Today I want to write a little bit about Google. This is inspired by David Carr's article in the New York Times Google Seduces with Utility, where he discusses his ever-growing relationship with Google. Check out his article. I find myself in the same place. Every few months I learn of a new Google application. Sometimes I check them out immediately. Sometimes it takes a while. But more and more I rely on Google for many online services.

Why do i rely the corporate behemoth Google so much? Simply put, the services are generally free, they often interact automatically with other Google services and they just work. They are almost always extremely easy to set up and use. So, yes, I haven't used MapQuest in months because Google Maps is so handy. My personal e-mail is a Gmail account. Another Gmail account manages the listservs I have joined. I understand the power of a "true" RSS reader, but I get behind on reading there, where with iGoogle I can scan dozens ofrecent blog posts and other feeds in a few seconds. When several of us are co-writing an article, we now just force the uninitated to sign up with Google Docs. No more coordinating different versions of an article in e-mail attachments. While I am well aware of the other search engines, why bother when Google almost always gives me the result I seek in the first ten results?

I appreciate the concern some have about the huge power the Google can have by analyzing search data. But who could argue that something like Google Flu Trends is a bad thing? Yes, I fear that I sound like I have drank the Google Kool-Aid.

For example, how about some Google holiday ideas? How about a nice inter-generational exercise where you sit the grandparents (or parents) with the youngsters in front of the computer and do some searching in Google's new Life Magazine photo archive? That should provoke some "i remember when" conversations. Here's a story on the Life collection. Or, again referencing Mr. Carr's article (and a certain TV commercial series) send a webcam off to a distant relative with a high speed connection and use Google Video to share your holiday times with them. I think many of you will try this free form of video conferencing soon. Yes. that Kool-Aid is mighty tasty for now.

Law Practice Today, a monthly e-zine published by the ABA Law Practice Management Section, has recently undergone a makeover and its November 2008 issue is really great.

But before I discuss it further, let me disclose my bias. Somehow some of my so-called friends and colleagues talked me into serving as Associate Editor of Law Practice Today. Many of us thought it needed changes and some new energy injected. Well, somehow speaking about that was taken as a willingness to volunteer time. Luckily, they also recruited Wendy Werner of Werner Associates to serve as Editor-in-Chief (and adult supervision generally.) We've also got some great new volunteers on the editorial board as well as some seasoned talent.

So let's talk what is great about the November 2008 issue of LPT. You should  read this great free publication and you should subscribe now so you don't miss a future issue. Our feature stories focus on practicing law in difficult economic times. (I won't link to all of them. Just go here.) David Maister writes about keeping an optimistic outlook in tough times. Dennis Kennedy hosts a great discussion, What Should You Do Now? A Roundtable Discussion on Law Practice in a Time of Great Economic Turmoil.  Participants include Tom Collins, Jordan Furlong, Patrick Lamb, Bruce MacEwen, Patrick McKenna, Edward Poll, Allison C. Shields and Merrilyn Astin Tarlton. This is quite a diverse and talented team. In addition, Deborah E. Gillis writes In a Tough Economy, the Importance of Effective Client Screening. I couldn't agree more.

But that's just the start. We have three new columns in LPT. I helped coordinate the intial Your Practice Management Advisor column, which will be a joint effort of the state bar and law society practice management advisors. Our first effort covers a wide range of territory with FAQs from the Practice Management Advisors. The other two new columns are Flying Solo by K. William Gibson and The Legal Mac by Ben Stevens. Bill Gibson is a former chair of the ABA Law Practice Management Section and edited the last edition of the book Flying Solo. Ben Stevens publishes The Mac Lawyer blog and spoke to large groups of interested lawyers at last year's ABA TECHSHOW.

Law Practice Today now hosts the Digital Edge podcast and this month Sharon Nelson and I interview Craig Ball for his take on several Electronic Discovery issues. Those of you who know Craig's work know thaty he will not lack opinions or be shy in expressing them.

There are also columns on marketing, career planning and billing techniques. So stop by this month's Law Practice Today and allow some time to review all of this great content. But it is important for you to subscribe when you are there, so that you don't miss future editions. A subscription means you get an e-mail notification when each issue is published near the middle of each month.

Carolyn Elefant has the best-known blog on starting a law practice at My Shingle. She has posted an interesting project where she uses mind-mapping software to create a diagram outlining the thoughts and processes of starting a law firm. It is likely that you will want to click on the logo in the bottom right hand corner of the diagram to launch it full-size in a new window.  If you haven't used this type of outline before, you can click on the + signs to expand and view the steps or thoughts. It is certainly an interesting approach which will appeal to the visually-oriented learner.

My friend, Reid Trautz, has published his 2008 Holiday Gift Guide for Lawyers. Lots of fun and interesting items are included there. This is a good opportunity for the lawyer to drop electronic hints to family members. A November e-mail with "Oh, I was just surfing the Internet and found this cool gadget. Here's the link. Isn't that interesting?" doesn't even really sound like a hint, does it? In mid-December, Sharon Nelson and I will let you hear our "Tech Toys for the Holidays" Digital Edge podcast. There will not be much overlap with Reid's holiday list.

Metadata still remains a huge and often misunderstood topic. Since my article Metadata – What Is It and What Are My Ethical Duties? was published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal on November 8, 2008, I've already had several people contact me and say "Wow, I didn't know anything at all about that. Thanks." When you write something for publication, you want everyone to read it. But this is something that I believe everyone needs to read and understand, whether you agree with my point of view or not. The legal ethics piece may be particular to lawyers, but everyone needs to know about metadata. Now that the article is online, take a moment to e-mail this link to lawyers you think might not be aware of the legal ethics issues relating to metadata.

