practicehacker

(... still more) Predictions ...

I was going to write something clever here but … screw it. This is what I think is going to happen in 2010.

1. Big law firms lose clients due to high overhead and lack of value
2. Small law firms pick up the clients and their profitability jumps
3. Unemployed grads go solo en masse depressing all lawyer wages
4. Home and flex offices, telecommuting, and telepresence catch on
5. Inefficient lawyers lose while those with social media savvy win
6. Walled gardens like Facebook thrive at the expense of open ones
7. Lawyers will use Twitter and Facebook at last, but still suck at it
8. Lawyers.com beats Avvo by selectively going public on some level
9. Blogs v. Twitter: Kevin O’Keefe and Rex Gradeless fight to the death
10. Real-time search and social media change legal research forever

Bonus: I finally stop making stupid predictions about the future of legal tech.

Feel free to share your thoughts about the coming year in the comments section below. See you in the new year.

The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies:
Smart Ways to Work Together

“Law practice is, has been, and will continue to be a collaborative process”
Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighelle

Summary: The Lawyer’s Guide offers a solid list of resources for lawyers seeking to collaborate. It is practically jargon-free as well, and frames its discussions with a look at the past before discussing more modern modes of collaboration. The book is also a great introduction to technology for lawyers of a certain age (i.e. Baby Boomers), although younger lawyers may find it to be a little too basic.

The Good: The authors of The Lawyer’s Guide display sensitivity to attorneys who came of age before the Internet was pervasive, and they do it without over-explaining or being too didactic.

The Bad: The authors do their best to treat the products attorneys have been using for decades, such as Microsoft Office programs, as collaboration tools. By today’s standards these programs are more likely to obstruct collaboration than to enable it. In the age of Twitter, Wikis, Zoho, SaaS, and Google Wave, they are part of the problem, not the solution.

The Ugly: As I read The Lawyer’s Guide I kept asking myself why the authors didn’t treat technology-enabled collaboration as a smart way to business instead of like the Rubic’s Cube of law practice (perplexing, complex, exasperating). It really isn’t that hard.

Evaluation: Keeping in mind what the books sets out to do, I give The Lawyer’s Guide a hearty endorsement and 4 hacks out of 5. In places it is a bit too basic but overall you can’t go wrong giving this book a read – either because you are a lawyer of a certain age or because you work for one.

“The practice of law is, has been, and will continue to be a collaborative process” according to Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell, authors of The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together. True enough. And collaboration in the Internet Age is not what it used to be. In their book, Dennis and Tom have compiled a guide for lawyers who want to keep up with current tools and methods of collaboration that take advantage of the technology. For example the book discusses

• Document collaboration in a lawsuit
• Internet meetings and file-sharing
• E-mail productivity including GTD
• An overview of the Web 2.0 phenomenon
• Strategic planning using technology

With an-easy-to read-format, short chapters, and full glossary and index, in addition to a complete list of tools and resources, The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies is exactly what it claims to be.

Let’s face it: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn squandered their potential. Instead of becoming knowledge or trade hubs, they’re essentially virtual singles bars. All 3 of these networks are so choked with ads, scams, and come-ons that companies trying to turn a legitimate buck have turned to so-called opinion or “thought” leaders (anyone from Ashton Kutcher to Robert Scoble) in order to cut through the chatter. Fair enough, but lawyers still aren’t going to buy a product because it’s being pushed by an actor (even if it’s a dream-boat like Ashton). And as the authors of this piece in Social Media Today point out, professionals get online for reasons not common to the average user, including:

• engaging with others in their discipline
• collaborating on their projects or cases
• learning about innovations in their field
• sharing and discussing their experiences
• reinforcing their referral relationships
• accessing and sharing hard to find info

So why is there such a yawning gap between what professionals want in social networks and what the networks deliver? And to make matters worse, most social media campaigns are basically re-packaged website or blog content grafted onto the flavor of the month; an approach which is transparent and ineffective.

Why don’t social networks and advertisers observe the same rules that we professionals observe among ourselves, i.e.

• trust is built by giving freely
• one good turn deserves another
• value speaks for itself – no BS
• be patient – teach don’t preach
• respect my time and intelligence

If social networks and marketers respect these principals will they gain traction with professionals? How should I know? But I’m sure that if they ignore these points I’ll be gone before they can sell me anything.

From Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop – some good advice about how to get found online:

• Don’t Be Ordinary. Unique ideas will take you further than throwing money at marketing
• Create Good Content. Blogs, videos, podcasts, social networks, and tweets get noticed
• Optimize It. Optimize posts to be found on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
• Promote It. Post your content as many ways as you can and email it to interested parties
• Measure Results. Act once, measure twice and keep measuring for continued success