This post may not have the lyrical flair of The Three Tenors, but hopefully you will find something useful (if not quite musical) by following the fusion of the thoughts of the three law professors that I recommend to you today.

Earlier this summer, I was honored to be asked to give the keynote address on the Future of Law Practice for the Indiana Bar Solo and Small Firm Conference that had the Future of Law as its theme. That was certainly a great honor and it was a great conference. It also gave me the opportunity to hear a presentation “Ethics –Where Are We Now?” by Indiana University law Professor William D. Henderson. Professor Henderson blogs on The Legal Whiteboard blog on the Law Professor Blogs Network. His area of focus is the legal profession and legal education. He is likely a familiar name to many readers of this blog as he is frequently quoted by many media outlets on changes in the legal profession. His presentation was excellent and I will never think of paragraph [9] of the Preamble to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct in quite the same way again.

So today, I urge you to read Prof. Henderson’s most excellent law review article Letting Go of Old Ideas, 112 Mich. L. Rev. 1111 (2014). It is a review of two very influential books published in 2013 about the changes confronting the legal profession: The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis, authored by Steven J. Harper and Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future by Richard Susskind.

Both of these books are important reading for lawyers today. But Prof. Henderson’s concise and readable review, peppered with his own observations, makes for an extremely important resource, combining the thoughts of three of the most important scholars of change in the legal profession. The books cover the similar subject matter from very different perspectives.

“In suitable lawyer fashion, both books are unfailingly analytical. They both also argue that the old order is collapsing. The Lawyer Bubble is backward looking and laments the legacy we have squandered, while Tomorrow’s Lawyers is future oriented and offers fairly specific prescriptive advice, particularly to those lawyers entering the legal field at a time when the number of traditional (what I call “artisan”) legal jobs is shrinking.” at 1111

Prof. Henderson also includes the thoughts of writers like Daniel Pink and Clay Shirkey. (“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”) You may be tired of hearing the phrase “disruptive technologies.” But his division of these technologies into two main “buckets:” faster–cheaper and better–cheaper (page 1126) helps the reader make better sense of this well-used term.

This twenty-one page article is definitely worth your time, especially since the Michigan Law Review has made it so easy to open and download. I extend my thanks to all three of these professors. Like so many, I have been frustrated with the “nothing wrong here, enroll in law school now!” pieces by some law school professors and even a law dean. I do not doubt that our profession has a bright future, but that future is brighter for those who are willing to do as Prof. Henderson suggests and let go of many old ideas. The challenges brought by advances in technology is not limited to our profession. See The Guardian’s Robot Doctors, Online Lawyers and Automated Architects: the Future of the Professions?

Some new lawyers desire a career serving corporate America, while others seek to be a lawyer for people. There is significant guidance for each career path contained in Prof. Henderson’s law review article and in the books he reviews.

Lawyers are very skilled at creating legal documents and one of the values they provide to their clients is quality documents based on research, precedent and experience. So most of the time, a client would be in no position to suggest anything about the form of the legal document or the required language in a legal document. But there are some sophisticated clients and groups of clients who might have some opinions along this line. The link below just came across my Twitter feed today. I don't know any of the background. But allow me to paraphrase in a very unapproved and irreverent way what this particular group of investors seems to be saying about their posted online resource.

 We at the National Venture Capital Association close many rounds of venture capital deals each year. We understand legal advice and paperwork is required. But we would love not to pay our lawyers so many millions of dollars to generate the paperwork for these deals. Because so many of these documents are organized differently based on the precedential documents from the various law firms, they are then very time-consuming for everyone to review. We have compiled these “best practice” documents and are making them available to everyone online—for free. If all the VC community would just use these as a starting point, think how much we would save in legal fees and how much easier it would be for us to review the documents. Oh, and, let us also note, with a bit of snark, that we think some of these form documents are better than some of those that some lawyers are generating for you now.

 OK, before you become upset with me and want to shoot the messenger, please go to NVCA Model Venture Capital Financing Documents and decide for yourself what this group is doing and saying.

 The Money Quote from the page: “By providing an industry-embraced set of model documents which can be used as a starting point in venture capital financings, it is our hope that the time and cost of financings will be greatly reduced and that all principals will be freed from the time consuming process of reviewing hundreds of pages of unfamiliar documents and instead will be able to focus on the high level issues and trade-offs of the deal at hand.”

