PLL Summit - Larry Guthrie and Doug Malerba on Developing Collaborative Communities

One of three sessions in the PLL Summit Administration concurrent sessions track. These are notes are from talk by Larry Guthrie of Covington & Burling LLP and Doug Malerba of McKenna Long and Aldridge on developing collaborative communities.  Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.


Larry Guthrie on Collaboration in Libraries


Larry Guthrie says that libraries are all about collaboration; collaboration has a positive tone today. There is an emphasis on building a team culture. 


6 types of collaboration by libraries

• historical perspective - libraries were originally a collaboration e.g. most monasteries created one place to hold all their books.
• through inter-library loan - "the more we share, the more we have" - libraries by nature are collaborative, helping each other as well as those inside our own firms. 
• in various locations - telecommuting, embedding librarians in branches, face-to-face meetings are preferred
• using various communication techniques - social media (wikis, blogs, Twitter, etc.), Harvard's 5 Tips for Better Virtual Meetings (purchase required), communication across generations.
• over various disciplines - with other fields and specific areas of interest - the public library can be the hub for a number of communities, can facilitate this with social networks. New book coming out: Collaborative Governance by John D. Donahue and Richard J. Zeckhauser.
• for activism on behalf of librarianship - library associations are partnering with other organizations to advocate on various issues. Librarians need to work with other information professionals to lobby on behalf of libraries.

Doug Malerba on Virtual Teamwork: The Life of a Teleworking Law Librarian

He now teleworks exclusively from his home in Connecticut. Teleworking is common; most knowledge workers work from home one day a week. However, it is still fairly rare in law firms.

In his case, his wife was given a job opportunity in Connecticut so they decided to move. He thought he would have to find a new job. 

Advantages - worker

• cost savings
• decreased interruptions in work day
• improved work/life balance
• geographic freedom

Advantages - employer

• cost savings (real estate, utilities)
• employee retention
• increased productivity
• decreased absenteeism - people can still often perform their duties even if they might not have been able to go into to work (sick, family member sick)
• business continuity 

Advantages - society

• cost savings (roads, infrastructure)
• decreased traffic
• lowered air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions
• energy security

He had to determine which duties were tied to his physical location and could no longer be performed:

• shelving
• periodical binding

However, is primary functions could be performed virtually

• reference desk
• working with government affairs group
• subject alerts
• ILL
• document delivery
• e-resources management

He was able to do most of the work. 

His proposal to work virtually came at an opportune time: his firm was looking to reduce operating costs. Also management believed in telecommuting. He started by working 25 hours per week by telecommuting.

The started using "unified reference", that allows expanded reference services provided by the librarians across the firm's offices. He noticed that communication between librarians in different offices improved; there was increased awareness of librarians in other offices. 

During "snow-mageddon" requests from the attorneys continued to come in; he 

was one of only a few librarians who was able to work meet the need.

He has now regained his full-time status.

Telework challenges:

• It is essential the virtual employee create and retain a robust identity to be seen by other employees. It is essential to use all forms of communication in addition to email: voice, teleconferencing, etc. People need to see a living, breathing human being and a colleague.
• Professional isolation is when an employee loses connection to the organization's employees and culture. This can lead to feeling less motivated.
• Social isolation - working alone can be harder for some people.
• Employee burn out is a risk - absence of distractions can be a double-edged sword if employees don't take breaks or establish boundaries. It is important that the employee "turn off." 
• When you work remotely, there is an expectation that you can handle basic computer trouble-shooting issues. Also need to maintain connection with those who can keep you running remotely.
• Need support from management - need solid support, need to feel connected.

He is now collaborating with Joelle Coachman on uses of social media. They are also looking at other new tools, such as reference monitoring.

Many of us are already serving clients remotely; we can now take advantage of telecommunications.

Jack Niles - coined the phrase "telecommuting" - predicts this term will disappear as it becomes more common.

A great compliment: one of his lawyers did not realize they no longer worked in the same office after a year of his telecommuting.

