[Ed. Note: I had a great email conversation with my friend, Michael Robak, Associate Director of the Law Library and Director of Technologies at UMKC School of Law and all-around geek like me, about the Reinvent Law Silicon Valley 2013 conference. Long story short, I bluntly mentioned to Michael that the twitter feed was so full of the usual buzz words, and the usual suspects preaching to the usual choir that’s been going on for the last four to five years. Michael’s response was very thoughtful when he, and I’m paraphrasing here, said “Greg, you are stupid.” Well, if I had tried to rewrite his response, that’s all I would have remembered, so I asked him to guest post and elaborate on what he found valuable. So, thank you Michael for taking me up on the offer. -GL]

I attended the March 8, 2013 Reinvent Law Silicon Valley 2013 conference held at the Computer History Museum.  Once the conference started, I realized that my good friend, and premier Geek, Greg Lambert, was absent.  After the event, I could not resist sending Greg a note asking why he missed, what I thought, was one of the best events I’ve attended about the changes in the legal profession and  needed changes in both the profession and legal education.
Greg immediately responded, because I swear he is the model for some of William Gibson’s cyber protagonists, that he had followed the conference twitter feed and thought it seemed one of those events where it was kind of just preaching to the choir, and then the choir folks get all excited, and then….nothing would come of it…  And, to this, I responded that Greg…was wrong…. this was not one of those events.  What follows is a cleaned up version of that response: (in which I leave out references to certain past and future events which may, or may not, involve… good scotch, gin, wine, or other such things)…
Greg,
Sorry you missed ReInvent Law Silicon Valley 2013.  You raise good points about this appearing to be an event where the faithful speak to each other, shout hallelujah, and then…nothing happens.
But I really must disagree.  Dan Katz  and Renee Newman Knake, along with Dean Joan Howarth of Michigan State University College of Law are, in my humble opinion, leading some game changing stuff. Have you had a chance to talk to Dan and Renee?   Dan and I share an Illinois connection, the late Larry Ribstein, whose work in the area has been incredibly influential to Dan and others.  I have been an ardent follower of Dan’s blog, Computational Legal Studies, and admire his works generally.   When I came to the University of Missouri – Kansas City from Illinois, I wanted, on some level, to create a niche like Dan had, but with a slightly different emphasis, from a 21st century librarian’s perspective. At last year’s ABA Tech show I connected with Dan and we had a great talk about how only a handful of law schools get this stuff.  And, as I told Dan, I am fortunate because my Dean, Ellen Suni, is one of that handful (and Bill Henderson will affirm!).  Plus, she understands my pitch about librarians as COO’s of Information for the Law School Enterprise.  And this is good stuff actually, very much “blue ocean” material.
I think what made this event different is that it brought clarity for a way forward for both legal education and for law. In my view, there is still confusion about how we discuss the “technology of law” and what it means exactly.. especially when you throw in legal research and associated tools.  And, it becomes even more confusing, when you throw in the whole discussion of Rule 5.4 as an inhibitor to the delivery of access to justice. 
This event had wholly new kinds of conversations about educating and practicing.  You are right on some level, there were people there who were reinforcing each other’s views,  but Aric Press was there and not someone I think of as necessarily part of that group. He tweeted about the vibe in the room and only 5 people wearing ties……I was one of the five and so had to seek him out and ask if that made me to cool, or counter cool, or …  I will say he was kind in his response…
Having said that, and speaking as a Law Librarian who sees a much bigger and important role for Law Librarians in both legal education and law practice,  this conference was huge.  Richard Susskind was our AALL keynote last year and that was awesome.  He outlined things we librarians can and should be doing to be not just relevant to the places we work but to actually take the lead in the changes happening in the legal ecosystem.  This conference completely underscored that and, to me, made it even clearer that we law librarians have a mega opportunity, to be at the center.

I think Marc Lauritsen and Oliver Goodenough’s book (Educating the Digital Lawyer, and free from LexisNexis) is a start, as is Susskind, but I have a different view on how law schools can move forward. Ken Hirsh is close with his course on teaching technology, but what I will have in place at UMKC in Spring 2014 is much more in line with Jerome Frank’s expression of experiential learning in “Why not a clinical lawyer school?” in his seminal article by that name.  But mine is “Why not have legal information professionals teach how to use technology in practice?”  (not quite as pithy, but I’m working on it…)

All I’m saying here dude is, I think there is a real opportunity for us (law librarians) to be at the forefront on shaping real change to both legal education and law practice. The twitter feed was ok but there was a palpable energy in the room relative to the potential opportunities, and not just folks coming together to sing amazing grace.  But my real take away here is that the “technology of law” is law librarian space.  It follows completely Thomson “re-branding” Westlaw to be Legal Solutions.  As Joe Hodnicki has declared (and, yes Joe, you owe me a drink in Seattle), it is all about Legal Research Plus.. and the plus is the “technology of law”.

