Kudos to OCU's Legal Research Certificate program for its innovative first Cool Tools Café program.  I was familiar with many, but not all, of their cool tools. Descriptions of some of the cool tools are available at the link above. You may want to review these. These young law students will soon be young lawyers, using these cool tools in their practices.

Your ABA, the American Bar Association's e-newsletter summarized an article that Catherine Sanders Reach and I co-authored for GPSolo magazine and titled it Time management tips for social media. I do like their heading a lot – Technology Translators. If you are not aware of social media management tools, this should be worth your time. Our original GPSolo magazine article can be found here.

Well, it is the holiday season and with Black Friday quickly approaching, you will certainly want to listen to the 49th edition of the Digital Edge podcast, our annual Tech Toys for the Holidays Edition. Sharon Nelson and I have our usual assortment of the cool and practical high tech gifts, along with a few that are wild and wacky. (You would probably have to have settled a pretty big case this year to bid on the DeLorean Time Machine or justify buying a Robomower, but there are many low cost items featured.) The show notes provide links to all of the products mentioned.

As Sharon and I make our own holiday arrangements, we are gearing up to produce the 50th Edition of the Digital Edge podcast, Lawyers and Technology. Who knew? 

And while we are discussing online gift guides, our friend and colleague, Reid Trautz has just published his 2011 Holiday Gift Guide for Lawyers. Reid's guide is not limited to technology toys and this year even includes some new ideas in liquid refreshments. Cheers…. I mean Happy Holidays!

Earlier this year Google removed the "advanced search" link from its home page. The answer to the question "why did Google hide Google Advanced Search?" remains a bit of a mystery. Google home page simplicity taken one infuriating step too far remains my best answer. Where you can find Advanced Search is pretty easy. But understanding why this little change is significant is very important to lawyers and others who want to be Internet users who are, well ….. ADVANCED!

First of all, even though the link is gone, you can still access this service by clicking on the gear in the upper right hand corner of Google next to "Sign in." Advanced search is on the drop down menu. So really the only change is two clicks instead of one. And, if you do a Google search and the results you see displayed are not to your liking, you can still click on advanced search and have your initial search terms automatically pulled in. If you use advanced search frequently, you can even bookmark this page: http://www.google.com/advanced_search instead of www.google.com, if you do wish. (This link is not new. I referred to it in a blog post in December, 2008.)  I assume most readers knew this.

But if this is all news to you, then I might respectfully suggest you are not finding the information you are looking for as fast or accurately as you might be. In a discussion about this topic in the Google Web search forum, one poster said, "[l]imiting [searches] by file type, domain name, etc is absolutely essential for students to know." Lawyers, too! As I noted in that 2008 blog post, using the "site:" search filter is great to search a single domain.

The advanced search feature I use most often is the date filter. If I am searching for information about a product, I generally start by limiting the search to pages posted or updated within the last year.

If you are searching on a fairly obscure topic and find one good resource, then using the advanced search to find other pages that are similar to that page or link to that page can lead to other great resources.

In years past, a lawyer might respond to me initiating this type of discussion by saying, "I'm not really an advanced Internet researcher, more of a basic one." My response now would be the same as it was then: Look at your billing rate, you are an advanced Internet researcher!

Last week at the ABA/GPSolo National Solo & Small Firm Conference I sat in on some great CLE sessions, did a presentation with Colorado Bar's Reba Nance on Keeping Them Happy: Secrets of Client Satisfaction and was drafted for a non-singing bit part in the Oklahoma Bar Family Law Singers Ethics Musical The Perils of Pauline, which was presented at the Conference.

The folks from Attorney at Work asked me to do a brief essay on my five takeaways from the 2011 National Solo & Small Firm Conference and it was published today as a part of their Friday Five series. It contains some nice technology tips. So read it at this link.

The September/October issue of the ABA Law Practice Magazine covers virtual law practices. I was the guest editor for this issue of the magazine and wrote the story Moving to a Virtual Practice Model – Do You Have the Right Stuff? I won't recapitulate the entire article here, other than to say my conclusion is "it depends." But I have no doubt this business model will prove very attractive to some.

I appreciate all of those who contributed to this issue of the magazine. There is a lot of great content here from a lot of experts. The features include:

The Next Five Years – Predictions for the Future of eLawyering By Richard S. Granat and Marc Lauritsen

Watch Where You Set Your Virtual Foot – Advice on Dealing with Varying State Rules By Daniel J. Siegel

The Untethered Law Office – Tools and Tips for Getting It Done By Jay S. Fleischman

Using Online Service Providers – Where the Duty of Confidentiality Reigns By Kathryn A. Thompson (research counsel for ETHICSearch, a service of the American Bar Association Center for Professional Responsibility.)