People have to get over the psychological barriers - there is an idea that everyone working from home are in their pyjamas watching TV.  Comment from a manager in the audience: if you have a diligent employee, there is no need to expect their attitude to change when they start to telecommute.

PLL Summit - Joelle Coachman - Resistance is Futile: Integrating New Technology into Your Library

One of three sessions in the PLL Summit Technology/Tech Services concurrent sessions track. These are notes are from talk by Joelle Coachman, E-Resources Librarian at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP and owner of Info-2Go Legal Research Services, on integrating new technology into your library.  Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.


Joelle Coachman gave a lively talk comparing the law librarian profession and law firms with Star Trek.


Note that different generations relate to different generations of Star Trek. Summer associates see William Shatner as the "Priceline Negotiator", not Captain James T. Kirk. 

As librarians we are "Data", the data gatherers. Focus is on the vertical engagement, delivery of information up to those we report to. She encourages us to work more in the horizontal, which is more challenging.


Social media is the "bad guy" in the room - you might miss key information if you are not searching in social media. Most of us see it as a research tool rather than an engagement tool. Most of us are private and do not want to share. It is the "monster" in the room; we don't view it favorably.


The Borg - a lot like a social network - they have no thoughts of their own once assimilated. "Resistance is futile". It creates connection between people; be careful it does not become a negative for you. The way vendors are using data that is being collected. 


How can we take a Borg-like existence in social networks to instead becoming more engaging and in control?  The information proliferated in social networks "is huge" and were "giving it all she's got, Captain". If you are following blogs, you have to make it a daily habit. Make your social engagement, whatever avenue you choose, part of your daily habit.


Twitter is valuable, breaks news. But the trouble with Twitter is that it is prolific - too many tweets are not valuable.   Engagement is different than anything else we have done as law librarians. She has been following others for a long time, but has only recently started talking with others on Twitter.


Tips:

• When you first set up your Twitter account, watch it for a while. It takes a while to fine-tune it specifically.
• You don't have to follow the world; it is your private domain; follow who you want.
•  When you first start, know who you are following. 
• If tweeting, keep in mind you cannot speak on behalf of your law firm. Keep in mind you are doing both personal and professional mixed together.  Know your purpose and know what you want to say. She personally tweets about library and personal topics "all mixed together."
• People often take key phrases from speakers and tweet them, and then have "little spurts" of discussions. Mark those tweets with tags. 
• You need to know the language of the interest group you are speaking to. Use hashtags to connect with those and other interest groups. So often we keep what we do in the back as "housekeeping" but if you share with the larger world, they will gain respect for what we do.  This is horizontal engagement.
• Cultivate and share who you are. It gives you the opportunity to be individualistic.
• Earn the right to tweet the link.
• Organize your social house. She recommends using a third party dashboard such as Hootsuite to allow for following different channels of discussion from the broader community. Otherwise you have to actively build habits to go search certain hashtags. TweetCaster, Tweetdeck and others are available. 

Other considerations:

• Mobile devices help. If you are not mobile, you will have to work that into your engagement. You don't have to text message, but if you can get a device that allows you to follow conversations, it will help you be connected and be relevant in a fast-paced environment. 
• LinkedIn - 2 billion people are using it; possibly 500 million are engaged day to day; it is growing and there is a definite change in the way people are using it.  Use it for external sharing - how many people shared that you are going to be at this event today? Don't just share with your peers, but share with others you are connected with to show you are active professionally.
• There is nothing wrong with asserting ourselves and talking about ourselves. 

LinkedIn tips:

• Maintain an updated profile - it is like keeping your resume up to date, but easier since they facilitate addition of information in a standard format. You never know what opportunities will come to you. 
• Use your custom URL
• Join or create groups; there is not harm, you can un-join if you do not like it. Get into a habit to go to the group every day or set up email notifications to send to you every day.
• By working with LinkedIn, it will help you answer questions about it later. 
• Strategic linking: use the "share" button - share to LinkedIn articles you are reading. You never know who in your network will find it interesting as well. 
• Don't hesitate to ask for recommendations. Lawyers cannot always have recommendations because of bar association rules, but law librarians don't have these rules. Even if your firm doesn't post your bio, you should have a bio on LinkedIn. It gives her the opportunity to reach those who would not have found her through her firm.
• When you are sharing articles and links, send via LinkedIn, even to people internally. She found over time that people in her firm started to re-share links around to their followers.

