I’ve been thinking a lot about the “end of days” for the traditional legal services provider – partnership law firms.

And I can already hear you grumbling. “How can there be an “end of days” for the current model of law firms? And don’t give us any of that, ‘UK Legal Services Act will change the world,’ crap. Kowalski, you’re crazy.”

Perhaps, but hear me out.

The partnership model of law firms is doomed to fail because of what Mancur Olson calls the collective action dilemma. Collective action dilemma occurs when you have a group of people all acting in . . . [more]

Legal marketers must have a little common ground with those who do public relations in Universities — taking important (yet questionably dry) material, and making it both understandable and interesting. And perhaps more important, fine tuning the message presentation for each intended audience.

Case in point, a recent study that came out of Wake Forest comparing pupil dilation response on left-side vs right-side photos (for those interested — your left side is always golden according to the research).

Let’s start with the PubMed link above, and look at the title: Emotive hemispheric differences measured in real-life portraits using pupil diameter . . . [more]

A hackathon (hack + marathon) is an event where computer programers, often in conjunction with graphic designers or other related disciplines, get together for marathon sessions to collaborate intensly on a project. There is a specific goal in mind, such as coding specific software or solving a specific problem.

Brooklyn Law School’s Incubator and Policy Clinic recently held its first legal hackathon, a day long event for law students, lawyers and entrepreneurs to help lawyers think more like hackers. One of the organizers said “What I’m hoping to get at today is to figure out how we as lawyers stop . . . [more]

This had escaped my attention earlier this week.

To mark the 30th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms last Tuesday, the Canadian Bar Association organized events across Canada such as conferences, mock court sessions for high school students, and flash mobs:

“Lawyers and other members of the legal community in Ottawa celebrated by organizing a flash mob at noon on the busy Sparks Street at Metcalfe, right in front of the Federal Court and a stone’s throw from Parliament Hill. In front of dozens of curious tourists, media cameras, and civil servants on lunch break, legal

The Royal Bank has advised us that several counterfeit Canadian dollar bank drafts have been negotiated by lawyers (4 in Ontario, 3 in Alberta and 1 in Quebec). These drafts are drawn on RBC transit 05142 003 and are payable to individual lawyers. The subject line on all 8 drafts indicates “Rowland Webster”. They are dated April 12 and 13, 2012, and are in the amount of $325,850. They indicate Royal Bank of Canada, Mississauga ON on the top left corner of the draft. RBC’s investigation indicated that these drafts were given to the lawyer as payment on a debt . . . [more]

Risk management has been a hot topic in the corporate community for about 10 years, springing mostly from scandals such as Enron, Worldcom and more recently the financial crisis of 2008. The devastation that these events wrought forced boards of directors to devote significant resources to managing risk and to keep abreast of what is happening in the world at large.

When one looks at law firms, we see that attention is paid to risk management only in the micro-sense; controls are put in place to prevent lawyers and staff from stealing trust funds, there are some controls over who . . . [more]

I was involved with managing a litigation file not too long ago. The client had a budget that required its large law firm to be tightly controlled and had asked me to assist in this regard.

Things went off the rails very quickly when the lawyer in charge became angered by the client’s desire to control how he ran the file.

“I’ve heard about you,” he said to me. “And I’ve read some of your stuff. You have a low opinion of lawyers.” It was clear that he was taking the client’s attempt to decide how the file would be . . . [more]

We have seen a few published cases where a court will order the service of a document by way of a defendant’s social media account.

I had the occasion today to talk to a couple of lawyers who do collection work. Anecdotally at least, the actual practice seems to vary by province and location. That is not surprising considering how new the concept is, how traditionally lawyers and judges tend to think, and how rules of practice differ.

A lawyer from Alberta mentioned how they routinely obtain orders to serve documents by facebook. He commented that it is acknowledged that . . . [more]

How do you assess how you are really doing? You need to look at much more than just billable hours. The key is cash flow management: You must understand what monies are coming into your practice, and where money is flowing out. Most modern law office accounting systems can give you reports that will give you a much better understanding of the cash flow of your practice. On a monthly basis, you should review the following ten reports from your accounting system:

#1 – Overall and projected monthly billings: What are your overall monthly billings, measured against your projected billings? . . . [more]

The OBA Civil Litigation section is putting on a session bearing this title on 30 April. Here is how the topic is being described:

The legal marketplace is changing. Lawyers and law firms face increasing pressure to control costs in litigation and must adapt to provide superior results for a lower price. Learn about the trends, tools and techniques that will help you meet client expectations, deliver extra value, minimize overhead and maximize your bottom line.

Topics to be covered are : unbundling, outsourcing, advocacy referral and methods of using technology to do more with less. New ethical quagmires and . . . [more]

The inaugural UCLA Cyber Crimes Moot concluded today, with participants from across the U.S. and an international judging panel. Yes, my participation in the preliminary and final rounds of the event is what qualified the event as internationally judged. The winners this year were from GW School of Law, and their coach was none other than Orin Kerr.

The competition focused on a fact pattern based on the 2010 case of United States v. Warshak, dealing with the unconstitutional search and seizure of e-mails under the Stored Communications Act, and whether they should be excluded as evidence . . . [more]