Congratulations to law firm Harrison Pensa in London, Ontario who have just relaunched their website. While launching a new site is not necessarily newsworthy (well, unless you are a member of the firm itself), in this case HP have used some fresh thinking which makes this redesigned site stand out.

A few features of the site:

• the look of the site is bold, personable, and still professional
• rather than stock photos, they feature their own lawyers prominently
• lawyer bios include links to their lawyers on social media sites (notably LinkedIn) and also allow for readers to share the bios across the web with a social media "share" button
• they have three blogs on the site (HP Business, HP Community, and Students), again with share-ability
• they are one of the few law firms taking advantage of the popular software WordPress.

Why is it interesting that they are using WordPress? WordPress is a free, Open Source platform that has become widely adopted around the world both for blogs and for websites as an easy-to-use content management system (CMS). According to Matt Mullenweg (WordPress originator) last August in his "State of the Word" report, WordPress is running on 15.5% of all websites, and accounts for over 54% of CMS marketshare. 22% of domains registered in the U.S. are running WordPress. That is a huge adoption rate, and yet law firms have a tendency to look for something other than this obvious solution. So, kudos to HP for joining the "cool kids" in using WordPress. It makes sense to use something that is widely known, and has a community around it for support.

HP are also tying the launch of their new website in with a campaign to raise funds for the London Food Bank. For every person who "likes" their Facebook community page, they will be donating a pound of food to the food bank. Kudos on this idea to give back!

For a more in-depth discussion of why the Harrison Pensa website is significant, see also Jordan Furlong's post on the Stem Law Firm Web Strategy blog from February 1st.

After a 6 week break the Members of Parliament return to Ottawa today starting at 11 am ET. The Projected Order of Business mentions resumption of the debate over Bill C-25, Pooled Registered Pension Plans Act. CBC's Kady O'Malley has her take on today's proceedings over on the CBC website.

We are expecting a new Federal budget in the next few weeks. And according to CBC News Now, other major legislation that will be dealt with this session includes immigration, financial services review, copyright reform (Bill C-11), the omnibus crime bill (Bill C-10) and doing away with the long gun registry (Bill C-19).

Coverage is currently available from the CBC Politics page. You can also see Kady O'Malley's live coverage via Twitter from the Hill Ticker.

The Senate returns tomorrow.

On Friday I had the pleasure of speaking to an audience of lawyers at The Commons Institute's eCommerce and the Practice of Law conference in Toronto. I was given the large topic of using social media in a legal practice.

Below are the slides I started with in the discussion, but the real meat of it was the many excellent questions that were put to me by the group. I hope to blog more about those questions, either here or over on my personal blog (will let you know!). In the meantime, I hope these slides are helpful.

Like Darryl Mountain in today's Slaw.ca column, I have been thinking about law school lately. Or rather, I have been reminded about past thoughts on this topic. Whether law school should be changed or not is a current hot topic in the U.S. In addition to the New York Times article that Darryl points to, The National Law Journal has also just published the article What is Law School For, Anyway? by Karen Sloan about law schools not keeping up with what is needed in the profession.

One thing I believe the U.S. law school system has gotten right, however, has been allowing for parttime studies leading up to a law degree. It has allowed law degrees to be more available to students of a wider range of backgrounds, and allowed some to obtain the law degree to support work and previous education for other purposes besides practising or teaching the law.

It has long irked me that Canadian law schools are full-time study only (somebody please correct me if I am wrong). In the U.S., because law school is available on a parttime basis, roughly half of law librarians have both a law and a librarian degree (this is a guesstimate on my part, based on past discussions). In Canada the number is much smaller. I would be surprised if we could find more than 20 people across the country with both degrees.

Typically those with dual degrees have completed the law degree first, and then looked for alternatives to practice, thereafter seeking out library school. There are a few who have taken the dual degree in a program for that purpose. I am aware of dual degree programs at Dalhousie University and the University of Toronto; again, I would be interested if there are other dual degree programs in Canada. Even more rare, the odd librarian has gone back to school for law. But typically those people go into practice.

For a Canadian law librarian who would like to pursue legal studies, it means stopping work for 3 years, not only paying for law school but also potentially giving up an income for those years. It is not something that most would be willing to do. As a result, we have few with dual degrees.

Demand for law librarians in Canada, however, rises over time. Many law schools across the country, for example, require the dual degree for their library reference and management staff. Those with dual degrees are also desirable in some law firms for research lawyer and knowledge management positions. Supply is not up to the demand, so as a result those from outside Canada are found to fill the positions. This in itself is not a problem for individual positions, but what happens when we get to the point where most senior positions at our Canadian law school libraries are not staffed by Canadians? How does that affect service, instruction for law students, and the general philosophy of law school libraries?

Yes, you are correct if you pick this up as a personal rant. I have long felt that, had law school been available on a parttime basis in Canada as it is for my colleagues in the U.S., I would have gradually worked toward and completed a law degree to supplement my three other university degrees. I completed my library degree on a parttime basis while working fulltime in a law firm library. Starting a law degree 18 years ago would have been of great interest to me. I think about how different my career would have been. But there is no way I could have afforded to put my work life aside to complete a law degree fulltime.

If there is demand for the dual degrees, why is no one in the Canadian system doing anything to facilitate this? Why do law school libraries not hire those with library degrees who are willing to pursue a law degree while working? Is there another option?

It's that time of year when we hear about new electronic products on the horizon and things we could/should be doing with them: the tech show season.

Tomorrow the big Consumer Electronics Show starts in Las Vegas and runs until January 13. I'm always surprised at how many people in my online social network travel to this show each year. I shouldn't be, I suppose, since it is the premier event for consumer electronics. To follow the action from afar (as I will) the hashtag on Twitter is #CES. You can also do as many others do, and follow Robert Scoble through the action. This year much of his coverage is on Google Plus. If you want to read even more, Scoble encourages us to check out his four Twitter lists for additional sources:

1. https://twitter.com/#!/Scobleizer/tech-news-brands This is the most complete list of tech news sources. 495 brands from Techcrunch to the BBC.

2. https://twitter.com/#!/Scobleizer/tech-news-people The journalists who make tech and media news. Mostly pros, but a few bloggers too who do great work. 500 of them.

3. https://twitter.com/#!/Scobleizer/tech-pundits Tech Media Pundits: the folks who make tech news interesting. 499 of them.

4. https://twitter.com/#!/Scobleizer/most-influential-in-tech These are the most influential people in the tech industry. 276 of them. Always worth watching (my favorite feed for Flipboard).

Source: Four Twitter lists you will want to follow at CES (Robert Scoble, Google Plus, January 7, 2012)

The legal world is already buzzing about the American Bar Association's ABA TECHSHOW 2012, March 29-31 in Chicago. The schedule has now been posted and registration is open. Early bird registration is available until February 17. The discussion is already active on Twitter using the hashtag #ABATECHSHOW.

In Montreal the LegalIT conference is slated as a one-day event on April 2, 2012. The organizers–members of the Young Bar Association of Montreal–are in the process of putting the program together. This event is always a highlight and worth checking out.

We are also waiting to hear details about LawTechCamp (held for the first time last May in Toronto) and the Pacific Law Technology Conference, usually held in Vancouver each October.

Have I missed any? What is your favourite tech event?

Last May I attended a talk by Ron Deibert, Director of Citizen Lab, part of the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, at the annual Mesh Conference in Toronto. He talked about cyber crime having become one of the world's largest growth sectors, with savvy young coders from poorer nations leading the way. Cyber crime, he explained, takes advantage of:

• mobile networking and reliance on the web for our computing
• lack of controls (i.e. regulation and legislation) internationally
• proper security practices and policies not yet in place

Deibert has written a report for GISWatch (Global Information Society Watch) entitled Toward a Cyber Security Strategy for Global Civil Society? (December 2011) in which he explains the forces affecting cyberspace:

• "The internet’s de facto and distributed regime of governance – largely informal and driven up to now by decisions of like-minded engineers – has come under massive stress as a function of the internet’s continuing rapid growth."
• "…there has been a vast growth in the developing world, as millions of new digital natives come online. With these new digital natives come new values and interests that in turn are affecting internet governance, as governments like China, Russia and India exercise their influence."
• Television, telephony and radio have been integrated into what we know as cyberspace to make one big communications system. "This paradigm shift has upset the principles, norms and rules of what used to be just the “internet”, with implications for freedom of speech and access to information."
• Transnational corporations are acting as gatekeepers. "Market considerations can easily outweigh privacy and other rights concerns, and have already made largely irrelevant so-called 'end-to-end' principles that once ensured network neutrality."
• "…the private sector is being pressured, compelled, and even incentivised to 'police the internet' by governments looking to download their growing cyberspace controls." He points to the proposed "Omnibus Crime Bill" (Bill C-10, Safe Streets and Communities Act) in Canada as an example of a government requiring ISPs and telecommunications companies to "retain user data, process the data in ways that make it amenable to law enforcement and intelligence, and then share that data with law enforcement representatives – all without judicial oversight."

He states that "the securitisation of cyberspace – a transformation of the domain into a matter of national security – is perhaps the most important factor shaping the global communications ecosystem today." Cyberspace is now affecting national security, and has brought with it a whole new set of products, services and policy around cyber securitisation.

He says it is also affecting Internet censorship, and this will become an increasing threat to civic networks that are interested in open data. The threats are real, he insists, so if civic networks want to see their interests maintained on the Internet, they must get involved in helping to find "grassroots" solutions to the Internet's security problems before governments dominate with their interests only:

Civic networks need to be at the forefront of security solutions that preserve cyberspace as an open commons of information, protect privacy by design, and shore up access to information and freedom of speech, while at the same time address the growing vulnerabilities that have produced a massive explosion in cyber crime and security breaches.

He states that civic networks–like large corporations–are transnational in scope, and are therefore well placed to bring public pressure to bear on the private sector. He also explains:

Part of the civic strategy must also include a serious engagement with law enforcement – another traditional anathema for civil society. Law enforcement agencies are often stigmatised as the Orwellian bogeymen of internet freedom (and in places like Belarus, Uzbekistan and Burma, they are), but the reality in the liberal democratic world is more complex. Many law enforcement agencies are overwhelmed with cyber crime, are understaffed, lack proper equipment and training, and have no incentives or structures to cooperate across borders. Instead of dealing with these shortcomings head on, politicians are opting for new “Patriot Act” powers that dilute civil liberties, place burdens on the private sector, and conjure up fears of a surveillance society. What law enforcement needs is not new powers, it needs new resources, capabilities, proper training and equipment. But alongside those new resources should be the highest standards of judicial oversight and public accountability. Civic networks can articulate the differences between powers and resources, and highlight the importance of public accountability to liberal democracy as an example to the rest of the world without alienating what could be an important natural ally.

I encourage you to read the full paper as this only gives a taste of Deibert's full intention.

While this paper is a call to action to "civil networks" to step up to the plate, I wonder who these networks are specifically. Who will take up the call, who will lead the way? Other than the OpenNet initiative and the Electronic Frontier Foundation mentioned in the article, I don't get a sense of exactly who is meant to carry this through. No doubt all of us as citizens, but I expect it will take a lot of coordination.

Photo credit: Binary Code 2 by Flaivoloka, from stock.xchng.

I read Steve Matthew's Slaw.ca column today Web Law Predictions for 2012 with great interest. I noted especially the prediction that "Firms Abandon Content, Blame Subsequent Failures on Social Media," with the implication that firms can't just by-pass creating great blog content and expect to get traction and otherwise build their reputations online.

One great start to blogging is to think about commentary that would have previously gone out via newsletter or email to clients, and make that available on the internet via a blog. However, writing for the printed text and writing for the web are two different things.

Write for your audience

First, you must consider your audience. Who are you writing for–lawyers? Or clients? Lawyers tend to like text-heavy documents, but most other audiences do not. If you are writing for clients, do not assume they will have time or the inclination to read long tracts.

Have a look at what else your audience reads and figure out what appeals to them. Perhaps video is the way to go instead with the audience you are trying to appeal to? It is very possible that clients in different industries consume content in different ways and prefer their content in different formats.

Make blog posts more readable

It can be more difficult to parse text online, and so we use a number of techniques to break up text for a blog:

• Consider breaking up a longer written article into a few smaller blog posts. You will get more mileage out of the content, and it will be easier for your audience to dip into.
• Use smaller paragraphs. I am always surprised at how a standard paragraph looks so long in a blog post. You will likely need to break these down more than you otherwise would think necessary. For example, the first two paragraphs in this blog post were originally one, but when I previewed them as a blog post, looked far too dense and so I broke them up.
• Use headings and bulleted or numbered lists inside longer blog posts to help the reader easily scan the content.
• Consider putting key words or phrases into bold to make them stand out, as I have done with this bulleted list.
• Use images to make blog posts more visually interesting. There is an interesting post today from Problogger: How to Use Images in Your Blog Posts. It is a nice introduction to using images.
• Use other media such as audio and video to lend some variety to your content. Selecting a video from another source, dropping it into your blog post with the "embed code," and then adding your own commentary to it is a nice way to change things up. If you get daring, you can try creating your own audio or video content. However, for a professional setting I suggest getting professional assistance to learn this part since it can be difficult to do well and is therefore time-consuming to get started on your own.

Vary the content

You need to keep the audience interested and engaged. Writing just commentary about recent case law is probably not going to keep them coming back for more. (I am assuming you want them to come back!) Don't forget to add a personal touch, lending a human voice with some personality. As audiences, we relate far better to other people than we do to faceless organizations.

Here are some additional ideas for content, and no doubt you can think of many more:

• discussion of newly introduced legislation
• other developments in the industry, such as new requirements from government
• what you learned at a conference or seminar
• a summary of recent surveys or report findings
• upcoming events
• a good, related article you read and your additional comments
• a review of a related book
• an interview with someone in the industry

What other types of blog posts do you like to read or write?
Image: courtesy of brainloc via stock.xchng

Just when we were getting used to Twitter's new interface, along comes an even newer one. Twitter is introducing a new interface that has a consistent layout across the mobile and Internet applications. The new version is gradually being rolled out; I have seen it on the iPhone but not yet on the Internet. The iPad version is still being developed.

More information is given at fly.twitter.com.

According to Kevin O'Keefe on his Real Lawyers Have Blogs blog, this redesigned Twitter will be better for lawyers. He maintains the layout is easier to use, and it is more professional in appearance:

Twitter is likely to win over more lawyers and law firms who have found Twitter difficult to use and a bit unprofessional in their minds. Twitter is already mainstream among influencers (bloggers, reporters, association leaders) of a law firm's clients and prospective clients as well as clients themselves. These changes will get lawyers sitting in the fence as to Twitter engaged in using it.

I was at my monthly book club meeting the other night. As is our wont, after a solid discussion about the book (Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy) we moved along to other topics of import. The question about women in law firms came up, not surprisingly since I am a law librarian and another member of the group is a lawyer. The rest of the group were surprised to learn that, despite law school students being at least half female, the percentage of female partners in firms still falls significantly short of the 50% mark.

We speculated on various reasons for this discrepancy. I was therefore interested to learn that The Globe and Mail also recently explored this question on November 8, 2011 in the article: Why is Supermom leaving the firm?. The article explains the problem:

According to Law Society of Upper Canada statistics, women are much more likely to leave their law firms than men. Most leave after spending about five to seven years as a lawyer, before they make partner. The disparity is stark: Despite now making up 39 per cent of the profession in Ontario, and 31 per cent of lawyers in private practice, women account for only 21 per cent of law firm partners. These statistics are mirrored across North America.

I also had a note from the Women's Law Association of Ontario about tomorrow night's dinner, that they will be tackling this very topic. If you are in Toronto I hope you will consider joining them:

Please come out in support of women lawyers and join us at our Annual Festive Dinner:

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Le Royal Meridien, King Edward Hotel, Toronto

5:45pm reception and 6:30pm dinner

Our keynote speaker will be Deborah Gillis, Senior Vice President, Membership and Global Operations at Catalyst. Deborah will be speaking on "Advancing Talented Women: Securing Sponsors and Other Strategies to Get Ahead."

Please consider buying a table – we have many young women law students who would be most grateful to be sponsored at your table.

For more information and registration details please visit our website www.wlao.on.ca. The program is open to all.

I'm by no means an expert in banking, but seems to me things are heating up in the world of alternative payments. Last week Benjamin Ensor from Forresters posted a nice overview of the rise of the digital wallet (also known as mobile wallet) in his article The Battle of the Digital Wallet. He says this is going to be a game-changer for the retail market:

A mobile digital wallet is more than just a mobile payment system because it combines:

• Mobile payment. Digital wallets are likely combine several different payments systems into a single service, including mobile contactless payments, online (i.e. web) payments, and over-the-network mobile payments, making it easy for customers to make a variety of different types of payment from a mobile device.
• Barcode scanning. Scanning barcodes or QR codes will let customers get more information about products, and let them pay for items on their phones before showing an on-screen receipt to leave the store.
• Loyalty rewards. Instead of carrying (and sometimes forgetting) a separate loyalty card, digital wallets will track customers’ spending and offer merchant-funded rewards, either on the phone or at the point of sale.
• Coupons and offers. Digital wallets are likely to offer customers coupons and location-based offers.

Potential providers

He goes on to outline the various potential providers that are gearing up to compete in this space:

• Banks and other credit issuers teaming up with credit card networks such as Visa and MasterCard
• Mobile operators working in consortia
• "Disruptors" including PayPal, Google and Apple

Back in November 2007 (four years ago!) I reported on my own blog that one of the Canadian banks was already testing mobile payments back then.

Starbucks making a leap

Not a company to wait around for others to do it for them, last January Starbucks launched their own iPhone app in the U.S. to allow for payment from phones. This app was just made available in Canada earlier this month according to the Financial Post. The FP says that the iPhone app "allows people to add credit to their account via the phone and earns points towards the coffee chain’s loyalty program. It also gives food and beverage nutrition information and information about getting a job at Starbucks." There are some nice screen shots of the app on the company's website.

