practicehacker

from ProBlogger.com

If you have a blog then you want people to read what you write and chances are you’ll use an RSS feed to do it. That’s where FeedBurner comes in, making your feed accessible to millions. Rick Klau is vice president of FeedBurner, a Naperville resident, and a Lawyer. He also has my dream resume. He is also a hell of a nice guy. Frankly, so are all the people featured in this post, namely

• Rick Klau (FeedBurner)
• Matt Homann (RealBigThinking)
• Greg Siskin (Visalaw)
• Steve Nipper (Rethink(IP))

As previously mentioned in this post regarding the ABA Tech Show, this year I got the opportunity to meet some great people I knew by reputation (such as Rick and Matt), as well as practicing lawyers whose Internet smarts I respect (like Greg and Steve). After the show I was able to follow up a little with Rick (not easy to do — he is out a lot!) and I believe the conversation will speak for itself. You be the judge.

Me to Rick

I am interested in any insight you could offer about how I could get more involved in publishing and speaking about technology, disruptive business models, and professions (law for starters) — and still make a living. I have been blogging for several years — so much so that my practice and income have suffered. Is it realistic to seek a position that allows me to pursue my interests in writing, speaking, and technology while still making a living?

Rick to Me

I wish I had a clear, concise answer about how to do what you’re looking to do. In my case it was always a combination of the right place at the right time and being able to explain tech in terms that non-techies could understand. It sounds to me like you’re in a situation where your passion isn’t connected to your income. Most of the people at TechShow are consultants or vendors … not practicing lawyers. You need to find a way to connect your passion to your practice [or switch professions].

Me to Rick

It occurs to me that you and your fellow speakers (Matt, Greg, and Steve) represent the non-lawyer <==> lawyer continuum I have been working through: you and Matt are not practicing lawyers and instead have found success in entirely different, more exciting, fields, while Greg and Mark are practicing lawyers who use technology to boost their productivity and distinguish themselves. The 4 of you inhabit various points along the line from law in the service of technology <–> technology in the service of law. My problem is I can’t decide what point on the continuum I inhabit so I am caught in the cycle of “the grass is greener” doing whatever it is I don’t do.

A little background to put this in context. I was not interested in technology until I got out of law school and discovered the Internet. That was 1995 — you’ll remember that as the year the Internet shed its clunky DOS look and became graphic intensive. I was blown away and found the possibilities more interesting than torts and civ pro so in no time I was not only managing my own practice but starting up a legal portal (eLawCentral) with capital from my family and a maniacle work ethic. Predictably, I held down 2 jobs and wore a dozen hats from managing researchers, programmers, and web designers, to budgeting, vetting vendors, soliciting advertisers and users, etc., etc. In 2000 we had a booth at Tech Show, and by the end of the ear we were in Tampa working out the terms of a merger with a legal ASP (which was really forward thinking for the time). We agreed on it and waited for bridge financing that ultimately never came. Meanwhile my colleagues Tim and Stacey got their little portal (Findlaw) bought by Thomson and with that “.com” became acceptable in the legal field. Unfortunately that was also the deth knell for us, since the market collapsed soon afterwards in a single weekend (I knew every .com debtor in the bankruptcy courts for years afterwards).

So back to the point. Am I a Lawyer who blogs or a blogger working in the law? A frustrated consultant? All of the above? Frankly I saw things that I liked in every member of that ABA panel so I could see myself being either of the above and enjoying it … at least until I found something else I wanted to do even more.

Editor’s Note: What follows is my opinion, not that of any other organization or group, including the DuPage County Bar Association, which kindly sponsored my attendance at ABA TechShow 2007. I drew these conclusions after seeing nearly every booth several times (just for good measure).

Adobe
Everyone knows I’m a lifelong Acrobat fan, but will this be the year they finally do something we haven’t seen 100 times before? If I have to sit through one more “Tips and Tricks with Adobe Acrobat” seminar I swear I’m going to lose it … On the other hand, I am aware that one of the premiere collaboration systems mentioned by nearly every speaker at the Tech Show was AdobeConnect which comes bundled with Acrobat 8 Professional. So maybe there is hope after all.

Attorneys Online
This company represents an advertising agency directed at the legal market. Not a bad idea if the services are not overpriced — unfortunately, I know from experience that “marketing” and “advertising” is the worst kind of vaporware. Want to make $5,000 disappear in one afternoon with a 0% return to show for it? Try investing in marketing or better yet advertising.

Audience Response Systems, Inc.
I’ll just come right out and say it … what the hell were these guys doing at the tech show? Can anybody tell me?

