resulting item was simply an eBook instead of a traditional Monograph, Personal Copy book or a Treatise. In an era of shrinking physical books, the role of the technical services librarian didn’t seem to be a vital. However, in the era of managing eBook collections, that role may be rising from the ashes of the collection.
Bess Reynolds’ article, The Challenges of E-Books in Law Firm Libraries, hits the issue right on the head when she wrote:

The mechanics of acquiring and distributing books, making sure they are up to date, and retrieving books from departing attorneys are all part of the job of the technical services department. Transferring these tasks to e-books was therefore already within our department’s job description.

She goes on to talk about the interaction between the Integrated Library System (ILS) and the eBook distributor and the need to manage the collection for the firm. The key to success is the seamless transition between physical book and electronic book for the actual user (read: attorney.) That seamless transition seems to hing upon the firm’s ability to manage, distribute and maintain the collection and the vendors ability to create a method flexible enough to allow the firm to handle the eBooks in the way that works best for that firm. The connecting piece in this puzzle is a good technical services librarian. So, if you don’t have one already, you better start looking now.