A few weeks ago, Fortune published an article on the “Big Data Employment Boom.”  According to the story, big data will require 4.4 million people for hard core IT jobs by 2015. The less obvious but no less critical need will be for knowledge workers with “softer” skills who know how to both work with information technologies and communicate well with people. These high demand knowledge workers will possess the mysterious mix of being able to discuss information needs, select appropriate data resources, translate needs into research queries, and possess the investigative intuition to help them deliver results tailored to the unique business need. Another article, in Information Week outlined the skills needed by the new breed of “big data” knowledge specialists.

 

Big Data  The Next Wave For Legal Practice and Client Support

Law firms seem to be well down the path of marrying internal and external data for law firm management decision making. They are using “big data” for AFA pricing, share of market analysis, competitive intelligence and other firm management activities.

 

It is inevitable that firms will start to use “big data” for client advisory work such as patent portfolio analysis, the financial impact of regulation, what’s market data for deals. Litigated issues could require social science, economic, manufacturing, demographic or scientific data to support a client’s case.

 

Big Data: Big GIGO Risk – Look Before You Leap (Into Bad Data)

 

Before Law firms plunge into the next ocean of data they should identify the professionals in their organization who are adept at assessing data quality.

 

 

The Intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts

 

These  articles reminded me that Steve Jobs, who was not pure technologist himself, attributed Apple’s success to hiring people who worked at the intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts. Big data it appears requires the same hybrid. And who are these people? They are they are already in your law firm. They are librarians …. Also known as knowledge managers, information analysts, reference librarians, researchers, and electronic services librarians.

 

Information Week identified the following Skills

 

1. Problem Solving Skills. Invent new solutions. People assume that law librarians research the law. Yes that is a given but on any day they can be asked to deliver research involving  intra-day trading trends, pharmaceutical market share, historical meteorological patterns, expert witness win rates…. You get by drift. They invent solutions to information problems all day long.

 

 2. Good Communication Skills – The big data knowledge worker needs to be able to talk to people in all levels of the organization and help them articulate their information needs. One of the core competencies of information professional is the ability to conduct a reference interview. It is not uncommon that people start out asking the wrong question. They sometimes have not thought through all the parameters they should consider in defining the information they need. Jumping into a research project without defining the goal is a surefire time and resource waster.
During the research interview an information professional helps the requester tease apart their needs.  E.g. “what is the time period you want the data to cover?” “should it be local, national, international?”  if there are two potential sources which one will be better?  Let’s look at stock prices—everyone can find a stock price right? But in the context of high stakes litigation your data may need to be limited in a number of ways – do you need, ask, bid, high, low, intra-day, close, adjusted close, after-hours? Lots of potential qualifiers to a question that looks simple to an information novice. Big data will be a big waste of time unless you have staff with the expertise to help lawyers, administrators and staff define the scope and limits of their information needs.

 

 3. Open- Mindedness  One of the big advantages of information professionals is that they respect the fact that they “don’t know everything.” Their skill is to understand their limitations and to embrace learning as an everyday value add of their profession.  They possess nimble thinking processes which allow them to develop new investigative expertise on the fly. They explore by continually questioning their assumptions. If they can’t find the data using the standard tools and methods, they know how to invent new pathways into information using analogous inquiries.

 

 More Core Competencies. To this list I would add a list of other important competencies which have been absent from most “big data” articles I have read so far. The big data knowledge worker will need to have.

4. The ability to locate the best and most appropriate data at the lowest cost

          5. The ability to assess the quality of external data sources. All information is not of equal quality. The temptation to harvest free open source data could put a firm at risk especially if the data were to use used in advising clients.

 

          6. The ability to assess the provenance of the data.  Is the data from a primary source? Or has it been handled and altered? By whom and how?

 

           7. Know the reputation of our source.  Is it known to be a reliable source?

 

           8.  Ability to interview the requester and help them to define the scope and limits of their need.

 

            9.. The ability to query the data and uncover patterns which suggest the need to ask more questions or pursue additional lines of inquiry.           

