Dispatches from a legal profession on the brink
Filed under: Process
Project management is about as close to a silver bullet as the legal profession could ask for these days. Consider: It’s easy to understand. It’s inexpensive to implement. It lowers costs. It improves quality. It enhances communication. It facilitates lawyer training. It makes fixed fees profitable. It makes clients happy. If it could cure cancer… Read more »
Filed under: Stem
Since entering the consultancy world last October, I’ve been (and continue to be) fortunate to work with two great organizations, Edge International (where my focus is on strategic planning for law firms and the rapidly evolving legal marketplace) and Stem Legal (where my focus is on communications, media and social media for law firms). Today,… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Competition, Innovation
My newest column has been posted at Canada’s best legal website, which regular readers will know is Slaw.ca. Even though the article is also posted here for posterity, take the opportunity to absorb all of Slaw’s great information by going to read it there.
Filed under: Big Firms, Competition, Innovation
Seth Godin calls it the WordPerfect Axiom, and he’s exactly right: When the platform changes, the leaders change. WordPerfect had a virtual monopoly on word processing in big firms that used DOS. Then Windows arrived and the folks at WordPerfect didn’t feel the need to hurry in porting themselves to the new platform. They had… Read more »
The next few weeks are booked solid for me, as I prepare for a series of presentations and workshops throughout March. So in exchange for fewer posts over the next month, I thought I’d let you know what I’ll be doing, where I’ll be doing it, and what I recommend you look into doing as… Read more »
Filed under: Stem
In case you’re interested, I authored this week’s Blawg Review (#252) with my colleagues at Stem Legal’s Law Firm Web Strategy Blog. The theme is technology run amok: the fear many people (and especially lawyers) seem to have about the things we create, as expressed in popular fiction from Frankenstein to Battlestar Galactica. I’ve always… Read more »
Recently, I’m told, several GCs and senior lawyers of large law firms gathered in London for a high-level conversation about new billing mechanisms. One noteworthy observation to emerge from the meeting was the law firms’ insistence that whatever new mechanism was developed, it had to take into account chargeable time invested in the work. I… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Solo & Small Firm
I was talking the other day with a partner in a large national firm. For a variety of reasons, including the nature of his practice area, his annual billings have been declining for a couple of years now, and he’s been contacted about it by some of the senior people in the firm. He’s been… Read more »
Filed under: Publishing, Research, Technology
My newest column is up at Slaw, winner for two consecutive years of Dennis Kennedy’s Best Law Blog Award. Follow the link to Canada’s best legal website.
Filed under: Law21
It’s not quite the iPad launch, but for me, it’s still a momentous occasion. If you’re reading this post via an RSS feed, then you might want to click on the originating link, because Law21 has a new look today. With the indispensable help of Jesse Collins of Moxy Webworks and Tony Delitala of Delitala… Read more »