"Make it so!" We can sit in the Captain's chair and drive the ship where we want it, contribute to the enterprise with "happy eyes" rather than fear and trepidation. 

She was also asked about use of Facebook. She uses Facebook personally but not as much professionally. The training she does now has forked toward LinkedIn. She encourages law firm librarians to make it personal rather than professional. If businesses want to be found, they have to be there, but think about your focus. If you are not using LinkedIn as a professional, you need to question why. It is where the professionals are.

PLL Summit - David Curle on transformations in the legal publishing industry

One of three sessions in the PLL Summit Technology/Tech Services concurrent sessions track. These are notes are from talk by David Curle of Outsell on transformations in the legal publishing industry.  Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.


$15.5 billion - publishers in the legal, tax and regulatory industry worldwide


2008 was the first year they went into negative growth; came back slight in 2010; expect it to take another 3-4 years to get back to where they were pre-2008.


Three companies dominate the space: LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters and WoltersKluwer hold about 70% of the market place. BNA is next with about 2% market share. It has made it difficult for anyone else to break into the market because they keep getting "gobbled up" by one of the big players.


It is difficult to describe the major players because depending on what part you see, you see something different. We tend to think of the "big three" as legal publishers; however, they serve a number of markets. Curle has broken the top three by type of legal information; about a third of their revenues is U.S. legal information. About a quarter is non-US legal. The rest are other areas such as corporate, government, academic, tax, governance and compliance areas. So only about $3.5 billion is generally derived from US law firms.


How much revenue do law firms bring in? About $400 billion. The largest firm brings in about $2 billion. It is a very fragmented industry, making it difficult for providers who work for anything from $2 billion business all the way down to a solo practitioner. 


$40 billion - the 10% of law firm expenditures that firms see as needing to cut. Legal vendors looking to expand into this space, the "business of law" such as in the IT area such as servers hosted in firms, etc. Vendors are pretty entrenched in their existing legal information areas and need to look to these ways to expand.


What do law firms do?

• Develop strategy
• Deliver legal services
• Run their businesses
• Market themselves

He uses Thomson Reuters as a case study, but similar things happened in WoltersKluwer and LexisNexis

• Thomson Reuters' role, 1996  > were not addressing these four areas
• Thomson Reuters' role, 2009  > expanding into these four areas
• Thomsone Reuters' role, 2011 > purchased services in these areas, now starting to compete with their own clients e.g. Pangea3, a legal outsourcing area; Hildebrandt and others

This transition is not unique; it is happening in other industries they are tracking. A business-to-business publisher has gone from publishing about marketing to actually doing marketing on their clients' behalf.

See Susskind's Grid: Toward an uncomfortable quadrant - describes where technological change is most likely to take place. Acquisition of Pangea3 puts Thomson Reuters in the upper right quadrant - online legal services. It involves clients directly, and it is not just about technology; it is about law firms' proprietary skill. 

Questions from law firm and corporate libraries survey: How are law firms managing all of this change? Especially given the challenges they are already facing? How are law firm libraries different or similar to corporate libraries? 


The responses showed that the corporate world felt the economic crisis faster than the law firms. Techniques for survival showed up later in law firm libraries. Part of strategy is comparing what you do versus what you do not do, and technology poses a number of these questions. Technology is front-and-center.


In the area of vendor relations - what techniques are librarians using to evaluate products? Law firm libraries tend to rely heavily on information provided by the vendor. They look at the products themselves, look at demos, look at the contracts, and then get feedback from some other buyers. Law firm libraries do less than corporate libraries: putting out requests for proposals, developing requirements lists, comparing products. 


What can we expect from vendors and other players, and how will it affect law libraries?