 

Will the Future Give Rise to The Chief Query Officer?

 

Let’s face it…

 

In a Big Data world,  everyone will potentially have access to the same data…

 

In a Big Data world, advantage will be  gained by asking better questions….

 

In a Big Data world, every firm will be striving to be one question ahead of the competition…

 

…..And it will need to be the right question!

 

So will this give rise to the Chief Query Officer?
The most recent issue of  the British Legal publication The Lawyer, includes a series of articles which predict global and regional trends in the legal profession. This is a follow up to a 2008 article which attempted to predict the legal world of 2013. They provide a scorecard on their 2008 predictions.

For this issue, .The Lawyer again interviewed partners from all the leading UK law firms  who are quoted throughout the series of articles. The online  issue includes an in-depth video interviews with David Morley from Allen & Overy and Tony Angel from DLA Piper.

Here are some of the most startling predictions:

  • Seven more transatlantic mergers
  • The End of “the Magic Circle”
  • The disappearance of 25 of the top 100 firms by 2018
  • China will open it’s legal market in 10 years.
  • At least one firm will succumb to a cybersecurity attack
  • By 2023 there will be 3 global insurance firms
  • Women will still represent only 20% of UK partners.
  • Asian law firms will be represented in the Global top 10
  • One Swiss Verien will collapse
  • Five firms will have spectacular implosions.
  • Apprenticeships will increase pathways to the legal profession.

And of course there is the seemingly permanent prediction of the “end of the billable hour,” but I don’t think anyone is placing money on that bet.

Years ago and I mean, decades ago I considered myself a human research machine… I thought in Boolean at the time even when I was home or out with friends: (( hamburger and “Diet Coke”) but not “french fries”).  My brain was a-swirl with the standard rules of legal research as well as the many exceptions.  “When you are searching for a consent decree– do not search for the phrase “consent decree” — the words never appear in the document.  The best search terms are “neither admit nor deny.'” But there were so many rules and exceptions and so little time.

A New Kind of Professional Development and Knowledge Management



University of Washington Researchers Rao and Stocco

I wondered when we would  have the capacity to simply do a brain transfer. Instead of lecturing the incoming associates, there would be a kind of “virtual floppy disk” (this was the 80s folks) on which I could record what I knew about research and virtually transfer it to the associates. Think of the greater possibilities with partners mentoring associates. Professional Development could take on a whole new meaning.

In place of lectures  where associates took notes, ( between checking  Facebook, Twitter) and tried to look generally interested…we will have a new painless and thoroughly efficient process. Envision everyone in a conference room or even at their desks wearing electrode loaded skull caps. Partners will simply think the lecture and everyone will get a perfect download without taking notes and with no “loss in transcription.”

University of Washington Scientists Have Done It

Scientists have for the second time transmitted a brain impulses over the Internet from one researcher to another. Rajesh Rao imagined moving his finger and across the campus, Andrea Stocco’s finger moved in response. See a video of the experiment and the University of Washington press release here.

If we weren’t already worried that we had reached the “end of privacy” here comes the final blow. Imagine the drone that can collect your thoughts.

But Thorny Legal Issues Abound

Copyright Do I own my thoughts? Someone will surely develop a technology for stealing thoughts. 
Would  author J.K. Rowling have had to wear a lead hat to keep people from downloading the next installment of Harry Potter? Would her works in progress be stolen and sold on the “underground market” like Dylan’s ” Basement Tapes?”

Insider Trading ” I was only thinking about the deal I never said a word to anyone.” Try proving that!

Privacy We will all have to forget our Social Security Numbers?

Friendships Lost Oh boy — the mayhem unleashed in our lives by the unauthorized transfer of “fleeting thoughts” that we would never utter aloud.  “I was NOT thinking ‘You  are too fat for jeggings.’ “

Political Polling  While you sleep Gallup will be scanning the sky for political  and demographic thought trends.

Thought Spam Will thought spammers find ways to intrude into our brains? Will we need “thought blockers?”  Will we all be required to walk around in something that looks like a “colander on our heads” to block the “thought spam?”