Leading the Virtual Firm By Karen Mackay

Popular Cloud Computing Services for Lawyers: Practice Management Online By Stephanie L. Kimbro and Tom Mighell  (Stephanie's blog VirtualLawPractice.org is a great resources on this topic.)

And there is a related article: Marketing Alternative Fee Arrangements By Mark A. Robertson

There are other greeat columns and articles in this magazine. I hope it can serve as a resource for some of you interested in learning more about virtual law practices.

Setting up a lawyer's trust accounting procedures in Quickbooks is certainly doable. But if you are not an accounting whiz, you might be worried you missed something. There are other tools like GnuCash (free) or Microsoft Office Accounting 2006 or 2007. Earler this year, the Minnesota Bar Association announced the release of its Trust Accounting Guides that have previously only been available to Minnesota Bar lawyers. In the spirit of public service, all lawyers can now benefit from their step-by-step instructions contained in:

  • Keeping Client Trust Accounts with GnuCash 2.2.4;
  • Keeping Records for Client Trust Accounts Using Microsoft Office Accounting 2006 or 2007;
  • Using QuickBooks 6.0 for Lawyers’ Trust Accounting;
  • Trust Accounting with QuickBooks 2005 Professional;
  • Keeping Clients’ Trust Accounts with QuickBooks 2010 Professional

This blog post from the MSBA Practice Blog contains all of the details and a link to the download site. You do have to furnish an e-mail address so you can be notified of updates or changes. This is truly a great public service. So thanks to the MSBA!!

But that is not all! As noted in the blog post linked above, they are also giving away Minnesota Legal Ethics, a 400 page ebook treatise by William J. Wernz. You read correctly. They are giving it away for free for you to download. So let's all show the Minnesota State Bar Association our thanks by taking them up on their offer to download these great free resources.

As a comic noted, sometimes you have the right to remain silent, but not the ability. That happened to me today when I was quickly flipping through a catalog and came across the following product listing. Download Recognition stickies Again, I should probably just let it go, but I can't! They are selling sets of pre-printed sticky notes for the busy manager to use to give positive feedback to employees. You just sign and deliver, according to the ad. Let's face it. What employee doesn't get a boost out of getting a pre-printed sticky note from the boss saying "You Nailed it" or "You Rock"?

What makes these even more of a value is that they come in sets of four in a binder that has inside the cover several  reasons why you might "reward" someone with a sticky. If you are a negative person, it is probably good to have the handy reminders that you might award a sticky for "keeping focused" or "being persistent." But I hope this comes with a warning label to keep it hidden within the desk. If the boss is out, seeing the locked and loaded stickies combined with the reminder list of why a subordinate might deserve such a reward open on the desk of the boss might generate many Facebook postings, if not outright laughter.

There is a point here, which I hope is obvious. if you are so bad about giving your employees feedback that buying pre-printed stickies to give out kudos is tempting to you, that siutation probably merits some more time and consideration. Law offices are busy places and competency is just assumed. But people like to hear when they are doing a good job, even if a pre-printed sticky note doesn't seem like the right tool for most law offices.

But if you want to try passing out a few notes to employees for positive feedback, I do have an idea for you.

Pre-printed isn't always bad.

You can be a hero…….

…… if you pass out cards that have "Gift Card" preprinted on them!

“First they came for the book store owners, and I didn’t speak up because I didn’t own a book store and cheaper books sounded good. Then they went after the big music labels and I didn’t speak up because I never liked the Big Music industry anyway. But now they are coming after the legal profession and that is just wrong in so many ways. It is time to fight back.”

The paraphrasing of Martin Niemöller’s famous statement may strike many readers as a poor attempt at humor. But the recent news articles about Google focusing on the legal industry merit the attention of lawyers. Let’s face it. If you are in a contest, you would probably not want it to be against Microsoft or Google.

Forbes magazine carried the news this month that Google Ventures is part of a group pouring $18.5 million into Rocket Lawyer, which is claiming to be the “fastest growing online legal service.” This news was followed up by a Forbes column titled “Google Backing of DIY Legal Forms Will Force Lawyers To Lower Fees.”

Certainly Rocket Lawyer is not the only business seeking to profit from providing preparation of legal documents online. When the economic outlook for the legal profession is certainly not projected to be one of increasing profits, why are venture capitalists apparently so interested in the legal profession? To answer that question, I turned to Richard Granat. Granat is the lawyer behind DirectLaw, a firm that provides lawyers with the tools to set up virtual practices that deliver documents and legal services online. He is also a long-time member and current Co-Chair of the eLawyering Task Force of the ABA Law Practice Management Section.

Calloway: So what is the story behind such VC interest in the legal profession?