• A continuing divergence of products and sub-groups; more targeted products. Offerings may even be by size of firm. LexisNexis is putting a push on to get back to smaller firms and solo lawyers, for example.
• More niche players and disrupters - especially as legal information access becomes more open. New information companies can come along and make new products out of it. In the past the three big vendors had control of the information.
• Law libraries need to invest in strategic planning and vendor portfolio management - what competencies and skills do library staff have that can serve the firms? Is there anything we need to give up doing? (He referred to Steven Lastres' comments in the KM session earlier today).
• Move toward Susskind's upper quadrant - providing more services directly to clients, the same as legal information providers are trying to do - high value, client-proximate solutions. 
• Help to shake off the primary law mindset - most law graduates have a primary law mindset, jumping directly on Westlaw (or more likely Google) to pull up primary information. So much legal work is pulling up primary legal sources "in a hap-hazard way"; he sees this as a shame. What is being lost is the sense of context and legal doctrine they used to get from working with legal treatises. Small firms and non-lawyers will start to use more free and cheap legal services. Lawyers in big firms need to be able to use other higher-value sources.
• More collaboration and peer-to-peer for content creation - libraries need to help facilitate this. You get better information from getting people talking to each other than from experts (knowledge sharing among peers). Need to help corporate counsel and non-lawyers collaborating and help to create the legal information e.g. building code information. This should be part of knowledge management efforts.
• Vendor relations needs to be about data: ROI, usage and pricing. Introduce more and more data into the evaluation and purchase of products. There is no trust that vendors are providing right and appropriate data; the law firm librarians need to introduce this as an idea.

He doesn't have solutions, but hopes this talk helps us understand the dynamics going on with legal vendors.

PLL Summit - Greg Castanias - How librarians add value to their law firms

One of two lunch speakers at PLL Summit. These are notes from a talk by Greg Castanias, Partner at Jones Day on how librarians (and library partners) add value to their law firms.  Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.


Greg Castanias related a story about how their libraries came to be coordinated under a global library partner.  He talked about how their various offices are being supported by the libraries. 


He outlined who law firm librarians work with:

• Library customers
• Firm management
• External vendors

He urges us to adopt the model for dealing with internal clients: adopt a customer service model. Speak the talk of a service, not of a "space." E.g. What is your problem and how can I help you find the answer?


He suggests:

• putting out a newsletter
• publishing photos of the professional staff so people know who can help them
• put tips into the firm newsletter
• making services seamless so that library staff in other offices can take over work

"If you are sitting in your library waiting for your clients come to you, you are doing it wrong." "Change is not coming, it already came and has passed you by."

Ask yourself if the library space, physical collection and staff the right size? Is the library adding value, or perceived as adding value, or perceived as being a drain?  You can earn gold stars by offering to give back space for new staff.

When he told lawyers about case law in Google Scholar via firm newsletter. He got a lot of feedback back from lawyers who thanked him for being sensitive to their client cost needs.

Castanias then talked directly to vendors:

"Vendors, your business model is broken." Demands for increasing costs do not make sense. Others do not provide sufficient tracking, forcing firms to buy third party tracking services to see how the firm's own lawyers are using the services. 

"You fail to understand how we do business while seeking partnership with us."  

"We are eating a significant amount of our contracts with you." 

"You acquire and acquire and acquire, but you are incapable of integrating your businesses in any meaningful way."  Businesses may be under one umbrella name, but firms are forced to deal with them all as individual businesses.

Libraries are heading toward a virtual approach. Clients are going to expect virtual libraries as part of the firm's overhead; they are not going to accept disbursements in the future. 

He predicts vendors are going to see more consolidation and elimination. He tells the vendors to find ways to distinguish themselves. He implores vendors to treat law firms as clients. 

"We are willing to pay for value."  He encourages vendors to create the right services for the right clients, and to come up with a better pricing model.

He says the "winners" may be vendors that do not exist yet. Beware that other publishers are finding that they being passed by, and legal publishers need to beware.