I saw this payment method in action last week as a customer and SBUX clerk who were both new at it gave it a try. It requires one to have a Starbucks card, and then money is electronically loaded onto that card. The card is then connected to the iPhone app. It then involved the customer making a specific screen on her iPhone available from the app (the screen with the barcode) so that the clerk could scan it with her barcode scanner.

I'm guessing that future iterations of mobile payments will be somehow more elegant, but it's certainly a start. Once this is sorted out it won't be long before we see the effects with things like digital payments for photocopies and vending machines.

What other examples have you seen of mobile payments?

Congratulations to Ted Tjaden who is featured in the Autumn 2011 issue of University of Toronto Faculty of Information alumni magazine Informed article "Alumni to Watch." He also graces the cover.

The article traces Ted's career from practicing lawyer in B.C. to library student at the Faculty of Information (now known as the iSchool) at the University of Toronto, to law librarian at the Bora Laskin Law Library at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law and adjunct professor for the Faculty of Information, and finally to his current position as National Director of Knowledge Management at McMillan LLP.

From the article:

While law librarianship is considered to be one of the most ‘stressful’ branches of librarianship, Ted refers to it instead as “challenging and ever changing.”

While the article does mention Ted's teaching and books The Law of Independent Legal Advice and Legal Research and Writing, what perhaps does not come out is the influence Ted has had on Canadian legal research, law librarianship and law firm knowledge management, how he has acted as teacher and guide to so many of us who work in this area over the last 15 years. He also currently sits as Treasurer on the Executive Board of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD).

Again, congrats to my fellow law librarian and Slaw contributor for the well-deserved recognition!

On Wednesday the Canadian Association of Law Libraries will be presenting a webinar with Michel Gamache, Director of Documentation Services, Heenan Blaikie in Montreal. Michel will be explaining how to get started with Yahoo Pipes for working with RSS feeds to customize information for practice groups. Even if you do not work in a law firm, this webinar will help you get started taking your use of RSS feeds to the next level. I myself dabble in the use of Pipes and am looking forward to learning more.

The webinar takes place this Wednesday, November 16, 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. ET. Cost is $45.40 for members and $67.80 for non-members (tax included). For more information and to register, visit the CALL/ACBD website: http://www.callacbd.ca/en/content/webinars.

Here is the full description:

Yahoo Pipes: Slicing and Dicing RSS Feeds for Legal Practice Groups
SPEAKER: Michel Gamache

Yahoo! Pipes has been around since 2007, yet it doesn't seem to have caught the eye of many librarians. However, this is a valuable and simple tool that can be used in the context of web monitoring and information delivery.

This webinar will help you understand what Yahoo! Pipes is all about. You will learn how to create, aggregate, filter and customize feeds. You will also learn how to create widgets so that the contents you manipulate can be made available on intranets.

Michel Gamache has been Director of Documentation Services at Heenan Blaikie since 1999. Previously, he was Library Manager at another law firm in Montreal.

Michel holds a MLIS degree and a Certificate in Industrial Relations both from Université de Montréal, as well as a Bachelor degree in Business Management from Université du Québec à Montréal.

I have been remiss at mentioning the free online conference Library 2.0 that started today at 9:30 am ET and continues around the clock through to the end of tomorrow. This page has a schedule of sessions listed according to your time zone. For a quick look at the schedule, check out the Eastern Standard Time schedule – sessions typically run for a 1/2 hour.

There is still time to sign up! Register for the Library 2.0 site. All sessions will be run using the Blackboard Collaborate platform. Session rooms have a bandwidth-related limit of 700 attendees. Word via Twitter is that there are approximately 6,000 registrants. There are a number of concurrent sessions, and of course most people will not be watching the full 24 hours. There are over 150 sessions in all. All will be recorded.

The hash tag #lib2011 is being used on sites such as Twitter.

I hope you will at least stop by for one or two sessions!

Flags are being raised by numerous privacy experts about expected federal "lawful access" legislation. This legislation–expected to be reintroduced–was last seen in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session, which ended March 26, 2011 and includes:

• Bill C-50 – Improving Access to Investigative Tools for Serious Crimes Act
• Bill C-51 – Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act
• Bill C-52 – Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act

Excerpted from a commentary by Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario Ann Cavoukian published in today's National Post:

At issue is the anticipated re-introduction of a trio of federal bills that will provide police with much greater ability to access and track information, via the communications technologies we use every day, such as the Internet, smart phones and other mobile devices. I have no doubt that, collectively, the legislation will substantially diminish the privacy rights of Ontarians and Canadians as a whole.

Let’s take a brief look at the surveillance bills, which were introduced prior to the last election:

• Bill C-50 would make it easier for the police to obtain judicial approval of multiple intercept and tracking warrants and production orders, to access and track e-communications.
• Bill C-51 would give the police new powers to obtain court orders for remote live tracking, as well as suspicion-based orders requiring telecommunication service providers and other companies to preserve and turn over data of interest to the police.
• Bill C-52 would require telecommunication service providers to build and maintain intercept capability into their networks for use by law enforcement, and gives the police warrantless power to access subscriber information.

I well understand the attraction for law enforcement officials — the increased ability to access and track our e-communications, with reduced judicial scrutiny, would put a treasure trove of new information at their fingertips.

However, we must be extremely careful not to allow the admitted investigative needs of police forces to interfere with or violate our constitutional right to be secure from unreasonable state surveillance. The proposed surveillance powers come at the expense of the necessary privacy safeguards guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

A number of privacy and Internet experts weigh in on the matter the UnLawful Access website via this video:

And have a petition from Open Media.ca: http://stopspying.ca

As well, there have been letters and articles written; here is a selection:

• Privacy invasion shouldn't be 'lawful' - commentary by Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, National Post (October 31, 2011)
• Letters to Ministers Toews and Nicholson re: Lawful Access [pdf] – letters by Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (October 31, 2011)
• Why Lawful Access legislation should not be allowed – David T.S. Fraser, Canadian Privacy Law Blog (October 31, 2011)
• Privacy Commissioner outlines concerns about potential lawful access legislation – News release: Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (October 27, 2011)
• Letter to Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews – Letter, Privacy Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart (October 26, 2011)
• Laws of the 21st century: Access legislation clarified – Kathryn Blaze Carlson, National Post (October 22, 2011)
• Canada’s forthcoming surveillance bill and how to rein it in – by Christopher Parsons, Vancouver Sun (October 8, 2011)
• Speech for Minister Toews For the Launch of Canada's Cyber Security Awareness Month and Public Education Initiative to Promote Cyber Security Awareness – Public Safety Canada (October 3, 2011).

Just in time for Hallowe'en, we get the scary news from the UN that the population of the Earth will be reaching 7 billion today (give or take 50 million). According to today's National Post:

Mounting concern over humanity’s environmental impact and fears that we may not be able to feed ourselves 100 years from now cast a cautionary tone over the buildup to Monday’s milestone.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon told students at a New York school last week: “Seven billion people who need enough food. Enough energy. Good opportunities in life for jobs and education. Rights and freedoms. The freedom to speak. The freedom to raise their own children in peace and security.

“Everything you want for yourself — seven billion times over.”

According to the news article, the population has doubled in only 50 years. We reached 6 billion in 1999.

At the World Food Day event on Friday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also indicated that 1 billion people currently go hungry, and that by 2050 he expects we will be at 9 billion (the National Post article indicated the UN is predicting it will be at 10 billion by 2100). He also said:

To keep pace, food production will need to double.

The wild price swings of recent years, together with the expected impacts of climate change, will make this extremely challenging.

Farmers could well find it too risky to invest in producing more, better-quality food.

Guaranteeing sustainable food and nutrition security for all will require the full engagement of many sectors and actors.

It means pursuing comprehensive approaches, assisting the most vulnerable, listening to rural women, empowering small producers.

It means policies like those advocated by the Scale Up Nutrition movement.

It means strong political commitment, predictable finance, and a focus on results.

This is a big challenge that will need to be tackled by many great minds. No doubt the legal industry will be called upon to help find solutions for lowering risk for farmers and entrepreneurs, developing policy, and enabling innovation.

See also:

Secretary-General, in Remarks at UN Day Concert, Urges Pledge of Unity, ‘Seven Billion Strong’, for Global Common Good (28 October 2011)

No doubt many libraries in our community have already heard the news: SydneyPLUS has just purchased a big piece of the Inmagic pie. This includes Inmagic’s DB/Text Library Suite of products: DB/TextWorks, DB/Text WebPublisher Pro, and Inmagic Genie.

According to Kathy Bryce via Andornot's blog:

The move will strengthen both SydneyPLUS and the new Inmagic division by bringing together complementary technologies to meet the needs of special librarians, while allowing Inmagic, Inc. to focus on new markets.

Inmagic, Inc. (the company) will retain its Presto technology and its related products PrestoKnowledgeNet, Presto AssociatioNet, and Presto IdeaNet.

It sounds like the two companies will be working more closely together. According to yesterday's press release:

Inmagic’s Presto for Social Libraries, which the companies will co-market and support under a strategic partnership, is an integration of Inmagic Genie, an integrated library system, with Inmagic Inc.’s Presto. Presto for Social Libraries is a Social Knowledge Network (SKN) application that integrates library workflow with knowledge-based content and the “wisdom of the community” to create a “Library 2.0” environment to support the research and business objectives of organizations.

Everyone is promising "business as usual" for the customers. Time will tell if this is the case, or if some customers take this opportunity to look for new alternatives. As a one-time customer of Inmagic, I watch with interest.

Ever since I set up a shingle four years ago to consult independently, I have been asked periodically as to whether I do legal research. Most recently, a few people have asked if this is a service I provide for the public. My response until now has been that I really don't know of anyone who does any substantive legal research for the public. It would be great to have the great collective mind of the Slaw community work on a solution since it is something I haven't been able to crack myself.

Some libraries (public and academic) may be able to direct the public to hard copy sources for their research or retrieve specific documents from online sources. Earlier this year I also asked my colleagues via the law library listservs as to who does independent Canadian legal research. Most who responded positively and were willing to do so unfortunately did not have their own licensing arrangement with the commercial vendors and would have to rely on the requester to provide access.

Where does this leave the general public? In addition to pro se litigants, I can imagine there are likely historians and scholars doing research leading to the writing of reports and historical treatises. And possibly other types of research, too. How do they do it??

The challenge of providing any kind of substantial legal research from online sources for the general public seems a tad insurmountable:

• Typically Canadian online commercial legal research sources are made available by flat rate subscription, not transactional fees. My perception has been that this would make setting up a legal research service prohibitively expensive for someone working independently.
• Much as with in-person inquiries at libraries when the public look for research in hard copy sources, emphasis would need to be placed on explaining that no interpretation by the online searcher could take place (well, unless the searcher was also an insured lawyer willing to take on the risk). I wonder how meaningful search results would be if no interpretation could take place? An approach to this would need to be taken and policies would need to be put in place.
• Liability would be a huge issue. When law librarians do legal research for client files in a law firm setting, it is understood that the lawyer on the file is ultimately taking responsibility for the results found and their interpretation. And is insured for this responsibility.

I was brainstorming some ideas with Liana Giovando (a newly-minted fellow independent law librarian), and this is what we have come up with so far:

• A consortium of some sort might be best to take this on rather than one or two independent consultants. Having the backing and resources of a larger group would go a long way to mitigate the costs and liability.
• Alternatively, perhaps a law firm would take this on as a service, providing the backing in terms of liability, providing the service of lawyers to review (and interpret?) search results.
• If commercial legal research sources are prohibitively expensive, then perhaps research could be done solely from publicly available sources such as CanLII, advising the research requester of the difference between free and fee sources.
• Access to a library with hard copy resources would also be needed to supplement the online research. Would it be acceptable to use a public library resources for this type of (presumably paid) service, or would an agreement need to be made with an existing law library to give access? Perhaps access to a number of otherwise private libraries would be needed.

That is as far as I've gotten with thinking this through. The next step is to determine whether there is a real need for such a service. Is this something that comes up only periodically, or frequently? What types of requests are there? Is it worth setting up such a service and what would be the business model? Thought would also need to be given as to how to deliver this type of service and how to market it.

I invite you to share your thoughts and suggestions, especially something that will move these ideas forward (I've already got lots on the negative side, thank you). Is there a service like this already that I have not yet found? How could one be set up? Would you be willing and able to help move this forward?

The Law Foundation of Ontario is helping to coordinate articling positions in the Public Interest community, in conjunction with Pro Bono Students Canada (PBSC). From the LFO's information page:

The Law Foundation of Ontario (LFO) is pleased to announce that it is now accepting applications from prospective host organizations for its groundbreaking Public Interest Articling Fellowship Program for the 2013-14 articling period.

The Public Interest Articling Fellowship was conceived to meet both a significant need for legal assistance within the public interest community and to allow law students to gain valuable experience in public interest law. The program expands opportunities for articling in public interest organizations in Ontario by targeting groups that do not have access to funds to pay for an articling position. Pro Bono Students Canada (PBSC), with its extensive experience in working with public interest organizations and law students across the province, will continue to administer the program.

The LFO is inviting applications from prospective host organizations for up to six 2013-14 Articling Fellowships. The Fellowship covers the articling student's salary, along with the LSUC Licensing Process Fee and Licensing Application Fee. A stipend may also be paid, if necessary, to the selected organizations for out-of-pocket expenses (such as furnishing an office or purchasing a computer) that are required to host an articling student.

To be eligible, the host organization must:

• Be Ontario-based
• Be a not-for-profit or registered charity
• Have an on-site Articling Principal
• Not have access to funds to hire an articling student

The deadline to apply as a host is October 24, 2011, 5:00 p.m. For information on applying, please see the LFO webpage.

Hat tip: @CanLawMag (Canadian Lawyer Magazine)

Persons Day this year falls on Tuesday, commemorating 82 years since women were made persons under the law following the Persons Case. LEAF, the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, is holding its annual gala Persons Day breakfast in cities across Canada over a number of mornings (Ottawa's was already held on Friday). There is still time to book your ticket. Last year 5,000 people across Canada attended the breakfast, with 800 in Toronto alone.

The Government of Canada's Status of Women Canada website has additional information about the "Famous Five" and the Persons Case at http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/dates/gg/case-affaire-eng.html (English) and http://www.cfc-swc.gc.ca/dates/gg/case-affaire-fra.html (French).

As well, nominations are taken throughout the year for the Governor General's Awards in Commemoration of the Persons Case. 2011 nominations closed in June, but nominations for 2012 can be made now. The 2011 Awards have not yet been announced, but the 2010 Awards are listed and there is also a link to past recipients dating back to 1979, the first year of the Awards.

The University Library at the University of Saskatchewan has more information about the Persons Case as part of their Herstory online exhibition at http://library.usask.ca/herstory/person.html.

For more information about LEAF visit their website at leaf.ca.

I'm sure most Canadians law firm denizens have heard about some of the latest firm merger news, but I thought it might be good to catch up with a few links to the news stories.

Macleod Dixon & Norton Rose

Probably the biggest news in Canada for some months now is Norton Rose. You may recall they merged in June with Ogilvy Renault to create Norton Rose OR in Canada. They now have plans to merge with 250 lawyer Canadian firm Macleod Dixon and will be rebranding the newly expanded Canadian arm as Norton Rose Canada. From the press release:

Macleod Dixon and Norton Rose OR announced today they will be joining forces as of January 1, 2012. The enlarged practice will become Norton Rose Canada, creating a world–leading practice in energy and mining law. With close to 700 lawyers based in Calgary, Montréal, Ottawa, Toronto, Québec, Caracas and Bogotá, Norton Rose Canada will be ranked among the top 3 Canadian legal practices.

This merger will significantly increase Norton Rose Canada’s resources across its six key industry sectors in Canada and in particular in the energy and infrastructure and mining and commodities sectors. Norton Rose Canada will be among a small number of Canadian firms with a leading practice in each of the three main markets in Canada (Calgary, Toronto and Montréal).

For Macleod Dixon's part, they had reportedly been looking to expand globally. And Norton Rose has been expanding on an international basis (not just in Canada).

Related articles:

• Macleod's global strategy culminates in global merger - Lexpert Magazine (article excerpt; full article currently available here)
• Norton-Macleod merger creates 'power-house"  - Globe and Mail (October 4, 2011)
• Norton Rose merges with Canada's Macleod Dixon, eyes U.S. partner - AmLaw Daily (October 4, 2011)
• Norton Rose wins Financial Times award for international expansion – Norton Rose press release (October 6, 2011)

Nicholl Paskel-Mede LLP and Clyde & Co.

Macleod Dixon's news has been overshadowing the news of Canadian boutique insurance law firm Nicholl Paskell-Mede LLP merging with U.K.-based international firm Clyde & Co.on September 1st. According to the Clyde & Co. press release:

Clyde & Co partner and board member James Burns said: "We are delighted to welcome our new Canadian partners and staff to the firm. The lawyers in our new Canadian offices are amongst the best in their fields, with existing work for Lloyd's of London syndicates as well as the Canadian and international insurance markets. Our expansion into Canada is consistent with our strategy of providing a full-service to our clients in our core sectors in key strategic locations. With its strong economy and significant insurance market, Canada was an obvious choice."

Like Norton Rose, Clyde & Co. appears to be on the road to additional expansion. See their press release The merged firm of Clyde & Co and Barlow Lyde & Gilbert which indicates they will be growing to 1300 lawyers worldwide as of November 1, 2011.

Related articles:

• Nicholl Paskel-Mede Merges with Clyde & Col. – Legal Feeds (Canadian Lawyer Magazine and Law Times blog) (June 28, 2011)
• Clyde & Co. merge in works for two years – Law Times (July 4, 2011)

Law Firm Mergers on the Rise

Reports are that law firm mergers are generally on the rise, at least in the U.S.. If you are looking to track these, I highly recommend following large firms and legal publications on Twitter as often the announcements are made on firm websites and Twitter streams before the news gets written up in the publications.