Granat: With Google Ventures funding both LawPivot and RocketLawyer™ and Kleiner Bell’s group investing $66,000,000 in LegalZoom combined with other evidence of interest that I have seen in the VC community, I see a “buzz” or “new paradigm” going around this community ( “the VC community”), that it is time to break the back of solos and small law firms by funding disruptive experiments that are designed to bring real change to the delivery of legal services, no matter what impact it has on the livelihoods of solos and small law firms.

Calloway:  I talk to a lot of lawyers who already say they are working longer hours for less money. I thought the VC money chased highly profitable and emerging ventures.

Granat:  The legal profession is just the next target of opportunity, no matter what the social cost. The VC funds don’t really care that what they are investing in may be violating existing unauthorized practice of law (UPL) laws, e.g. LegalZoom. They just see an opportunity to radically change the solo and small law firm legal industry sector at whatever costs, in order to create value for the enterprises they invest in and for themselves. Disruption means sucking the value from an industry sector in favor of the disrupter,  just as Apple sucked value from desk-top computing, and changed the music industry, Amazon permanently sucked value from the book retail industry, and Netflix changed the movie distribution industry.

Calloway: Disruption sounds very scary, as do the examples you cite. But haven’t we seen this before? Every lawyer I know has several stories of clients who had to pay thousands of dollars to fix the mess created when they tried to do something themselves or had some non-lawyer try to do it. These so-called simple matters are often not as simple as they may seem.

Granat:  I agree in part. It depends on the problem. Some consumers will settle for what I call a “good enough” result. So for example, if consumers buy a set of no-fault divorce forms and file their own divorce, and it is awarded, they get a result they can live with, because it is better than paying thousands of dollars in legal fees, which is often the other alternative.

On the other hand, the average consumer does know what they don’t know.  In this instance the uninformed party may not know what rights they are giving up to child support, spousal maintenance or property division. To cite another example, a will may look simple, but if one issue is dealt with incorrectly, the entire document might be invalid, or a subject to attack.

LegalZoom says that it has sold more than 1,000,000 wills, and Robert Shaprio, of O.J. fame, claims the ”Law is on Your Side”, whatever that means. But the reality is no one knows whether the content of those wills fits the circumstances of the testator and reflects the testator’s true intent. When the consumer learns that a mistake has been made, it is often too late.

Calloway: You mentioned UPL laws. Lawyers believe that UPL laws serve an important role in protecting the public when some of the most important issues of their lives are in play. When I was in private practice, there were many times I was consulted when someone was about to sign a terrible document, like a completely unfair divorce settlement agreement.  Are lawyers the only ones who see the danger to the public here?

Granat:  This is a complicated area. I don’t think that the general public would want a regulatory régime where anyone could represent another person in a court, without being licensed. The courts would not permit it any way.

On the other hand, drafting and preparing documents seems to be another matter. I think that one of the consequences of the release of legal information and legal forms from the law books, and onto to the Internet, is that a large majority of the American public now think they can do things on their own without the assistance of a lawyer.

I don’t think the legal profession has done a good job of marketing its true value and its social contribution in this area. While every state has a statute on its books that prohibits a non-lawyer from preparing a legal document, LegalZoom continues to do so with impunity. The top leadership of the American Bar Association, dominated as it is by larger law firms, has done nothing to promote the contribution and role that solos and small law firms play in our larger society. So if the top leadership of the organized bar doesn’t take a position on the matter, it makes it look like solos and small law firms – the target of these new disruptive ventures – are just out to protect their incomes, rather than protecting the public from real harm.

Calloway: I can sense already a reaction from some lawyers that we only are talking about high-volume, lower cost work that is not really that profitable in the first place. Some lawyers avoid this type of work and other lawyers do it as much for a public service and building good will as anything. The legal profession is currently very competitive. Lawyers know how to compete. So won't a little competition just make us better?

Granat:  I think that the economics of solo and small practice is undergoing a major transformation. Lawyers will still be able to demand high fees for complex, value-added work. For tasks where there is a large information component which can be manipulated by software, such as web-enabled document automation systems, lawyers will feel the effects of disintermediation, just as other industries have that have been transformed by the Internet.

Much higher volume work is the bread and butter of solo and small firm practice. If these services are pulled away from the law firm, and delivered by non-lawyer entities, it will completely destabilize the economic model upon which solos and small law firm practice is built. I think that the economics of small firm practice is beginning to change in a fundamental ways. $150-$250 an hour billing rates are not a guaranteed “right”. They are, or were, a response to market dynamics. The market for legal services is changing.