PLL Summit - Joan Axelroth - What Law Firm Administrators Want Librarians to Know

The second half of the morning at PLL Summit allowed attendees to attend 2 out of 5 summaries from the PLL's Law Firm Management webinar program (we got to choose which two). These are notes are from a 30 minute session with  library and information management consultant Joan Axelroth on law firm administration. Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.


Rather than summarize her webinar, Joan Axelroth asked us to work through the questions that James Jones posed to us in the morning.


Q:  How will these likely changes in law firm management models impact traditional library/information services?


A: Obvious answer: budget cuts, reduced staffing and access to services.


One law firm embedded their librarians into departments; this was very successful. Their billable hours have increased (doubled!); they may be a way to use this to justify more staff. 


Has anyone thought about not pricing library time hourly?  In some firms it may depend on the arrangement with the clients - some time billed to clients; some written off.  Even if the firm is using alternative billing methods, they still need to account for time and still ask the library staff members to track their hours.


In some firms, marketing departments are now hiring librarians directly. This new market is forcing librarians and other departments to partner more to get things done. One librarian related a story of creating a business analyst position within her library; within a year it was moved to the Marketing Department.


The mantra is to break down silos, but it is difficult to collaborate. 


With vendor products aimed at different departments, they try to use economies of scale to share services between departments.


In one firm the CIO was put in charge of the electronic resources. This was expected to be horrible; however, it turned out to be useful. It brought departments together to talk about the resources; it reduced duplication and also helped the CIO understand how difficult it is to turn down an attorney when he or she needs a resource simply based on cost.


What have you done to support the changes your management has been making in response to the economic downturn?


One response: they had to write a monthly report. It was dreaded at first, but forced the library director to set down what they were doing, geared them up for what was coming up.  


Some partners are now micro-managing more. What is the budget, how far off are you on your budget, do you have any new contracts? You have to address what they want to know. How do you get them to listen? You need to say it in a way they will hear - the value they will get.  Put it into terms they will listen to e.g. dollars and cents. If you don't find the right approach, try it again. Do they want a quarterly oral report, do they want a written report, do they want one page, bulleted? 


Some tips from the group discussion:

• You should be reading what Hildebrandt is blogging and publishing. 
• Be ready for an elevator speech. 
• Follow clients in the news and be ready to talk about them.
• It is amazing how much your vendors know about your organization - they may be able to point you to people internally to speak with.

If you have ideas about making the firm more effective and cost efficient (that clients are looking for), how do you communicate that?


Becomes political - you have to be careful not to go over someone's head. You can't go over the other departments and speak directly with the managing partner. Instead try to talk with the other departments and come up with a new model first.


Even though you may have an org chart, it may not show you where the real power is. You can learn where the power is and use it to your advantage. 




See also: blog post by Mary Ellen Bates also covering this session.

PLL Summit - Steven Lastres, Julie Bozzell and Toby Brown - Moving Beyond the Library Walls to Support Strategic Knowledge Management

The second half of the morning at PLL Summit allowed attendees to attend 2 out of 5 summaries from the PLL's Law Firm Management webinar program (we got to choose which two). These are notes are from a 30 minute session with Steven Lastres, Julie Bozzell and Toby Brown on law firm libraries and knowledge management.  Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

KM is about working smarter. KM strategies are a way for law firms to become more competitive. Firms need to make their young associates as smart as they can be, as fast as they can be. Teaching them the tools to get to the actionable items should be the focus. KM helps improve client/customer service - e.g. library staff share what they have done and learn with others, especially if they are in a global environment - you need to capture the links, documents and PDFs that were found during research.

KM Projects that require librarian competencies:

• Intranet/portal content development
• Creation of expertise databases
• Database development & maintainance
• Taxonomy, development of controlled vocabulary
• Project management
• Statistical analysis
• Search engine optimization

If your library is not into KM, how do you get there? You will not be invited - you need to get yourself involved. Prepare your "brag bag".  Lawyers are not necessarily struggling with the research databases; they are struggling with the other tools they have access to. We have expertise and can help them; we should approach IT.  

