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Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange

David Bowie

I recently read Jordan Furlong’s excellent piece entitled Forget Everything You Think You Know About Law Firms. Jordan, one of the most insightful thinkers in the legal space, believes that law firm leaders need to better understand and react to changes, changes that are already altering the legal landscape. The challenge leaders face, says Furlong, is recognizing and accepting these changes. Says Furlong, “The future has arrived without you noticing.”Continue Reading What If? Forget Everything You Think You Know About Litigation

Dan Roe of law.com recently reported on a study by Edge International on the problem of underperforming partners. I have written on this issue before.

Identifying and defining underperforming and underproductive partners will prove more and more challenging given the changing dynamics in the profession. Those firms that evaluate partners’ performance and productivity only on current financial metrics may face problems in the future.

The Survey

According to the Survey, more than half of the responding firms believe underproductive partners hurt firm profitability. And two-thirds say they intend to act on the problem within the next two years.Continue Reading Beyond the Billable Hour: Rethinking Partner Evaluation to Enhance Long-Term Financial Health

There’s gold in them thar hills. Mark Twain in 1892 novel The American Claimant

Almost every law firm has a great wealth of documents and knowledge locked up in work they have previously done in cases and matters. If only they could find it. The problem, as I have discussed before, is that lawyers don’t want to spend nonbillable time getting the information into a system where it could be searched and accessed. But a recent partnership between the major legal research player, vLex, and a leading document management vendor, iManage, is attempting to solve that problem.Continue Reading vLex and iManage Partner to Maximize Customer Past Efforts: But User Process is Key

It goes without saying that one of the most critical functions of a law firm is to train its associates adequately. But time constraints and a lack of consistency, as I have previously discussed, make good, sound training of associates problematic in many firms. However, large language models and GenAI, even open models, may offer potential solutions. Provided, of course, that the firm and its partners understand the risks and benefits of these models and how to use them.Continue Reading Revolutionizing Law Firm Training with AI: The Power of Large Language Models

Working with outside counsel is like getting thrown in a pit of rattlesnakes and hoping one won’t bite you. Anonymous

Axiom, the 14,000-person alternative legal service provider, launched in 2000, together with Wakefield Research, recently conducted and published a Study of U.S. in-house counsel. They conducted a 15-minute Survey online in January and February of this year. Some 300 general counsels of small, mid-size, and large businesses responded.Continue Reading Law Firms on Notice: Adapt to In-House Counsel’s Concerns in the Wake of Axiom’s 2023 Findings. Or Else

There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil. Walter Lippmann

As most of you know, I frequently attend conferences–both legal tech related and those related to technology in general, like CES. I do this because I am interested in the field and because I like to think what I write as a former practicing lawyer is valuable. The latter idea, of course, carries the responsibility to be candid and to “call em as I see em”. I have tried to do that since I started blogging some seven years ago.Continue Reading Integrity Over Access. Why I Said No Thanks to a Conference’s Demand for Positive Coverage

We best be careful, or we will find ourselves in a closet talking to ourselves too much.

Once upon a time, I had a good client who was fond of saying, “We best be careful, or we will find ourselves in a closet talking to ourselves too much.” Meaning, of course, that you get into trouble if you don’t get diverse viewpoints from people who perhaps see the problem and the world differently than you.

My client’s wisdom was recently brought home to me in connection with the Gen AI hoopla. The last two months have been a whirlwind of conferences for me. During that time, I attended three technology conferences. One was CES, which was generally directed toward consumer electronics and technology. The other two, LegalWeek and ABA TechShow, were both directed at legal technology in particular. Continue Reading Gen AI in Law: A Lawyer Reality Check

Every year, Thomson Reuters and the Georgetown Law Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession come with a report on the State of the Legal Market. I have written about the reports before; I find them enlightening and generally well done. The 2024 Report is based on data from some 179 U.S. law firms developed by Thomson Reuters’ Financial Insights platform. Data came from 48 AmLaw 100 firms, 49 AmLaw second 100 firms, and 82 midsize firms.

The 2024 Report came out in early January this year and, as usual, is chock full of interesting findings. The Report used the historical demise of Pan Am Airlines as an example to drive home a point. Law firms may be facing a tipping point, a point at which they need to refine how they do business to survive. Continue Reading The Thomson Reuters State of the Legal Market Report: Shifting Tides in Legal Practice?

Training of associates. Everyone agrees it’s critical. But all too often, it’s left to happenstance. As I have discussed before, happenstance training often penalizes women and people of color. Older white partners gravitate toward younger versions of themselves when making assignments that serve as training.

Even beyond that, a “luck of the draw” training approach is pretty dumb, given the tight labor market.

Of course, some firms attempt to create training programs. But all too often, they are run by partners who would rather work on billable matters. And let’s face it, lawyers are trained to be teachers/trainers. Another option is to rely on videos. Also ineffectiveContinue Reading AltaClaro Associate Training Program: Old Problem. New Solution

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

With all the hype over GenAI, the metaverse, the digital world where people/avatars can mingle, has been largely forgotten. After all, the notion of working in teams of cartoonish avatars seemed unlikely at best. And silly at worst, particularly for any business purposes. No one seemed interested in dealing face to face with an avatar that looked like, say, Donald Duck. So, most of us dismissed the metaverse, putting it in the same class as blockchain. Much ado about nothing. Solutions in search of problems.

But then I happened to come across some groundbreaking work that Meta (formerly known as Facebook) is doing. The program is called Codec Avatars. It focuses on making the avatars closely resemble what we really look like and less abstract. They call these things Codec avatars. The goal is to make the avatars what they call “photo realistic” as opposed to expressive. Ok, you say, big deal, they are still unrealistic avatars with no arms and legs, etc. Why not just keep using Zoom?Continue Reading The Metaverse and Blockchain for Legal: We’re Back