For example, @NortonRoseOR has been tweeting related articles. I have also seen useful tweets from @CanLawMag (Canadian Lawyer Magazine). Individuals in the legal industry sometimes also tweet rumours they have heard. For mergers in U.S. firms, see also Altman Weil's MergerLine.
Related articles:

• Australian law firm in global merger [video] – news.com.cau (September 26, 2011)
• Law firm mergers & acquisitions Q3 2011 [PDF] – Altman Weil (October 2011)
• Law firm mergers increase 79% - JD Journal (October 3, 2011)
• Urge to merge: law firm tie-ups rose nearly 80 percent in 2011's first three quarters - AmLaw Daily (October 3, 2011)
• Law firm mergers in the U.S. rise 79% in first three quarters on smaller deals – Bloomberg (October 3, 2011)
• Law firm mergers rise in third quarter says Hildebrandt Institute MergerWatch report - Thomson Reuters press release (October 4, 2011)

Do you have any tips on tracking law firm mergers? Please share in the comments!

Way back in December rumours were flying about the social bookmarking site Delicious. Various reports had it that owner Yahoo! would be closing it down. Slaw's own Steve Matthews even put together the post R.I.P. Delicious tracing its pending demise. Many people looked for an alternative and exported their bookmarks to other sites in anticipation of it being closed. Some of those alternative services welcomed the new members with open arms, even creating tools for transferring the bookmarks over.

Fast forward: an announcement came out in May 2011 announcing the sale of Delicious to AVOS, owned by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, in July. Following the sale, a notice went out over the summer asking members to give Yahoo! permission to transfer their bookmarks to the new owners. And then this week the "new" Delicious was launched.

The new Delicious was not launched without some pain, however. In the notice asking for permission to transfer the bookmarks there was not, unfortunately, any indication that the service would actually be changing. The new owners launched the new site without advance notice. Members (myself included) were shocked to find bookmarks and tags (personal categories) suddenly missing. As well, much of the functionality was gone. And the interface had changed. Some–those who had not seen the notice to give permission to Yahoo! for the transfer of bookmarks–discovered their accounts gone altogether.

A little shell-shocked, those of us who had loyally stuck by Delicious watched the site to see any signs of improvement. There seemed to be no forum in which to share concerns other than general sites such as Twitter. ReadWriteWeb reported that the new site was a big disappointment. Finally, at the end of the day AVOS put out a blog post on their own site explaining what had happened. A few things were at play:

• they had pulled the Delicious site into what they consider beta test, starting with a basic site and adding features back in
• they had transferred only the most recent bookmarks and some tags from Yahoo! with the intention of loading them all back in gradually
• anyone who had missed the notice asking to give permission to Yahoo! to transfer the bookmarks and did not provide permission were not included in the transfer to the new site.

AVOS subsequently created the delicious beta status blog to track improvements being made and complaints as they were being addressed. Still, some messaging is coming out from the AVOS blog. Gradually we are seeing functionality return.

The problems have distracted most of us from the new changes that have been made:

• the front of the Delicious site has been reworked to be more accessible, with more visual content
• the idea of "stacks" have been introduced: links grouped and shared by members (which also populate the front page).

Time will tell if the service gets back to where we had it, and if the new features were worth the switch. It seems to me the lack of communication initially around this project is a good example of what not to do with change management: not keeping extremely loyal users in the loop with regard to changes. It will be interesting to see if they have learned any lessons along the way.

In recent presentations and teaching I have been sharing some numbers about social network use compared against mobile use by Canadians. I have put those numbers together in a few slides that might be of interest–these slides are downloadable for anyone who would like to use them.

I have included a disclaimer (second slide) just to warn everyone these numbers are from a range of sources and therefore likely were compiled using different methods. So, these numbers are meant for general interest rather than to be used to make business decisions that would rely on the numbers.

I note these numbers (updated last week) have already seen one significant change: Google Plus has come out of beta, and it is estimated there are at least 45 million on board, making it arguably the third largest networking site right now. I'm trying to find the reference for that again but can't, although I've included some related links below.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Are there other numbers you would find of interest?

Related information:

• Time Spent On Facebook Is Growing At An Astonishing Rate, Business Insider (September 26, 2011) – US numbers
• Longest Facebook Sessions are in Singapore, Allfacebook (September 27, 2011) – international numbers
• Google+ Opens the Floodgates to All, Market Share Rockets, Hitwise (September 26, 2011)
• Google+ Climbs Up Social Networking Ladder, PCWorld (September 27, 2011)

Larry Bodine, former law firm marketing consultant known for his LawMarketing Blog, has been named the new editor-in-chief of Lawyers.com and Martindale.com. (If you are in Canada the Lawyers.com link may flip you to the Canadian site http://www.canadian-lawyers.ca/ unfortunately).

According to an article from the Law Technology News on September 16, Bodine has indicated he is going to overhaul the Lawyers.com site:

…the site could stand improvement, Bodine said. Currently its content is aggregated from other sites. "The switch that I want to make is generating our own material. You're going to see a complete change on the homepage as soon as I can get that accomplished," he said. Also, "I want to start putting a lot more video on that site. I'm going to make the site much more interactive. You'll be able to ask a question, there'll be stuff to play with. The whole idea is to get people to come to the site when they don't have an immediate legal need.

Once he has finished re-working the Lawyers.com site, he is going to have a closer look at Martindale.com:

Bodine said he'll work on the Martindale site after instituting the Lawyers.com rebuild. "We need to weave in and reach out to the legal marketing community … We need to do it in a way so it's their sandbox to play in," he explained.

No word yet on whether other related LexisNexis web properties around the world–including Canadian-Lawyers.ca–will similarly go under the microscope.

Hat tip Nina Platt of Pinhawk Librarian News Digest for picking up the LTN article on Larry Bodine's move.

This weekend I stopped by the Vegetarian Food Festival in Toronto to try out some new food products. The last thing I expected to see was a lawyer group. But there, prominently situated between food sample tables and advocacy groups was the Lawyers for Animal Welfare  booth.

University of Toronto law student Camille Labchuk and lawyer Nick Wright were staffing the booth, making members of the public aware of the group and a number of law-related animal welfare issues. I learned that Lawyers for Animal Welfare (LAW) is a registered charity dedicated to advancing public knowledge of animal practices and preventing the abuse and killing of animals through enforcement of existing laws.

Notably, the group is presenting the program The Emerging Field of Animal Law on October 3rd through Ontario Bar Association's professional development program. This program is available in person and via webcast. From the program description:

Join us for an opportunity to network and learn from a panel of lawyers and students working in the field of animal law at this inaugural Ontario Bar Association event. The field of animal law is growing rapidly in Canada. Animal law has been established and practiced in the United States for decades, and the past few years have been marked by a growing awareness of animal legal issues in Canada. Most Canadian law schools now offer courses in animal law, animal law practitioners have emerged and an increasing number of law students are entering the field. These developments have prompted many to draw comparisons between the present state of animal law, and the state of environmental law 25 years ago. For some lawyers, practicing animal law simply means working with clients who have legal issues relating to animals. Others are drawn to the field by a commitment to protecting animals – beings with few legal protections unable to help themselves. Drawing on a growing body of Canadian case law and legislation relating to animal issues, particularly in Ontario, lawyers practicing animal law are at the forefront of an exciting new field of law. This session will be relevant to various types of civil litigation practice as well as criminal prosecutions.

Program Chair: 
Nicholas dePencier Wright, LLB, MBA, Campaigner, Humane Society International/Canada and
Executive Director, Lawyers for Animal Welfare (LAW)

Speakers:
Peter Sankoff, JD, LLM, Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario, Faculty of Law
Evelyne Kostanska, JD, President, Lawyers for Animal Welfare (LAW) and Fellow, PETA Foundation
Camille Labchuk, President, Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, University of Toronto Chapter and Campaign Manager, Lawyers for Animal Welfare (LAW)

For more information about the group see their website: http://www.lawyersforanimalwelfare.com/ and find out about upcoming meetings from their Meetup.com page http://www.meetup.com/lawmeetup/. You can also sign up for their mailing list: http://www.lawyersforanimalwelfare.com/subscribe/.

This is an interesting addendum to the ABA session "“Friend” Is Now a Verb: Judicial Ethics and the New Social Media". In the Financial Post's Legal Post section from August 2nd, Mitch Kowalski notes Oklahoma’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Panel released an opinion on judges and social media in that state on July 6, 2011. The Oklahoma State Courts Network (OSCN.net) has the full Judicial Ethics Opinion 2011-3.

From the opinion:

¶1 Questions: 1. May a Judge hold an internet social account, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin without violating the Code of Judicial Conduct?

¶2 2. May a Judge who owns an internet based social media account add court staff, law enforcement officers, social workers, attorneys and others who may appear in his or her court as "friends" on the account?

¶3 Answers: Question 1 – Yes, with restrictions.

¶4 Question 2 – No.

The opinion goes on to explain this position, and concludes:

¶10 To those who would argue that this position is too restrictive of the rights and privileges of the Judge, we echo the Kentucky opinion JE 119, wherein it is stated "A Judge must accept restrictions on the Judge’s conduct that might be viewed as burdensome by the ordinary citizen and should do so freely and willingly."

I agree, this is not news. Our lives are getting faster and we expect to know what is happening right now in the world, not what happened five hours ago or yesterday. For those of us who work with information and live online, television and radio are often not fast enough. We expect to hear about things as they happen.

Lawyers need to stay on top of what is happening to clients so they can help respond in a timely manner. As librarians, the challenge is pulling information together so that those we serve are up to date. In the journalism realm, reporters strive to get coverage out ever faster. When a crisis occurs, PR machines now are expected to get responses out within an hour or two. It is no longer acceptable to wait a few days to allow for crafting of messages. David Meerman Scott, author of Real-time Marketing & PR talks about this phenomenon in his video:

Real-Time Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott

Kady O'Malley, CBC report who covers the Parliament Hill beat in Ottawa, was at the recent Canadian Bar Association conference. The CBA caught this interview with her after her talk, in which she discusses real time reporting and its affect on politics:

Kady O'Malley

One thing she doesn't address in the video is the growing prominence of citizen journalists, people without journalist training reporting on things they are seeing. Citizen journalism really comes into play on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube when people mention things that are happening to them or near to them. For example, when we hear of natural disasters it is usually first seen on Twitter now, especially when it comes to earthquakes. This past week for those of us on or near the east coast has been particularly exciting in this regard, with tornadoes, earthquakes and hurricanes (oh my!).

For myself, I appreciated Kady O'Malley's real time reporting of the Jack Layton visitation in Ottawa last week via Twitter. Some of us who attended his funeral in person (I was on the street outside Roy Thompson Hall), shared photos, video and impressions of what was happening around us. I noted, watching the coverage on TV later, that it dulled in comparison with being right there. The citizen journalistic efforts were not about getting the facts correct, but about sharing impressions and feelings. It was not about a political agenda (at least, in my case) but about becoming more engaged as a citizen with the story at hand and, in some cases, feeling more a part of a community. We see this when people post tweets from events such as last week's ILTA conference.

So, not only is real time news and information allowing us to consume more individually, but also it is allowing us to feel more connected to the story and perhaps even become a part of it. Lines are increasingly blurring in this regard: consumers are not just consumers, but also reporters.

Where does that leave us? As librarians we can no longer wait for requests for information to come our way, and then take a few hours to pull sources together as far as day to day information goes. We need to think about what sources are important, find their related real-time feeds, and pull those together automatically as much as possible (ideally with RSS feeds if available), filtering and sorting according to the interests of our clients. Especially those of us in law firms need to know what is happening so that responses can be made in a timely fashion. No longer can responses wait a week or sometimes even in a day. It is a real challenge to figure this out and get it working, but once in place it can fill that need for immediate information. From there it is a matter of tweaking the results, adding or subtracting to improve the content over time.

What are the challenges you face with looking for real time information? How are you meeting these challenges?

It has been a long while since we mentioned the Innovaction Awards. The 2011 winners were recently announced, and a Canadian group are among the winners:

Berwin Leighton Paisner, LLP (BLP) was selected for their Lawyers On Demand (LOD) initiative which began in 2007 after BLP observed two important issues affecting the UK legal market: (1) legal services clients want to stretch their budgets further and (2) many lawyers are looking for greater flexibility and autonomy in their work. BLP created LOD to address these issues. LOD challenged the traditional models of legal service delivery and brought talented freelance lawyers to work directly with clients. LOD lawyers work at the client office or their home office but are nevertheless vetted and supported by BLP know-how resources, the LOD service unique in the market. LOD began as a pilot in 2007 with eight lawyers. Since then, it has increased ten-fold in size and gained a fantastic list of clients.

The University of Toronto Faculty of Law received an InnovAction Award for its Internationally Trained Lawyers Program (ITLP). When immigrating to Canada, one of the biggest challenges internationally-trained lawyers (ITL) face is the lack of access to opportunities to receive practical, hands-on experience in the Canadian legal environment, particularly during the lengthy accreditation and licensing process. In recognizing the limited opportunities for ITLs, the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law created a bridging program for ITLs who wish to practice in Ontario. The ITLP is a comprehensive 10-month program to help participants obtain their license and secure full-time professional employment. The program includes intensive academic, cultural fluency and career development classroom sessions, design to support international lawyers.

The University of Miami School of Law in partnership with five other law schools was selected for theirLawWithoutWalls initiative. LawWithoutWalls is a part-virtual, collaborative academic model that unites students, faculty, practitioners, and entrepreneurs from around the world to innovate legal education and practice. It’s designed to help those engaged in the education and practice of law to embrace the impact of our changing world. LawWithoutWalls exemplifies what 21^st century education can be. Students are not educated on-line in the same old way. Instead, technology is utilized to create an entirely new educational experience, a platform for interdisciplinary interchange and community.

Check out the video for LawWithoutWalls (for video from Lawyers On Demand, you will have to visit their website):

LawWithoutWalls from LawWithoutWalls on Vimeo.

These are notes are from a panel presentation organized by the ABA Section on Labor and Employment Law at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto on Sunday, August 7, 2011. Panelists included Douglas E. Dexter, Farella Braun & Martell LLP, San Francisco; Roy L. Heenan, Heenan Blaikie LLP, Montreal; Mauricio Paez, Jones Day, New York; and Lauren Schwartzreich, Outten & Golden LLP, New York. The moderator was Cynthia E. Nance, Professor of Law, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. This is the final instalment of my notes from ABA 2011. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts! 

Lauren Schwartzreich – Employee access to social media

Information on social networking sites (people's individual profiles) may not be accurate: could have been hacked, friends could be playing jokes, could be tongue-in-cheek. So, take care not to take everything at face value when looking at profiles of potential employees. There is a great potential for discrimination claims, such as claims under Americans With Disabilities Act and others. Not all information might be taken at face value.

Monitoring of employees' Internet use:

• What are the circumstances under which monitoring was put into place? Is it retaliation? Pretext for discrimination?
• Looking at the content of Internet use and communication: Was it protected speech under the National Labor Relations Act? Was it employee/lawyer communication and therefore protected?
• With respect to technology used for monitoring: did the employer surreptitiously use sign-on information to social networking site? Did the employer coerce a fellow staff member to reveal password?

With social media use in an employment setting, there are potential claims on both sides.

Douglas Dexter – Employer Response to Social Media and the Workplace

Social media is definitely a concern that employers have. Many HR departments are not using the Internet at all to research candidates' backgrounds. As the technology develops for the employees for maintaining Facebook sites and can detect who is looking at their sites, there will be more and more litigation. Individuals who are being searched are not currently generally cognizant that of being searched.

Each of us is capable of publishing information "on a gargantuan scale" and this is often done without a lot of thought. Those of us with Facebook pages, are on Twitter, have LinkedIn pages: can you tell who are your friends and when they joined? Are people from your workplace following you? A lot of people forget who they are publishing to. From the employers' perspective, this is the most troubling reason to monitor what is happening. People make remarks in a very public way about the workplace, co-workers and supervisors, competitors and products. If there is a critique of your companies' products, employees feel it is their obligation and right to respond resulting in thousands of "spokespeople" on the Internet. That is where we are getting our consumer information. Do we want our employees to be in that role?

• What about our customers? If someone happens to have a bad experience with a call centre, they complain to their Facebook page to untold number of followers.
• Are employees having conversations on the Internet that would have previously taken place in the lunchroom?
• What about confidential business information – someone tweeting "you wouldn't believe what we are going to do next!"

Part of the problem is the instantaneousness of it, they are not thinking, they are just doing. Employers are investigating.

What kind of postings have led to employment actions?

• "drunken pirate" photo prevented a teaching candidate from getting a job
• explicit photos have led to suspension
• posts disparaging the boss (with the boss as a friend!)

Things get complicated because sites are both personal and professional. There is an expectation in many jobs that people should be involved in social media. Lines start to become blurred.

A social media policy should provide guidelines for employees who use social media for work purposes:

• requiring management review and approval before launching any internet initiative
• how much review of each posting?
• even this most fundamental safety net is controversial
• before any images of company facilities, events or employees
• that would disclose confidential information of business, customers, co-workers
• respectful of customers, employer, co-workers
• put the company in the best light

Policy for personal use should include:

• use guidelines
• engagement should occur through personal account
• should not appear to represent the Employer
• should not use Employer's trademarks
• should make it clear the views are yours alone
• should not disparage business affiliates, competitors or customers
• should not contain confidential information about facilities, business plans, customers
• should not reproduce company material without permission
• should comply company with general company policies
• with respect to images: any photos in Employer facilities may only be used if approved; ask permission from colleagues before including them
• with respect to "Friends": conduct yourself with co-workers as you would in the office. What about prohibiting friending of subordinates? When two people are equals and one gets promoted, should that person run out and un-friend?
• additional provisions: For publicly traded companies: "Please be aware that we may request that you temporarily confine your website or weblog commentary to topics unrelated to the company…if we believe this is necessary or advisable to ensure compliance with securities regulations or other laws." (there may be information black-out periods)
• consult with HR if any questions
• not intended to preclude employees from exercising their rights

Mauricio Paez – Social media and labor relations

Don't make a virtue out of being a social media luddite. If a case comes across your desk, you want to know if you have a claim under the NLRA.

