We have certainly seen many changes in the way business is done over the last few decades. Many of these have to do with the prominence of the Internet and other technological advances. But others have to do with consumer attitudes and expectations. Innovation is important for today's businesses. Encouraging innovative behavior in law firms can be a challenge.

I wrote Small Firm Lawyers and Innovation for the Oklahoma Bar Journal this month with several goals in mind. I wanted to share some thoughts about innovation with our members. I wanted to share Jordan Furlong's provocative blog post, Why Lawyer's Don't Innovate. I wanted to remind small firm lawyers that they can be more nimble in innovation than larger firms with layers of decision makers. And I wanted to share some off-the-wall ideas about innovative services lawyers might provide. I hope you enjoy the column.

(It is really hard to stay current when online communication is instantaneous. The Canadian Bar Association National Magazine posted a nice piece Why is the legal profession so slow to innovate? right after we published our print magazine. )

 

On crisp fall Sunday afternoons, many NFL fans are wrapped up in
following football games– on television and via mobile devices.
Whether they watch in a sports bar or in their living room, they cheer loudly
for the big plays. Suprisingly, some of the most focused watchers may not
really care which team wins. They care about their own team − their fantasy
football team. In addition, with the NBA season kicking off this week, last week was a busy time for fantasy basketball league drafts.

For
the uninitiated, fantasy sports involves fans setting up competitive leagues
and drafting real professional players for their teams. Points are scored based on the actual player’s
performance on the field. The NFL has been quite supportive of the concept,
often showing how various players rank for fantasy points for the day during
TV broadcasts. Online sites manage the scoring live and most have mobile access. So you can check your phone and learn that a moment ago Adrian Peterson scored a 45 yard touchdown for your team.

So what does this have to do with lawyers? Well, many leagues offer cash prizes and fantasy sports had become a huge business. According to a report on NPR's All Tech Considered:

"The analysts at IBISWorld forecast fantasy sports will bring in $1.2 Billion in 2013, representing a threefold growth since 2004.
The Fantasy Sports Trade Association says 33 million Americans take part
in one fantasy sport or another — and 24 million of them play fantasy
football."

With serious money involved, this fun hobby can take on some serious overtones. It is one thing if the losers have to buy a few rounds of drinks for the winners. It is another if 12 team owners enter a $1000 buy in league resulting in $12,000 in prize money to be distributed. At the point it might be wise to pay someone to manage the league and/or arbitrate disputes.

The Planet Money feature "Cashing In On The Fantasy-Sports Economy" lists a number of businesses that have grown up around fantasy sports, from buying insurance against your star player being injured to an individual who will serve as a judge on whether a late season trade is fair or should be overturned. One company, LeagueSafe, holds the stakes during the season and now has eight employees.

A lot of these new opportunities sound tailor-made for lawyers. We deal with equity and dispute resolution on a daily basis. If your league does become embroiled in litigation over prize money, would you rather have had a lawyer-arbitrator who made the contested decision or grocery store employee with several years of fantasy football experience? Most of these opportunities would arguably not generate what many lawyers would view as significant income. (The judge-for-hire featured in the story charges $14.95 for a ruling.)

But a growing industry with eight figure revenue means a lot of lawyers have made a lot of money and will make a lot of money. (The first presentation at the next Fantasy Sports Trade Association Conference is Legal Update.) A solo lawyer who loves fantasy sports and brings in a few extra dollars managing a few leagues and arbitrating in others might find it the most "fun" money he makes each year even if the return is closer to minimum wage than to a billable hour rate.

The point is this is an opportunity fueled by technology advances. The roots of fantasy sports involved getting the newspaper the next day and manually adding up your team's score. Few today would have the patience for that. (It is hard enough trying to be patient with Roddy White's nagging injury this season.) There will be many more new and exciting opportunities for lawyers. Stay alert.

In my Oklahoma Bar Journal column, The Virtual Law Practice
− Are We All Virtual Lawyers Now? I play around a bit with the term virtual
lawyers and ask some questions about what the term really means. Does it refer only
to online delivery of legal services, to lawyers who sometimes telecommute from home or to
lawyers who represent clients without physically ever meeting them? If the
latter is the case, then there were virtual lawyers before there was the Internet
and we are all virtual lawyers now. I do provide links to several great online resources
on virtual law practice. The links will hopefully atone for my irreverent
treatment of the term to some of the subject matter experts who created those
resources.

If you never want to be a virtual lawyer, you may still want
to read the article as it includes a special section for you called Virtual
Practice Tools for “Real” Lawyers.

Our most recent Digital Edge podcast also covers virtual law
practice. Bob Ambrogi is our guest and out topis is 2013 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report:
Has Virtual Lawyering Declined? Sharon Nelson and I both have opinions
on this topic, so the podcast was more of a group discussion than interview.

Whether to ban Google Glass is undoubtedly not on your law firm's radar right now. Most of the partners have never heard of Google Glass. And the product is not even available to the public yet. Now it is only in use by Google employees and a few thousand "explorers."

Google Glass is wearable technology, worn like eyeglasses. As you can see here, Google Glass does some pretty amazing things in only its first release. Since you can record audio and video, as well as take pictures, without others being aware you are doing so, this has some people quite concerned. See Google Glass and Its Privacy Implications. After all, we all understand that some people will misuse technology in all manner of creative ways. It would be a great way to record a motion picture in the theater, for example, and locker rooms and rest rooms are other areas of concern.

