Honestly answer the following questions:

  • What did two of your High School classmates do this weekend?
  • What is the favorite band of one of your peers that you hang out with at your professional conferences?
  • Can you find a link to an article that someone you follow on Twitter, but you have never actually met, wrote the last week?

Now, answer these same questions:

  • What did two of your law firm Partners do this weekend?
  • What is the favorite band of the Practice Group Leader you talked to last? (Or, any PGL for that matter.)
  • Can you find a link to an article that ANY attorney in your firm wrote last week?

Isn’t it a bit strange that in this age of information, we know more about people we haven’t met in 25 years, if ever, than we do about the people that work down the hall from us?

Of course, most of us are gathering this type of information through our Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and apparently, even Google+, these days. At the law firm, however, many of these same resources are blocked or discouraged, and no viable (AKA, “secure”) alternatives are being offered to help co-workers get to know each other beyond the breakroom discussion, or the occassional CLE luncheon.

Is it really important to know what the Associate down the hall is planning this weekend? Is it critical that you can name a band of the PGL for Bankruptcy? Will you suffer in your work if you didn’t know that Partner X wrote an article in the State Bar Association Journal last month?

If your firm doesn’t allow for social media interaction, then it would seem the answer is no. It seems that there is a lot of interaction going on in the world, but within firms, the only approved version is actually a platform called InterAction, and it has very little to do with the type of communications we are using to connect with others in the world. It does seem a shame that I know less about the people I spend 8 – 10 hours a day in the same office than I do about someone I haven’t actually met face-to-face.

I suspect as long as this type of social interaction is seen as wasteful by most law firms, I’ll continue to get updates on the status of my High School friend’s new Great Dane puppy, Max, than I’ll know about what’s going on in the life of the Partner down the hall. After all, it’s probably safer that way. Ignorance is not only bliss, it’s secure!

“To provide the public with open access to electronic federal court records.”

That is the plan for The Open PACER Act being pushed by OpenPACER.org.

Today there was a cross-posting on the Law Library Blog (not to be confused with the Law Librarian Blog), and Legal Research Plus. You can read the proposed bill and see how it asks for open access to the federal court records.

We’ve talked before on PACER and open access (which I took some criticizm.) I think that the idea of a free PACER system, especially one that better modernizes the platform, would be great. However, I do not want to see the Federal Court System chopped off at the knees by removing a source of funding for the Courts without offsetting those cuts. So, if the Courts lose PACER revenues, then Congress should make sure they balance that by offsetting the costs through increased funding. Currently, I do not see that in the Open PACER Act. Any chance for a friendly amendment??

Image [cc] Tim Pearce

Law firms invest in associates. That seems obvious. They bring in the best and brightest, planning to groom them into future partners. Firms spend considerable sums, investing in these assets. So for fun, let’s take this “investment” as a strategy at face value.

My recollection of the stat is that after five years only two out of ten new associates will still be at a firm. That stat alone suggests ‘investment’ may not be the right word or at a minimum, we would call this a poor investment model. Unless a firm can realize 4 times the return on the associate investments that actually stay, it will be difficult to make the ROI case. 

Perhaps equally interesting from a business perspective is the matter of what is happening to these investments. Where are they going when they leave the firm?

Obviously these trained associates become available for someone else to capitalize on. Historically this was done primarily by clients. As much as they may like to complain about paying to train first and second year associates, they seem to have no problem hiring them once they are trained. To my knowledge, not many clients hire lawyers right out of law school. Why would they? These people are not trained to practice law.

But now many others are joining in, happy to make a return off of the castaway investments of law firms. Non-firms such as Axiom, LPOs like Pangea3 and even new alternative firms such as Valorem Law Group are more than happy to cash in on these investments. Even accounting firms are hiring up trained associates. It’s my read that these new business models are dependent on this flow of trained lawyers.

And why wouldn’t they take advantage of this situation? There’s a glut of these investments out in the market right now, begging to be picked up.

Enter the Conundrum: This pool will dry up … soon enough.

Although the market may currently have a glut of trained, castaway associates, firms are now hiring fewer and fewer of these investments. Not because they expect to improve their retention above the 20% number, but merely because demand for hours is down. So as the demand for castaway associates is rising, the supply is dropping. Adding fuel to this fire – law school applications are down by 30%.

So even though the market is currently over-supplied with these people, the market forces appear to be quickly correcting that imbalance. In many respects this is truly a conundrum. Trained associates are obviously a valued asset, to everyone in the market. Yet the market is seeing fit to devalue them to the point that fewer people even want to try to be one. Or at a minimum, the willingness to train them is disappearing.