You need to be able to:

• explain it to a board agent
• explain it to an administrative law judge
• explain this in a court of appeals

What types of issues has the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) addressed?

• rules governing the use of social media
• where you have a unionized workforce, the employer has to negotiate with the union before putting a policy related to social media in place
• whether violates the National Labor Relations Act
• social media policy that could result in discipline will become part of the bargaining
• if you don't go to the union first, you could have a claim against you
• is the policy compliant under the NLRA?
• need decisions under the NLRA to interpret the law

Clarifications:

• this applies to any private sector employer, not just unionized
• "collective" in this case could be one employee speaking to a group or even just one person on social media – considered "concerted activity"

Roy Heenan – Social media and employment law in Canada

Canada has a different direction, to follow the OECD guidelines on privacy protection. If you follow the guidelines and certain principles, you can get data collected in Europe transferred over to your company.

We have a privacy act which gives individual access to information, fairness on the behalf of government, and a Privacy Commissioner appointed by the government. She is very active in policing the privacy area. She is assisted by PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act ) which is based largely on the OECD guidelines. It limits use, disclosure and retention of information, and companies have to have safeguards in data collection. This is the Federal government, but some provinces have similar legislation and rules.

There is a list of protections and also a list of expectations visited on employers. Has the employer a proper policy? Is it communicated to the employees? If there hasn't been a policy or carefully communicated, disciplined employees may be reinstated into their jobs.

According to the Privacy Commissioner on privacy and social networking:

• it is a different animal from email; employers should and must produce a whole policy to deal with social media and it should be communicated to employees.
• Privacy communication to employees
• anything posted on sites may be accessed by current and potential employers, competitors, etc. Anything posted to social networking sites may be used by unintended audiences.
• employees should be aware of untended disclosure
• disclosure could be damaging to employer.

May 2011 – 2010 Annual Report from Privacy Commissioner

• online tracking and cloud computing
• shifting expectations of privacy – people want to communicate but still expect privacy, which is contradictory
• companies must develop standards of data collection since will still be accountable

Vancouver riots (and tweets by Brock Anton)

• a lot of shaming came out of this; friends were outing friends on Facebook
• public told companies that if they kept these people on as employees, they would boycott the stores
• the consequence has been dramatic
• the next day the cleanup was done by getting volunteers through social media

Need to consider to what extend is there really an expectation of privacy? In Canada we are going through this reflection; with technology there are ways of having surveillance, and there is a danger of collecting too much private information as a result.

Q&A

Q: Do you think there is now an ethical obligation to be informed about social media? Also, how to obtain and preserve social media evidence?

Schwartzreich: If you are involved in litigation, it is becoming increasingly important. Content on social media sites is most likely going to be relevant. Trend of cases has indicated a broader, early trigger to when the need to preserve evidence arises. You are going to be responsible for clients' social media, what is discoverable content. You have to figure out how you are going to preserve it.

Facebook tool: download your information tool [see screen shots below]. You can download a good portion of your clients' Facebook content, but some content is excluded. You need to figure out what is going to be relevant.

(click on images to enlarge)

Twitter: "Tweetake" program for backing up tweets.

Free tools may, however, be limited in scope. Courts will become frequently frustrated with counsel if they don't look for this content early. You don't want courts to require turning over of clients' login information during discovery.

Also, how are you going to get Internet information admitted at trial? Courts are not that forgiving at authenticating information from the Internet.

Paez: 12 Delaware Law Review 2011 article – August 2nd [see: Ethical Risks Arising From Lawyers’ Use of (and Refusal to Use) Social Media by Margaret M. DiBianca, p. 179 (pdf)] cited New York Law Journal – 60% of domestic relations lawyers collect information through the Internet. Varies by area of law. Also, to make an argument you have to understand how a Facebook page works. Your 14 year old who has 1000 friends is going to be in the workforce sooner rather than later, you better understand this.

Heenan: www.accessprivacy.com – 30 page paper from May 2011 – not just an obligation for lawyers, but a potential opportunity.

Q (from counsel to large corporation): He does not understand why social media is not blocked inside organizations, and just unblock those who need to do marketing research.

Nance: It is your job to promote the entity and it is not just those in PR e.g. if she is on a panel at the ABA conference, she wants to tweet to drive people to her organization.

Dexter: There was a lot of effort put into blocking sites early on. As a practical matter, you no longer need your computer to access social networking sites, so this is no longer going to work. Wasting time in the workplace as a selective enforcement issue is almost insurmountable. The technology is way ahead.

Paez: You are never going to be able to stop employees from posting Facebook updates. Don't put a policy in place you cannot enforce.

Comment from the audience: If you see posts from a juror, you have an ethical obligation to report it to the court.

These are notes are from a panel discussion session at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto on Saturday, August 6, 2011. Panelists included Dr. Paolo Balboni, Director, European Privacy Association, Milan, Italy; the Honorable Julie Brill, Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC; Stuart Ingis, Venable LLP, Washington, DC, and Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Ottawa, Canada. The session was moderated by Saira Nayak, Nayak Strategies, Redmond, WA. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

Introduction

Can Self Regulation help?

Is Self Regulation really a part of a framework?

Key elements of Self Regulation:

• clear & consistent standards
• accountability – internal and external
• organizations should be accountable (found in APEC, European, OECD and PIPEDA frameworks)
• CIPL (Centre for Information Policy Leadership) also identified accountability as important
• accountability agents and third part audits
• individual user acces
• Safe Harbor provisions used to incentivize
• consumer education

Self Regulatory Organizations

•  e.g. cinematic content, children's advertising, online advertising in the US

Co Regulatory Organizations

• e.g. online advertising in Europe

Stuart Ingis on OBA (Online Behavioral Advertising) Notice and Choice

Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA)

• website: AboutAds.info
• self regulatory program for online behavioural advertising
• principles released in July 2009 – 50 page document > Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising
• advertising option icon > the icon indicates adherence to the Principles > consumers can click on icon to view clear disclosure statement; an easy-to-use opt-out mechanism
• icon used in ad notices; for example: Dawn and American Express Rewards Gold card
• a lot of publishers and advertisers are putting notices and icon in footers
• DAA consumer choice mechanism – www.AboutAds.info – self-populates, you should go there if you haven't
• CBBB (Council of Better Business Bureaus) and DMA (Direct Marketing Association) have complementary accountability programs

Advertising option icon

Dr. Paolo Balboni on Trust Marks

EU Trustmarks

• have been put into place to help with Self Regulation
• Action 17 EU Digital Agenda
• Art. 29 Working Party Opinion 3/2010 [pdf]
• companies started to see compliance with privacy and data protection as an asset to sell their services and products. Favourable to proving compliance of such trustmarks
• Commission is going to evaluate whether to use trustmarks
• certificates in general could be a valuable way to support accountability. Steps: privacy assessment; implementation option; getting a trustmark to make a consumer see a company is compliant
• trustmark is a label that allows consumers to recognize if they can trust a website
• Trustmark Organizations (TMOs): e.g. Trusted Shops (strong in Germany, France and UK but not yet pan-European), thuiswinkel woorborg (very local; very strong in The Netherlands; a consumer association of Holland is behind it), TRUSTe (he has been critical of this company but they have improved; they are very strong in the United States and well-positioned in Europe; looking into the European market).
• active monitoring of compliance is key
• The Commission is looking for pan-European trustmark to allow for cross-border use.

Panel discussion

Q. Your general view of Self Regulation and other model schemes

Commissioner Stoddart: Yes, there is a role for Self Regulation in every modern economy. Cannot have compliance with the law unless there is an attempt at self compliance. However, in Canada have not taken the position that Self Regulation is enough. They have passed a law covering consumer protection of data. It is written in a very general way and they try to interpret it flexibly.

Ingis: Yes

Commissioner Brill: Self Regulatory frameworks are important. Is it sufficient? There have to be some key elements for Self Regulation to be enough.There ought to be some kind of compliance monitoring and real consequences if there is not compliance. It needs to keep pace with technology. Self Regulation might be more facile and hold more promise for keeping up with technology. Set up a mechanism for consumers to interact with it; it needs to avoid technological loopholes. It needs to take into account sensitive information in a self regulatory regime.

Q from audience: De-regulation in an industry such as the airline industry; how do you get people to buy in if the underlying structure is entrepreneurial?

Ingis: There is government oversight; government puts pressure on the business industry to self regulate. Every industry is different. In advertising and marketing world; sometimes regulation is backed up with legislation, sometimes not. If you compared these areas with those with just legislation, you would probably see more compliance with Self Regulation.

Commissioner Stoddart: Back in 1995 the average consumer could understand what was going on in the advertising world; today the average consumer does not know what is going on with the technology when they click on advertising. The ability to take advantage of the trail of information is extraordinary. When Microsoft set up of 8.0 browser they wanted an opt out feature, an opt out feature that has to be refreshed. New features of the digital world; as regulatory bodies need to have an understanding.

Ingis: Doesn't jump to the conclusion that Self Regulation doesn't work. Need education and transparency. Some views are cultural, some related to demographics (e.g. age). Benefits outweigh the concerns, as long as protection is in place. Wall Street Journal stories about the Microsoft browser may have been embellished. Microsoft was going to have a feature to allow for ad blocking; did not have it as a default. Has been characterized as not as accurate as it was.

Q: Co-regulatory scheme by both government and industry to make this work?

Dr. Balboni: The European Commission – EU is recommending an accreditation scheme for third parties providing trustmarks. Say there is no compliance with privacy and data protection by the advertising industry, both parties can accept the risk (the advertisers and the consumer). Now the government is putting Self Regulation in place; he thinks this is a good idea. Better to have Self Regulation, then the industry is more likely to comply with it.

Commissioner Brill: When does Self Regulation work best, should it be part of Co Regulation? Yes. What does it require? Difficult to talk about it in the abstract. In the US, they have identified by statute certain areas that need regulation e.g. credit reports, health information, online children's information, financial information under the GLB. What about geolocation information? Facial recognition? Is self-regulatory model enough to address these sensitive areas? Data brokers who may not be traditional credit reporting agencies may fall under this regulatory area. At its best, it is an iterative process. Where are the areas of sensitive process? They put out reports identifying the issues; industry is clearly reading the reports.

Commissioner Stoddart: In the last 10 years, the emergence of the concept of trustmark used outside of North America has seen them reimported back through the Asian world. At the same time, many of the countries that use trustmarks (e.g. Mexico), see an increasing pattern to co-regulation.

Q: What is the current program around OBA (online behavioral advertising)? How is the program doing? Are consumers aware somebody is tracking them? Are companies competing to show they are protecting data?

Ingis: There is not some deadline to be hit; people are supposed to be compliant now to the IAB's (Interactive Advertising Bureau's) part of its code. Progress was strong at first behind the scenes, not public. There is a finite number of actors, expected to decrease with consolidation. They have had good progress, and a further call from the Commission to do more. They have undertaken to look to see if they can put walls around all data protection.

Q from audience: Finite number of actors but multiple levels of regulation?

Ingis: it benefits everybody if there is more uniformity

Q: How much should regulators work together? Are there discussions going on?

Commissioner Brill: Yes. They have not enacted a comprehensive FIPPS (Fairness of Information and Protection of Privacy) law but have a UDAP (Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices) law. Europe is undergoing a similar process. Canada is also looking at it; they have adapted concepts born in Canada. All are responding to things happening in industry. There are organizational, institutional and structural ways they are working together: e.g. OECD principles, APEC. Also GPEN (Global Privacy Enforcement Network).

Commissioner Stoddart: US leadership is very important in developing networks of data protection. There are also standards around fairness of information and protection of data. There is also European Adequacy status - abiding by those principles when exporting information from that country. Canada was the first granted, also granted to some other countries. This brings a more practical application to the table rather than formalities around data protection.

Q from audience: Recent US Supreme Court Sorrell case – prescription information from pharmacies – strong First Amendment principles in the US; other countries have equivalents and some don't; some have similar approached in a different way. How do you get a uniform system when principles are so different? How is that going to get balanced?

Commissioner Brill: the statute was an omnibus statute addressing prescription. The language that the SCOTUS majority decision focused on, it is hard for the justices to figure out what the state was intending with the statute. Decision is fairly sweeping but not the "death knell" for US regulators. She does not think the ability to regulate data brokers will be affected. The First Amendment does make the US different, but she is not sure how different it makes them.

Commissioner Stoddart: Coming out of international debate, it is showing how uniform regulation might take place. No one is thinking they are going to use somebody else's model; but there is a lot of willingness to be flexible to retain your own approach to make it compatible with the continuous flow of data.

Q from audience: the definition of personal information (PII) – Canada interprets it more broadly.

Commissioner Brill: U.S. state regulation around PII came out at a time before this was an issue.

Nayak: Almost anything could be considered PII if in the right context; take a piece of information that is not considered private and combine it with another piece of information, and it might be considered PII.

Dr. Balboni: Europe's definition of PII is very broad. In Europe there is an attitude that their model will be exported to the world; when they look at the US or other countries, they see it as poor. This is too bad. E.g. cloud computing – need data protection.

Q: Accountability – is there a role for accountability agents or third parties to certify compliance of companies and the patchwork that will result from the regulation across the countries?

Commissioner Stoddart: In both Google wifi and Staples investigations they asked for practical enforcement ideas; took a book out of the US Federal Commission book. On accountability generally, there is the idea that government regulatory agencies could delegate to third party accountability agencies if structured correctly could be interesting.

Commissioner Brill: In the Google Buzz settlement the FTC required third party audits – information was made public in a way that consumers didn't understand or expect would have been made public.

Q from Commissioner Stoddart: How do you go after those who are flying under the radar?

Ingis: This can be one of the strengths of self regulation if done right; bigger companies helping to do it in a forum in which they are comfortable. Larger companies were the first ones to step forward and they are seeing the rest of the ecosystem coming into play. Violators are coming forward and some haven't even heard of the program in industries in which they are active.

Q: Consumers are supposedly going to benefit; seeing a lot of renewed calls for access. Britian: MyData program. What is the role of Self Regulation here, can it define a framework for access?

Dr. Balboni: will be reflected in a new version of the European Data Protection protocol. Europe has some experience in this area of "privacy by design" or "privacy by default" – point at which access should be given to end users. Look at a way to build privacy by design to empower the user and give access to the data the company will have. The perception of personal data is changing in consumers.

Commissioner Brill: The access question is incredibly important; there was not enough time to cover it today. In the US they give consumers the right to access their credit reports because the consumer needs to be able to correct them so they are not denied rights if inaccurate. Regulation around the data broker industry is important. Practical obscurity: consumers do not know who is collecting data on them. Important role by the CDIA (Consumer Data Industry Association) and other organizations could play a Self Regulatory role.

Commissioner Stoddart: Access to information has been a right for Canadian citizens over the last 10 years. It is the status quo.

These are notes from a talk by the Honorable Herbert B. Dixon, Jr. trial judge of the Washington DC Superior Court, followed by a panel discussion at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto last Saturday. Panelists included Judge Dixon; the Honorable Bernice B. Donald, Western District of Tennessee; Cynthia Gray, Esq. of Chicago, Illinois who counsels judges; Marla N. Greenstein of Anchorage, Alaska, who is involved in judicial conduct regulation; and G. Michael Witte who is Indiana Disciplinary Commission Executive Secretary and a former judge. The session was moderated by the Honorable Annette Scieszinski, Albia, Iowa and sponsored by the Judicial Division of the ABA. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

Keynote by Judge Herbert B. Dixon, Jr. 

Technology helps people remember things they would not usually remember. Technology helps in case presentations.

What is Social Media?

It is less about technology and more about the way it allows people to collaborate and share. Social media is "an umbrella term – integration of technology and social interaction between people." Is it just a fad? He showed us the videos "Social Media Revolution" 2010 and 2011 versions (2011 is below):

There are ethical perils for attorneys who use social networking:

• judge said attorney asked for continuance because her father died, but Facebook showed she was partying all weekend
• lawyer was angry at a judge; he referred to her as an "evil, unfair witch" on his blog. Florida Bar reprimanded and fined him (was a personal attack, not a first amendment issue).

Courts wrestle with social networks:

• employee was on the witness stand and the boss was texting him answers; someone alerted the judge
• juror misconduct in Florida: jurors admitted to doing research on the Internet during drug trial. Turns out 8 more jurors were doing the same thing; judge had to declare a mistrial. The news headlines read: "Mistrial by Google."
• in another case, a juror expelled after posting verdict on Facebook. The juror was replaced and trial went forward

Judge Dixon talked about a new type of jury instruction:

• given during voir dire
• allow them to use computers before voir dire, but warn them against looking up information. He gives them three reasons, and repeats throughout the process; seems to work: (1) to ensure fairness; (2) if they violate instructions, they will jeopardize the results of the trial; and (3) if they find out someone violates instructions, it could get that juror in trouble.

Googling potential jurors by the lawyers during voir dire?

•  he did not allow it in his courtroom; however, there was a court decision that allowed it
•  as long as it does not interfere with the voir dire, it may be permitted

Example of juror's Facebook misconduct:

• juror in UK
• 6 million pound drug case
• contacted acquitted codefendant
• codefendant's lawyer reported it to the judge

Example of juror's text messaging misconduct:

• rape trial in Queens, NY
• juror sent text messages to numerous people
• the juror took on the role of reporter: "from a 12 x 20 jury room with excellent wifi, Juror #5 reporting live"
• local prosecutor was a recipient of the text messages

Should a judge be on Facebook? CCPIO's New Media Report released August 26, 2010 says 40% of judges have Facebook accounts; most of those are elected judges.