Put on your thinking caps  If you think email has resulted in information overload  –  here comes a new monster of “over sharing.”  As we know, every new technology seems to offer efficiency with one hand and create a new inefficiency in the other. How will be block other peoples random thoughts in this brave new world?

 
Dan Doctoroff

Yesterday, Dan Doctoroff CEO of Bloomberg sent a letter to Bloomberg terminal customers outlining the results of two investigations of the company’s data security and journalistic practices. The investigations were triggered by reports in May 2013 that Bloomberg news reporters had access to some subscriber information.

In response to the controversy Bloomberg retained the law firm of Hogan Lovells and the data security and regulatory compliance consulting firm Promontory Financial Group to examine Bloomberg’s client data policies and practices. The 102 page Hogan Lovells/Promontory report also includes the conclusions of Samuel J. Palmisano, the former Chairman and CEO of IBM, who provided advice to the Board of Directors. The full Hogan Lovells/Promontory report on the terminal at RVWS.
Journalistic Standards In addition, they asked, Clark Hoyt, previously Editor-at-Large at Bloomberg News and a former Public Editor of The New York Times, to examine the relationship between Bloomberg’s news and commercial operations. Hoyt conducted interviews across Bloomberg news unit, with clients and experts on journalistic ethics.

A Video Statement from Dan Doctoroff, the letter to customers, and the full reports from HoganLovells/Promontory on security and Hoyt on  journalistic standards are available at
The Hogan Lovells/Promontory report and Mr. Palmisano concluded that Bloomberg has appropriate client data policies and controls in place. Both reports made additional recommendations which Bloomberg chose to voluntarily implement as they were presented.

Doctoroff stated that “our highest priorities are to innovate rapidly, promote transparency and respond quickly to your questions and needs.” But he admitted that Bloomberg leadership did not fully appreciate how growth in both our news and commercial operations necessitated a change in policies and practices.
Growth and Change: From a Data Business to a News Business. One of the aspects of this controversy that intrigued me is rooted in the corporate history of  Bloomberg. Doctoroff tries to put the controversy into this context. Bloomberg didn’t start out as a news organization. The company provided market data. Although he doesn’t explicitly state it — the facts suggest that news reporting be began s a marketing initiative designed  to expand business terminal sales. 

The news division began 23 years ago with a “handful of scrappy journalists ” The division has grown to over 2,000 journalists and reporting has become a more important part of the business terminal offering. The report described how the peculiar origins of the news function at Bloomberg blurred lines between journalism and commerce. Reporters sometimes accompanied terminal sales people on visits to clients and potential clients because they wanted for find out what  type of news subscribers would find useful.

Hoyt concluded that Bloomberg didn’t do enough to reassess the relationship between news and our commercial operations as their news department grew and their business expanded.  Doctoroff agreed with the assessment: “The fact that we didn’t recognize the sensitivity of journalist access to limited client data represents an example of how our policies did not keep pace with the realities of our growth and evolution.”

Doctoroff’s Concluding Thoughts


“It is clear that we should have been more proactive in considering the evolution of customer data issues as well as the relationship between our news and commercial operations. Personally, I wish I had done more to hasten this evolution, which could have helped to prevent us from making mistakes. That said, I am proud of how our company responded when we became aware of the fact that we needed to change. We acted quickly to give our clients the protection and third party reassurance they deserve.”

Doctoroff letter sums it all up: “Where do we go from here?” As we chart a complex, multifaceted path forward, two simple words come to mind: transparency and innovation. “ Our ultimate goal is not just to fix today’s issues; it is to set new standards for ourselves and, in doing so, hopefully a higher bar for the entire industry.” 

Customer Response A story in today’s New York TImes reports that the two most outspoken banks regrading Bloomberg;s practices, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, expressed satisfaction on Wednesday with Bloomberg’s review.”We appreciate their commitment to safeguarding client data and their willingness to review their practices,” a Goldman spokesman, David Wells, said. Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan, said that Bloomberg “handled all aspects of the review very well.”

