I have been thinking a lot lately about video and how it might be of use in law. I blogged about Law Marketing: YouTube Milestones and the launch of law video site LegalTube earlier this month. Now allow me to introduce you to my new favourite video site, Magma.

Magma is the brainchild of Andrew Baron in New York, and developed by his team at Rocketboom, known as Internet video blogging pioneers. Not meant to replace YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo and the like, this site is a place to discover and aggregate videos from those other sites. I . . . [more]

Everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame, and this week there was plenty of recognition to go around — both in the biotech community and in the legal community.

The FDA, famous for restrictive rules on communications, is having a hard time adjusting to current internet trends, leading to some controversial decisions about Google search ads. Trying to do better, FDA held a two-day hearing about the use of the internet and social media for online drug marketing so it can calibrate its decisions for a new era. Rule-making will follow at the old era pace, though.

Simon Fodden . . . [more]

Not sure if YouTube is your thing? Alabama trial attorney Lew Garrison has created a YouTube-like site for law-related video, called LegalTube. According to Law.com, the site was launched on September 1st after four months of development. It is billed as a video directory for finding lawyers, but in addition to advertising video, there is legal humour, courtroom stories, and a “webisode reality series” called Law After Dark. The site also has a news alert video series on drug recalls and class action lawsuits.

And in case you were wondering, LegalTube has its own channel on . . . [more]

Still doubtful about video as a marketing vehicle? A few recent milestones from YouTube, the leading site for video distribution, be it entertainment-related or professional:

• as of October, YouTube is now up to over a billion views each day
• as of May, at least 20 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute
• Increased high definition (HD) resolution is coming to YouTube starting this week. 1080p HD will be the new maximum resolution, up from the previous 720p HD. This is in response to the increasing resolution of consumer cameras. See the blog post for comparative examples.

One of the most enjoyable aspects about working with clients outside the Canadian market is getting exposed to new areas of the law. This was the case when I started working with McClanahan Myers Espey LLP and was introduced to Mike Myers. Mike has a unique expertise, uncovering corporate life insurance policies where the company (and not the family) are the beneficiaries. The practice is more commonly referred to as dead peasants’ insurance or Janitors Insurance, and Mike works on behalf of the families. He is also one of a select few to have a successful track record in . . . [more]

It’s something I’ve always wondered about. How do you use video, presumably on YouTube, without looking like you’re advertising like this guy.

I got together with some of the most savvy lawyers I know in the area, and we sat around talking about why we blog, why litigators are often reluctant to participate, and a couple other issues. We forgot about the camera that was filming us, and took a look at the footage after we were done.

The musical intro/outro is us too – Garry Wise and Michael Carabash are pretty talented musicians on the guitar.

We liked . . . [more]

Twitter is developing a way of making a shareable list of Twitter users, so that people can form, recommend, or adopt groups of users. (See the story on ReadWriteWeb.)

Currenlty, TweepML offers a way of doing this sharable list making. (The name is a take on OPML, which stands for Outline Processor Markup Language, an invention of Dave Winer, and used principally for making an XML list of RSS feeds. Tweeps are people — “peeps” — who use Twitter.) The idea of such a list is that it makes it technically easier for you to follow groups of people. . . . [more]

I’d like to offer Slaw readers a quick pointer to a new mini-research project we’ve released over at Stem. For the past couple weeks Emma Durand-Wood has been assembling a list of law firm taglines from firms based in Canada, US and the UK.

That list is now live. Enjoy! . . . [more]

♬Following the leader, the leader, the leader
We’re following the leader wherever he may go…♬

Lyrics and music by: Sammy Fain, Sammy Cahn, Frank Churchill, Winston Hibler and Ted Sears, from Peter Pan.

The ABA Journal on Sept 17, 2009 reported that O’Melveny and Myers revealed plans to become a high-end fixed-fee leader in their latest 5 year strategic plan.

‘The aim, according to the plan, is to become “the leader in providing high-end legal services on a fixed fee basis, reducing costs to clients and achieving superior economic performance through practice management oriented toward cost-effective client service.’

Woah! Wait . . . [more]

According to the Times Online legal blog Law Central, Fasken Martineau has added six lawyers to its London contingent of 50 “fee-earners” (!) and gets praise for bucking the “doom and gloom” mentality in which Britlaw seems mired.

I note that the Times calls Fasken’s an “international” firm, with nary a whisper of Canada or Canadian in the brief piece. Something we said?

In addition to its offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City, Fasken Martineau has an office of six lawyers in Johannesburg.

The firm has also added three senior lawyers to its . . . [more]

Just when you thought every niche had been filled, up comes an area of practice to remind you that this is a more wrinkled world than we are typically aware and the practice of law is a force second only to life itself, perhaps, when it comes to occupying all imaginable spaces: there is a law of algae.

It occupies a website, too, of course, which, appropriately is LawOfAlgae.com, a.k.a. Stoel Rives LLP, a Minneapolis firm specializing in renewable energy. Which is where algae comes in. Evidently it is an up-and-coming source of biomass from which to make . . . [more]

There’s an interesting article today on Law.com about what impact the recession is having on the situation of law librarians in the United States. “Law Librarians: ‘No More Sacred Cows’” by Alan Cohen is based on the 2009 American Lawyer survey of law librarians. To see the actual findings of the full survey you’ll have to be a subscriber, but Cohen hits the high spots for you.

Library budgets have shrunk in 46% of cases, compared to 9% in 2008 / The expectation from the firms is that every resource must show a decent ROI. / New software