BIGHAND
This company shared the crowded field of digital dictation with contenders such as Winscribe, QuikSek, and others. QuikSek for example lets you dictate anywhere (such as into a microphone for e-mailing as a sound file, on the telephone, etc.) and have the output prepared as a document (e.g. a letter or contract) and sent by e-mail the next morning. Combined with Skype’s nearly free calling features, the result is to keep costs low while enhancing output and cutting completion time for documents. Thanks to our English-speaking friends in other timezones we can now realize the benefits of outsourcing once reserved for the manufacturing set. (See Lotus Legal, another vendor at the show, for another example of legal outsourcing).

CaseLogistix
Last year I was super-jazzed about these guys: they gave a pretty face to the problem of evidence gathering and evaluation. Using the familiar 3-pane Outlook interface this company’s product helps sort different kinds of files representing evidence (PDF’s, documents, sound files, pictures, etc.) as well as to sketch out parties in the case and tie all the loose ends into a more or less cohesive picture. That was last year. Then I went to the Kroll booth (see below). As Neo said in the Matrix: “whoa.”

DigIT Technologies
This company represents yet another “best tool for EDD” hype machine (yawn). I mention them however, because they also win my Karma is a Bitch award. See, about 8 years ago I started a law portal site and a salesman from Autonomy, the parent company of DigIT, tried to sell me an exorbitantly expensive “smart” search tool. We didn’t buy it, but I couldn’t get over the fact that they were essentially trying to sell a Cadillac to a start-up that only needed a Hyundai. Long-story short, Autonomy didn’t give 2 bits about what was best for their would-be customer and instead just wanted to push, push, push their product. For shame.

eConsulting Group™
I’ve included this company on the list primarily because the diagrams, flow-charts, Gantt charts, and circle-in-circle diagrams they used at their booth (and presumably in their analysis for Clients) made this former-MBA of a war horse smile. Yes, it felt just like 1988 again. Hair was big. Michael Jackson was cool. I would like to have talked to the people manning the booth, if there were any. Maybe they should send more people to the show next year?

FlexESQ/Mojo Interactive
I’ll save you a lot of snooping around on this company’s website — they help you use familiar paradigms (the word processor, the spread sheet, drag and drop pictures, etc.) to create your own website. But if you’re going to do that why not just pay someone? Why buy the software when you can rent the web-design talent? Can somebody help to explain this?

Interwoven
I visited this booth 3 times and asked for an explanation of what they did on each occasion. Nobody could tell me. But from what I understand the company provides a collaborative environment along the lines of Lotus (Notes, Calendar, etc.). That sounds great too, until you realize that collaborative environments with full capability to share documents, video, audio, etc. are literally available for little or nothing on the web and now come with a full complement of calendars, to-do lists, contact managers and more. Does the availability of such resources spell the end for companies like Interwoven? Not at all, but it does mean that the race to provide better products for less is on, and the companies who have been living off the fat of the land will ultimately have to get in line.

Ixio/Qshift
This company was at the show last year, and I was impressed even then. This year I was really impressed. Basically Qshift is document automation software but it is well stripped down and “smarter” than the simple menus and Q&A features of say Hot Docs or Ghost Fille. And as they roll out their self-titled “Web 2.0″ product this year I plan to keep tabs on its launch. Now, I’m not sure that even they know why they’re calling it a “Web 2.0″ product, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Kroll Ontrack
This company took me to their private suite to demo some really cool e-Discovery tools. They were intuitive (mostly following the Microsoft Outlook paradigms) with good interfaces (graphs, lines, charts, and other ways of getting information across quickly to the user). They also had the only software I saw anywhere that could search both audio and video for desired characteristics (ie search for particular words right in the audio rather than having to tanscribe anything). And the prices were not that outrageous (depending on which product you were looking at). And damned if I didn’t “happen” to run into Steve Jakobowski, of the Bankruptcy Litigation Blog, at the demo. Steve is a great guy and legal blogging star here in Chicago. We could always use more of those.

LexisNexis
While arguably less evil than Thomson, LexisNexis does more than its share of monopolistic behavior. Lexis is truly an example of the adage that one can never be too big, too all encompassing, or too scary. Heck, at least they’re ahead of Thomson in terms of technology and software. That’s got to count for something right?

Lextranet
Lextranet is an ASP service providing a suite of web-based tools for litigation support and case management including document-review, transcript management, and the classic “deal room.”