Related Posts: Bloomberg Law Not Impacted By Terminal Privacy Breach

If anyone had asked me in 2006 if there was room in legal publishing for a new suite of topical current  awareness newsletters I would have said “no.” BNA, Andrews, Mealys. Warren  and a host of other super-specialty newsletters had left no niche of law lie fallow.And I would have been dead wrong! I am not easily confounded. My first  reaction to the success of Law360  was “how did they do that?”. My second reaction is “why didn’t I think  of that?” But the story of Law360 provides an interesting model of contrarian  success and maybe even a model that the legal industry could learn from.

Common wisdom would suggest that launching a successful legal newsletter requires:
•    Knowledge of the law
•    A competitive analysis of existing legal newsletters
•    Big law connections
•    Venture Capital
•    Focus Groups
•    A Booming economy when your customers are awash in cash.
•    Competitive (conservative) pricing

If you agreed with any of these assumptions, you would be wrong.

Founder Marius Meland: “I Just Love News”
Law360 is the brainchild of Marius Meland.  Meland has been in love with the news business all his life. He grew up in Norway and published his first newspaper when he was 7 years old. “The Running Post” was published in three languages English, Italian and Norwegian. It was a kid’s paper that covered things as

Marius Meland

diverse as his love of dinosaurs or a local store opening. He later studied journalism at the University of Oregon and then worked as a reporter and global desk editor at Dow
Jones, then a Senior Editor at Forbes, then the managing editor at
technology research firm eMarketer. He  left journalism and became a
vice president at AllianceBernstein, and  then a management consultant to international fund executives at Global Insight.

But his missed his first love…. The news. He quit  his consulting job and with $6,000 dollars in the bank he sat in his apartment and dreamed up a newsletter which covered the expanding  field of  Intellectual Property, called IP Law Bulletin which launched in October 2003. He formed a company called  Portfolio Media.
Meland  escaped the solitude of his apartment by writing at a local Starbucks. One day in December 2004 he noticed another patron who was reading a Swedish Newspaper. Magnus Hoglund, who was Swedish, was a recent Columbia business school grad who would become his partner. They transformed IP Law Bulletin and the security and bankruptcy titles which followed it into a rebranded product known as  Law360 in 2006.

How Far They Have Come — Readership
As of April, 2013  Law360’s  paid  readership   topped 150,000, up  50,000 in just  nine  months.   Meland reports that 100% of the AmLaw 100 firms  subscribe to  Law 360.  The company’s data also shows that more lawyers are reading more articles across the Law360 Platform. Almost 2,000 organizations including law firms, corporate legal departments and government agencies subscribe to  Law360

 Coverage In 10 years Meland has expanded the reach of Law360 from his home based newsroom to a national network of 11  news bureaus . The Headquarters newsroom is located in an “industrial chic”  space in lower Manhattan which was a former home to Andy Warhole’s Factory circa 1973. They have bureaus in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Wilmington, San Francisco,San Diego and Miami.

The Law360 Newsroom

The Method They have developed a proprietary electronic system for tracking and mining federal litigation .They download  all Pacer activities and continuously scrape the Pacer  website every 30 minutes. They filter 12,000 judicial activities a day  and have  trained the newsroom staff to look for complaints involving companies and issues of interest to business lawyers. They also take a highly competitive approach to  beating their rivals. Meland claims they beat the competition by 1 to 2 days for many stories. They continually review what the competitors are covering and benchmark their victories when they post the first story on a significant case.Wolters Kluwer recently launched  their Daily Reporting Suite of newsletters  which appears to be positioned to compete directly with Law360.

Law360 provides some coverage of state courts, but state courts have more inconsistent digital coverage and require a different methodology for identifying significant filings, settlement and opinions.

Recently they have created  advisory panels of  more than 250 top attorneys  who help pinpoint the hot button issues which are emerging in their practice areas, before the issues are in the headlines.

Deconstructing Success – How Did They Do It?

The “ Apple” Aesthetic   Meland  is  a big admirer of the Steve Jobs design aesthetic. He likes lots of white space combined with easy and intuitive  navigation.  Side Bars highlight the names law firms and companies mentioned in the issue.