Thanks for your update and congrats on the new job! We do need to meet at ABA Tech and talk, there are changes a coming and I think AALL and SLA folks really don’t understand. Actually it was Kingsley Martin’s talk that made it most clear why things haven’t happened with technology yet because of the need for machines to catch up. He had a great talk.

Look forward to seeing you in Chicago!!

Michael
Post script to the original email:
Have you heard about LegalForce (formerly Trademarkia) and their store front operation in Palo Alto? I had a chance to visit on Saturday, March 9, 2013 and  man, oh man, it is amazing.  A bookstore, a DIY law place, a place you can compare tablets (since, according to Calvin, the “legal concierge” who gave me a tour, LegalForce believes legal content will be delivered on these platforms, so why not try and compare).  All they need is a coffee bar.
Aric Press has written a terrific review of the event.
Bill Henderson, whose talk at Reinvent Law was amazing, has a terrific post.
Image [cc] Fox3siu

A good friend recently switch from BigLaw to in-house, not as a lawyer but on the business side. He shared a story about working with some consultants on a project. The story caught my attention not for the subject matter, but instead for the billing practices of the consultants.

The company is revising its records management practices. Although simple sounding, these efforts involve all kinds of issues both legal and business related. Companies have so much data and so many compliance rules to follow and they need to minimize risk at the same time, So these efforts are not for sissies.

The story involves some consultants from an unnamed provider; not a law firm. At a recent meeting ten Subject Matter Expert (SME) consultants attended. They covered compliance, technology, economics, etc. Some were even PhDs … which I read as “expensive.” And these consultants fly in for regular meetings from around the country. I didn’t ask, but would venture they bill for travel time.

Is anyone at the company screaming about this service approach? No.

If this was a law firm instead of a consulting company, you know there would be screaming.

Where am I going with this? It’s not to defend law firms, but instead to gain perspective.

Why aren’t people screaming? Because they expect consultants to behave that way. They used to expect lawyers to do the same, but something changed and they no longer abide such behavior. What changed was Trust. In the market it appears that clients are treating their lawyers as opposing parties instead of trusted advisors. They feel lawyers are there to just bill as many hours as they can and get rich at the client’s expense.

With consultants, I figure clients trust that they will bill as many hours as they can. Either that, or the client is focused on an end-goal (in this case a new records management practice) and are less concerned about how that goal is achieved. So the clients have some level of trust or understanding about the service model of the consultants. This makes it clear what law firms need to do: address the trust issue.  Yes – firms still need to “reinvent” and join the future, but more importantly, they need to re-establish a trusted advisor role with their clients. Without that reaffirmed trust, all of the efforts on efficiency and cost savings may well fall short of meeting clients’ expectations.

And, oh yeah … the service being provided by the consulting company could easily be part of a law firm’s offerings. I’m just sayin …

Image [cc] the|G|™

A friend from another firm recently told me a story that made me think about the way law firms are structured, the resources available, and whether or not attorneys actually take advantage of those resources. The story goes something like this:

A Practice Group Leader and a few other partners sat down with key people in the administrative departments (conflicts, records, library, marketing, business development, KM, document services, human resources, IT, litigation support, etc.) and started listing off the names of attorneys at the firm. The names were followed by questions like:

  • What is your opinion of this person?
  • How much do they use your services?
  • How often do they attend training provided by your team on relevant topics to their practice?
  • When they use your services, what kind of feedback do you get?

The idea behind these questions is actually pretty simple. The firm provides millions of dollars in people and products to support the attorneys’ functions at the firm… so, are they actually using it? Offhandedly, my friend said that for the attorneys where many of the admin people answered “Who?” or “Never seen or heard from them,” were suddenly missing from the ranks after a few months. Not to say that this was the sole consideration on the attorney’s value to the firm, but I imagine it was a factor.