Georgia judge steps down following questions about Facebook relationship with defendant.

A North Carolina judge issued public reprimand:

• judge and attorney "friended" each other on Facebook
• judge posted on attorney's FB wall
• judge was issued public reprimand.

What should judges do in terms of Facebook account? Answers are all over the place.

• law enforcement officers and employees – okay for judges to friend them as long as they do not discuss details of trials
• Florida – Judges cannot "friend" lawyers on Facebook; inappropriate
• New York – yes, a judge can friend a lawyer, BUT the judge must avoid appearance of impropriety
• Kentucky – agrees with New York
• judge from Staten Island was moved to Manhattan; judge was using Facebook and Twitter accounts from the bench
• Ohio – an anonymous webmail name "webmiss" to write to newspaper when there were scathing reports about a judge. It was traced to computer in judge's office; might have been her daughter.
• Ohio – agree with Kentucky and New York, with same cautions.

In Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett and McCormish v. Bennett, United States Supreme Court, Oral argument March 28, 2011, Chief Justice John Roberts stated: "I checked the Citizens' Clean Elections Commission website this morning…"

Dixon's Judicial Commandments re: Social Media

• judge must maintain decorum in social networks (Rule 1.2 Promoting Confidence of the Judiciary)
• judge should not make comments on a social networking site about any matters pending before the judge
• judge should not view a party's or witnesses' pages on a social networking site to obtain information before the judge
• judge should disqualify himself or herself when they judges' social network relationships makes it inappropriate (Rule 2.11 Disqualification)
• a judge should be aware of the contents of his or her social networking page

Panel Discussion

Panelists:
Judge Bernice B. Donald, Western District of Tennessee
Judge Herbert B. Dixon, Jr., Washington DC Superior Court
Cynthia Gray, Esq. , Chicago, Illinois
Marla N. Greenstein,Anchorage, Alaska
Michael Witte, Lawrenceberg, Indiana

Survey of Relevant Rules of Conduct (Model Code of Judicial Conduct) -
Rule 2.4
Rule 2.8
Rule 2.0
Rule 2.12

Moderator Judge Annette Scieszinski, Albia, Iowa presented a number of scenarios and questions for the esteemed panel. Note the audience was made up primarily of judges, both elected and appointed, at various court levels.

Q 1: Insidious Nature of Lingo - A new judge on your bench is on the cutting edge of the new social media – what about the jargon?

Greenstein: off the bench there may be emails between judges; with new text message language, there is a casualness that is inappropriate in more formal documents.

Judge Scieszinski: Rule 1.2 Judges must promote public confidence: independence, integrity and impartiality – must avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.

Q 2: A jury arrived at a controversial ruling last week; the anonymous bloggers are going nuts. To make sure it's a balanced discussion, the judge joins the online debate anonymously.

Witte: "Put a zip on it." A judge is joining in a discussion that he is going to have to make a ruling on; it is still a public discussion.

Judge Donald: Even if the judge is not influenced, cannot ethically discuss their rulings. Things done under the banner of anonymity will come back to you. When something gets into cyberspace, it is there forever.

Greenstein: It is hard to read the comments and not participate. You are better not to read. Set up your own parameters and do not tempt yourself.

Judge Dixon: When you participate anonymously, it looks like you knew it was wrong to do and looks just worse.

Question from audience: what would younger people think about the reasonableness of this?

Audience comment: it is not as anonymous as you think; there will always be an IP address footprint.

Judge Scieszinski: You can't just go online and read anonymously; and you cannot eliminate something you have read from your awareness.

Question from audience: Is it improper for judges to follow news coverage of trials they are hearing?

Greenstein: It is not improper, but it is tempting to respond. It should not be the judge who does the monitoring; someone else should take this burden away from the judge.

Judge Scieszinski: Don't think your staff can monitor and feed to the judge; the staff are under the same rules and ethics as the judge.

Applicable rules:

Rule 2.8 (C)
Rule 2.9 (A)
Rule 2.10

Q 3: Proactivist Judging - Now assigned to the drug court, you find it liberating to interact with social workers, probation officers, treatment providers and others on the team. A dedicated Facebook account would be a good, informal and collaborative tool, and the clients would enjoy it. Right?

Gray: It is not wrong for a judge to find a way to communicate and collaborate; she likes to think there is a better way for the court to do it than on Facebook; would be better on the court's own servers with privacy and specific rules around it. Someone should be monitoring it consistently to ensure the rules are followed. In a court setting, judges need to take care that the discussion is not too casual.

Judge Dixon: in a lot of places the specialized courts are "opt in" courts – have to request to go to those courts; there are a list of rules that have to be agreed to.

Rules 2.9 Comment 4 – speaks directly to the problem-solving courts

Greenstein: problem-solving courts – it would be great to have some use of technology to coordinate between all the players; technology gives a way to communicate in a way where everyone feels comfortable, feels they get the information at the same time. They should not shy away from use of technology. She hopes judges will go away today with ideas on how to use technology.

Question from audience (a judge): He keeps getting invitations for Facebook and LinkedIn; do the same issues apply to the more professional-oriented networks? Are they safer?

Judge Dixon: No. The dangers are still the same, even if just supposedly more professional. Lawyers will still ask you to connect to them.

Greenstein: LinkedIn is like belonging to a Rotary Club, except you can't see everyone in the room. Be a member, but be aware you can't see everyone.

Judge Donald: She is not sure about other groups being in these networks and who this links her to; it is not right for her. She deletes invitations to connect, even with family members. Clerks should not be on Twitter talking about court cases or judges; creates problems from ethical and safety standpoint. "There may be a day when I link to something, but I'm just not there yet."

Witte: When you are on LInkedIn, it asks what your specialty is; take note if you are in a state that says you cannot say you are a specialist in a certain area.

Question for Greenstein: Facebook or some similar account: is it useful for judicial outreach?

Greenstein: In a last minute election campaign one judge was able to use Facebook and another website to communicate with brother electorate in a way that was less expensive than it would have – has put together some information on this. Would be great for judges to have a public website that has information; could be controlled more. This is just another media that you need to be trained to use.

Judge Dixon: Court as an institution rather than judges as individuals could use social media. For example, in DC they are announcing a Safe Surrender Program – individuals voluntarily turn themselves in if they have outstanding bench warrants – was announced this time using Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media.

Question from audience (family court judge): What about the Family Wizard program (see http://www.ourfamilywizard.com/ofw/ )? - court schedules what is supposed to happen with the family; court can go in to see if everything is taking place.

Gray: Sounds like it is not ex parte and everyone has agreed to it.

Judge Donald: Doesn't see it as issuing contact, it is just exchanging schedules. Doesn't see it as inappropriate.

Greenstein: What would be inappropriate is if you used online sources to do your own research rather than doing appropriate hearings.

Judge Dixon: Sounds like supervised visitations in the digital age.

Audience comment: Worried that the judge becomes the supervisor. If you see something inappropriate, do you bring them into court?

Family court judge: fortunately she has not had these problems. It has reduced the swearing. She does use this information for contempt hearings, if someone says he picked up a child and the systems shows he didn't.

Q 4: Text messaging jurors about court status eases the traffic jam in accessing the recorded-message system. Now it's time to expand the message network to include outreach and court promotion. Isn't this the way the public wants us to communicate?

Judge Donald: They were one of the pilot projects launching cameras in the courtroom. "We ought to use the medium that is most effective with the best information." Texting about jury service is fine; however, they have to ensure there is adequate input into the development of these systems from the court and clerks. Right now they have a call-in service and text message that notifies everyone if there is a problem with the building. Her court is very innovative. She supports the use of this kind of information to users.

Rule 1.2 Comment 6: it has not always been clear whether a judge may initiate and participate in community outreach activities.

Q 5: A lawyer tells politically incorrect jokes while waiting in the hall for order hour. The judge just avoids the hall. Should something be done?

Judge Dixon: He has seen this in the courtroom. Call them to the bench and let them know about the inappropriateness.

Judge Scieszinski: Is it different if Larry tweets this to his followers?

Judge Dixon: If there is an inappropriate comment of the lawyer being made publicly, does the judge have the authority to say something? He is not aware of anything that has discussed the issue.

Judge Donald: As a judge you have an obligation to prevent this in a courtroom; but how would you know otherwise unless you were following them?

Rule 2.3 (B)

Judge Dixon: You do not have control over public ramps that lawyers may be a part of. A judge does not have the authority; the judge will just have to withdraw him or herself.

Greenstein: It is usually brought to the judge's attention by a staff member, and there is usually harassment involved. A judge has to be aware of the obligations.

Q 6: Inadvertent exposure – When the judge arrives at the courthouse, the clerk says, "Our 9:30 Dad has been beating on his girlfriend again; it's all over Facebook."

Greenstein: This has introduced ex parte communication to the judge. A similar situation happened in Alaska. Hopefully court staff are trained not to communicate this kind of thing with the judge.

Judge Scieszinski: How is this different from seeing it on the morning news?

Greenstein: Yes, it is different. News tends to be more general; personal communication tends to be more specific. Should the judge read something that will affect the decision, the judge should disclose this.

Witte: With the news, you are not targeted to be the recipient. With the personal message, you are the target.

Q 7: Judge about town – the judge's Facebook page is very professional. She's well-connected, knows everybody, and is good at the politics of being a public official. The judge clicks "like" on all the business sites that cross the screen – the restaurants, the spa, the book store, the coffee shop, etc. What's wrong with supporting your community?

Judge Donald: It infers you are using the prestige of your judicial offers to promote these businesses. She did like the idea, however, of being "about town".

Judge Dixon: There is nothing wrong with telling a chef you liked a meal; however, once you click "like" in a social network, that puts you in a position that they can use what you said to tell others that a judge likes them.

Greenstein: Anything you do in social media is public.

Judge Scieszinski: What about the Casey Anthony verdict: what about clicking "like" on that?

Witte: If you click on the story you may be indicating these kinds of stories; but you may be inadvertently indicating you like the outcome.

Q 7: The banner at the bottom of the TV screen says "Did the defendent prove its case?" as closing arguments near in a high-profile criminal trial. Emailed votes, and comments, are allowed and you want to weight in because, after all, you work these cases regularly…

Greenstein: Judges cannot comment on others' matters. It depends on your code.

Gray: The Model code says you cannot comment because it might affect the fairness of the case.

Judge Dixon: When you get into making public comments, you are asking for trouble. With the Internet you have more opportunities to make yourself look like a fool than you would when you were just standing in a room.

Q 8: Blogging – a great way to communicate with a very open or closed group. Right? The criminal law changes so fast, and you've been asked to blog about issues that have previously come before you and how they were resolved. You do this as a service to the local bar. Lately, police officers have been posting good questions on your blog, noting how helpful your advice is. (Indeed, there is a downturn in suppression issues coming into your courtroom.)

Gray: Judges should not be answering questions of police officers. However, this may be a good way to communicate. She would be concerned if this was a closed group. Be careful in giving advice to the bar; pro se litigants can be suspicious that other sides know something they don't know. While blogging is a great idea and there are good ways to educate the bar, you must ensure this is public education and not just bar education.

Question from audience: What about blogs about non-legal topics?

Gray: that is fine; don't indicate you are a judge on the blog and certainly don't put a photo of you in your robes on it. Topics like beermaking and food is fine.

Question from the audience: How far do you take monitoring of the Internet?

Greenstein: In some states there is a private company that provides telephone hearings and they use photos of the judges on their website; judges sometimes do not have control over this. Judges need to make the request that their photos not be used by private enterprise. She's seen a problem with a law firm still using the judge's photo in advertising after he left the firm.

Audience comment: She is on Facebook specifically to see when her photo has been posted (she removes the tags).

Noted at the end of the session: This program can be taken and adapted for other jurisdictions – contact the Judicial Division of the ABA. Also the JD Ethics Committee has similar programs available.

These are notes are from a panel discussion session at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto last Friday, one of the Solo Day 2011 talks. Panelists included Charley Moore, founder of RocketLawyer, San Francisco, CA; Carolyn Elefant, solo practitioner and blogger (see MyShingle.com), Washington, DC , and Jay S. Fleischman, consumer bankruptcy lawyer at Shaev & Fleischman (see NewYorkBankruptcyHelp.com and BankruptcyLawNetwork.com) and online legal marketing consultant at www.LegalPracticePro.com . Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

The Virtual Law Office

Charley Moore provided a case study of a young solo practitioner as an example of someone who might be setting out to set up a virtual law office. He went through a series of advice for starting out:

• Having profiles on high profile websites will help build your reputation. You want to be on more than two sites; when potential clients Google you, you want them to find positive profiles that you have curated. For example: LinkedIn profile and a Facebook page for your practice
• "The fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one big thing." Moore is a believer in "one big thing," i.e. figuring out your niche, what you are very good at.
• Organize your practice and know how to prioritize: blogging, LinkedIn and other social media presence
• Setting up a virtual practice means: cheap overhead (no office!), and convenient for your clients.
• If you don't need to print, you don't need paper storage.

Jay Fleishman on going virtual:

• you only need a cell phone and computer to provide legal services (a means of communication, and a means of storing and disseminating information).
• everything lawyers needs practice is in their brains
• "those pretty books sitting in your library are quite frankly garbage…those books are costing you money with real estate."
• he has not had an office phone since 2004; his local clients have a local phone number for him that takes them to an automated attendant. It rings to either his cell phone or his Skype line on his computer. He uses Grasshopper.com which costs him a lot less than traditional phone bills. It also sends him the messages as MP3 file attached to an email.
• if you go on vacation and you are solo and your client does not get you, "that's bad practice" – "you can either skip your vacations or you can use technology to allow you have work life balance. You can serve them better."

Moore:

He uses Google Voice (free service). On this trip he forgot his phone at home in error; he got a new Android phone in Toronto, threw in a new simcard and added one more number to Google Voice from the Internet, and successfully rerouted all calls to the new phone.

Clients actually love to hear he is learning and at conferences, tweeting what he is learning. This is client engagement.

Fleischman:

Advertising online gets things going online quickly. "All it's costing you is money." "It's getting you on the map incredibly quickly."

It is easy to get online fast, there are any number of services, for example:

• RocketLawyer
• Avvo
• Google Adwords

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Moore: You are thinking about search engine optimization. What are the optimizing elements on your website http://www.newyorkbankruptcyhelp.com/ ?

Fleischman:

A good web presence requires both marketing and promotion. Pure marketing moves people from one place to another on the site and only provides pure information. However, an information gatherer is very different from a do-it-yourselfer.

Site also has email updates and Consumers Guide to Bankruptcy. Both only ask for an email address to request them. The less information you ask for, the more likely you are to convert somebody. Once they sign up, you put them into a marketing database. He uses AWeber.

Moore: he uses Marketo

Elefant: a lot of people use MailChimp which is a free service; AWeber has extra spam protection.

Fleischman:

From the email updates, subscribers get an update each time he puts up a new blog post. If they opt in for the guide book, on a 3-4-3-4 day basis, they receive an email (pre-programmed). It is a pretty good bet they will be in front of the computer at the same time on the same day the next week; 7 days later, but you want communication before then.

Everything on the website is not high promotion, high sales. You want to make the offer in a very human way; you want to make the offer in a way such that you would not be offended by it if you were to receive it.

That is the process of turning a stranger into someone who has a sense that you know what you are talking about in your practice area, you are a nice person, and you have some authority.

Moore: Larry Rice is a good model of a practice that is a real expertise; that is why he is called on by CNN and CNBC. Get an area of expertise and blog about it, tweet about it. Write about your ideas and others' ideas. That will build your reputation and your authority. Search engines Google and Bing are supposed to direct someone to the best authority for something they are looking for.

Fleischman: BankruptcyLawNetwork.com – consumer bankruptcy site created four years ago. Over 125,000 visitors every month. All it is is a blog, 6,000+ individual articles. It has taken a lot of time but has only cost them time. The definitive sense of what an authority site should be. He gets clients coming to him who have read his blog extensively.

Question from the audience: are his fees posted?

Fleischman: No, but he doesn't think it would matter.

Moore:

By becoming an authority by blogging and podcasting, you start getting others linking to you. Fleischman's reputation has grown because he has done the work gradually every day over time, with more and more people linking to his site. Virtuous circle: "the more well known you get, the more well known you get."

Over time you will get more followers and more links; if you stick with it, you will build good reputation. But you have to do it every day and expect that it is part of practice. Keep doing it even if nobody is listening.

Carolyn Elefant on MyShingle.com

She has a widget for printing for each blog post so that posts print as one consumable piece.

She has a national practice, markets to other attorneys rather than to consumers. On her firm website she has videos and links to ebooks. Hers is based on a talk that she gave. When land owners call a particular agency, they print out her book and give it out to people because of the quality. Having somebody else market your information is very useful.

The site allowed her to create a micro-niche very quickly. Research the area, write an ebook about it, put it online, circulate it with a press release, send out to clients and it is a quick way to expand into a different area, target different people.

Her MyShingle.com site has a YouTube channel.

Solo practice can be isolating; she uses some tools just to learn about them and finds this enriching, even if they might not necessarily advance her practice. Twitter is not just for marketing, it is also a way to keep up to date. It's not just a marketing function.

She also started a trade association – OREC - Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition

Q&A

Moore: Currently RocketLawyer does not yet deal with Canadian lawyers.

Comment from audience member: You need to start.

Q: What about meeting in person?

Fleischman: being able to meet only electronically "is a hurdle"; he meets all of his clients face to face. He does not believe initial consultation needs to be face to face, but having a place to meet is important, even if it is a business centre. He is not big on meeting in coffee shops, but some do make it work. He often meets at client offices.