Update: Of course, as soon as my article went to press covering every single legal ethics opinion about metadata, a new one had to emerge. You may want to read the article first before reading the following paragraphs.

On October 21, 2008, the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar released Maine Ethics Opinion #196. This opinion arrives at two conclusions:

  1. Without authorization from a court, it is ethically impermissible for an attorney to seek to uncover metadata, embedded in an electronic document received from counsel for another party, in an effort to detect confidential information that should be reasonably known not to have been intentionally communicated.
  2. A sending attorney has an ethical duty to use reasonable care when transmitting an electronic document to prevent the disclosure of metadata containing confidential information. 

Point 2 is now largely a consenus opinion of the jurisdictions that have opined on the issue. It is certainly "good law" and good practice. Point 1 adopts the theory of several jurisdictions that lawyers are prohibited by our ethics rules from looking at certain types of data that everyone else can freely view. At least the authors insert an intent element so that it is clear some examining of metadata is OK, like looking at the formulas in a spreadsheet to make sure they are accurate. I do not disagree with the lofty sentiments and high goals, but question the practicality of this view.

Authors of the more recent ethics opinions have the benefit of being able to review the prior work that well frames the issues. As I noted in my article, Colorado in Formal Opinion 119 adopts the view that there is nothing wrong with looking at metadata. But if you stumble across confidential information, you must immediately notify opposing counsel so that you can agree how to handle it or either of you can go to court for guidance or relief. I note this because the Maine opinion specifically criticizes this approach as "a complex and perhaps impractical set of requirements for the parties," while hinting that one would have to be a computer genius to fully understand metadata anyway.

Opinions still differ about legal ethics and metadata. Links to all of the ethics opinions that are publicly available online appear at the end of my article.

A blog post from the Greatest American Lawyer blog made me chuckle and it might make you think. The webinar topic was law firm profitability and GAL wanted to talk about alternatives to hourly billing. What he didn't anticipate was his unease in discussing hourly billing at all. Read his interesting post.

One of the interesting things about discussing hourly billing is how defensive some people can be regarding their status quo. One lawyer asked him how could it be ethical to have system that returned more than the lawyer's hourly rate. Think about that. That same lawyer likely wouldn't question a lawyer who had so much business that he decided to raise his hourly rate by 25%. But a system disclosed to and agreed with the client that returned 125% for an hour over what the client who opted to pay the lawyer on an hourly basis paid, well, there has got to be some ethical problem there, right? Obviously, I don't think so.

This summer, the American Bar Association published Winning Alternatives to the Billable Hour 3rd Edition by Mark Robertson and Jim Calloway. I don't know if it was modesty or oversight that kept me from mentioning it here on my blog before. I actually did think of mentioning it when I covered several other law practice management books this summer. In doing the third edition of the book we did several case studies, interviewing lawyers who had actually put alternative billing into practice. In hindsight, I am not sure how we left out GAL, but I am glad he provided us with this abbreviated case study on his blog.

Who are the most important people in your practice? Well, if you answered anyone besides clients, go over and sit in the corner and contemplate the error of your ways. In last month's Oklahoma Bar Journal, my column was An Increased Focus on Improving Client Satisfaction Is Your Formula for Success. In uncertain times, it is a certainty that keeping your clients happy should be your number one goal.

If any of you want to download our "suitable for printing and framing" Ten Commandments of Good Client Relationships after reading this article, feel free. Hang it in the office breakroom or lobby…… or maybe in the line of sight of the lawyer who most needs to be reminded of these principles daily.

Jim Calloway and Sharon Nelson discuss this important topic and the ethical implications of EDD outsourcing in the October Edition of their Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology podcast. Take a few minutes to listen to their comments on Outsourcing EDD Review Abroad in this 12th edition of The Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology.

This week's Website of the Week is the collection of educational video clips from LawProse. These contain some great two- or three-minute lessons on legal writing. In particular, I suggest you view the interviews with U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas. You will find both videos thought-provoking. Scroll down to the archives for a lot of additional material. (I didn't see the button to make the video display full-screen, so you can use right click and Zoom to do that.)

This site was suggested by William Bernhardt in a recent OBA seminar on improving your legal writing skills. Bernhardt is New York Times-bestselling author of over twenty mystery-thrillers that have sold more than ten million copies worldwide. He is also a member of the Oklahoma Bar Association. As someone who has spent a good deal of time following the cases and adventures of fictional Oklahoma lawyer Ben Kincaid, it was great to get some writing tips from his creator.

Allocatur is a site that I encourage all of my readers to visit. Liz Harris is a "cost lawyer" based in Melbourne, Australia. I'll let you visit her site's About page to learn what a cost lawyer in Australia does. She has a very interesting point of view. (Of course, maybe that's just because I agreed with all of her recent posts.) Her blog covers "news, thoughts and suggestions on lawyer /client relationships, legal costs, value billing, the 6 minute unit and meeting client expectations." Given our current global financial situation, most lawyers can use another source discussing lawyer billing and value to the client. If you've never visited this site before, you will find lots of her archives to review. Visit Allocatur by Liz Harris. American readers will get an international point of view. I think all of you will be glad you did.