Selling Awareness Meland really views Law360 as a newswire. He doesn’t offer exhaustive analysis, instead he offers a sort of “stream of conscious” awareness. His goal is to assure lawyers that they know all the important developments in their practice area. They can scan the newsletter and understand the major developments of the day and  see if their clients or key competitors are mentioned in any stories in just a few seconds.

The Secret Formula – Make Your Readers the Star. This is my personal take on Law360’s success. Law360 has become a  kind of marketing platform where practitioners  can shine. Each issue prominently highlights the names of firms mentioned in stories. Over the past few years new “lawyer centric”  features have evolved including interviews with practitioners, lawyer and law firm rankings, and opportunities for practitioners to publish their own analytical articles which will be read by General Counsel and their peers. Law360 appeals to the natural inclination of lawyers to see their names in lights and the increasing competitive need for lawyers  to brand themselves.

Price More Than What the Market with Bear. Meland is very confident in the value of Law360. He never shied away from demanding a high price.  Law360 price increases have been well above the rate of inflation. Many Private Firm Law Library Directors do a double take at Law360s Budget ripping price increases. Meland insists that while  the price has gone up,  firms are reaping the benefit of the ever expanding volume of stories, special features and new topical areas.  Law360 now offers newsletters for  20 practice areas, 8 industries and 6 jurisdictions, a  total of  34  newsletters. Today they have 150 employees in 11 cities with $20 Million in sales.

Acquired by Lexis  – Now What?
Law360 was acquired by LexisNexis on March 20 2012 for an undisclosed amount. According to Liz Mason,  Vice President for Legal News at LexisNexis  LexisNexis is embracing Law360 into their overall product strategy.
Our plans have three key components:
1.    Leverage LexisNexis resources, such as Courtlink, Statenet and Knowledge Mosiac, to provide fast information about new events in the litigation, legislative and regulatory space to the Law360 newsgathering operation
2.    Integrate the highly-regarded Law360 coverage into new and existing offerings such as Lexis Advance and Lexis Practice Advisor.  Customers tell us that they value the ability to move easily from the news story to the original source document and guidance provided by related LexisNexis products
3.    Expand Law360 coverage into areas of interest to our customers.

Coming to Lexis Advance. Law360 headlines are available on the Lexis Advance carousel.  Law360 content will be made available with the next release of Lexis Advance for Law360 Platform customers.

New Products Up Next  According to Meland Law360 is launching a number of new titles this year, including coverage of tax, capital markets and the aerospace & defense industries, and will continue to look at ways of enhancing existing coverage. They also plan to provide more original coverage of additional state courts.  In the past year alone, coverage of policy/regulatory issues has increased by 130%, primarily by designating more senior reporters to cover these areas. Articles containing analysis have increased by more than 200%.

Did they succeed because of the great recession rather than despite it?

Law360 found fertile soil for growth in the nexus between lawyers’ competitive “need to know” and the crushing professional insecurity triggered in the wake of “the Great Recession.” The entire legal profession was facing a crisis of confidence. Law firms were collapsing, partners were being turned out on the street,  clients were rebelling and along comes a platform of newsfeeds that offers a bright beacon of hope. Law360 bloomed, just when  every lawyer needed nothing more than to feel smart about the competition and smart about their clients without a huge investment of time. Best of all Law360 was the first publication to prominently display the names of firms mentioned in stories. Lawyers wanted to know the news, but more than that they wanted to know which law firms were making the news. Even more than that they wanted to see their own name on the front of Law360.

Whether by design or accident, Law360  appears to have executed  a brilliant but contrarian plan to leverage the crisis of confidence which was shaking the legal profession.  Yes Law360  provided the news, but what lawyers were really buying was the prospect of  exposure and the “holy grail” of business development– a new client!

Related Stories:
A Lexis Law360 Deal: The Race For Content Continues
Lexis Announces  Acquisition of  Law360

 This morning Greg McCaffery CEO of Bloomberg Law sent a letter to clients announcing some changes at Bloomberg Law and BloombergBNA. The most immediate impact will be the unification of all legal products under a single subsidiary named BloombergBNA starting in January 2014.

