pm blog

Craig Bayer, Law Office Technology knows the feeling.  Today he offers a few tips and simple downloads to help.

He’s in a pretty good mood with LSU winning last night, personally I’m waiting for:

Remember Nick Saben ??

Craig Bayer of Law Office Technology takes a look at
Lexis® Back Office Powered by PCLaw and their partnership
with ADP for in-house payroll.

On-Demand Publishing, simplify the process.

A common thread passed along the hollows of many a lawyer, the
art of getting published. Not just having articles or opinions printed as copy but the next level of content distribution.

Whether its a book, CD/DVD or video planning an execution can take many twist and turns. Traditionally you would go through a publishing house or as some of today’s entrepreneurs start by contacting someone like us (EZ Duplication) create CDs and market them using their current web site or link(s) to others.

The process has take a aggressive stance with the growth of two leading services.

LuLu.com confines your distribution sales through their site.

Createspace.com, who’s Parent company Amazon.com gives you direct access too that worldwide client base. Filling the second most important ingredient potential sales.

On Demand publishing. Upload your text. Create your packaging
an price levels. Simple, your on your way.

Once you go VoIP you’ll (probably) never go back … at least that’s what companies like Skype and Vonage hope. A mere 5 years after a gaggle of AT&T wanna-be’s started turning idle bandwidth into gold by promoting it’s use to transmit voice signals, the voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) train may have arrived at the station for conservative businesses such as law firms. Take a look at this piece for instance: Legal Technology - When to Go VoIP? The implication is that VoIP can be deployed in a business environment, but ought to be used via conventional and familiar, if reliable, sources such as Ma Bell (or what’s left of her). The article may signal once and for all as to whether VoIP can be employed without sacrificing the advantages of a conventional phone system, but it begs the question of whether you’re still getting a bang for your buck when the service is delivered from the same people who gouged you raw in the first place — your friendly telephone monopoly. My answer? A simple ‘no.’ No, you’re not going to get true VoIP value from AT&T that you could if you were to get the service from an AT&T competitor. Why? Because AT&T offering VoIP is like GM offering to sell you a Kia. It should take about 3 seconds for them to try to upsell you to a Cadillac … or in this case a super-expensive PBX system with about two dozen features that you don’t need, never heard of, couldn’t care less about, and without which you’d be much better off. But I guess you can’t blame the phone companies for using the same coercive, hard-sell tactics that have worked for them in the past. Hey, if it ain’t broke …

Watch your stock portfolio…. Lou Lupin Executive VP and General Counsel of mobile technology giant Qualcomm resigned Monday. Between an import ban on certain handsets and the company’s inability to enforce its patents in critical circumstances, this could signal a death march by a known industry leader…. more….

Bonus Feature: the Carturner (because backing out of your driveway can be a killer)

With the rise in accidents in our own driveways, killing at least 100 children over 13 annually every year, inventor/entrepreneur Bill Schwenker proposes that we do away with driveways altogether in favor of an automobile-sized turntable? Guess it beats buying a new driveway. Or maybe people could just learn to be you know, careful …

BMW Not Included

Are lawyers and law firms as far behind the Web 2.0 curve as I tend to think? This nugget from a recent WSJ article entitled Social Studies implies that they have good company if they are … To summarize the article … blogs, wikis and RSS … have begun to gain traction inside companies.

Blogs are probably the best known, thanks in part to their popularity and the handful of executives who use them at Procter & Gamble and Northwestern Mutual Life among others as a way for rank-and-file employees to discuss industry trends, bring team members up to speed, or vent about changes within the company.

Wikis aren’t as familiar as blogs, but they may be even better suited for business use. They’re versatile tools for doing almost any sort of collaboration (as Wikipedia, has done.) At Disney’s Pixar for instance, wiki technology is being used to help coordinate new computerized animation tools for an upcoming film.

Finally, RSS (for Really Simple Syndication) knits together all the material created on blogs and in wikis and delivers it in easy-to-find fashion. RSS lets employees keep up to date on the latest blog post or change in the project-team wiki. It also can alert users to changes in business-critical information like an entry in a spreadsheet or even the computerized output from production equipment, such as error messages from semiconductor machinery.

Seems like we attorneys ought to be able to find a gaggle of uses for these technologies, no? Not to mention the fact that lawyers were really the first profession to take to blogs in the first place … even if it did take 3 years for them to become so mainstream that most small firms and solo’s either have, or plan to start, a blog nowadays. Of course, the quality of content on such vehicles is another story …

“I’ve always supported Avvo”

In one of her most recent posts, Bar Association Enters the 21st Century, Carolyn ‘I supported Avvo all along’ Elefant takes a breathtaking intuitive leap, proclaiming that (hold onto your hats) lawyers may be slightly behind the curve when it comes to technology. No, it’s true. She’s out there. Here’s how Carolyn put it
Lawyers have been using the Internet for a decade, and even the most unsophisticated consumers have had Internet access at home for at least five years. … a directory that would enable consumers to find lawyers online should have seemed like a logical project for bar associations — which purport to serve the public by helping increase access to law. The bars did little to provide lawyers with ways to list themselves online and, consequently Avvo stepped in to fill this void

Powerful stuff. Sadly however Carolyn has it all wrong.

By not putting together a decent referral system on the web (ed. note: Carolyn’s post says that the first such bar association system may be online now) Bar Associations have not dropped the ball or missed an opportunity to serve, any more than Avvo has stepped into their inadvertent breach. On the contrary, what we are watching right now is the unraveling of one of the last monopolies baked into American law — the Bar Association. Let there be no doubt then: Bar Associations do indeed exist to serve … themselves. And like every bureaucracy since the invention of bureaucracy (thank you Emile Durkheim) bar associations large and small perpetuate themselves by keeping information about, and communication between, members to a minimum. It’s that simple. If lawyers can’t find each other they can’t get together and cause trouble. Divide and conquer - as far as strategies go, it’s an oldie but a goodie.

Remember, ego administer proinde ego sum. I administrate, therefore I am. Take away the Bar Association’s power to control information and regulate free assembly, and you take away its power … period. No bureaucracy ever let that happen voluntarily. No, what we are seeing is that the nation’s Bar Associations held on to their role as the sole arbiters of right and wrong, keepers of the sacred flame, for as long as they could.

And now that their monopoly is looking shoddy and dated, will this old, tired, dog learn new tricks? Come on … what do you think?