As an economist, I am very curious to see how the market will respond once the pool has dried up. You would have to assume the gap will be filled since markets tend to fill a vacuum. An alternative for training these people should emerge. But here’s the real question: Who will be able to make a return on that investment? If you figure that out, give me a call. I may have a few bucks to get things started.

Big hat tip to my friend Jason Wilson in pointing out the new rebranding of Westlaw into the new “Legal Solutions” product, and for pointing out that Thomson Reuters is using a very familiar looking color and layout design that seems to be borrowing heavily from the Bloomberg Law product. Perhaps Orange, Gray, Black, and Blue are just the hip trends in New York these days. But, seriously, if you took away the mention of Bloomberg Law and Thomson Reuters’ Legal Solution, you might be hard pressed to tell the difference in the two products. [Note: an Arthur Andersen alum pointed out that they actually had this color scheme by in 2002 way before TR or Bloomberg started using it.]

Jason sums up my thoughts quite nicely on the similarities:

TR pages are getting dangerously close to the same color scheme of Bloomberg Law, and it makes me wonder why they are trying so hard to compete with something that hasn’t seen widespread adoption?

Alright Lexis… apparently you’re late to the game. Time to switch Lexis Red, and go with a Bloomberg Orange! After all, anyone that is in the know, knows Lexis is much more in the crosshairs of Bloomberg than Thomson Reuters is.

Judge for yourself (FYI – Bloomberg=Left; Thomson Reuters=Right):

I’ve written about Andy Hines, Futurist Professor from the University of Houston, before on this blog, but I just watched his TedXHouston video on what it is like to be a professional Futurist. The talk really caught my attention around the 6:55 portion where Andy starts delving into understanding how new ideas and change tend to be viewed by the members of your organization. He breaks them into four groups and defines how the members of each group tend to react to organizational change. For any of you who have implemented change in your organization, this will make perfect sense to you.

  1. Frogs – Understand foresight and they are good at getting things done in the organization. However, they are rare. The value of Frogs is that they can help you sell your ideas, and they can be champions for change.
  2. Lemmings – These are the people that pop out of the woodwork when a new idea comes around, and they say “Cool!” They can be an excellent support group, but they are the early adopters and not the mainstream of the organization. If you start to believe that they are the norm of the organization, then you all go off the cliff together.
  3. The Vultures – They don’t like foresight, they don’t like change, and they probably don’t like you. Best thing you can do is avoid The Vultures because you cannot change them.
  4. The Rats – This group is the vast majority of any organization. The Rats are really good at diagnosing what’s going on during the process of change. If the idea is a good one, they come running; if it is a bad idea, they are the first one off the sinking ship.

After breaking down the four groups, Hines turns the focus back on the person attempting to introduce and move the idea forward. First and foremost, “Good ideas don’t necessarily sell themselves.” You need to constantly sell people on your ideas.

Second, “You can’t be too worried about credit.” Once the organization adopts the idea, you may be pushed to the background (or completely out of the picture.) That’s okay. You’ve done your part in getting the organizational leaders to adopt your ideas. (Just remember to remind your boss that you were the generator of this idea.)

One other point that Andy Hines makes toward the end of the presentation, probably defines most of you reading this article. Hines calls them “The Futurizers.” These are the people that read articles, go to presentations, listen to their peers, and then come back to the organization and asks “Why aren’t we doing this? Why aren’t we thinking that way? Where are we going?”

Check out Andy Hines’ presentation below, and also check out his blog.

Image [cc] Loren Zemlicka

I attended a seminar last week on process management in legal departments. Onit sponsored it and the content was quite useful.

However, beyond the value of the content on process innovation, I retrieved a golden nugget of wisdom. Bradford Power, an expert on process innovation and change, was speaking on the value of process improvement. He gave two corporate examples highlighting two different models for driving change. The first one was “identify fat and fire it.” This model was self-repeating every few years, since the fat would reappear in time since the poor processes remained. The second model was ‘change the process.’

Fire the Fat is obviously demoralizing for a team. This lead to a discussion about how this approach is counter-productive. Then Bradford mentioned studies on what really motivates employees, which lead to my nugget. He referenced the outdated “command and control” management model too often used by organizations. In that world motivation is obtained through carrots and sticks. Here Bradford made the point that carrots and sticks are poor motivators. Studies show they may provide some short-term motivation, but in the long-run they produce negative results.

This is where PAM comes in.

He commented on how change is 10% systems and processes and 90% people. So people is where you should focus your change resources. And PAM is the proven way to entice that motivation for change. PAM actually has benefits way beyond change management. She results in happy, productive people.

Meet PAM:

P = Purpose. Employees that have a known, shared purpose are happier and more motivated. For law firms a shared purpose might be better client service (e.g. phone calls returned timely). Or it might be faster resolution of cases, or it might be better settlement outcomes. Whatever it is, having an understood, shared goal will drive people to success.

