Reinventing Professionals

I was in London over Thanksgiving to speak at the 2011 BigHand User Conference and had the privilege of meeting with Richard Susskind, author of The End of Lawyers?, at the historic St. Pancras Renaissance hotel. We talked about upcoming trends and he highlighted that “the only trend that matters for 2012 is the more for less challenge,” in which lawyers will continue to try to find ways to deliver the highest quality service at the lowest possible cost. Susskind noted that the pressure on in-house legal teams is enormous and they will be asking law firms to consider new efficiencies in the coming year. Ultimately, he said, 2012 will not be about pricing differently, but about working differently (e.g., outsourcing, offshoring, subcontracting, etc). “I think [2012] is going to be the last year where people will get away with trying to meet a client’s demands by offering alternative fee arrangements; after that it is working differently.” 

I have been a fan of Lawline.com and its CEO, David Schnurman, for many years. He is always striving to build a better product by cultivating a culture that imbues it with passion. This ode to his commitment made me smile, but also prompts the viewer to ask how (if) your employees would pay tribute in the same way.

Recently, productivity software maker, RocketMatter, introduced a free e-book called: The Law Firm of Tomorrow! – Part One: Marketing 2.0 and Legal Tech Savviness (click on the link to download), which provides – Guidance for creating a Facebook marketing strategy. Techniques for optimizing your email blasts and Twitter usage. Strategies for employing cloud computing to reduce both cost and risk. Ways to identify security issues to be aware of for mobile computing. In reinventing your practice, business or profile, what type of information can you provide in an e-book format to help your audience? RocketMatter will be hosting a free webinar – Reinventing your Law Practice in the Recovery (click on the link to register) – on July 28th from 12-1pm ET during which I will provide a few suggestions for sparking some of these ideas. I had the opportunity to interview RocketMatter founder, Larry Port, a few years ago. Our discussion highlights many of the trends that have continued to develop and a number of techniques that have helped make the company successful in this environment.

I was in San Francisco this week speaking at UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law and stopped in to speak with Kurt Jensen, the President and CEO of Daegis, an e-discovery professional services company.

On the floor of LegalTech New York Day 2, I spoke with Dean Gonsowski, the Vice President of E-Discovery Services at Clearwell Systems about the most misunderstood theme at the conference, and Craig Carpenter, the Vice President and General Counsel of Recommind about predictive coding.

If you were sitting here at Avvo's Avvocating conference, you would see from the crowd of hundreds of practitioners that the answer is a resounding "yes." (Incredibly professional photo, which is just half of the

I spoke with Ray Zwiefelhofer, the new president of World Software Corporation, the maker of Worldox, a legal document management product.

I spoke with Chere Estrin, chairperson of the Board of Directors for The Organization of Legal Professionals, a non-profit organization established to provide e-discovery certification to attorneys, non-attorneys, vendors and technicians through education and collaboration. Estrin is also the editor of SUE magazine for women litigators and KNOW magazine for paralegals.

I spoke with Mark Britton, founder and CEO of Avvo.com, one of the leading online legal websites with 1.5 million unique visitors per month. Britton, a co-blogger on this site, and I discussed Avvo's history, its rapid growth, and the ways in which lawyers can benefit from its services.

Earlier this week, I attended an invitation-only breakfast hosted by David Cowen, the managing director of The Cowen Group, an executive search and market analysis firm focusing exclusively on litigation support and e-discovery. The event featured an esteemed panel of thought leaders in e-discovery sharing insider accounts of the early case assessment trend and strategies for conducting one successfully. The attendees and panelists hailed from corporate America, the AmLaw 200 and vendors, including Anacomp, Capital Legal Solutions, DataCert and Recommind, who co-sponsored the program.