Best bets and ideas:

• help review what people are searching for on the intranet, work to offer up "best results" - IT does not like to do this
• thesaurus development
• SharePoint 2010 - metadata term scores - help building taxonomies and synonyms to help surface content
• connect lawyers to key KM resources
• index the lawyers' content e.g. by practice group
• managing projects on wikis (Bozzell found calling it a "resource page" helped them adopt it faster)
• dashboard development - pulling together content from external providers e.g. by industry or client - it is too difficult to expect lawyers to have 90 different vendors and 90 different passwords; need to pull the content all together for them.

Stop using library terms; use terms people are already use e.g. Internet-related terms.

Analysis KM 

• draws from the ediscovery field - too much information for humans to digest
• search becoming less effective

Kiiac - created by Kingsley Martin (who developed West KM previously) - takes a group of similar documents, breaks them down into their components and compares them; the human can then choose what is correct or not; can then compare the "standard" against the other documents to show which are standard and which are not. Important for librarians to work in this area - makes you part of the strategic part of the firm.

Steven Lastres:  Don't wait to be told what to do - go to the management partners and tell them what you want to do and why you want to do it. Learn to do a business case analysis and present it. We are the ones who work with the lawyers and the ones who know how to do this kind of work. Stop doing the work that is not lawyer-facing. No partner cares if you have a pristine catalog record.

Audience comment: Get out and talk to the lawyers in your firm, find out what they need.

Lastres: with firm cuts there are fewer people to do this kind of work; it is a great opportunity for law firm librarians to step out of our comfort zone and do this kind of work. Bring it back to the client: what's the value to the client, what's the value to the lawyer?

Audience comment: Lawyers don't want to share outside of their practice groups. A: Needs to come from management, needs to be a factor in their compensation model.

Note the PLL KM sub-group will be doing monthly chats on related topics; they are looking for members. Join them on LinkedIn - PLL/SIS Knowledge Management Group.

PLL Summit - Esther Dyson on Technology Changes in Business and Libraries

Second on at PLL Summit is Esther Dyson on technology changes in business and libraries.  See her website: http://www.edventure.com/ Note: these are my notes from this Q&A session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.


She started out with a response to James Jones' talk. She characterized the changes in law firms as part of the larger movement we are seeing "from fuzziness to clarity," allowing us to commoditize legal work. She suggested that librarians join outsourcing firms where information is the core business rather than law firms where we have supporting roles. 


Is the world getting smarter or stupider? Dyson quoted William Gibson "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed."  You are getting more and more at either end of the range. Google is not destroying our ability to think, but it is changing what we are finding as important to remember. Lawyers think logically--someone still needs to read the laws to determine if they are fair and just and internally coherent. Google affects our ability to think deeply.


What percentage of AALL PLL's membership is female? It is a female dominated profession working in male dominated organizations. Dyson says it is wonderful to see a group of women in this area. She started as a reporter and fact-checker. As a young female reporter she was able to get a lot of high level executives to "be indiscrete" in what they shared with her. However, she didn't work in a male-dominated organization. 


Talking in global terms, she says it is easier to get rid of a government than it is to re-build the government with a new social contract. In social networks you can leave if you don't agree with something; it is harder to leave a country if you don't agree.  Help people know they are not alone.


In the US there is a tolerance for failure and taking a risk that is not tolerated elsewhere. People who step out of line may be despised or even shot. US individualism is mostly good, and not appreciated. Americans are not as kind and generous without social circles, but willing to take a risk. 


Young people in other countries don't have a lot of role models to try something different; they look to the US for those role models. They see what Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have done, but not what their local people have done.


She sees the future of search as more oriented toward actions or transactions: search with verbs when you want to do something. She wonders about a legal search engine that focuses just on legal information put into context.


What does she think about the new web domains? We have no shortage of domain names; the shortage is space in people's heads. E.g. you could have a domain name and add 1,2,3,4 etc. She doesn't see the need for these new domains. She doesn't see the need for having to buy domains with all different extensions.