Calloway: Admittedly we both have personal objectives here. I’ve been advocating for some time that lawyers should have better document assembly solutions in place and your business is to help lawyers set up virtual law practices. But I’m sure you have some ideas about how solo and small firm lawyers should respond to this challenge.

Granat:  Lawyers have to learn how to work smarter. Last year, Marc Lauritsen Co-Chair of our eLawyering Task Force wrote a brilliant book, The Lawyer's Guide to Working Smarter with Knowledge Tools, on how lawyers can work smarter but it has not been widely read. It should be required reading by every solo and small firm practitioner. Further, to compete in today’s connected world, lawyers need to pick up the skills to market their services online and to deliver legal services online. If you are not online, you are nowhere.

Calloway: There are other resources readers can review. Jordan Furlong recently did a blog post on this topic called Here come the disruptors and you can get a flavor of Marc Lauritsen's book mentioned above by reading this article he wrote for Law Practice magazine.

Like the law enforcement slogan, lawyers protect and serve their clients. I have no doubt that centuries-old tradition will continue, even if some methods of delivery of legal services may change. The ramifications of the trends discussed above are yet to be seen.

I did not get to hear my friend, Judge Herbert M. Dixon, Jr., give the keynote address at the American Bar Association Annual Meeting session titled “‘Friend is Now a Verb: Judicial Ethics and the New Social Media,” which was sponsored by the ABA’s Judicial Division. Judge Dixon is a former ABA TECHSHOW Board member and is technology columnist for the ABA Judicial Division’s Judges Journal, ABA NOW had some good coverage of Judge Dixon's remarks and Connie Crosby posted her extensive notes and the video the judge showed the audience. The panel discussion following the keynote sounds like it was lively.

Judge Dixon warned the judges about the trouble they could face by friending lawyers on Facebook or using social media to obtain information about witnesses or litigants. He recounted several well-documented horror stories. I definitely think his warnings are well-placed. I also think some of these issues are very challenging.

I've considered some of these issues. Some of them seem to be more about how the tools are used rather than the tool itself. I understand that it is a clear and simple rule, and in many cases appropriate, to say a judge shouldn't "friend" those lawyers who practice in his/her court on Facebook. But should it be a hard and fast rule? I seem to recall a judge who invited all lawyers in a smaller jurisdiction to "friend" him so he, operating without staff support, could place dockets and updates there. That would certainly have been appropriate on a court website, so does it become wrong if done via Facebook? Well, sure there is more to Facebook than that. Facebook can allow lawyers to send hidden direct messages to the judge. But that is sort of like e-mail, isn't it? Or, to be silly, sort of like having a listed telephone number in the directory and answering the phone when it rings.

I get the problem. If the judge is Facebook friends with one lawyer trying a case in the court and not the other, it looks bad. It might even be a violation of judicial ethics. (Deciding that is way outside of my pay grade.) But didn't that exist in the pre-Facebook era, too? Judges go to the same churches with lawyers and often belong to the same clubs. They may cheer for the same high school football team. Some big city lawyers may not appreciate the almost impossible to escape web of relationships in smaller, rural communities.

A recent news item noted that Missouri had passed a law limiting the ability of teachers to "friend" their minor students on Facebook. That doesn't seem unreasonable to many, particularly with the anecdotal accounts of bad teachers using FB as an avenue for exploitation and abuse. And yet, you have to wonder whether a teacher e-mailing or texting a student should be deemed per se wrong. And let's not forget that a lot of text messages are things like "I'm running late" or "Are you here?" Is texting wrong but calling voice on the cell phone OK? Personally, if teachers are taking a small group of students on a field trip in another state, having all of their cell phone numbers seems like a wise precaution rather than a wrongful act.

Judge Dixon knows me fairly well and he knows I am not taking issue with him. But I guess the larger point to me is that the Internet and the mobile web allows us to be directly connected in all sorts of personal ways and I think as a society we are still grappling with the implications of that. I would truly hate for some judge to be in trouble because he Facebook friended a high school chum for the class reunion who was a lawyer who never appeared in his court and they both forgot about it months later when the lawyer did unexpectedly appear in his court for the first time. We have agreed as a society that some guilty should go free as the price for a system where innocents are hopefully not imprisoned. So maybe that means blocking thousands of positive student-teacher interactions in the name of blocking a predator.

I don't mean to suggest I have the answer for I certainly do not. I would always err on the side of protecting children. And yet, you can go back to the days of law school as you read Connie's notes and it will not take long before you say "But wait, what about this particular fact situation?" So it is with rules and exceptions and the law.

I'm sorry I missed seeing Judge Dixon at ABA Annual Meeting as we often run into each other there. So maybe blogging about his keynote serves a similar purpose even though some would say I shouldn't friend him on Facebook– and, of course, I'm not even licensed to appear in his court.