New Leadership Structure Effective January 1, McCaffery will become the CEO of Bloomberg BNA.The leadership team will include Sue Martin, formerly CFO of the Bloomberg Industry Verticals; Darren McKewen, President of BNA; and Dmitri Mehlhorn.

Listening at AALL. McCaffery’s letter acknowledged the impact of client discussions at the recent AALL conference. “We discussed these topics repeatedly two weeks ago at the American Association of Law Libraries annual conference, when a team of us from Bloomberg Law/Bloomberg BNA spent four days with leaders in the field of legal information.”

The “Why” of this Move “Clients want even better solutions—solutions that integrate Bloomberg business insights, BNA content, and next-generation legal research technology to help our clients thrive in the changing landscape. “

Yes You Can Still Subscribe Directly to BNA Products The top question on the minds of information professionals will be whether this move suggests that the company is turning to a more aggressive marketing approach and requiring customers to purchase BLaw before they can get BNA subscriptions. There is no indication in the letter of any change is this regard.

Innovation Focused on Law Firm Profitability. Music to everyone’s ears. “We are committed to making individual users more effective, and our clients’ enterprises more profitable.” The letter describes the integration of BBNA Tax Management Portfolios with the Bloomberg Law DealMaker product to give tax professionals even more powerful tools for serving their clients. I believe this is absolutely the future. We will see new “mash ups” of previously independent products which connects previously independent content sets while adding new functionality and the opportunity for greater productivity.

Content Powered By Context and Connections. This is the main legal publishing industry trend which has already been in motion. Recent moves by Thomson Reuters, Lexis, Nexis and Wolters Kluwer echo the same message. We are no longer buying content, we are buying content wired to unconventional data streams which will surface new connections and be powered to change the way we work.

Good News for BLaw Subscribers This morning Greg McCaffery put a stake in the ground and declared that Bloomberg BNA will beat the competition in speeding innovation to the marketplace. The good news for Bloomberg BNA subscribers is that whatever BBNA develops, they are assured that they will get it all. One of Bloomberg Law’s distinguishing approaches to the legal market is to provide a predictable pricing model which assures that all innovations and new products are immediately available to all subscribers.

Pearson the British publisher of the Financial Times, announced that they will be selling their Mergermarket unit which publishes the Mergermarket deal monitoring and deal data product and Debtwire which covers the global distressed debt market.According to a story in the New York Times, Pearson bought Mergermarket for $192 Million in 2006. The Times story also reported that Mergermarket’s sales were $334 million in the first half of 2013.

Mergermarket has gained traction in US law firms due to its “boots on the ground” approach to monitoring deal activities and rumors in 67 locations around the world. Reporters  provide a steady stream of custom deal news as well as an excellent deal database which is used for Competitive Intelligence analysis and by lawyers for determining “What’s Market.”  Since M&A activity has been uneven over the past few years, it is impressive that Mergermarkets revenue has grown in this tough environment.

Over the past year there have been rumors that Pearson was in talks with Bloomberg regarding the sale of the Financial Times. Pearson’s announcement indicated that it did not intend to sell the Financial Times because it was viewed as important to their educational market strategy and apparently Mergermarket is not. But there is probably a legal publisher with a strategy which would benefit from a product like Mergermarket.

Where is the Most Strategic Synergy in Legal Publishing for Mergermarket?

Bloomberg Law doesn’t need it. They have much of  the same data although they present it differently. I would only see  Bloomberg buying Mergermarket so someone else can’t benefit from owning it.
 
Thomson Reuters  Like Bloomberg. TR doesn’t really doesn’t need  Mergermarket since they have the Thomson Reuters financial platform which is chocked full of deal data. TR is already working  on integrating  Thomson Reuters financial data  into their legal products. Mergermarket also has some overlap with the “what’s market” market capabilities of  the newly acquired Practical Law Company platform which was purchased earlier this year.