Elefant: because she has a national practice, she cannot always meet face to face; many clients are not on Skype yet. She will talk with them and answer as many questions as possible for them to make them feel comfortable. Virtual firms do not mean that you are always online, but having the ability to keep in touch online is a supplement to meeting in person. For some clients it is more convenient not to have to meet. She is also rigorous about follow-up, giving a weekly report and followup on what is being done.

Moore: Clients expect they can go online and see the data and documents online. This is a growing expectation.

Q: What about clients who want to know where my office is, and if I can scan in and fax them?

Moore: He didn't see this as an issue. This is not just for young people; 60+ is a growing demographic on Facebook

Q: How do you deal with Facebook?

Elefant: She suggests starting a Facebook page for your law firm so you don't have to friend people you don't know.

Fleischman: He takes the opposite approach; he will never put anything online that will embarrass him. He has no photos of his son on Facebook. Any photos where people tag him, he removes the tag. If someone friends themselves with him, they are not "outing" themselves as a bankruptcy client. No one needs to know why they are there. They are less likely to follow a firm page.

Elefant: If you take that approach, you can limit what certain people see.

During this session the General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Division of the ABA ("GP Solo") launched their Smart Soloing Center with tips and research sources. They will also be putting out an ebook shortly.

Note: This session was also recorded for the Legally Easy podcast (the RocketLawyer podcast). I will add in a link once that becomes available.

These are notes are from a panel discussion session at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto last Friday. Panelists included Arthur G. Greene, Boyer Greene LLC, Bedford, NH; T. Andrew Brown, Brown & Hutchinson, Attorneys at Law, Rochester, NY; Thomas C. Grella, McGuire Wood & Bissette PA, Asheville, NC; Ken Young, Young Mayden LLC, Charlotte, NC; and Mark Robertson, Robertson & Williams, Oklahoma City, OK & co-author of Winning Alternatives to the Billable Hour. Moderator was Prof. Gary A. Munneke of Pace University School of Law, White Plains, NY. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

This was an informal discussion led by Prof. Gary Munneke. A range of topics concerning the legal profession and the management of law firms were covered. I found much of the discussion challenged or refuted common, widely-held beliefs. My overall take-away was that the nature of law firms are changing in some ways, but staying the same in others. There are differences between changes of small law firms compared to the large firms.

Question for Andrew Brown: Why did New York decide to undertake the study of the future of the legal profession?

[See undated press release from New York State Bar Association]

The Task Force was a project of immediate past president of New York Bar Association Stephen Younger – undertaken because of effect of the recession in 2007. They found the recession didn't cause the current state, but highlighted the issues. How could lawyers shape their own destiny?

See the April 2, 2011 NYSBA Report of the Task Force on the Future of the Legal Profession [pdf]

The report looked at three aspects:

• structure and billing
• training and education
• work-life balance integration

Structure and billing

They found that smart firms are looking at restructuring; firms of the future will look very different. If you are planning to practice for 3-4 years, you will be okay, but if you plan to practice longer, you need to look at changing.

Training and Education

The report included feedback from deans of 15 law schools; they were all interested in participating; the idea that law schools are not willing to change is not true.

Experiential learning is more costly; law schools have to do more in training of lawyers.

Work-life balance integration

Lawyers are looking to work with more flexibility. Not less or easier, but they expect more flexibility in their work. Technology is changing rapidly and we can take advantage of it with respect to structure and billing, work-life balance.

Q: Do the findings apply only to New York?

Brown: It is not just a New York thing. The team they pulled together for the Task Force had broader views of things. Much of what they talked about have equal application to firms across the United States and some outside the US.

Q: Originally it was thought that when the recession would be over things would get back to normal. But we now don't know when the recession will be over.

Brown: Downturned economy accentuated what was already festering. He doesn't think we will go back to the world as it was. He doesn't think there will be less legal work or less legal services, but the same number of attorneys will not be needed on U.S. soil.

Structuring and billing will not change; it is the pyramid structure of large and small law firms that will change. There will be more contract lawyers, increasing outsourcing (especially from India and China). Increasing technology use. A lot of what we are seeing is driven by technology.

The big changes we are talking about are not cyclical. We are not going back to the way the profession has been over the years. Things will look very different in the years to come.

Question for Tom Grella: What is it like for a managing partner in a big law firm? How do you deal with these forces affecting firms?

In managing a large law firm, he sees the need to focus on three areas:

• Flexibility
• Innovation
• Responsiveness

Those lawyers who only have 3-4 years left to practice perhaps do not have to worry about changing their practice. He has to emphasize being flexible with his partners. Ideas of the way things are changing may come from younger lawyers who are not yet partners.

They are attempting to get people to think in more innovative ways. They may be practicing traditionally but need to start thinking innovatively.

Two major forces on firms:

• Changing client expectations - clients are willing to jump to other firms to get their expectations met; he needs to continually push the importance of responsiveness to the staff
• Changing forms of competition

Q: Have you been responsive or reactive?

Grella: Both. When you don't do things as partners want, they may see it as just reactive.

They have done a lot of planning. A lot of strategic planning is different than it used to be. He has had to come up with creative ways to get them to do strategic planning:

• E.g. Economic crisis summit he ran in the firm over a weekend 2 years ago; looking at new areas of practice and new ways of practice; also things they were doing they might consider dropping. It was really strategic planning
• E.g. Partner commitment planning
• They are now doing succession planning.

Q: What about leadership management?

Grella: Leadership and management are two very different things. "Management ties us down and keeps us from being able to lead." Managing deals with day to day things. "Leadership lets us move forward." He is a fan of leadership: building trust and serving other people. It is very easy to lose trust and credibility with partners.

Q: What are the regulatory issues lawyers are facing in the changing environment?

Grella: More efforts (at least in N. Carolina) to regulate at the Bar level; however, it is becoming more difficult to regulate, especially with unauthorized areas of practice. It is getting harder to know what the practice of law is; it is getting harder to regulate.

Munneke: The shrinking professional monopoly combined with global work is causing changes.

Grella: In N. Carolina lawyers had a monopoly on real estate closes; they were going to be closed down by the government, but they were able to argue this kept costs down. They may not be as lucky to hold onto the monopoly in the future. In areas that look like they are doing the same as others, they need to find ways to differentiate.

Question for Arthur Greene: How will the future play out differently for large and small firms?

There have been a lot of layoffs and changes in the mega-firms; but approx 70% of lawyers are in smaller firms (under 50 lawyers). The recession has had an impact on smaller firms, but not as much as the larger firms. As long as they have had more than one practice area, they have survived.

He sees trends that will predict what will happen in 5-10 years for smaller firms. For small firms in the same community where lawyers have equal reputations, you would think they are doing equally well. However, when he looks at their financial reports (which he is privy to), he sees a disparity between firms and what managing partners are taking home.

Factors contributing to successful firms:

• leadership – firms that are doing well always had good leadership; firms that are not don't have the leadership and they don't understand that is their problem
• approach to marketing – networking and staying ahead of the curve in terms of clients is so much more important today
• being innovative – a lot of small firms are doing well being innovative
• attention to succession – firms are most at risk when the founder retires. Do they see themselves as a firm or individual lawyers? Is there an "institutional approach" in decision-making?

These areas are putting firms in a stronger position.

Q: You seem to be saying there will be less restructuring in small firms that are fairly lean than large firms that have a lot of associates at the bottom.

Greene: Yes. When large firms with "boat loads" of associates come up short on work, they can lose hundreds of thousands of dollars very quickly.Small and mid-sized firms are in a better position to manage their way through it. They were able to not lay off those who were important to their future. They laid off associates (and sometimes partners) that were not going to help them in the future.

Q: Are the competitors to firms: banks, paralegals and online services?

Greene: Yes, these are competitors to small firms; but there are great opportunities to small firms. Big firms grew because corporations became global; however, there is a lot of work that is local in nature. Those are the markets that are open to the small firms.

Q: Some people have said it is crazy to open a new practice at this time.

Greene: For someone just out of law school, it would take an extraordinary individual to open a practice. In cases of small firms spinning off of large law firms, there are opportunities for innovation, especially for more experienced lawyers.

Question for Ken Young: We saw a lot of lay offs of lawyers in 2008-2009. What did this teach us for hiring in the future?

Young specializes in employment of lawyers and opening offices. These four years have been very interesting in lawyer hiring.

3 Ls:

1.  leveraging in hiring is over - young associates flushed money up the pyramid to partners who perhaps were not working hard enough. This model is no longer happening. Associates are being hired for very specific needs (e.g. ERISA, bankruptcy). Smaller firms are being very careful. They are recommending to hire slowly; turnover is costly. Best firms are now interviewing candidates 4 times to get inside a person's
2. lock step - idea that if you make your goals you will become a partner. Now more large firms are going to large bands of associates; some associates may never get outside the firms band. Some may advance more quickly if they are entrepreneurial. A lot of partners also lost their jobs. Firms are now leaner, more careful about who they hire.
3. lower expectations – get inside the heads of those you are hiring and find out what motivates them. They may not want to make partner. In your hiring, you cannot assume that because they are top of the class they may not have the same five year plan you had when you came out of law school. Why did they go to law school? You've got to engage and get inside their heads. They might also not be trustworthy and someone you wouldn't want to send your clients to. They might not fit your culture. Even people who impressed you out of law school. When you talk with a young lawyer or a lateral candidate, take the time to talk to them and make sure they are like you and your firm.

Q: Is the idea of becoming an equity partner an impossible dream for students getting out of law school today?

Young: For someone to make equity partner in this market, they will have to be entrepreneurial. Not necessarily entrepreneurial in getting clients, but in developing an area of specialization that makes them a "go-to" person. But it makes a much more "special person" to become equity partner.

Q: If someone leaves the city, does the firm keep them on by virtually?

Young: Yes, smart firms are slow to hire and keep people on longer, even if it means letting them work virtually.

Q: Do younger people bail out and move to smaller firms to become partner? Is that even possible today?

Young: That is actually a good plan. If you are not going to make partner, it is good. He is seeing seven year lawyers (especially in New York City) who are willing to take four year positions.

Q: Do you see law firms using mergers and different alliances to bring in the talent they need and want rather than growing them?

Young: Yes, he just saw a merger between a 500 lawyer firm and a 45 lawyer firm where the point was not to grow larger. With the financial markets in London and Asia, we are going to continue to see mergers. Note if you have a 7 or 8 lawyer firm, you don't need to merge with someone to be bigger.

Q: If law firms grow by buying experience in talent, where do new lawyers get experience?

Young: Hopefully they get work where they can. They need to be smart with how they are practicing.

Several firms started by young lawyers from large firms: the entrepreneurial ones have teamed up with those they were in law school with to start a firm, but they had three years of training.

Question for Mark Robertson: Please comment on billing practices; in the New York Bar Association Task Force the one lightning rod issue was billing. People were saying hourly billing is dead, but large law firms said it would be back.

Robertson: Those who think alternative billing will disappear have their heads in the sand.

Alternative billing is historically not alternative; before 1950s, hourly billing did not exist. Clients were quoted a price and if they liked it, they hired the lawyer. They did not charge by the hour until the early 1960s. Before then they looked at the work they did, they would estimate what was fair. In the 1950s there was a study that said that lawyers who kept track of their hours made more money; lawyers after that "screwed it up."

Tracking hours is a measure of the lawyers' costs, not the value to the client. Hours should still be tracked to see if you are making money.

Wall Street firms were heavily influenced by their clients and had to cut staff. Many have a two-year gap in their succession plan. American Corporate Counsels (ACC): have put forward a value challenge that they ask or demand their firms follow. [see: ACC Value-based fee primer] Wall Street firms are more demanding; they look at the method of billing.

Additional thoughts:

Greene: With respect to billing methods: he was liaison to the Billable Hours task force from 1998. They spent a year working on the subject; it was a group of lawyers from a range of firms plus professors, and there was a division then also. At the time those who defended the billable hours were lawyers from New York and Washington who billed over $700 an hour.

Young: Clients like it when you approach work like a business person and not like a plumber.

Brown: What makes people fearful is the thought of losing money. When you talk abut changing billing structures, they get fearful because they think they are going to make less money. This is not true. He can think of ways they have the opportunity to make more money; they have to think in smart ways.

• Figure out ways to do the same work in less time, but at the same time you make clients happy.
• Knowing the law is not enough; you need to find ways to be entrepreneurial. Younger lawyers are going to be out there doing different kinds of work, impacting the profession.
• Contracting work is going to be big and continue to get big. Lawyers often need help; as law firms, you may looking at ways to service the needs of other law firms.

Grella: We are a business, and we are in business to make a profit. There was previously a big controversy about whether they are a business or a profession; however, they have a business to run. They have to be flexible and aware of the changing environment. You may a good leader and a good litigator, but you may not be the best person to be in charge of a practice group. Practice group leaders in his firm do not have training in marketing so they bring experts in. You should consider as your managing partner or CEO someone who is not an attorney; hire someone who has the skills needed to run an organization.

Robertson: Alternative billing does not just mean one fixed fee. One firm bills according to how the client sees value. There was a time when lawyers did tax returns, not accountants. Lawyers have a monopoly on representing people in court. Other than that, for most mainstream issues people represent themselves. Why are they hiring you to do something? Can they hire an investment banker to do a complicated transfer? As lawyers, need to define the value of services being provided to clients. Ultimately who decides what is reasonable is not you, it's your client.

Audience question (barrister from England): apart from solicitors, barristers can now partner with whomever they want. He practices with two paralegals.

Robertson: He advises young lawyers to get jobs as paralegals if necessary.

Audience question (representative from a law school): for law students who are graduating, how can they position themselves to be attractive to small firms?

Brown: if you are a law school turning out students for a smaller market, smaller firms are looking for students with experiential learning, clinical learning. Many interviewers are not asking about this, so it is sending the wrong message to the law schools.

Young: differentiating factors: if someone has worked between undergrad and law school, this shows someone who has a drive to work.

Grella: Tier of law school means nothing to him; he is looking for someone with good communication skills to talk with the client. He is looking for things people have traditionally not looked for in the past.

Munneke's concluding concepts

The economic model for large firms is changing; small firms are being affective. They are looking to a larger paradigm shift.

Other issues:

• contract lawyering
• public funding of law firms in the UK
• the general practice is dead, specialization is necessary
• the role of information is changing, clients can get it on their own.

Parting considerations:

• How will the organization and structure of your practice change?
• How will you train staff and lawyers?
• How will you find the balance between life and work?
• How will you harness technology to work for you?
• Who will be your clients?
• How will you reach them?
• What services will you provide?
• Who will be your primary competitors?

See also americanbar.org/lpm – some of the Task Force material will be posted there.

These are notes are from a panel presentation session at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto last Thursday. Panelists included Dominique Shelton, Wildmon Harrold, Beverly Hills, CA, Prof. Teresa Scassa, University of Ottawa, Research Chair of Information Law, Ottawa, ON, Dr. Ann T. Greeley, DecisionQuest, and Nicole Black, Rochester, NY . Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

Dominique Shelton - Overview on what is social media

Social media often involves the creation of "user generated content", which often takes bits and pieces of things created by others. This is why social media often gets into intellectual property issues.

Types of User Generated Content Sites:

• Blogs
• Wiki sites
• User generated advertisements e.g. Doritos and Pepsi MAX "Crash the Superbowl" contest; Lipton Brisk's Facebook account teaming up with rapper Eminem "Anti-ad"
• In the mobile sphere: Twitter
• authorized and unauthorized mashups such as photographs, video, music put together without permission clearance. Serena software often includes mashups on the back end
• MMOG ("massively multiplayer online games") and virtual worlds e.g. Starbucks site within Second Life virtual world. In online game World of Warcraft and others there are over 13 million participants. Exchange of money in these sites can mean some litigation. In 2014 this market is expected to reach $96 billion.

FTC Privacy Report, December 2010: Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: A Proposed Framework for Businesses and Policymakers [pdf]

Online behavioural advertising (OBA)

• Online behavioural advertising (OBA) uses tracking to determine what kinds of advertising to serve up to the website viewer.
• The Privacy Commissioner of Canada's definition of "behavioural advertising" is particularly helpful. [Connie's note: see Report on the 2010 Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's Consultations on Online Tracking, Profiling and Targeting, and Cloud Computing, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, May 2011]
• The lawsuits are happening are around "flash cookies" and HTML5 code; cannot use the browsers to disable them because they are hard-coded in and almost impossible to identify.
• Types of claims in the US: behavioural lawsuits e.g. NBC and Warner Bros Records sued due to tracking widgets; there are also mobile class actions pending and some of the ad servers are being sued.

"Privacy by design"

• Concept was created in Canada
• Gives users notice that tracking of their movement on the Internet is going on
• In-Ad notices or "hyper notices" are implemented so that it is not just covered in a blanket user agreement; people are specifically notified when being followed.
• The European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) also has some best practice material around this: EASA Best Practice Recommendation on Online Behavioural Advertising
• Will tracking users online be considered infringement of personal privacy?

Things to do:

• Find out whether the client is using flash cookies
• Sensitize them to the issues
• Be up to date on industry standards
• Ask questions of your vendors

Prof. Teresa Scassa, University of Ottawa - Social networking: Privacy and Trademark Issues

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada does a lot of work in this area.

Civil litigation in Canada:

• do not have the same volume of litigation in Canada as in the US
• courts have ordered access to metadata regarding the amount of time or use of social networking sites; also content from social networking sites has been ordered to be disclosed
• On pages that are considered public, there are no privacy issues.
• 2 lines of jurisprudence in Canada: if there is content on the public pages that infer there may be content of interest on the private side; some people use the features of Facebook to reveal private information to only certain people

Sparks v. Dube raised interesting issues around preservation orders

• Court considered ex parte motion for preservation order
• defendant sought court order to compel plaintiff to download the content of her social networking site under direct supervision (rather than just not update the site)
• there were photos on the public side of the site that showed activities that contradicted injuries she was purported to have;
• court granted the order with some adjustment

Trademarks & social networking:

Use of trademarks on social networking sites has risk:

• the risk of use of another's trademark in a user name or sub-domain; impersonation of celebrities
• borderless Internet and national trademark; there can be many people entitled to the same trademark
• things can go viral very quickly; some companies have found in over-reacting to what they see as trademark infringement can create a backlash against the trademark owner
• there are unlimited variations on marks. It is not enough of a solution to buy every domain name you want.