Of course, there are many ways to evaluate talent within the lawyer ranks at a firm. Quality of work, relationships with clients, book of business, hours billed, are a few methods, so adding in the additional metric of “uses firm support departments” seems to me like a good idea. Polling the administrative staff may also raise some red flags in the way services are defined or distributed as well. If the same department answers “never heard of them” every time, then maybe the problem isn’t with the attorneys.

I am fantabulized by the vehemential angertude with which people have arguponded Greg’s post on the word “literally”.  I have no more amorosity to the upsidrong definition of literally than anyone else does, but language evolvopes.  The strength of the English language is its adoptationability.  Words have hardplace definitions, but they are at best temporational. In time, “literally” may instanbul into “not literally” and no amount of oenobitching will change that.

The real uberwow-whatnow is how to, or can you, write legal documents to account for the morphasticity of the language?

I spent most of my day yesterday at a J.Boye Intranet Strategy and Round TableMeeting. For those of you unfamiliar with J.Boye, the group facilitates closed-door, confidential, and vendor-free conversations between intranet managers and similar professionals across a wide range of industries.  They meet quarterly to have very open and honest discussions about intranet related issues, with the goal of helping each other to solve problems, discover new technologies, and to develop professionally.   

In most law firms, management of the intranet falls to either KM, IT, or the Library. My unique position is Manager of Intelligence and Intranet – is a combination that “geek extraordinaire” Ryan McClead recently pointed out is akin to being both an umpire and a hot dog vendor at the same baseball game. At the J.Boye meeting, I put my umpire gear away and focused on hot dogs, discussing the evolution of the intranet as a platform.  Lots of companies are implementing micro sites, social media tools, people directories, content management systems, and enterprise search solutions.  They are evaluating UX (user experience) and IA (information architecture) best practices. They are attempting to marry these concepts with robust, never-out-of-date content that people really want and will actually use, even  discussing strategies to encourage users to publish and own content.  There is discussion around monitoring metrics and analytics to determine how effective (or in most cases not) all of these tools are. Their analysis suggests that people are not engaged, user adoption is low, and they need new technologies to bring people in and increase usage across the site.  

Sometime before noon, nearly exasperated, I  tweeted:

By the end of the day, however, I was starting to think that maybe I had been too hasty with my tweet. The intranet isn’t entirely dead, though I can’t help but think that maybe, rather than greater evolution, the intranet needs to devolve a bit.  Let me explain. 

It seems to me, based on the general chatter at J.Boye, that intranets have not successfully evolved much beyond electronic HR manuals anyway. The most frequently used pages on most intranets are vacation request forms, benefits summaries, people directories, and general HR content.  Most other content either goes unread, or people are consuming it elsewhere – in emails, at team meetings, or on external social media platforms. There still isn’t a fool-proof, unvetted, and successfully integrated channel for “social” and the bulk of intranet content is the same sales and marketing content that is available on externally facing websites, in pdf media libraries, and stuffed in glossy brochure stands in reception areas.  

Although intranets were originally intended, as I understand it, to be a source for write-once content, to increase efficiency in the workplace, and to give people all the tools they need to do their jobs in an single, easily accessible location, most intranets have stagnated at this level of first generation “brochure-ware”.  

I would argue that our lack of intranet progress is not for a lack of trying, but because the majority of people currently consuming content on intranets are actually looking for “brochure-ware”, not internal blogging platforms, or collaborative workspaces. 

The concept of an intranet will undoubtedly change as the demands from users change, and as more and more firms start to make content available through mobile browsers, tablets, and the like. The question is not how we can make the current intranet more effective, or what direction we should take the intranet next, but what direction will its organic evolution take once it is driven by user demand and not by hot dog vendors?

Image [cc] Goldberg

As many of you who have read this blog in the past have come to realize… I am not one to let a few grammatical errors stop me from publishing a blog post. I have even come to expect the ad hoc editors out there to post comments correcting my mistakes, and virtually wagging your finger at me for my lack of proofreading. That’s fine. I get it. Grammatical errors are like nails on a chalkboard to some people, and I’ve even had one specific error that I’ve harped on for years… only to have the rug pulled out from under me yesterday by a Slate article. After I read it, my life literally turned upside down.

Turns out that the word literally has a second meaning:

2. Used to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feelings.

For the past few decades, I’ve been wincing every time I’ve heard my Mom say things like:

… and when she found out how much it cost, it literally killed her.
… my head literally exploded when I heard the news.
… that literally blew her mind!!
 

Sorry Mom!! Although, now that I think about it, my Mom does tend to be a bit morbid in her use of the word literally.