LexisNexis has been in the habit of purchasing (Law 360 and Knowledge Mosaic) or aligning (American Lawyer Media) with specialty publishers which cater to the legal market. Knowledge Mosaic has a different emphasis than Mergermarket but covers some of the same deal data, so the acquisition of Mergermarket does not seem like a likely move for LexisNexis to me.

Wolters Kluwer Law and Business – Now this one is intriguing. Wolters Kluwer has recenly expanded and accelerated  their suite of “push” offerings with their of daily legal newsletters. These newsletters focus on legal issues. Lawyers welcome products that can weave legal and business issues together in a way that enhances their competitiveness and efficiency. Wolters Kluwer already has a strong core of corporate, antitrust  and securities legal content on their Intelliconnect and RBSource platforms. It’s not hard to imagine some sparks flying if they married the stream of Mergermarket rumors and deals data to their core corporate legal content.
 
The Risk of Acquisition
 
Law librarians and legal information professionals know all too well that all product acquisitions do not end happily for customers or products. The litany of lost products is too long to recite, but as alawys we will watch carefully to see if Mergermarket can survive and thrive its own merger.
 
Also of Note — A Recent Bloomberg – Above the Law Connection
 
Bloomberg Media recently recruited Justin B Smith who engineered a digital transformation of The Atlantic magazine. At the end of the story in the New York Times, it noted that Smith founded Breaking Media which owns a number of websites, most notably the Above the Law blog. I contacted David Lat the Managing Editor of ATL and he indicated that Smith’s move to Bloomberg  will have no impact on ATL. Fair enough, Smith  has moved to Bloomberg Media and not to  Bloomberg Law, but something could happen over a water cooler! Bloomberg Law is always on the prowl for good content and new media is hot.  BLaw did establish an alliance with  another leading legal blog ScotusBlog which covers the US Supreme Court. Just gotta keep wondering what’s up next!

 

Bruce
MacEwen has been writing AdamSmith Esq for over a decade, but last year his
series “Growth is Dead” both stunned and perplexed law firm leaders 
throughout the US.
Bruce MacEwen

Bruce
provided the keynote for this year’s PLL Summit in Seattle, Washington. It is
impossible to summarize his dense and thorough economic analysis of the legal
sector.

At
best I can offer what I would call ” the Haiku of Adam Smith Esq.”

  • Financial
    recessions are different.
  • Law
    firm leaders only began to identify efficiency as a desirable goal four years ago.
  • When
    comparing law firms look at revenue per lawyer… it is more reliable because it is  harder “to game.”
  • Revenue
    per lawyer in Q1 of 2013 was down 23% for corporate work and 26% for litigation.
  • Excess
    capacity triggers the irrational impulse to offer irrational discounts.
  • Most
    law firm partners don’t know the difference between revenue and profits.
  • Lawyers
    still divide the world into lawyers and non-lawyers.
  • Law
    firms may need to move to a new leverage model of 1 partner to 1 associate.
  • Law
    firms should cultivate an active alumni network including lawyers who want to
    work part time or on a temporary basis  who can be tapped when the firm
    needs to staff up.
  • Proactive firms are more profitable than reactive firms.
  • Substitutes
    are more dangerous than competitors. LPOs are substitutes. For every one dollar
    an LPO gains, law firms lose 3 dollars.
  • Running
    a law firm is 5 times more complicated than running any other kind of business.
  • Lawyers
    need to practice law and let the professionals, manage the firm. He means those
    darned non-lawyers need to manage.
  • Law firms need credentialed, senior level executives to run the business of the firm.  
  • Law
    firms and lawyers must determine their distinguishing strategic proposition.
  • Most partners can not and most firm websites do not describe their firms ” Unique Strategic Proposition.”
  • A
    Distinguishing Strategic Proposition is distinctive, compelling and credible.
  • Law firms must build visibility in a digital world.
  • There
    is no entitlement to incumbency. Quoting from the CEO of now defunct, A&P
    Stores before they slid into oblivion,” You can’t argue with 100 years of success,”
  • Complacency is the biggest threat to law firms.
  • Lawyers are psychologically ill suited to reinvent their law firms. (Too skeptical, too independent and too risk averse,)
  • Lawyers
    hate failure. But they need to learn to take chances in order to
    improve their firms and become more competitive. This may involve some
    failures.
  • Law firms need to invest in R&D in order to reinvent their own future.
This list is not be enough, read the book, Growth is Dead and subscribe to the AdamSmithEsq website to receive Bruce’s ongoing commentary on the state of the legal marketplace. Well done Bruce!