Facebook and Twitter:

• both have policies on intellectual property protection (for registered trademarks; not unregistered)
• suspected trademark infringement can be reported to Facebook
• Twitter does not permit non-parodic impersonation, but does allow parody

Suggested:

• Monitor use of their trademarks
• Develop an appropriate and considered response in advance.

Dr. Ann T. Greeley, DecisionQuest – Social Media in the Courtroom

Through social media, we now have unprecedented access to public's conversations, attitudes and opinions. Jurors can't help themselves: just like all of us, they take in as much information as they can. The use of social media during a trial has become an issue. This is not surprising: 6 out of 10 US citizens get news from the Internet; online news is now more popular than newspapers or radio. In the US, jurors can talk about trials after the court case, and there are starting to be people creating blogs after the fact.

Researching potential jurors

Social media now allows us to find out what people are thinking; in the US they can do research on the potential jurors before the trial.

Best practices for researching a potential juror:

• determine the most influential sources
• determine if someone is pro-plaintiff or pro-defence
• qualitative analysis of attitudes, opinions and beliefs
• conduct quantitative analysis of readers' comments
• prepare strategic recommendations for jury research, voir dire questionnaires, witness preparation, etc.

People can creating personas for blogs, and creating fake reviews. How can you know what is true? In researching jurors, looking at social media sites, public records, court materials, news sources, and others.

Accessing information by jurors outside of the courtroom

There are "stealth jurors" – people who wish they were jurors or talk as if they were jurors.

Search "jury duty" and "guilty" or "jury duty" and "innocent" on Twitter – you can see general comments on what people are saying when they are waiting to be chosen for jury duty or are on a jury. Can do similar on Facebook.

Nicole Black, Rochester, New York – Ethical pitfalls of social media

Social media can be used by lawyers in a lot of positive ways, but there are pitfalls.

Some ethical pitfalls:

•  Lawyer Advertising rules – the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 was created to address online issues
• If you think what you are putting up might be advertising, a disclaimer may be required. When in doubt, put up the disclaimer (e.g. for informational blogs)
• inadvertently creating an attorney-client relationship; for example, from her blog she gets a lot of inquiry email. There is a need to take care if responding; she recommends responding generally, pointing them to other information rather than advice, and using disclaimers.
• disclosing confidential information
• improper contact with other parties. There should be no deceptive Facebook friending; you can't have your paralegal friend somebody to find out information about them. Always disclose who you are.
• improper client solicitation – when responding for a request for information, that is not a solicitation. But there should be no "ambulance chasing" on Twitter!
• on LinkedIn, stating a "specialization" – in a lot of jurisdictions in the US, you cannot specialize in your law practice, this could violate your rules
• for LinkedIn and other profile sites – in South Caroline, once you claim your profile, you are responsible for what is put up on your site including recommendations from clients
• No ex parte communications – In Florida judges cannot friend lawyers with hearings in front of them; however, they are in the minority

You need to balance the benefits and risks. You also need to learn about social media.

See also Omar Ha-Redeye's writeup of this same session, also here on Slaw.ca

These are notes are from a panel presentation session at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto last Thursday. Panelists included lawyer/librarian Matthew Braun, Legal Reference Specialist at the Law Library of Congress in Washington, DC, Sara Sommarstrom, Program Director, Minnesota Justice Foundation, and Prof. Nanette Elster, Vice President, Spence & Elster and Adjunct Faculty, The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, IL. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

This session was made up of three very different presentations exploring how technology is being used to provide legal or health care services and information to populations that otherwise would be underserved:

• In the first presentation, Matthew Braun described online services from the Law Library of Congress, including how the Global Legal Information Network has become a key portal–and even the main repository–for legal and national documents for some countries that do not have their own online repositories.
• In the second talk, Sara Sommarstrom described ways in which the Minnesota Justice Network is leveraging a small staff using new technologies, providing services to homeless veterans, those in rural areas without lawyers, and reaching out to a certain population in urban areas who could possibly be need specific legal advice.
• In the third talk, Prof. Nanette Elster spoke passionately about the growing divide that is being created with increasing inaccessibility to legal services, healthcare services and Internet by parts of the population. She spoke specifically about the use of social media to improve health care for the underserved.

These talks provide examples on how this divide can be narrowed with existing technologies and social media.

Matthew Braun, Law Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/law

The first mission of the Library of Congress is to support the Congress, but they also support constituents. It is the oldest U.S. federal cultural institution, with a permanent staff of about 3,600 employees. It has the largest collection of libraries in the world and 144 million items in 420 languages.

Researchers can find additional information by going to: http://www.loc.gov/rr/

The Law Library of Congress (LLC) was established in 1832 as a separate department of the LOC. They currently have about 30,000 volumes in a public reading room.

Some of the resources they offer:

• Global Legal Research Center - www.loc.gov/law – the GLRC has a staff of foreign law attorneys who can advise on law in other countries
• Global Legal Information Network – www.glin.gov - "a public database of official texts of laws, regulations, judicial decisions, and other complementary legal sources contributed by governmental agencies and international organizations."
  For some jurisdictions, GLIN serves as the primary repository for legal information. For countries with a legal system in place, this might also serve as a central place for their legal information. Searches can be run in several languages.
• THOMAS – www.thomas.gov - legislative information from the U.S. Congress. Allows for search of legislation. Staff members of the law library add content daily
• A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation - http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw - includes U.S. congressional documents and debates from 1774 to 1875.
• Legal Blawg Archive – captures an archive of a selected number of legal blogs. Searchable, and divided by subject area. Because this is an archive, they do not actively capture current blog posts.

• Their blog In Custodia Legis is getting good traction
• On Facebook at www.facebook.com/lawlibraryofcongress
• On Twitter @LawLibCongress
• YouTube – the Law Library includes their videos on the Library of Congress channel
• "Ask a Librarian" – questions can be directed to the law library. Includes live reference chat.

Question from the audience: Is the library planning to digitize?

Braun: They are in the same building as the US Copyright Office, so are not looking to digitize monographs as others have. They are working with the GPO to make primary legal material available electronically. They are also working on ways to make the case law more accessible; a lot of the content is in proprietary systems.

Sara Sommarstrom, Program Director, Minnesota Justice Foundation, http://www.mnjustice.org/

Minnesota Justice Foundation Pro Se Clinics is a "tiny little non-profit" of 7 staff members who have been able to do some amazing things with free technologies.

Helping homeless veterans:

For example, they recently participated in a Stand Down event for homeless veterans. They used online resources with laptops and wireless to provide information. They used ProJusticeMN and LawHelpMN as resources. According to the ABA Commission on Homelessness and Poverty, child support services for homeless veterans are essential. There are currently more homeless veterans in the U.S. than service members who died in Vietnam.

Serving rural populations:

Minnesota has a lot of rural area with few lawyers, so they use technology to link in to expertise in the urban areas. They are taking advantage of Interactive Television (ITV) currently present in every courthouse in Minnesota. It was set up so that those in other counties could appear in court, but is under-utilized. They use the equipment in law firms and courthouses to link in with private attorneys to get advice from them for pro se litigants. It allows attorneys to take part without giving up days for travel. They are asked to be available on certain days when clinics are run; if a topic in their area comes up, they are contacted to participate via video. This allows those attorneys to participate while giving up as little time as possible from paid client work.

Technology:

• bridges geographic divide between clients and legal services
• allows them to provide services where there are no attorneys
• makes it easy for attorneys to volunteer
• allows for effective use of volunteer resources (especially students who are familiar with the technology)

They also use Skype successfully to "stretch across boundaries". They find video conferencing works best because attorneys feel more comfortable giving advice if they can see the litigants.

Remote technologies at clinics are easy and cheap to set up; can be used anywhere:

• use wireless "hot spots" to set up their own wifi;
• scanner/copier/printer

They have even used this in army tents.

Outreach to tenants in foreclosed properties:

How could they identify tenants in foreclosed properties so they could reach out to them with legal information? The solution was to cross-reference foreclosed properties with rental license data (all done by law students). They used a program called batchgeo.com to map them on Google Maps, and sent out law students to the properties (giving them directions to properties and a phone number in case they needed help). The students provided free legal advice, giving information to the people who needed to know their rights in the case that the property they were living in was being foreclosed.

Question from the audience: Would Skype help outreach to a Spanish speaking population?

Sommarstrom: Find out language skills of the lawyers providing service and make sure they are available when needed.

She also participated in an Externship using Skype, including someone based in Alaska where there are no law schools.

Additional notes on this talk can be found on the ABA Journal blog: Pro Bono Goes High Tech, and Homeless Veterans Benefit.

Prof. Nanette Elster, Vice President, Spence & Elster and Adjunct Faculty, The John Marshall Law School

Using social media to improve health care for the underserved: we have great tools out there, but not everybody is informed about them. Health and social media has been in the news a lot. One of the key missteps traditionally in emergency management has been miscommunication. Social media is changing this.

23% of internet users with chronic illness have looked online for others with similar conditions. Even if people do not have internet access, they can use cell phones to access medical information. However according to Pew in 2007 there is a digital divide between different demographics. There are things that can dramatically improve this.

Example of a health care organization providing service via social media:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) participates online:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• MySpace
• Daily Strength – safe and anonymous support groups
• CaringBridge - connecting families with health challenges

Inaccessibility to legal services, healthcare services and Internet is creating a growing divide.

There is also blurring of boundaries now for physicians. Not everyone putting information out is credible. There needs to be a mechanism in place to ensure what is put out is accurate. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) views mobile medical apps as posing potential health risks, so they want to create some oversight.

Standards for physician/client confidentiality are changing. What do you do in an age when patients can "friend" a physician on Facebook? Lines get blurred as to what is personal information and patient information. The American Medical Association put out a social media policy for physicians: AMA Policy: Professionalism in the Use of Social Media.

Social Justice or Social "Injustice"?

• seeing some disparities crossing boundaries, but also seeing some things coming together for fewer disparities
• Example: the "text4baby" program is a free text messaging service in English and Spanish for prenatal and postpartum care
• According to "Peer-to-peer Healthcare" from Pew Research Center (February 28, 2011), when they find information and support through the Internet, people feel less isolated; the Internet is a source of emotional support
• Mayo Clinic is a pioneer, feeling that people should drive their own health care support
• Partners Healthcare's Center for Connected Health in Boston use cell phones and computers to help monitor people at home, text pregnant teens and have outreach for drug users

Healthy People 2020 (HP 2020) recommends increasing the use of social marketing in health promotion and disease prevention.

Some considerations:

• who is using it and in what form?
• understanding who is not using it and why not is just as important
• most libraries now have free Internet access
• how do you encourage use so that it engenders trust?
• the need to maximize the potential of social media
• what kind of oversight is needed? Right now there are a lot of legal disclaimers, but what about thinking about ensuring the information is really true and accurate? Focus energy on medical/legal partnerships.

Do what Public Health is designed to do, for prevention rather than later care treatment. This would improve the health care costs. In sharing resources, there is a need to speak different languages and understand different cultures.

Question from audience: What about the use of Skype?

Elster: Skype is a great way to build a different kind of community, and allow law schools to connect remotely without moving their families. It also means they have to become better at written communication

In this ten-minute video, best-selling author Seth Godin talks about a fundamental shift in today's business world that includes marketing, social media and a move toward openness. He says: "You are going to have to change if you want to be there too."

Yahoo! Futurist: Seth Godin

Some food for thought. A quick summary:

1. Marketing needs to be responsible for the product.
2. You need to measure interaction.
3. The only asset that gets built online is permission to talk to people.

I wonder about the first point and how it can be applied to a law firm? I almost think it needs to be turned on its end; instead of making the marketers in charge of the product, perhaps those in charge of the work product should be doing the marketing and (along with it) the listening to the clients. What do you think?
Some additional points he made on innovation:

1. Innovation is an invitation to failure.
2. Innovation requires solving an interesting problem.

He says that innovation takes place only if these two factors are in place. In other words, there has to be a problem to solve and the organization (or individual) has to prepare for failed attempts before having success.What do you think of Seth Godin's discussion? Anything that strikes you as particular relevant or irrelevant for the legal industry?

Hat tip to Mitch Joel for a link to the video.

In addition to the blog posts I put together from selected sessions at the PLL Summit on Saturday, I have also liveblogged a few of the other conference sessions I have attended:

• Barbara Tillett and John Mark Ockerbloom on Authority Control Vocabularies and the Semantic Web
  These are notes are from talk by Dr. Barbara B. Tillett of theLibrary of Congress and John Mark Ockerboom of the University of Pennsylvania.
• To Recover or Not to Recover: Trends, Solutions, and Alternatives for Taming Online Research Costs
  These are notes are from a panel discussion session with Joan Axelroth, Axelroth & Associates, Anthony A. Licata, CFO of Dechert LLP and Nuchine Nobari, Library Director of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, LLP. The session was moderated by Sarah Mauldin, Head Librarian of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP.
• Coding Potpourri: A Survey of Programming Languages and Tools Used in Library Applications Today
  These are notes are from a panel discussion session with Nicole Engard, Director of Open Source Education ByWater Solutions, Ted Lawless, Library Applications Developer at Brown University, Jason Eiseman, Librarian for Emerging Technologies at Yale Law School Library, and Tom Boone, Reference Librarian, Loyola Law School. The session was moderated by Cynthia Bassett, University of Missouri Law School Library.
• E-books and the Future of Legal Publishing
  These are notes are from a panel discussion session withScott Meiser of LexisNexis, Dan Bennett of Thomson Reuters Professional, and Steven W. Sutton of YBP Library Services, A Baker & Taylor Company . The session was moderated by June Hsiao Liebert, Coordinator, John Marshall Law School.

I've had some good feedback to the blog posts. These are selected notes; any errors or omissions are mine. I welcome comments! So far I haven't put any analysis together; it is all muddling around in my brain currently. I thought the E-books session in particular was a good follow-up to our similar session at the CALL conference in May. It is now Tuesday afternoon. The last few sessions are running and people seem to be quietly moving out, heading back home. See you in Toronto!

Sunday at the AALL 2011 conference in Philadelphia about 200 people attended the Cool Tools Cafe, a 75 minute session in which we could visit 5 minute demos of new tools at any of 17 tables. I managed to visit about half. I was particularly impressed by DRAGNET, a legal search tool from the New York Law School demonstrated by Terry Ballard, Assistant Director of Technical Services for Library Systems of Mendik Library.

DRAGNET (Database Resource Access Using Google's New Electronic Technologies) is a search tool created with Google custom search which we have mentioned a few times over the years here on Slaw.ca. Search results are pulled from 100 "high quality" law-related sites. I was particularly impressed that the search box and results are incorporated into their library resources page.

Search results come up very quickly under five tabs so that they are separated by recent links, results from New York-specific sites, results from Federal (U.S.) sites, results from international sites, and all sites combined listed in the top tab. See the image below for an example of New York results for "privacy". Up to 100 links are returned under each tab with the results.

For more information about NYLS's DRAGNET and how it was created, see Using Google Custom Search To Access Recommended Legal Sites by Terry Ballard, LLAGNY Law Lines (Spring 2011) Vol. 34, No. 3, p. 22 (PDF). During his demo, Terry mentioned he would like to see other law libraries create their own DRAGNETs.

I am currently in Philadelphia for the American Association of Law Libraries 2011 conference. Today is the PLL Summit put on by the Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section (PLL-SIS). I have live-blogging the sessions I attended:

• James Jones on Understanding Law Firm Trends
• Esther Dyson on Technology Changes in Business and Libraries
• Steven Lastres, Julie Bozzell and Toby Brown – Moving Beyond the Library Walls to Support Strategic Knowledge Management
• Joan Axelroth – What Law Firm Administrators Want Librarians to Know
• Greg Castanias – How librarians add value to their law firms
• David Curle on transformations in the legal publishing industry
• Joelle Coachman – Resistance is Futile: Integrating New Technology into Your Library
• Larry Guthrie and Doug Malerba on Developing Collaborative Communities

This day was an incredible testament to the keen engagement of the law firm librarians. The PLL Summit was started last year, and this year they doubled the attendance. All sessions (except one) were recorded, so all will be posted.

Law library consultant Nina Platt is the editor of the new PinHawk News free daily email alert service for law librarians, the Librarian News Digest.

From the inaugural issue:

Welcome to the first issue of the daily Librarian News Digest, a free digest of news from publications and blogs on the internet that focus on topics of importance to librarians. As editor of Librarian News Digest, my goal is to track pertinent news and select what's most important to you as a librarian. Expect to see news and ideas that help you manage, acquire, organize, research, and market your library, along with other interesting topics.

As you scan through this issue and those to come, please remember that this is your digest. I welcome your suggestions on what sites to track or what topics to include as well as other feedback. Please send suggestions and feedback to nplatt@pinhawk.com.

Happy reading! Nina Platt

Click on the image below the fold for a sample.

Fellow law library consultant Kathie Sullivan and I have been working together to track new collaboration tools and document the challenges that groups face in using them. New project management platforms such as Basecamp, collaborative mindmapping, and wireframe/mockup tools like Mockingbird and Balsamiq join familiar tools like wikis and Google Docs to make teamwork easier, regardless of where everyone is located. We are specifically interested in how these might be used in library and legal settings.

We are building a wiki that will document the tools and related stories (still to be made public), and will be speaking at two events this month:

• Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) Webinar – Tuesday, July 19, 2011, 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. ET
  For details and to register, see the CALL webinar series page.
• American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) 2011 Conference in Philadelphia – Monday, July 25, 2011 – 8:45 – 9:45 a.m. ET
  See session description.