On the newest episode of The Digital Edge podcast, When Lawyers Get Divorced: Ethically Breaking up a Law Firm, Sharon D. Nelson and Jim Calloway ask legal ethics expert Tom Spahn about the proper way to professionally deal with the various situations that arise when a law firm splits up. He explains that lawyers and their firms should remain civil and open to negotiation before the lawyer has left. Firms have run into trouble while trying to penalize leaving employees on an individual basis. He discusses the ethically proper way to deal with unfinished business doctrines, document retention programs, and fiduciary duties to clients. Due to technology, there are new issues to consider including digital files or property ownership of domain names. Overall, however, Spahn emphasizes that every partner has a continuing duty to make sure every client is adequately served.

This episode comes with special downloadable bonus content. We include “8 Resources to Help Lawyers When Switching Firms,” with links to some great state bar association information, white papers, guides and forms on this topic, as well as some in-depth articles. Feel free to pass this link along to your lawyer friends who may be finding that “breaking up is hard to do.”

 

The annual Big Ideas issue of Law Practice Magazine is officially a “big deal.” Some of you will recall that I spent much time last year promoting the 2013 Big Ideas issue of Law Practice Magazine. (I served as a co-guest editor.)  I’m just as enthusiastic about 2014 Big Ideas issue of Law Practice Magazine. Big Ideas Cover

If you aren’t a member of the ABA Law Practice Division, you can read the magazine articles for free online or use the LP Mag app to download the mobile edition to your mobile device for only $4.99.

There’s a wealth of information contained in the Law Practice Magazine July/August 2014 issue. You will want to read more than just the few articles I have featured below. My apologies to the omitted authors.

“The 21st Century T-Shaped Lawyer” by R. Amani Smathers will introduce many of you to an entirely new concept. This is a powerful article. Many will not be comfortable with this outline of the skill set for future lawyers. I will force you to read the article to find the definition of a T-shaped lawyer, but let me dangle a couple of quotes from the article as bait to make sure you click.

“According to IBM, T-shaped professionals are valuable because they are empathetic, making them great at teamwork and collaboration, and creative problem solvers…

“The call for T-shaped lawyers is a refinement of a call for hybrid or multidisciplinary professionals.”

And being T-shaped even sounds like more fun.

The great (dare I say “legendary”?) Gerry Riskin advises courage and skill as we chart our courses through “Icebergs and Sea Monsters in Treacherous Legal Seas.” Join the captain of the fine ship the Law Practice of Tomorrow for some ideas about successfully piloting these seas. This is such a readable piece of work that you may finally have the courage to pass this one along to that partner that really needs to read it.

In “Finding Relief for Password Problems in the Cloud,” Tom Mighell gives you all of the information you need to take care of the problem of secure password management that you know needs to be addressed—today.

My column on Practice Management Advice has a title that sounds a bit pedestrian next to tales of sea monsters and reshaping lawyers to a T, but at least it is self-explanatory. “IT Governance: A Critical Issue for Law Firms” reflects a truism in today’s law office operations environment. I hope you will find my comments useful on how to formalize and improve this process.

So you have a lot of big ideas to process this month. Thanks to Law Practice Magazine for pulling them all together in a nice package.

In this episode of The Digital Edge podcast, Tips and Tricks for Lawyers Using PowerPoint in Trial Presentations, Sharon Nelson and Jim Calloway interview Paul Unger about the best practices in using PowerPoint in the courtroom. Unger emphasizes simplicity, professionalism, and making PowerPoint a tool that reinforces the content rather than providing it. According to research Unger has done, audiences who are distracted by bullet points and excess text are unlikely to remember much of the slide’s content or even the presenting lawyer’s main point. He recommends that the PowerPoint slides provide only headlines and pictures that are held together by the attorney’s narrative.

Law Practice 2020 is the theme of the May/June Issue of GPSOLO Magazine and I would be telling you that you need to read this one from cover to cover even if it didn't include my guest GP Mentor column, "The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be," which is targeted to new lawyers. I doubt you will be able to read it all at one sitting, or even quickly, as it contains a lot of information to absorb and contemplate.

