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Last Thursday, a group of some 400 legal knowledge management professionals came together for the Strategic Knowledge & Innovation Legal Leaders Summit (SKILLS) conference.  Oz Benamram asked me to pull together a 20 minute recap of all of the presentations that day, and share it with the 3 Geeks’ readers. So, here’s about a 20 minute recap of the 20 presentations for that day. Enjoy!!

Jason Barnwell – Keynote

There are two things that most of us know about Jason. First, he thinks there is always opportunities for improvement. Whether that is for himself, his team at Microsoft, and especially for law firms looking to better service their clients. His takeaway quote for me was when Kay Kim asked him what are law firms doing right and what are they doing wrong?

So the biggest challenge I see is, is structural, and as much as the business model works pretty well for about right now. But it doesn’t necessarily work great for where we’re going.

The other thing that we know about Jason is that if you are presenting on innovation in a law firm, he’s going to ask you specifically “is what you are doing benefitting the law firm only, or does it benefit the client?” So, expect to answer that question… at a minimum to yourself, even if Jason isn’t in the room.

Digital Transformation – Shark-TED-Talk-Tank (Part 1)

I loved all three sessions of our Shark-Ted-Talk-Tank presentations. We were just missing the three billionaires, and the large red carpet. But, the content was all there.
Continue Reading SKILLS 2022 – Recap

I interrupt our regularly scheduled programming—the continuing series on value storytelling—with a rant inspired by my pending Continuing Legal Education deadline.

Despite the temptation to satisfy everyone’s daily outrage quota by taking on a soft target, I consider our collective (and my personal) annoyance with CLE a minor symptom of a major problem. Our culture of learning is broken. This has all manner of downside implications, including for innovation.

But, first, a little rantastic fun. Can you spot what’s missing from this ad I received in the mail?

I am getting CLE right now. While typing these words, a CLE audio file is playing in the background on mute. I felt compelled to acquire hard evidence before launching into a tirade.

What’s missing from the advertisement is any suggestion I might learn. No mention of quality or relevance. Rather, the repeated, bolded promise of “no final exam” struck me as an assurance there would be no requirement I pay attention—i.e., I could avoid learning anything at all. A promise made; a promise kept.
Continue Reading CLE is Broken (as is our approach to learning/innovation)

Last night (April 13th, 2021) I had the privilege of being on the “stage” for a Clubhouse discussion around the Billable Hour. Is it alive and well? Yes. It is COVID resistant. Is it ever going to change?  Hopefully! What do in house counsel think about the billable hour? Some hate it, some…

AALL President, Steven P. Anderson is looking for ways that law libraries and law librarians can communicate the value they bring to their institutions and communities. Anderson’s idea is to go beyond simply talking about the value, and actually create a report that presents the values through metrics and outcomes. Having sat with Steve over…

As many of you have watched over the past two years, JC Penny has gone through a bit of a rough patch with its failed experiment with Ron Johnson as its CEO. In fact, today is the two-year anniversary of Johnson’s appointment, which collapsed back on April 8th. Johnson was viewed by most people as…

Image  [cc] calliope_Muse

I’ve been on the ‘value’ bandwagon for quite some time now, but I recently had an epiphany courtesy of Ulla de Stricker during the recent CLA webinar “Becoming Indispensable: The Value Proposition”. It was one of those moments where you understand that you’ve been headed in the wrong direction; a real lightning bolt. I…

Image [cc] Iain Farrell

The theme of “self-help” has popped up in a number of my conversations lately. I’m talking about work that lawyers used to rely upon others to handle, that they are now handling themselves. Whether it is pulling PACER dockets, case law, Shepardizing, filing court documents, or typing up their own documents,…

For the upcoming COLPM Futures Conference, I was tasked with defining value in value billing for law firms. This is a great problem to tackle. I think the market has given us a lengthy list of value billing propositions clients want, but absent getting full-rates (which is a myth by the way), not many

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