NewsGator
Prepare for shock and awe — NewsGator is an RSS reader. Translation: it gathers information from the places you tell it to look, and brings it to you. Only the information you want; only from the places you’re interested in. Imagine using that kind of “pull” rather than just “pushing” information on people who have no interest in it. That is the genius of RSS. To put it another way: when I first began reading RSS feeds they were not only seen as illegitimate by lawyers, but were considered too juvenile for anyone over the age of 24 to be reading. Now NewsGator is being sold to corporate and big-law customers. I would say the legal market is now playing catch-up. Indeed, this is exactly what we are seeing with SocialText, the highest profile(though not the only) purveyor of big company wikis.

Thomson Elite/Thomson FindLaw/Thomson West
Who says socialism is dead? Just make your way to Egan, Minnessota to see it in full control of the world’s largest legal publisher. Thomson-West-Elite-Prolaw-Findlaw proves that it is just not enough to be bloated, bureaucratic, slow-moving, and monopolistic when you can also be grossly over-priced, inflexible, and indifferent to 70% of your market. And people think that lawyers are money-grubbing reptiles …

Thank you for listening. Feel free to contact me at mmhedayat1@gmail.com with your own thoughts about the TechShow, or better yet comment to this post and share your point of view with the world.

It’s Friday night and I am at the end of a whirlwind 2-day stint at the Sheraton Chicago attending the American Bar Association’s 2007 Technology Show — both walking the floor to see new and interesting products, and attending an intense round of seminars and round-table discussions. All in all, as a 10-year veteran of TechShow I can confidently say that it was not the same old same old (I’m as surprised as you are). While I’m essentially too exhausted to write anything substantive about the experience here, let me just say a few choice words and call it a night.

Web 2.0 is Here (about a year and a half after I told you about it on this Blog): yes, I know I’m blowing my own horn but damn it, I told you this would happen. Web 2.0 (which roughly speaking means the concept of the web as platform, the web as application, the web as collaborative software) is showing signs of respectability. Based on the number of legal administrators from Boise and Managing-Partners from Minnesota in attendance this year, I predict that we will see Web 2.0-style applications in large firms this year, medium-sized firms next year, and small/solo shops in 2010.

E-Discovery is Really Real: I realize that I’m significantly behind the curve in terms of sounding the alarm bells regarding e-discovery, but at this year’s show I was able to spend time with a few vendors whose software, pricing, and delivery options were … well let’s just say they were extremely impressive (kind of staggering in one case). I was seriously impressed. E-Discovery is going to become more real as cost factors trend down and the capability of resources on the market continues to climb (think in terms of Moore’s Law as applied to this area).

The Desktop is Nearly Dead/Long Live the Browser: This rounds back to the first point above. The trend I noticed 6 years ago after learning the acronym ASP (application service provider) has very nearly become the standard; clunky, desktop-based software with limited functionality is at last being replaced by flexible, light-weight, web based applets that allow users to produce first class results even on the fly. Know all ye who read this that if your software still looks like MS Word 97 next year you will be branded a has-been. Software manufacturers take notice.

Google, Google, Google: Go ahead, say it ten times fast. It just feels good. Plus, this upstart company can do for FREE what Microsoft, Westlaw, Lexis-Nexis, and a host of other pricey application vendors do for a fortune. See, the thing about free applications is that if they are worth anything at all then those results represent an ROI (return on investment) of about 1,000,000%. Doesn’t that make it worth at least trying what Google and other companies like it (there are others) have to offer? I would say so.

Hero Worship: I have no cogent explanation for this entry and it probably does not even belong here because it seems so personal, but this year I feel especially lucky to have spoken (if only for a moment) with some of the people I’ve been corresponding with, speaking with on the phone, or referring to in my blogs, including Matt Homann, Tom Mighell, Andrea Linares, Rick Klau, and Craig Bayer (who’s work appears on this blog). I also made new friends this year such as Mark Nipper. Not present this year, though not forgotten, were stalwarts like Dennis Kennedy and Denise Howell. These are impressive people who do inspiring things. I am glad for their good work and look to their example. (ed. note: sorry if I left anyone out — I’m a bit out of it right now).

In short, there was something for everyone at this year’s TechShow and I have the pictures and product reviews to prove it. More to come later …

RSS Resources You Can Use: Automated Web Surfing for Lawyers

by Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy

You’ve heard the term. You’ve seen the rss icon. Now you’re ready to use rss but you are still not sure how it works. Mighell and Kennedy will help you get started with this brief overview of how rss resources will make your Web surfing more manageable. [more].