"How Technology Is Changing the Practice of Law" is a great thought-provoking piece from Blair Janis. It contains many important observations and quotable phrases. Moore's Law and artificial intelligence both impact your future. Blair explains how and highlights the "tension between the risk aversion in the legal profession and the ever-changing expectations and demands of legal service consumers."

There are many different tools for communication available today. "How to Choose the Right Tools for Any Client Communication" by Wells H. Anderson and Seth G. Rowland outlines today's tools and discusses the benefits and drawbacks of each.

"Online Paper Mills: Are They a Threat and How Do We Compete?" By David Hiersekorn is worth reading. Many of these online services target traditional clients of solo and small firm lawyers with what lawyers view as a lower quality product compared to the lawyer's services.

"Road Warrior: Shades of Nostradamus" by Jeffrey Allen is a great read for the mobile lawyer. And if you haven't yet figured it out, we are (almost) all mobile lawyers these days.

There are two articles about law firm security: "Cyberthreats and Defenses" by Sharon D. Nelson and John W. Simek" and "More Than a Locked Door: Law Firm Security" by Natalie Kelly, Daniel J. Siegel & John W. Simek. (This is a slightly abridged version of this article from Law Practice Magazine.) Your attention is also directed to "Working with Corporate Clients in the New Legal Landscape" by Alan Nathanson and "To Boldly Go . . . Outsourcing to Virtual Paralegals" by Pamela J. Starr.

Not all of the articles are persuasive. "Restore Access to Justice Through Limited License Legal Technicians" by Steve Crossland still fails to convince me that the Washington state LLLT plan can protect the public as well as other ideas or will ultimately reduce costs to consumers.

There is a lot more to this Law Practice 2020 issue of May/June Issue of GPSOLO Magazine. Spend some time with the free online version of the magazine if you are not a subscriber.

ABA TECHSHOW 2014 was a great event. There were several attendees from Oklahoma this year, so some of us contributed to an article on What We Saw at ABA TECHSHOW 2014 for the Oklahoma Bar Journal. The online version of the article has lots of links to other resources. Oklahoma lawyers who have already completed the article in their bar journal may want to see this version for easy access to all of the links.

This could well be the 100th review of ABA TECHSHOW posted online. But that just shows you how good it was! We hope to see you there next year.

So what is the best legal technology for solo & small firm lawyers? Our Digital Edge podcast attempts to answer part of that question when Sharon Nelson and I interview her husband and co-author John Simek about that topic. Sharon and John, along with Michael C. Maschke, co-authored the 2014 Solo and Small Firm Legal Tech Guide.

It is a relaxed podcast between old friends and the book is a great resource for solo and small firm lawyers, particularly new solos setting up a practice for the first time.

Every now and then I get some negative reponses when I talk one-on-one to lawyers about upcoming changes in the future of our profession. The most common comment is that the present times are a temporary blip and when the economy gets better, the amount of legal work will increase. Or they say that the recent decline in applications for law schools will lower supply. (Of course, the decline in applications by itself means very little if law schools still admit the same number of students.) Large law firms used to be in the lead of denial, but that has changed. Take a good look at 9 Takeaways from the Altman Weil Law Firms in Transition Study from the LexisNexis Business of Law Blog. The chart featuring the change in survey responses in just the last five years is remarkable.

I've been honored to be asked to speak at several state bar meetings on change and future of our profession. The Indiana State Bar Association Solo & Small Firm Conference has a theme of the Future of Law and they have me doing the keynote. At the State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting, I am opening the Adaptable Lawyer Track with "Lawyers and Change: How to Prosper in the Future You Didn’t Expect." (PDF brochure) If you are at either of these events, stop by to say hello.

 

Peggy Gruenke has written a nice pair of articles on trust accounting for the Attorneyatwork site. Last month's article was Would You Pass a Trust Account Audit? and the most recent one is Handling Settlement Funds: A Best-Practices Checklist. I've know Peggy since her days as a bar association executive. These are very clear and well-written pieces. Trust accounting is deceptively simple. Any lawyer can do an adequate job in this area, but for those who do not, it can be a very serious matter indeed. These articles point out why a little additional record keeping can help you catch mistakes before they happen. Some lawyers may decide to print both of these articles out and distribute them within the law office. That method seems to garner a little more attention than sending another email containing a link to another article someone thinks you really need to read.