Answer Maven

Last week Heller Ehrman dissolved.  Mergers in the law firm world seem to be minimal, large businesses are failing as evidenced by the legislative scramble last week to jump start the commercial paper and credit markets.

I found this AmLaw Daily post quite interesting.  It seems to bring to the forefront some practical advise that firms should heed to ensure their longevity.  A few things that really captured my attention:

1. “Bigger is not always better.”  Client service is the meat of law firms.  If you make your clients happy, you keep them.  Adding more attorneys and increasing your costs to accommodate those additions is not for the client’s benefit, is it?
2. “Lack of organizational glue.”  In the comments field of this posting someone wrote in that firms attract talent.  I think that in the boom times, firms, didn’t work hard enough to retain talent.  As the economic strain filters down many levels of firm staffing will suffer including associates who are talented but now have no place due to the need to reduce costs.  Easy to downsize groups of talent when a merger has/will occur in order to provide the best bottom-line to your suitor but is it best for your clients?  Sometimes the bottom line is actually better served by the talent than the numbers.

The bottom line interpretation of this thought provoking piece is selling customers your value.  Do you have experience, talent, added-value service that keeps the customer’s priorities as your ow

Tonight I was doing some background research on an individual.  I did not find a lot of current information.  I followed the research rule of performing the search on multiple search engines.  In doing so, I found, as expected different search results.

Then I realized it had been quite some time since I ran my own name through the search engines.  So, I performed a search for Constance Ard.   As usual, I received different results and retrieved items that I had forgotten. I even found items where other bloggers are referring to my own items that I had not seen.

It is wise to monitor your Internet presence regularly.  This will help safeguard your privacy and your reputation.  Knowing who is writing about you and what is being said is critical.  Being able to remove incorrect references will help you maintain your web credibility.  Understanding that you are reaching beyond your known world will help in your continue effort to grow your business or  spread your message.

So search yourself regularly on the web in order to know thyself.

Facebook hires a GOP insider as their GC.  This was a surprise to Silicon Valley but I think it’s a good choice.  Who better to help Facebook weave through the maze of privacy regulations and public policy pitfalls than someone with experience.  Facebook, will inevitably face more governmental challenges as its constiuency grows to mirror the voting public.  Protection and strategic legal planning are a must for survival.   It just goes to show that understanding technology and patent processes isn’t enough for legal representatives of technology companies in today’s market.

I read a report yesterday called E-Discovery View from the  Front Lines by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System.

This report provided a thorough overview of the growth in importance of E-Discovery to the legal system, a review of how e-discovery has changed in recent years, some interesting discussion of “litigation holds” and other best practices as well as some recommendations for change.

One of the interesting things I noted while reading this and several other publications related to e-discovery in the past few days is the emphasis on fear surrounding e-discovery.  It seems that law firms fear e-discovery due to costs, general counsel fears e-discovery due to costs and businesses fear e-discovery due to costs.  Some would say that if everyone is concerned about costs perhaps ways to reduce costs should be employed more consistently.

I don’t think that anyone affected by e-discovery is unwilling to do find and employ ways to reduce costs.  I think that e-discovery has been mainly reactionary rather than pro-active for all involved, including vendors.  An opportunity to make money by employing technology to manage a process for ESI (electronically stored information) presented itself and vendors adapted.  Law firms often seek out-of-the-box applications in order to solve problems and unfortunately, I don’t think that enough strategic planning is employed before choosing a solution.  This is of course, not the fault of the firms.  In my experience, law firm innovations are often pushed by client demand and all too often that demand is prioritized without the client having done their own preparedness.

A few years back this used to be the problem of big companies and large firms but with the reality of less than .1 percent of information created on paper this is everyone’s problem.  So you may ask what should you do to minimize the fear.

A few practical tips would be:

• Plan based upon ESI work-flow
  • This plan should be a cross-functional team plan that brings the best planners from IT, info centers, and records management into the room with the strategic business planners
• Don’t over retain your ESI, use the plan
• End redundancy in ESI if it is stored at a departmental level, not every staff member should be required to retain the info
• Investigate vendors and strategic who have solutions, not simply applications
• Staff for ESI and E-Discovery – Having someone on board who understands the bigger picture for the Industry and information flow from creation to use is a no-brainer in reducing up-front costs.

Check this post from TechRepublic on some great ways to learn news skills for your own benefit.

I can personally vouch for the information you can learn just by volunteering and public libraries provide so much value for the cost if you just take a look at their offerings.  If you feel the offerings are a bit too basic for your needs how about volunteering to teach a more advanced course.