Re: access to your genome information. The issues are more around privacy than healthcare. If you want information private, don't put it online. It is your own information and you have the right to it. In terms of health, your family history and lifestyle are more important right now for predicting your health; however in the future knowing your genome will become more important. She also thinks checking your blood on a regular basis will provide a lot more information in the future--can show changes in your health. 


The only problem is that people get the data but don't change their behaviour; however, social networks can impact this. She compares it to frequent flyer cards, what people do to get free miles and get status. If you had a similar card that measures how many steps you take that gives you the perks for your health care - earning status. Sharing data with friends and competing or collaborating (such as through Facebook or iPhones) is going to be more motivating than seeing just your own data.


People are far less naive than 15-20 years ago as far as advertising goes; they may not understand the advertising industry, but they know what it means to get an online service for free and where the revenue comes in - you get the service for free because it is supported by ads, for example. She talked about http://www.patientslikeme.com/ where people with diseases can voluntarily share their data to pharma companies etc. to allow them to help fight the diseases. https://www.23andme.com/ allows people to share their genome information with their doctors. You can do it with a fake name if you don't want your insurance company to find you. You can also share genome information with friends.


Is Facebook uniquely American or uniquely Internet? When she sees people use online tools in other countries, she sees they may be more open but they are still the same people, e.g. Russians online are still Russian. The culture online will be affected by the users. However, the Internet is making people more open with the people they don't know. It is changing people all over the world; she sees the idea of the "global village" is "way overdrawn."


She is trained as a cosmonaut with 6 months training in Russia, which she says is generally not useful in the rest of her life. Most people in law like logic - when you search online you cannot currently get the whole context. People who do that will have an advantage of people who don't. People who think and value knowledge will be needed and have an edge. 


Google's "filter bubble" that provides you with information filtered for you - she sees value in going beyond your own filter bubble. She speaks metaphorically - people have the choice to go beyond their own filter bubble or they don't. We have more opportunity for regret; we have more opportunity to do exciting things.


She feels the US government has not done a good job of getting people excited about space travel, which has led to the cancelling of the space shuttle. She is on the NASA advisory council, gets to visit the research centers; however the people who need advice is Congress, not NASA. They cut back budget on needed programs; they keep fostering projects that are way over budget. It is all about to be privatized, and she expects it to blossom.


Space law will become interesting.

PLL Summit - James Jones on Understanding Law Firm Trends

First up at PLL Summit is James Jones of Hildebrandt Baker Robbins helping us to understand trends in firms and where we are today.  Note: these are my notes from his talk; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

James Jones took us through a summary of recent history, from 2007 to the present. After the economic crisis, in 2010 we started to see some return to stability although not growth in law firms. Firms were starting to see the benefits of significant cuts in 2009 since you typically do not see benefits of cuts in the years they were made. In 2011 you would not see the same benefits as you could not make the same cuts, and expenses previously delayed would have to be paid. As well, firms that made too deep of cuts to associates would be hiring some back at increased cost.

In 2011, legal business will stabilize although not at the levels seen in years prior to the economic downturn in 2008.

As we see more competition in the market, firms are going to need to spend money and start investing resources to compete in the new market place. He sees this as a delicate balancing act. He predicts firms will see modest profit (in the single digit range). He sees 2 to 3 years of ongoing "slugging it out" before we start to see recovery by firms.  As well, some things will not come back to where they were.

Other factors:

Aside from the economy, there have been other driving factors for changes to U.S. law firms:

Availability of information

Notably, more competitive information has started becoming available. Jones theorizes law firms were not a proper market because market information was not available for clients; "law firms controlled the whole scene."  This started to change in the past three decades with publications such as The American Lawyer and LExpert. A lot of information started coming from the trade press. A lot of effort has now gone into rating firms such as with Chambers ratings. As well, the courts have had an effect; any time the bar associations have tried to put anti-competitive rules in place they have been struck down.

Drive toward customization

He referred to Richard Susskind's The End of Lawyers? - Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services.

Most lawyers see themselves as doing "bespoke" work; they see the other option as commoditized ( such as downloading your will).  However, most law is done somewhere in a range between the two:

• standardized - form file developed by individual lawyers
• systemized - form files developed between lawyers, rudimentary knowledge management systems
• packaged - starting to make some of the forms available to clients to fill out

Services typically work their way from bespoke to commoditized.