Not only does this news make me a bad son, it also makes one of my favorite quotes from the TV show Psych, slightly less funny:
Juliet O’Hara: Detective Lassiter is literally on fire today.

Shawn Spencer: “Literally on fire” as in Michael Jackson in the Pepsi commercial, or as in a misuse of the word “literally?”

Let this be a warning for all you grammar police out there (many of whom I apparently see on social networks pointing out the proper place to put an apostrophe on major holidays.) Be very careful on pointing out the grammatical errors of others. It could literally come back to bite you!
 

I was babysitting my 4 year-old nephew last night and we were playing with a German circle puzzle. The puzzle is very much like the Chinese Tangram puzzles that are popular now, where you take the geometric pieces and try to arrange them to match images published in a booklet.  The pieces of this particular puzzle fit into a circular arrangement for easy storage in the box.

When we were done playing, I told him to put the pieces back together to make a complete circle.  He worked diligently for several minutes and then suddenly announced, “I did it Ryan, I made a complete circle!”

I must have had a less than satisfied look on my face because before I could speak he added excitedly, “…with a hat!”

It’s hard to argue when you’re getting more than you originally asked for.

I have made the point several times in this space that failure, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.  Failure is typically the first step on the path to success.  Still, it can be hard to present failure to superiors and if you do it too many times it can be detrimental to your career.  The brilliance of a 4 year-old reminds me, that while it’s good to be open to failure, it’s not always good to call it that.  Sometimes you’ve got to look for the hat that makes a failure a little bit better than success would have been.

I now have a German Circle With a Hat puzzle that proves the maxim.

Image [cc] Daniel*1977

An article on a recent legal market survey suggested a new trend in legal pricing: a trend away from Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs). Trend may be too strong a word, but in any event, the survey results bear consideration.

Offline I received a number of reactions about the survey result. Most people were concerned it might be viewed as a sign things are returning to the Old Normal. Yet at the same time, no one suggested they were seeing signs of such a return.

So what does it mean?

I never thought AFAs were going to sweep through the market and eliminate hourly (a.k.a. time and material) billing. As much as hourly billing has been pilloried as the demon of the profession, it will retain a role in the market as along as clients find it useful. So it would only be a matter of time before some new equilibrium of pricing approaches was established. This new balance would likely include a greater variety of types of billing arrangements and over time the balance will always be adjusting to market conditions. But maybe we are reaching a point where AFAs have peaked in their natural share of the market?

In looking at various surveys and market data, I see a possible explanation. As clients continue to seek ways to reduce the cost of legal services, some surveys and commentators rightly suggest that clients have been asking for AFAs, and then settling for bigger discounts. Market data seems to confirm this, as rate increases are moderating and realization against standard rates continues to drop. As well market surveys show firms in the second and third tier of the market (AmLaw 200 and Mid-level firms) have been doing relatively well, compared to the top tier (AmLaw 100).

This all suggests clients are moving work to lower rate providers instead of embracing AFAs. So a survey stating AFAs may have peaked seems reasonable to me.

Looking past the various surveys, I see two other market movements afoot. The first is a growing recognition from clients that not all work needs to be handled by top tier firms. In the past, this was the classic “you can never go wrong choosing IBM” approach. Clients sent a vast majority of their work to top tier firms as a means to protect themselves. No one wanted to take the risk of a bad legal result. With cost savings pressure increasing, in-house counsel now have the cover they need to take those risks. Saving money takes precedence over legal risk. Or at least we might make that assumption based on the market behavior.

The second market movement I suggest is afoot, is yet to fully materialize. Moving work to lower rate providers may or may not save clients money. It is easy to claim credit on cost savings with a 10% reduction in billing rates, but does it actually save money? The answer is: we’re not sure. Which is not a great answer. We see a number of providers entering the market bent on helping answer this question.

Adding the two movements together results in clients taking on greater legal risk without a clear cost savings result. I think this issue will come into focus over time. At that point clients may do one of two things: #1 – They may re-engage on AFAs, or #2 – They may increase their attention to efficiency and effectiveness. With #1, clients will be shifting their focus to cost savings at the fee level over the rate level. This approach should result in more quantifiable cost savings. With #2 – clients will more deeply engaged with their law firms to focus effort on value. Of course some combination of #1 and #2 is even more likely.