Some businesses are already announcing that Google Glass will be banned from their locations. Movie No Google glass Smalltheaters are understandable. But one of the first businesses to announce the Google Glass ban was Seattle’s 5 Point Café. The cafe got a fair amount of online publicity with the announcement. But the stated reason of wanting to protect all customer's privacy seems rational to me. It would be one thing to record the person you are having dinner with, but another to record other patron's conversations. It is true that most everyone in the restaurant is carrying a smart phone in their pocket or purse, but at least with them it is clear when you are using them as a camera. You can record with Google Glass with no one knowing.

Search Engine Journal has posted Top 10 Places that Have Banned Google Glass and law firms are not included. But I think law firms will join what may be a fairly long list of businesses that decide on the ban.

Would you want one client or witness in your waiting rooms recording your other clients waiting for their appointment- especially if a client was discussing her divorce with her mother? How about the number of exposed documents that a person might walk by on the way to their appointment with a lawyer? (Yes, I know the best practice would be for there to be no exposed documents.) What about the lawyer conferencing with the client? Your advice is what you sell to clients. Would you really want to give a client the ability to post the video of an entire consultation with you online? And before you say, "Sure, why not?" remember that this video can be edited to take things out of context or to make it appear that you said things that you did not say. A client could also compromise his or her legal matter by failing to secure a video taken in the lawyers office.

Yes, I am often a tech early adopter, but I think many law firms will join the list of businesses that ban Google Glass–when it is released to the public. A website, Stop the Cyborgs, already has created free, downloadable ban signs like the image you see above and will sell you printed stickers, t-shirts and posters. Thanks to lawyer Glen Gilmore for his tweet on his @SocialMediaLaw1 with some of the links.

 

The September/October 2013 issue of Law Practice Magazine is out. it contains my column on practice management advice, The Law Firm Convenience Store. The title may offend some lawyers who will not like being compared to retail establishments. But, in an increasingly competitive environment, making your services more convenient for clients and potential clients is really a no-brainer. Who would you choose to do business with? One who is convenient or one who makes it difficult to work with? Flexible office hours, satellite locations and more online delivery of services may be some ideas to consider.

But trust me- this is one topic not to be ignored. How frustrated do you become sitting in a doctor's office waiting room well after the time for your scheduled appointment? What policies have you implemented to make sure you don't give your clients the same feeling? Yes, the project in front of you may just need five more minutes of work to complete. But if your client has already been waiting for you five minutes, your time is up!

Finance is the theme of the September/October 2013 issue of Law Practice Magazine. The cover story, Your Financial Dashboard, is well worth your time, especially if you have never heard of a KPI. Also highly recommended are Erik Mazzone's Top 10 Reasons Not to Bother With a Law Firm App, Heidi Alexander's How to Get Paid, Laura Calloway's Simple Steps: How to Go Paperless and Churn That Bill, Baby! Overbilling in Law Firms By Sharon D. Nelson and John W. Simek.

Top 30 BadgeEarlier this year this website listed my blog as one of their Top 30 Law Blogs of 2013. I failed to mention it here at the time, but I'm always greatly appreciative of any recognition of my blogging. I happened to visit the website again recently and realized that I should mention it, not so much for repeating the accolades, but because this is a really nice collection of law blogs. Check them out if you are looking for some new places to visit on the web or something of value to add to your newsreader.

Jared Correia had a nice piece on AttorneyatWork.com today entitled Fee Tale: This Is Not Your Father’s Engagement Agreement in which he outlines some "upgrades" to attorney-client fee agreements that perhaps have not be reviewed or refreshed for a number of years. He links to some other well-written articles and of course, as Jared often does, links to a few irreverent references that might make you laugh. Nice work, Jared. And if your law firm had been using the same old engagement agree for the last ten yuears, maybe you should read Jared's work and share the link to the article with your firm's management committee.

Doing business in today's world is about innovation and improving efficiency. Sometimes this is a challenge for law firms as they are steeped in precedent, history and tradition. But Jordan Furlong has given us some other reasons in his post "Why lawyers don’t innovate." Hard work and talent will, hopefully, continue to be rewarded. But innovation in the legal profession may also determine real success in the future. I think Jordan has some valuable insights and he also draws liberally from a great article by Atul Gawande, a medical professional with much to teach the legal profession.

Hopefully after reading this, the next time you are encountering challenges while trying to persuade any group, lawyers or otherwise, to take innovative action, you will think of a rural birth-delivery nurse in India and smile broadly rather than showing frustration.

No one thinks it is unusual or wrong for a professional copy editor to write copy for a law firm's website. But blogging has always been a more personal endeavor. Some lawyers who are time-challenged or whose writing skills are better for briefs than blog posts have turned to "ghost bloggers" and now some lawyer blogging services will include the blog content seemingly written by the lawyer for a fee. So does that practice mean a lawyer is posting "misleading" advertising content that violates a lawyer's ethical responsibilities?

Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog, who writes the Real Lawyers Have Blogs blog joins Sharon Nelson and me for a lively discussion on the ethics of ghost blogging on our August 2013 edition of the Digital Edge podcast Lawyers Swarm to Ghost Blogging, But is it Ethical? If you know Kevin, you know that he is not shy about sharing his opinions and he thinks the ethics of ghost blogging are very questionable. But Kevin also explores how this shortcut practice also robs the lawyer-blogger of the true value of blogging– building relationships online and establishing the lawyer's individual expertise and personality.

I hope you will find this Digital Edge podcast on the Legal Talk Network enjoyable and informative.