.

Every PLL Summit has been a success but the  4th Annual PLL Summit, SOS: Shaping Our Success, which was held on July 13th in Seattle,  set a new standard of excellence by all accounts. Due to a combination of jetlag and computer problems, I was unable to write my normal nocturnal dispaces.  As my daughter likes to say, “God made midnight, so Mom could write.”

So I will begin, a week late, to report on the panels, the personalities and the punditry. BloombergBNA hosted the opening reception Friday evening and provided an opportunity for attendees to meet the “celebrity” guest speakers, the sponsors and network with each other.

Jean O’Grady and Bruce MacEwen
(c. Bess Reynolds)

Growth is Dead Now What?

The Summit,, kicked off with an extraordinary presentation by the lawyer, economist, consultant,  Bruce MacEwen, aka Adam Smith Esq.  He is a wizard with charts and data and kept everyone riveted with diagnostics, precautions and predictions for the future of law firms.

 Lean Up! Finding and Seizing Opportunities for Growth”

Bruce MacEwen opened his presentation by stating that the recession had given law firms permission to talk about things that could never be discussed before. We continued discussing “the unspeakable” in the Lean Up Panel. I set the stage with data and trend analysis. Lawyer and consultant Victoria Pynchon,  was both provocative and entertaining in asking us to “reframe” our careers. Bob Oaks and Bill Scarbrough provided insights into the opportunities they created or seized on their way to the C-Suite. Joan Axelroth moderated and provided questions to the panel.

Lunch With “Above the Law”  or How did  a Nice Harvard/Yale Grad Like You End Up Starting “Above the Law?”



Victoria Pynchon and David Lat
(c. Bess Reynolds)

Picture this: David Lat, Assistant Attorney General in Newark meeting with his former boss New Jersey Governor Chris Christie when Christie was Attorney General, in the days after Lat “outed himself” as the author of  a controversial blog. Convinced that his identity was about to be “uncovered,” Lat agreed to be interviewed by Jeffery Toobin for an article in the New Yorker.  Before there was “Above the Law” there was  “Underneath Their Robes”  judicial snark-fest written by  David’s female doppelganger “Article 3 Groupie.”  David  provided a wonderful history of how he developed “Above the Law”  and how it evolved from being every CMO’s nightmare into being an almost mainstream communication channel which now receives advance copies of things like bonus memos from Big Law PR departments.

Afternoon Tracks. Branding, Social Media

The worst thing about tracks is having to choose between “hot topics.” No matter which one’s you pick you are always sure you missed something important and this time it would have been true.
sessions

Kathy Skinner and several of her colleagues from Morrison and Foerster provided recaps of the afternoon sessions.

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis, WoltersKluwer, BloombergLaw/Bloomberg BNA and Fastcase.

Summit V Lives

The Summit will continue in 2014. Joan Axelroth and I will step down as co-chairs. Marcia Burris and Cheryl Nemeier will co-chair Summit V.

One of the great things about this year’s  Fastcase 50 is that it includes so many of my personal colleagues and mentors (whether they knew it or not!).

Luminaries Include: Bob Berring, Cindy Chick,Bess Reynolds, Anne Ellis, Steve Lastres, and Tracy Thompson-Przylucki  from the library community.  Leaders from other fields include: Ron Friedmann, Bruce MacEwen, Kingsly Martin and the late Dwight Opperman.

Congratulations to everyone.

Thank you Fastcase, founders Ed Walters and Phil Rosenthal for taking the time to recognize the  “unsung heroes” who are helping the legal profession navigate the stormy seas to the  reinvented practice of law.