Lawyers typically don't like this model; however, quality with packaged and commoditized is typically higher than bespoke work because the lawyer has been through the type of work many times and builds in responses to many types of problems. Bespoke work is typically from the first time a lawyer does the work.

Growth of enabling technologies

UK firms are ahead of US firms in this area:

• Clifford Chance Online Services
• Linklaters blueflag
• BusinessIntegrity
• Newchange Document from Allen & Overy
• Practical Law Company

There is an emergency of new service providers that are not law firms:

• CPA Global
• Pangea3
• Lawscribe
• OCS - Outside Counsel Solutions
• Morgan Lewis (a law firm)
• Integreon

Some are basing the work out of India, but not all. They are doing work previously done by associates in firms e.g. discovery.

Lopsided Economic Model

Boom of law firms in the past was their ability to raise rates 6-8% every year. So now it is difficult to maintain this in these economic times. "Client push back became inevitable."  He showed us in graphic form how law firm rates increased right through to 2008, whereas the economy turned down in 2008; "this was not a sustainable model."

New competitive models drive new strategies

When demand exceeds supply, prices go up. Before 2008, even firms that had no strategic focus could easily make money. Post-economic crisis, supply now exceeds demand. There is now huge pressure on prices to reduce. For a firm to grow, it now has to take market share away from another firm. "Firms that don't have clear strategies are going to be losers in this market."

In the past there was no incentives in the system for efficiencies. First were all about expansion and growth; nobody talked about efficiency. 

The new world is different: it is a buyer's market, driven by the clients. Clients are looking for efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Quality is still important, but all the firms clients are looking at provide quality. Differentiating factor is the cost.

This is now driving new strategic directions:

- client models

- service delivery models

- talent models

Should firms run with a talent model?  Or do you get rid of 16-18% of associates every year? (As often happens now).

In the past when firms looked at strategy, they only looked at positioning strategy. Firms are still going to need this, but "this isn't enough." What type of technology, infrastructure and processes are you going to need?  If you move to a different model that doesn't fire 16-18% of people each year, you need to look at hiring in the first place.

Some firms are seeing more demand, some are seeing a lot less. We are starting to see a segmentation in the law firm market.

7 questions

Seven questions posed to us by James Jones with respect to the role of law libraries in light of these trends:

1. How will these likely changes in law firm management models impact traditional library/information services?
2. How will this drive for efficiency and cost-effectiveness impact ways in which legal research is undertaken?
3. How might librarians/information specialists help in partnering with clients and in supporting "one-to-many" knowledge sharing models?
4. In an age of "disintermediation," how can information be rendered more useful and actionable?  (Trends we have seen in other industries, we will start to see the same thing happening in law...lawyers will no longer be gatekeepers of esoteric information)
5. What roles might librarians/information specialists play in the management of new firm "products" - e.g., various tools for on-line guidance and services?
6. What roles might librarians/information specialists play in the development of "just-in-time" training resources.
7. How might the growing importance of information management impact the roles that executive librarians play in their firms?

Q&A

A: Firms should be sitting down with their 10 biggest clients. The number one thing clients want is to have their general counsel sit down and talk with them; very few lawyers do.

Q: Are clients not unique, wouldn't commoditization be a problem?
A: There are ethical concerns about one-to-many systems; however, the market is driving it and these concerns will need to be worked out.  E.g. Linklaters system available only to existing clients - there is a client-lawyer relationship.

At AALL 2011 - Private Law Libraries Summit - Change as Action

I am currently in Philadelphia at the American Association of Law Libraries 2011 conference. Today I am attending a full day hosted by the Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section, a day they call the PLL Summit. The theme this year is "Change As Action."  See the full agenda.

The room is chocked full of law firm library managers and directors. This is a very popular day.

I am planning to live blog as much of the day as I can, so hang onto your hats!

Update - here's the full list of blog posts:

• 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