In this episode of The Digital Edge, Sharon Nelson and I talk to Brett Burney about the latest Apple products and how they can serve lawyers. Our podcast is titled The Apple Product Cheat Sheet for Lawyers and if you are unsure as to what iOS apps or other Apple products, you should be using in your law practice, this podcast is for you.  Brett Burney

Many of you already know of Brett Burney from his Apps in Law site which hosts podcasts, video and tips.  Brett focuses his attention on which Apple tools will save lawyers time and effort in their business. We discussed topics ranging from Face ID to  iOS 11. We also discuss the top apps that attorneys who use Apple products should download and use.

This is a high quality podcast, even if I do say so myself, because Brett just loves talking about apps and other Apple products for lawyers. His enthusiasm is contagious.

This podcast will get you excited about trying some new apps and we have links to the products mentioned during the podcast on the podcast home page. After you finish with the podcast, visit Brett's site and review his "Best Apps in Law" page. It is like Brett's own personal version of an awards show.

For an interesting juxtaposition of opinions about AI and the future of law, here are a couple of items to review.

Bob Ambrogi's piece in Above the Law is titled Fear Not, Lawyers, AI Is Not Your Enemy and even has a subtitle of "The dirty little secret of AI is that it can make us even better lawyers than we are without it."

Bob writes reassuring things like, "Here’s the thing: AI in the legal profession is not a rogue robot storming the halls of justice. It is not a sentient machine out to destroy humans or even lawyers. It is not even plotting to take away our jobs." and "AI is a tool. A tool that we control. It is a tool that can make us more effective and efficient at what we do. It is a tool that can help us deliver our services more quickly and at lower cost."

He concludes, "AI is not a battleground. It is fertile ground. It is not lawyers vs. robots. It is lawyers plus AI."

I respect and trust Bob Ambrogi.

But in last week's Wall Street Journal, there's a different message. This Robot Will Handle Your Divorce Free of Charge details the plans of Joshua Browder, the inventor of the Do Not Pay chatbot, that according to the article, assisted 400,000 people save a total of $11 million in parking fines. The WSJ article quotes him. “I think people get caught up in trying to make money,” says Browder, 19. “I’m just trying to make the law free for everyone.” He promulgates often-repeated falsehoods, like uncontested divorces costing up to $10,000. The new service will launch in February and purports to generate all the documents necessary to file for and obtain a divorce. He says, "All you need is to get your partner to sign."

“I’m trying to replace all these lawyers charging hundreds of dollars just to copy and paste,” he is quoted in the article as saying.

As with many so-called experts who actually know very little about their subject matter, he probably doesn't appreciate that many of those partners who "just sign" are not in an emotional state to make profound decisions that will impact their lives and their children's lives for years or the expenses and unintended consequences that flow from omitting assets or debts from divorce papers. Since he is not a lawyer, he has surely not dealt with the challenges of QUADROs being rejected by employers or real estate titles hopelessly snarled because of bad legal descriptions.

My personal opinion is that sometimes a marriage of short duration that produced no children, assets or debts can be done rather simply without great expense. Some online services purport to do this and Oklahoma lawyers will do so for their clients, too, including those who provide limited scope services. As oil field firefighter Red Adair famously said, "If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur."

I don't disagree with Bob Ambrogi's observations, but I think it is also clear that good AI tools will be based on facts and needs, not popular misconceptions about the law or vindictiveness.

 

The year 2017 has been an extraordinary year for hurricanes impacting the U.S. and the Caribbean. It is heartbreaking to see pictures and videos of the destruction and devastation. Recovery will take many years for some of these areas and many families have lost photo albums and prized possessions that cannot be replaced. The number of wildfires in the western part of the U.S. this year has been staggering as well.

Given the huge number of disasters we have seen this year, surely no law firm is without a disaster plan now? Right? Right?Disaster plan

I could feel the silence in response to that, even over the Internet.

If your planning is not adequate, start your planning by reading my column from the Oklahoma Bar Journal, What a Disaster! Hopefully this will give you a good outline from which to begin.

Keeping a podcast going for 11 years is quite the accomplishment, particularly for lawyers. The Internet is littered with lawyer blogs and podcasts that start strong, fade after a few months and are dead within a year.

But as regular listeners know, the Kennedy-Mighell Report is a consistently entertaining and informative production. (I should note a significant personal bias as the co-hosts are both long-term friends of mine.)

For the 200th episode of the Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis and Tom answer technology related questions from listeners (including yours truly). They provide a lot of great information, including about some of their favorite products.  Regular listeners of the podcast already know of Tom's interest in finding the best Bluetooth speaker of all. I noted his current recommendation. This is a very interesting podcast, although at over 47 minutes in length you need to set aside some time to take in it all.

Congratulations to Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell on a long podcasting run and another great podcast. We will expect even more from episode 201.

200th Kennedy Mighell Report

If there is a single sentence summing up what every law firm of any size should be focusing on today, I’ll nominate this one. A law firm today should be in the business of producing great solutions and happy clients.