In preparation for these talks, we are hoping to create scenarios for multiple settings in which a real problem is outlined and we make some suggestions of tools which could facilitate a solution.

Would you be willing to share your story with us? We'd like to know a) what collaborative tools you've used with success but also b) what kinds of problems you've encountered when attempting to work on team projects. Team projects could be within your office/library location or between remote locations (branches, other libraries, committees, etc.).

This request has already gone out to some of the AALL and CALL listservs–thanks to everyone who have participated! We have been gathering some great stories and would like to add to it. Feel free to post in the comments here, or email me directly.

The latest in metasearch engines appears to be Fastoise (presumably rhymes with "tortoise" if the graphic is any indication). Fastoise searches across search engines Yahoo! and Bing (both of which use Bing's search tool), YouTube and Twitter.

Results are separated into four columns, with images from the search across the top. I could not see any related RSS feed or alert service, but results can be shared across Twitter, Facebook and Google+ (the newest social network).

Omar Ha-Redeye gave an excellent write-up of some of the ideas explored at last weekend's lawTechcamp in (and after) the sessions, but I want to make note of the event itself.

About 100 people from the law and tech industries attended the free half-day event, held at the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. The event was organized by Monica Goyal, owner and CEO of My Legal Briefcase, Sapna Mahboobani, principal of Sapna Law Professional Corporation, and lawyer/writer Mitch Kowalski.

lawTechcamp took an informal approach, taking cues for topics from ideas submitted by registrants. Focus was more on conversation than having a "sage on the stage" passing down advice from on high. Up to three concurrent sessions were held at any one time, with eleven sessions in all. As far as we know, this is the first event of its kind anywhere; certainly the first of its kind in Toronto.

I attended:

• Colin LaChance's session on free access to the law and implications of "born digital" documents (Colin is the new President and CEO of CanLII)
• the discussion on lawyers working in the area of technology with panelists Monica Goyal, Michael Carabash, lawyers and founder of www.dynamiclawyers.com, and Terry Taoussanopoulos, associate with Brooks Barristers & Solicitors who is also working on a law-related technology application, moderated by Jordan Dolgin, founder and CEO of Dolgin Professional Corporation. To me this session captured the essence of lawTechcamp. They discussed the challenges of being on the fringe as both lawyers and technologists or developers. This entire lawTechcamp event was designed to help them find a community, whether from the tech or law world.
• a discussion on knowledge management solutions for small law firms (which I also moderated) with panelists Natalie Worsfold, tax lawyer, Ron Carriere, CEO of Cirilab, and Sanjeev Arora, founder of Tabillo and Principal Consultant at Quasar Apps.

Other sessions included:

• Computing the Law presented by Prof. Daniel Katz of Michigan State University
• Privacy Considerations in Contracts presented by Gavin Magrath, founding partner of Magrath O’Connor LLP
• Social Media and the Courts presented by Slawyer Omar Ha-Redeye (click on the link for blog post with Omar's presentation slides)
• An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure: Key Elements for Social Media Policies presented by Lorraine Fleck, lawyer and trade-mark agent at Hoffer Adler LLP
• Domain Name Disputes presented by Rosario Cartagena, associate in Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP’s Toronto office.
• A Non-Traditional and Open Analysis of Intellectual Property Law presented by Felix Tang, partner and co-founder of Innovate LLP
• To the Cloud presented by Mitch Kowalski
• Developing a Marketing Plan presented by Queen's University law student Joy Wakefield

Response to the day by attendees and speakers alike was excellent. Everyone I spoke with was keen on seeing another event like this. It will be interesting to see if other lawTechcamps pop up in other cities.

Finding something on Social Media 101 for the right audience can at times be a challenge. There are plenty of basic documents for business, marketing and Public Relations. But what about lawyers, librarians and others? What if your audience does not care about "building a strategy" but just wants to know what social media is and how it is used?

On a recent hunt for just such material, I came across a nice briefing series from the Canadian Library of Parliament written last year. The series includes five publications on selected topics:

• Social Media 1: Introduction by Michael Dewing (Feb 2010)
• Social Media 2: Who Uses Them? by Michael Dewing (Feb 2010)
• Social Media 3: Privacy and the Facebook Example by Alysia Davies (Feb 2010)
• Social Media 4: Political Uses and Implications for Representative Democracy by Amanda Clarke (March 2010)
• Socia Media 5: Parliamentary Use in the United Kingdom by Havi Echenberg (March 2010)

I like that these papers have a neutral tone (not "selling" one way of thinking), provide historical context, and give some excellent links for further reading. While some of the numbers may get out out of date, especially the first two in the series create a nice jumping off point.

May 31st update: the registration deadline has been extended to June 2nd.

The Women's Law Association of Ontario 2011 Annual Dinner will be Tuesday, June 7th. Deadline for registering is today. Some of the details from the WLAO website:

The Women's Law Association of Ontario is very proud to announce that the

2011 President's Award will be presented to

Laurie Pawlitza
Treasurer, The Law Society of Upper Canada
Partner, Torkin Manes Barristers and Solicitors

In recognition of her extraordinary contribution to the legal profession and, in particular, for her significant role in promoting the interests of women lawyers in Ontario

Tuesday, June 7, 2011
The National Club, Toronto
5:45pm reception with dinner to follow at 6:30pm

The 2011 Student Awards will also be presented in partnership with:

Aird & Berlis LLP/WLAO Advocacy Award to a student who has demonstrated a superior achievement in an advocacy related project.

McCarthy Tétrault LLP/WLAO Community Contribution Award to a student who has demonstrated a continuing dedication to community.

Deadline for registration is May 30, 2011.

You may register directly from the website.

Howdy from Calgary! I am at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries.

There is a lot of interest in the discussions taking place at this year's conference. I am hearing from law librarians, legal publishers, knowledge management directors, and many others as to how they can follow along if not in attendance. There is a lot of buzz about greening the library, time management, workflow, digitization, budgeting, cost recovery, legal project management, and ebooks. All the hot buzzwords! I have had more than a few people ask me to let them know the outcome of discussions. Wow!

The best way to stay in touch with this conference from the outside is by Twitter. The official hashtag is #callacbd. Whether you are in Calgary or not, you can follow along the public tweets in real time with the tag #callacbd at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23callacbd

Those of use currently tweeting (posting to Twitter) in case you prefer to follow individuals:

Shaunna Mireau

Susannah Tredwell

Colin Lachance

wenlib

Susan Munro (please check back–soon to have open tweets)

biblio citizen (I'm curious to know who this is!)

LibrarySherpa

Connie Crosby

In light of the upcoming law library conference season (notably including the Canadian Association of Law Libraries conference–CALL 2011–next week), I am taking the liberty of sharing a few reasons why I see conferences as essential to law library staff.

If you have a law library, sending at least one library staff member to a professional conference each year is worth more than the equivalent dollar cost of books.

Let me repeat that in another way: you will get more value from conferences than books.

Radical, I know, and my legal publishing friends are perhaps going to hate me for saying this. Please allow me to explain.

6 reasons why in-person conference attendance is essential for your law library staff:

1. Building a network - A big strength of law library technicians and librarians is their professional network. In times when you do not have certain resources on hand, or the know-how for a particular task, the library staff member's network is an essential resource. Think about how many times your organization, after cutting back on a resource, looks to just borrow it in. This is largely impossible unless your library staff member has already built a relationship with the lender. This is sometimes enabled by membership in an association, but if you are looking for something at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, only those who care about the borrower are going to help out in a pinch. And by far the best way to build and develop that network and those relationships is in person. A conference facilitates this networking.
2. Access to the legal publishing industry - It is the one time of year library staff have direct access to the publishing industry's senior management. And they are all in one place. Particularly at the CALL conference, presidents of the Canadian legal publishing companies are typically present because this is a key target market. As such, library staff get the first look at new developments, often launched at the conference. It is also an essential time for building positive relationships with the publishing representatives and having your needs heard.
3. Developing new or existing skills – by participating on committees, speaking at the conference, or helping to run aspects of the organization such as by sitting on the executive board of an association or being a conference planner, participants learn new skills and develop existing ones. I certainly improved my management skills over time by working on CALL conference planning committees and sitting on the Board. Knowing how to present ideas in front of a group is also an increasingly important skill. One can, of course, participate in committees from a distance, but the real work of committees and special interest groups often takes place at an association's annual conference.
4. Transfer of tacit knowledge from colleagues – the knowledge that can be written down and passed along through an article or blog post is called "explicit knowledge". Knowledge stuck inside someone's head, passed along best by doing something alongside someone else or comparing notes, is called "tacit knowledge". It is much easier to gain this tacit knowledge by being there in person. A lot of learning takes place at conference lunches and social events, when law librarians and technicians seek each other out for advice. Unless you have a very large library staff or they already have a large network, they could be working in a vacuum without getting a "leg up" from the learnings of others.
5. Learning the latest trends and techniques – in addition to hearing what is new from the legal publishers, and learning new thinking informally from colleagues, the professional development program at a conference is specifically designed for more formal learning about what is new, how people are handling specific challenges, and where the industry is heading. It would be great if these programs were livestreamed and recorded for posting to the web. Some are. But we are still a long way from having access to all this content on demand via the web. It will get there, but in the meantime attending in person is really the way to go.
6. Meeting future staff members - the best way to hire a valuable new employee is to already be familiar with the person and perhaps even have already worked with him or her. Meeting new faces at conferences, working with them on committees are ways to establish a working relationship and sense of teamwork before you have even hired the person in question.

So often decisions about whether library staff should attend a conference is based solely on the program. But as you can see, the program as just one element in benefits from attending a conference.

I get tired of hearing that conference attendance is a "perk". It is absolutely not. When I have attended the CALL conference through the years, it is always an intense few days, seeing me connecting, sharing and learning from 7:30 am often until midnight. There is little down time for leisure activity as we try to pack as much as humanly possible in a few short days.

Today as a consultant, I invest twice as much now in conference attendance as I did in my role as a library manager: I not only pay for my attendance, but also I give up time on client projects (and therefore income) to attend. And still I see it as essential. It is too bad there cannot be a CALL conference in everyone's home city every year. But, the reality is that for learning opportunities specifically suited to law library staff, one must typically travel to attend the key conferences, be it CALL or one of the others: American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), Special Libraries Association (SLA), Internet Librarian, Computers in Libraries, KMWorld, or any of at least a dozen others.

If you do not have library staff attending at least one conference each year, think to yourself: will your organization fall behind? Don't you want to give your staff as much advantage as possible to excel?

Yesterday I was catching up on some of my television viewing and happened to watch Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, whose guest was author and New Yorker columnist Malcolm Gladwell. Among other topics, they discussed the legitimacy of US college rankings. Gladwell maintained that, while not all rankings are bad, summarizing such complex analysis, and putting completely different organizations side-by-side in a simple ranking list oversimplified the information at hand.

Gladwell went on to talk about the Law School Ranking Game, a tool created by Jeffrey E. Stake at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. The introduction to the Law School Ranking Game explains:

What kind of game is this? You tell us.

We Americans love rankings. The creators of some rankings play to win your money. Law schools play ranking games to win your attendance.

The Ranking Game lets you make your own rankings of law schools based on your preferences.

How do you win

By learning how much play to give rankings in the "choosing a law school" game—a game of High Stakes, indeed.

I gave the Law School Ranking Game a whirl. I found that it did not work with all the browsers on my machine (not on Firefox or Chrome) which may have had something to do with the version of Java enabled. The third attempt was a charm (Safari on my Macbook). It popped open a little spreadsheet (left in the screen shot image) along with a list of weightings (right). I was able to click on the weightings and change them to suit me, and then hit the "ReRank now" button at the top to change the rankings. I think clicked on "Sort" to put the rankings in order.

I like that it shows what the original rankings are. Rankings can be created based on a number of factors (such as price, LSAT percentile, employment of graduates, student/faculty ratio, number of volumes in the library, budget for learning, and whether Tibetan food is available within 600 m from the law school) weighted however you like.

This is obviously poking fun at–and poking holes in–law school rankings. They call it a "game" I'm sure to avoid any liability in case of inaccuracies in the data. Still, it looks to be a useful tool.

Under the section How to Protect from Ranking-mania there is a discussion about the problems with rankings, and how to evaluate a law school. Some good advice:

Do your homework.What should you look to choose a school if rankings are so unhelpful? To determine which school should be tops on your list, read what you can about all the schools under consideration. Look for information on internet web sites and in libraries. Other sources you might consult include The University of Richmond Pre-Law Handbook, the Boston College Online Law School Locator, and the listserv at lawsch-l@american.edu. More important, visit the schools. Find out what courses are regularly offered in specialties you consider important. Talk to the students. Find out if teachers are accessible and committed to devoting substantial energy to teaching. Find out if faculty members have published in areas important to you. Talk to faculty members. Only by doing those kinds of things can you begin to tell where you will fit in well. Along with the Deans of more than 150 law schools, I urge you not to rely on published rankings. Instead, do your own leg work and find the school that best meets your needs. It will be worth it.

Related:

Are you ready to meet the future? Special Libraries Association members have been exploring this question on the Future Ready 365 blog, discussing potential and what it takes to make us as individuals, an association, and the profession as a whole ready for the future. SLA President Cindy Romaine explains that being "future ready" for members, the Association and the profession is supported by four pillars:

• Collaboration to accelerate the availability of useful information
• An adaptable skill set that anticipates and responds to the evolving marketplace
• Alignment with the language and values of the community you serve
• Building a community that connects stakeholders in mutually beneficial relationships

Daily posts on the Future Ready 365 blog have been covering a range of subjects including skills needed to meet future demands, change in attitudes, and how the profession and SLA need to adapt.

For the post on February 22nd, Romaine took the opportunity to interview Guy Kawasaki, high-profile entrepreneur, tech trend watcher and former chief evangelist for Apple who she met at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. I like this quote from Kawasaki:

There’s probably more knowledge than ever, and it’s more accessible than ever but the reinvented research librarian holds the key for using the Internet in the most effective manner. Many, but not all, people know how to use Google and Wikipedia, but Google and Wikipedia do not provide all of human knowledge. Some of that knowledge is locked away in private databases and some of that knowledge is difficult for a novice to find. That’s where research librarians still hold the key. They are the ultimate information curator no matter what hocus, pocus you hear about the “semantic web.”

We are invited to submit our thoughts either as comments to the blog posts or as posts. See details on submitting a blog post. I encourage you to consider submitting a post, even if you are not a member. Mine has gone in and will hopefully make an appearance soon.

Related Slaw posts:

The features on professional networking site LinkedIn change frequently, so it is worth spending some time periodically to update your profile.

Earlier this month I attended the AIIP (Association of Independent Information Professionals) annual conference. I took a bit of extra time to attend one of the pre-conference workshops put on by Scott Brown, owner of Social Information Group, on using LinkedIn. It was good to have a current, detailed look at the network and its current features.

Allow me to share a few things I learned:

• some of the formatting options are hidden under unrelated sections in the Edit Profile view.
• add additional keywords under "Interests" that you believe people looking for you will be likely to search for. You can edit Interests by clicking "edit" for your websites list.
• add descriptions to your current and past positions. You can especially add wording (key words) that might be searched by others when they are looking for people. If you write proposals or resumes, you may already have some of this wording on hand.
• include your volunteer positions, such as committee work, in your profile since these demonstrate experience and skills attained in addition to your day job.
• to format the text in your profile summary as you might have seen others do: while formatting features such as bullets are not available inside the LinkedIn system, you can copy and paste from elsewhere for a better look.
• you can add a Publications section to your profile, to which you can add any books you may have written, articles, and blog posts. You need to add these in the order you would like to see them as you will not be able to rearrange them later.
• if you are organizing an event, it is a good idea to add it to LinkedIn so that others can indicate they are attending.
• use the status message to link to items that might be of interest to your followers.
• a third party tool such as TweetDeck or HootSuite allows you to post status messages to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other sites, giving you control of where you send any particular message.
• including a professional profile photo is a good idea. Without it, your name in listings looks incomplete. Also it gives others a visual reminder of who you are when they view your profile, for example someone who you met only once at a meeting or conference.

An additional tip I picked up during the conference:

• to see information on who has viewed your page, you need to allow permission to view yours; you will want to change this setting back to show less about yourself.

Technical work in the library–largely done behind-the-scenes–is key to ensuring things go smoothly on the client-facing side such as reference and research. One tedious and time-consuming tech task is shelf-reading: checking each book on the shelf to ensure it has been signed back in and is in the correct place. Without doing this on a regular basis (such as once or twice a year), books that have been mis-shelved become impossible to locate.

A library shelf-reading prototype using augmented reality technology–technology that adds to an image of physical space with a computer-generated overlay–is being developed out of Miami University's Augmented Reality Research Group led by Prof. Bo Brinkman. The prototype uses an Android phone app that overlays an image of the books on a shelf with an indication of which books are in or out of order. It also checks which books have not already been signed in. While still in development, this project holds out hope of ways to significantly reduce the time spent on this type of work. Prof. Brinkman was scheduled to talk about this project on Saturday at the Association of Colleges and Research Libraries 2011 conference.

A couple of things I would like to see that would make this technology even more practical for implementation:

• the ability to use barcodes on the spines or RFID tags already inside the books rather than using yet another labelling system. Libraries have already invested a lot of time and money into these systems; it does not seem to make sense to add another system.
• into the future, it would be good to have a small automated robot review the shelves with this technology (such as overnight), rather than requiring a person to do it. Ideally, the robot would also move books into their correct places on the shelf. Some work has been done in developing robotics for shelving in large libraries, so tying the two together makes sense. Mind you, if robots are doing the shelving in the first place, you may not need to do the shelf-reading.

I love the potential this project holds.

Source: Read Write Web – Awesome Augmented Reality App Could Save Librarians Hours by Audrey Watters (March 27, 2011).

Hat tip: Susan Murphy.