As has been widely reported, it’s no secret that the number of actual jury trials have declined precipitously in recent years. Too much risk. Discovery costs–particularly those associated with electronic discovery–have made the pretrial process simply too expensive. And there is a reluctance by some to trust juries with what they believe are complicated issues. The result: more cases are settled, typically in mediation.
Continue Reading The Elon Musk Verdict: Some Cases Have to Be Tried
When the winds of change are blowing, some people are building shelters, and others are building windmills. Chinese Proverb
I recently read Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of The Digital Age by Brad Smith, Microsoft’s President. Smith discusses the challenges and opportunities posed by the digital age and artificial intelligence on a variety of fronts. In one chapter, Smith discusses one of my a favorite subjects: the opportunities that data and data analytics provide for improved decision making.
Continue Reading Data, Data Everywhere/Nor Any Drop to Drink
Last week, I talked about why social media for lawyers is essential. In this post, I want to talk about the practical: what has worked for me in using social media to develop business.
How to Use Social Media
When you use social media, you are creating an image of who you are as a person and your brand. First and foremost, that image must be authentic and consistent with who you are as a person. Then, what you do on social media must be compatible with that image.
Continue Reading Social Media and Lawyers: Forming Human Relationships. Part II
Let’s not forget the reason to have a social media presence and network is to create opportuinites for real meetings. To form human relationships.
Continue Reading Social Media, Blogging, and Lawyers: Forming Human Relationships
There’s been much hype over the last couple of years about blockchain, what it might do in terms of simplifying and documenting transactions and digital information and how it may affect lawyers and what they do. While it’s admittedly hard for many to get their heads around how the blockchain works, there has been gradual acceptance among businesses of its value.
Lawyers, on the other hand, have by and large looked askew at the whole concept of blockchain and how it may impact how they do their work and, for that matter, the kind of work they may be doing in the future. For most lawyers, the blockchain has been mostly noise.
Continue Reading Automation. Blockchain. A formula to reduce Legal spend?
“The Best Innovation Tool is Continuous Learning”
Dennis Kennedy recently published a new book entitled Successful Innovation Outcomes in Law: A Practical Guide for Law Firms, Law Departments and Other Legal Organizations. In essence, it’s a primer and “how-to” on innovation in law and generally.
Kennedy is well known as an astute legal commentator and thinker. Perhaps that’s because he has worn so many hats during his career: in-house lawyer, technologist, author, and adjunct professor, to name a few. As he puts it, “innovation is a visible thread that runs through my career.” (By way of disclosure, I have known Dennis for several years and, like many others, turn to him often for advice and guidance. He never disappoints). Continue Reading Dennis Kennedy’s Latest Book: Everything You Need to Know About Innovation
It a well-known phenomenon that unlike every other business and profession, lawyers avoid asking what their clients think of the services they have provided like the plaque. It’s almost like we fear the answer. And maybe we should.
Now, at least, thanks to Ari Kaplan, Relativity, and FTI, there are answers to questions about what clients want from lawyers and whether lawyers are providing it. And these answers are a little scary. Continue Reading Want to Know What Your Clients Want? Ask Ari Kaplan
Last week, the annual Clio Conference was held in San Diego. Attended by approximately 2500 lawyers, technologists, and Clio customers, it has appropriately become the go-to legal tech conference. Part seminar, part marketing, and part pure celebration, it is almost everything you want a conference to be.
Clio provides cloud practice management programs mainly to small and mid-size law firms. Also, through partnerships with countless providers, it can offer a broad array of other products to customers. At its Conference, Clio releases a valuable Legal Trends Report, which looks at the practical and business trends of its law firm customers and others.
The Conference is chock full of useful information and included keynotes from such noteworthy writers and pundits as Daniel Pink, Shaka Senghor, and Glenn Greenwald. As my friend Joe Patrice wrote in Above the Law recently, “it might be fair to say that the show is about the philosophy of all legal technology and how its product fits into that…”
Once upon a time, red and white barber poles were used to identify barbers who also practiced medicine on the side, since there was little money to be made from practicing medicine. The red and white barber pole had its origins in the old notion: “healing whatever ails you”; the red color actually represented blood shed during bloodletting.
Continue Reading Amazon and Dentons: Barber Poles of Legal Services?
The partners of the Georgia firm Swift, Currie, McGhee & Hiers had a dilemma. Their firm was the largest litigation only firm in Georgia and one of the biggest in the south. But over the past several years, the firm had grown topsy-turvy: it added 60 lawyers since 2017, had added practice areas, and brought in lots of laterals. But its website, marketing materials, and even logo hadn’t changed in years. For its marketing to be effective, a new approach was needed to define better who and what the firm is now versus several years ago. But how to get there?