Happy Lawyer Happy ClientMost new clients don’t really want legal services. They need legal services. What they want is often a resolution of a problem. Sometimes they want to avoid a problem in the future. Sometimes they want advice and paperwork relating to something they are planning. However, the majority of legal work is the result of someone having a problem and hiring a lawyer to find, create or negotiate a solution to that problem.

Your attention is directed to my column from the Oklahoma Bar Journal, Great Solutions and Happy Clients. There are many strategies to improve client satisfaction. I cover a few of them.

The more you appreciate that the client wants a solution to their problem rather than legal services, the better you can design your legal services delivery processes to incorporate communication with clients focusing on how you are reaching their solution and the better you can design your marketing efforts to attract new clients.

Mr. Brian Kuhn serves as the Global Co-Leader for the IBM Watson Legal Practice driving global strategy and execution across clients, legal markets and internal  Brian Kuhn 
groups. He is responsible for defining the intersection of legal blockchain and legal artificial intelligence for IBM. In this podcast, he talks with Jim Calloway and Sharon Nelson about why lawyers should be interested in cognitive computing (or augmented intelligence). We hope you enjoy our podcast How Augmented Intelligence and Cognitive Computing Serves the Legal Profession. 

Lawyers help their clients manage many legal and business risks. But law firms have many risks of their own to manage today. From ransomware and other cyber attacks to losing a key client or key lawyer, the way to Managing Riskmanage these risks is to think about the risks in advance and make plans from creating an incident response plans to purchasing insurance. In my column Risky Business: Managing Law Firm Risks for Law Practice magazine, I cover several risks and how to begin the planning processes to mitigate them.

The September/October 2017 of Law Practice magazine is a Finance themed issue. Every lawyer in private practice should be interested in law firm finance. Noteworthy articles include Budgeting for a Banner Year by Ellen Freedman, Identifying Your Ideal Clients by Mary Juetten and Using Small Data to Make Big Decisions by Fastcase CEO Ed Walters.

Managing both finances and potential risks more effectively are great topics for law firm improvement. There is much to consider in this issue of the Law Practice Division's flagship publication.

 

 

 

My “Big Idea” for the Big Ideas issue of Law Practice Magazine was a column titled The Law Firm Portal: A Must-Have Client Service Tool. I hope you can take the time to read it. Portals

In all honesty perhaps the biggest idea today for solo and small firm lawyers (who have not already done so) is to work from digital client files, powered by practice management software which allows lawyers to securely communicate with clients via secure client portals and reduces the use of insecure email with clients.

Darla Jackson, Oklahoma Bar Association Practice Management Advisor, and I did a webcast for the American Bar Association called “Client Portals: Why Attorneys are Flocking to Them” earlier this year early this year. It is still available on demand.

Now the world has watched as hurricanes have destroyed and damaged many buildings in Texas and Florida. There really cannot be a better argument for preserving client information in a manner where it can be easily accessed to be used for the client’s benefit. In the even of a natural disaster, as soon as both the lawyer and the client locate electricity and an internet connection giving access to a cloud-based practice management system or portal provider, the law firm is operating and there are secure communications with the client, no matter who might be excluded from office or home.

One year ago I was the guest on Digital Detectives podcast on the topic of Cyber Security for Small Firms and Solo Practice.

This is an important subject and I decided this podcast deserved a repeat promotion. I had occasion to listen to the podcast recently and my five Digital Detectivescybersecurity tips are still important for lawyers, especially in smaller firms.

One thing that has changed since we recorded the podcast is that the ability to “pay the ransom” (if you are so inclined) is now often nonexistent. Once the infection is out in the wild, the authorities can’t do much about preventing the spread, but they’ve been successful in quickly blocking the methods used to pay the ransom in bitcoin.

I was interviewed by my good friends, Sharon Nelson and John Simek and I can guarantee that you will never hear a podcast about cybersecurity with more laughter. The information about today’s cyber threats seems much less scary when it is interspersed with laughter.

Share the link to the podcast with someone you know that needs to listen to it.

The Big Ideas issue of Law Practice Magazine is one of my favorite publications each year. As a member of the LP Magazine board, I love watching it take shape.

Law Practice Magazine JulyAug 2017The most recent Big Ideas issue not only has great content, but also one of my favorite covers for the magazine ever.

Among the many great articles contained in this issue is Transforming a Law Practice with Technology by Nick Gaffney, one on how legal operations professionals can bring a data-driven approach to law firm budgets, and an article entitled Gray but Not Gone by Roberta Tapper and Elizabeth Deane, which focuses on the role of senior attorneys who do not wish to retire. There are also columns on artificial intelligence in the practice of law, the current state of digital maps and the Legal Board, a keyboard design for lawyers.

Brooke Moore writes “Client Driven Firms: the Future of Law Is Now.” There can be no more true statement today about the future of law practice today than this one. Clients are pressuring the law firms that serve them to improve.

Summer may be ending, but your summer reading list hasn't been completed until you have digested the big ideas contained in this great Law Practice magazine.