A = Autonomy. People, especially in knowledge worker roles, do not like to be micro-managed. They prefer to be given a goal and some resources, along with the autonomy (and responsibility) to get it done.

M = Mastery. People also like to be masters of their domain (hold the Seinfeld references). They enjoy being respected as a knowledgeable expert on a given subject.

Which brings us back to PAM and why I want to work for her. Bradford’s words really rang true for me. Yes, I want to be paid what I am worth. But more importantly, I want to feel the value of that worth in my job. If you ever get to work for PAM, count yourself as lucky.

PAM also highlights the apparent gap between lawyers and other professionals in the industry. She’s probably there for many lawyers, but only makes rare, guest appearances with the other professionals in a firm. Firms should really consider bringing PAM on-board for the entire firm as they embrace change.

Image [cc] Global X

Thomson Reuter’s flagship financial product, Eikon, is turning out to be more like the Titanic after hitting an iceberg. According to reports from the New York Observer, Thomson Reuters has laid off around 3,000 employees, most from the financial sector, including sales, training and analysts’ divisions. In addition to these, it is also reported that there were also layoffs in the Editorial ranks, including big names like:

Peter Bohan, editor of Reuters America Service, has reportedly been let go. Mr. Bohan had been at Reuters for two decades, most recently as the Midwest bureau chief. Brad Dorfman, Reuters’s U.S. retail and consumer products company news editor, and Lee Aitken, who had been in charge of political coverage since 2012, were also reportedly let go from the company.

While most of the departures occurred at the managerial level, the majority of the Reuters TV team is out as well, after YouTube’s decision not to renew its one-year-old contract with the news service.

It’s not a good time to be an Editor these days, as Lexis has also recently announced the closing of the Matthew Bender’s Albany, New York office.

The Eikon product has already cost one Thomson Reuter’s CEO (Tom Glocer) his job, and hit TRI’s stock considerably since 2011. Plus, the Eikon flop placed Thomson Reuters on a list of 12 Companies that Could Go Bankrupt Very Soon. (Which caused us to write Could Thomson Reuters Be In Trouble? back in October 2011.)

The pain isn’t just being felt in the Financial Sectors of Thomson Reuters either. Anyone at Thomson Reuters with a good salary (this should include our friends at TR Legal) will feel the pain, too.

All Thomson Reuters employees, not just those in editorial, who make more than $100,000 will not receive raises in 2013.

All of these issues are pointing to a company that is struggling to pull all of its different acquired pieces together (think how well BNA/Bloomberg has merged, and then think of all the different platforms TR is still supporting.) It also seems that Thomson Reuters is not taking the market share away from Bloomberg in the financial market. It also seems to point to the need for TR’s Legal group to ramp it up and start bringing in more revenue and profits.

Those of us in the Legal Industry should be on the lookout for more sales pressure on the horizon.

I would like to take this opportunity to respond to your letters dated January 17, 2013 and January 23, 2013, respectively.  As is quite common amongst your kind (attorneys), I believe you may be talking past each other.  Ms. Elefant’s point is well taken, as techie at a large law firm, I am sometimes a little surprised at the lack of technological intelligence of young lawyers. They enter the firm with bright and shiny JDs from Ivy League schools and yet for many of them the internet is simply magic, like indoor plumbing. They don’t have any idea or any desire to know how it works or how they can use it better. To be fair, in my experience, this is also how most senior attorneys view the internet, except they believe that the internet is evil black magic to be kept at a distance. You know, like indoor plumbing.

Mr. Camson also makes a very good point.  He’s focused on being the best attorney he can be.  He can’t be bothered with things like sharing his considerable experience with personal and consumer technology to improve his firm’s footprint on the intertubes. Or for that matter, with helping a senior attorney learn something new. This is about him and what you can teach him before he blows this popsicle firm and gets a cushy corporate gig.

Enter Uncle Ryan with a solution for everybody.  Ms. Elefant, you write a blog about solos and small firms, I recognize that these operations do not have the budget for tech support personnel like the big firms do.  But the kind of thing you’re looking for doesn’t require an expensive tech consultant or full time IT staff.  You need a sophomore in college, studying computer engineering or art history, who can tinker for a couple of hours a week after class to solve the problems you are looking to solve.  If you get the right kid with a couple of linux boxes and a handful of open source softwares, you can get virtually anything you want for $10/ hour and pizza for lunch on Fridays. While I agree that it would be efficient and convenient to hire young attorneys that can do both the tech and legal side of things, I think that will be hard to find. I’m not sure of any law schools that are actively churning out tech-savvy, responsible, team players looking primarily to contribute to the success of their firm.  Sadly, most of them are still developing young lawyers.