At the top level, I sense the market is just trying to find its way to new ground. AFAs were originally held up as the best path towards cost savings. In reality, they are merely a tool. Achieving cost savings goals requires more than different pricing approaches. So the market will continue in its struggle to find the right mix of tools and approaches to meet that overriding goal. I suggest it is an overriding goal in the market, given the consistent focus on reducing legal fees across the market.

In the meantime, I predict we will continue to see such trends, within trends.

Image [cc] billychic

Usually, I ignore unsolicited emails that rant about a vendor or association or how I could benefit from having a real editor review my posts before hitting “submit.” Every once in a while, however, I do get some gems, and this weekend I got one I wanted to share with you. The email comes from someone named “Phil Batman” (which I am assuming is a pseudonym) and it was sent to me and 19 executives at Thomson Reuters. I guess Phil thought that I would appreciate the humor, even if some of it is ‘inside baseball’ and may not be understood by most folks that don’t have a good understanding of the current set of players at Thomson Reuters. Hint: a quick Google of some of these names may clear up why they are being mentioned.

So, straight from my in-box to your browser, I give you “Phil Batman’s Top Ten Items on the Reuters To Do List”:

10. Learn difference between a product and a hole in the ground
9.   Review pay package of CTO James Powell
8.   Rehire Tom Glocer to sell toasters door-to-door
7.   Lead story on every Reuters newswire: “Eikon products still dependable and affordably priced!”
6.   Three words: “Eikon With Porn”
5.   Find out who the hell this “Dave Thomson” is (Singers enter)
4.   Have Anna Nicole Smith keep marrying rival executives until they’re all dead
3.   See if Powell’s engineers can help Albert Lojko use his cache of iPhones, iPads, & MacBooks
2.   Assemble all employees for a huge party followed by massive layoffs
… and the number one item on the Reuters To Do List:
1.   The Late Show With Phil Brittan
 

My kids watching The Dollyrots’ StageIt Show

Evan Lowenstein noticed that the music industry had changed, and for musicians, that wasn’t a good thing. “It caused our industry to go from hundreds of artists making millions of dollars, to millions of artists making hundreds of dollars.” In fact, for a solo artist to just make minimum wage these days, they would have to have people download 12,399 songs, per month, from iTunes or Amazon, or their song would have to stream over 4 million times a month on Spotify to make the minimum wage threshold. (See the Information is Beautiful breakout, also see today’s report in The Atlantic which counters this somewhat.) Remember, those numbers are for solo artists, multi-member bands have to make three, or more times that to break the minimum wage barrier.

So, what should artists and bands do? Tour? Yes. Sell merch online? Yes. Run promotions on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or PledgeMusic? Yes. All of those make money, much more than the traditional selling of songs and albums does, but they are also very demanding and are either one-off type projects, or extremely expensive. Lowenstein has come up with an online alternative to touring, and you may see your favorite bands performing for you, right from their living rooms.

Lowenstein created the online concert platform called Stageit. The idea is pretty simple. Your favorite musicians perform live, usually from their own homes, and sell tickets to the show, usually at a “name your own price” amount. So, you can watch a live performance and pay 10¢ (if you’re a total cheapskate.) Most fans pay between $1 and $10, depending upon their own financial situation, and how much they like the band. In addition to the ticket sales, which the bands keep 60% of the sales, you can also “tip” the performers during the show. The tips go directly to the artists, and usually the artists will put an incentive for ‘big tippers’ by giving away some merch or singing a special song for the top tippers during the show.

During the show, you get to have an online chat with the band and they see your comments as you post them. Last month, I watched my favorite band, The Dollyrots, perform from Kelly Ogden’s living room couch, and I streamed the show directly to my big screen TV using the HDMI cable on my PC. As you can see from the picture above, my kids also joined in on the fun. What you didn’t see was them asking me to type in requests for the next song throughout the show. We enjoyed the show, it was cheap, it was intimate, and the band made a decent amount of money right from their own living room.

The Internet has been a double-edge sword for the music industry. It has allowed many bands that would never have made it under the old model to find a following around the world. However, it has become a driver in pushing musicians’ wages down. New resources, like Stageit, are helping reshape the way musicians can reach fans, and make money at the same time. If you’re looking for a Stageit show to attend in the next couple of weeks, I have a suggestion for you. Another one of the LA Pop-Punk Girl Bands that I like, Go Betty Go, is having a Stageit show on March 10th. If that’s not your type of music, then go search Stageit and search around. Even popular bands and artists are finding it to be a great way to reach out to fans, and make some money at the same time.