I’m a little behind in this news, but the Texas Bar Association has recently launched the new Casemaker platform for all of its members. The new interface is definitely a step up for Casemaker and makes searching across the different library database a lot easier. The Casemaker access is free to all members of the bar, and even to librarians within the state that register using the Texas Bar’s CLE website.

We here at 3 Geeks think that what Casemaker and Fastcase are doing through the bar associations is a valuable benefit for the bar members. Although we love to pit all of these competitors against each other, we also realize that they offer a great service that is far too often overlooked by the members of the bar. If you’re not sure if your bar offers Casemaker or Fastcase, here’s a quick list of which bars are covered:

Fastcase
 
·  State Bar of Arizona
·  Arkansas Bar Association
·  Cincinnati Law Library
·  Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association
·  D.C. Bar
·  The Florida Bar
·  State Bar of Georgia
·  Hawaii State Bar Association
·  Illinois State Bar Association
·  Iowa State Bar Association
·  Kern County Bar Association
·  LA Law Library
·  Louisiana State Bar Association
·  Maryland State Bar Association
·  Minnesota State Bar Association
·  The Missouri Bar
·  State Bar of Nevada
·  New Jersey State Bar Association
·  State Bar of New Mexico
·  North Carolina Bar Association
·  Oklahoma Bar Association
·  Oregon State Bar
·  San Fernando Valley Bar Association
·  State Bar of South Dakota
·  State Bar of Wisconsin
·  Tennessee Bar Association
·  Virginia State Bar
·  West Virginia State Bar
Casemaker

I’ve been in beautiful Rancho Palos Verdes, California this week attending the Marketing Partner Forum.  Yesterday, I caught a couple of sessions that stood out because they discussed the need for law firms to be focused on the prevention of litigation, rather than the representation of ongoing litigation. That, in and of itself, wasn’t new, but the way firms should charge for that type of work did strike me as ‘interesting.’

First up, there was Keynote Speaker Trevor Faure, Global Leader & Partner, Legal Services, Ernst & Young Global. Trevor’s topic was “The Smarter Legal Model: Replacing the Traditional Zero-Sum Game Client Relationship with a Profitable Partnership.” He wrote a book in 2010 entitled The Smarter Legal Model: more from less, through the recently acquired PLC. If you’ve ever caught a Richard Susskind presentation, the themes would sound very similar, especially since they are both British.

Toward the end of his talk, Faure pointed to an alternative method of doing client work that will sound familiar to many law firm librarians. The idea was to look at the trends in client litigation, say labor disputes, and determine how much they spend in a typical year. The firm would then work with the client to change the structure of the business, the policies regarding the actions leading to the disputes, and training on how to change the behavior of the client as to avoid the disputes altogether. The firm would not charge the client up front for this work. Instead, it would take a percentage of the reduction in cost over a period of time. If the client reduced its spend the next year by $100,000 the firm would be paid $50,000. The idea being that the client is still money ahead and the firm would also be a winner.

For librarians, we have seen this model before in taking a percentage of the saving when consultants come in and evaluate a firm’s research collection, suggest cuts, and then take a cut of the saving for a few years. Many of us have done this, and the process can be a bit tricky, and can lead to a bad relationship with the consultant if everyone is not on the same page. It’s also something that most firms do once, and then never again.

The issues usually arise around what did the consultant actually do,versus what the firm was in the process of doing already. The same issue could arise around the firm and the client. What was the client already implementing to modify their behavior, versus what did the firm actually cause them to change. It can make a difference in how much actual savings occurred and how much the firm is owed by the client. If not performed carefully, a billing dispute could occur and cause damage to the firm’s overall relationship to the client.

I actually think that this can work, and there may be many firms out there already doing this, but I would suggest that everyone involved needs to have clear communications on exactly what the changes are, who came up with the changes, and how much was actually saved.

The second presentation happened later in the day and was comprised of a panel of General Counsel from big corporations and law firm lawyers and chief knowledge officers. The same ‘lawyers need to be proactive’ theme ran through this presentation, and there was a streak of bitterness amongst the GCs that you could feel as we listened as story after story talked about how the GCs felt that law firms were not trusted to give the best services for a fair price. In fact, one GC gave a blanket statement that GCs hire lawyers, not firms. This sent a visible shutter through many of the members of the audience.

The GCs began telling the audience what they really want their outside counsel to do. They want the partners to better understand their business. They want a better line of communication. They want firms to better manage the matters to a budget and keep them informed, to the penny, on where we are at all times. They want firms to install practice management processes. They want to be able to call the firm from time to time to get answers on immediate needs. They want the firms to send their lawyers into the client’s business and walk in their shoes for a while in order to think as a GC would, and not as a law firm lawyer would. They want CLE. They want their outside counsel to make them shine to their bosses.

They want most of these items at no additional cost.