LawyerKM

Follow LawyerKM on Twitter

I’ve written a bit about Twitter and micro-blogging in law firms.  I’ve had my doubts about it’s value both inside and outside law firms.  I’ve also praised it for being good at what it is.  If you think that Twitter is a complete waste of time, think again.

I came across a interview with Laura Fitton, founder & CEO of Pistachio Consulting, on Global Neighborhoods.  Check out the whole interview, but here’s the takeaway:

All my work now comes from people I know through Twitter. All of it. Not only do all my clients come from Twitter, by the time someone contacts me, they thoroughly understand how my mind works and have already decided I am the one for the project.

While the size of my Twitter network is crazy, the quality of it is what *really* blows my mind. I now routinely stumble across someone absolutely fascinating and brilliant who I had no idea was following me. My Twitter network includes some extraordinary and influential professionals including VCs, CEOs, CIOs, VPs; the executive producer of Curb Your Enthusiasm; the editor in chief of CIO Magazine, authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto and hundreds of other extraordinary people, many of whom I have never met face-to-face.

All of these brilliant and accomplished people–all of them trace back to things that happened on or because of Twitter. Connecting to so many smart people – online and off – via Twitter has been like hitting a big cool oasis in a lifelong desert. I love nothing more than hearing people’s ideas and passion. That fires me up and keeps me going.

Wow.  Maybe Twitter is not such a waste of time, after all.  Granted, @Pistachio, as she is known on Twitter, is a consultant who helps “companies harness the business power of microsharing quickly and effectively”  [Laura prefers the term "microsharing" over "microblogging"].  So, it follows that Twitter, the leading microblogging site, would be fertile ground for her.  But can lawyers reap the same benefits from Twitter?

Law firm blogging guru Kevin O’Keefe said that Lawyer Marketing with Twitter has Arrived and his company, LexBlog, “may pick up some very good work through Twitter – with larger law firms.”  But what about practicing lawyers picking up clients?  Kevin pointed out a bit of a gaff by one public relations firm that apparently used Twitter to find plaintiffs for a class-action lawsuit.  The Twitter community did not react positively (“…ambulance chasers…” and “have some pride” were tweeted in response).  The PR firm later retracted the posting.

Legal web marketing consultant Steve Matthews, of Stem Legal, noted that there are a lot of lawyers on Twitter.  But the question remains: can those twittering lawyers turn 140-character tweets into cash?  Steve suggests that “[w]ith Twitter, like most forms of web marketing, the value is found in the big picture & the cumulative effect of using it as but one piece of the web-lawyer’s marketing toolbox.”  I’m no marketing expert, but that makes sense.

Twitter shouldn’t be seen as a billboard on which lawyers declare their ability to trounce insurance companies and win large settlements for injured clients.  It should be a way for lawyers to engage in conversations and form relationships, which may lead to trust, confidence, and maybe — just maybe — a new client or more work from an existing one.

So, do you lawyers out there have any success stories about getting business from Twitter?  We’d love to hear about it.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation — following in the footsteps of the intelligence community — has created and is testing a wiki.  In fact, the users of FBI’s wiki, Bureaupedia, will be able to link to articles in Intellipedia, the wiki of the spies.

“An agent that retires after 30 years leaves with all of that — what we call a tacit knowledge — everything leaves with him,” said Zalmai Azmi, FBI’s chief information officer, who will be retiring in October. That includes “best practices, things that he did differently, things that he wishes he had done differently.”

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Find Without Searching

For a search engine to deliver what you need, you have to enter a query into a search box, right? But what if you don’t know what you need, or if your need to find something arises in an instant?

Among other things, knowledge management is about getting the right information to the right people at the right time. What if there is no time to search? Can you still get the right information when you need it?

Client calling...

Picture this: It’s early morning, you’re in your office and the phone rings. Caller ID indicates that it is one of your biggest clients. You panic a little because you haven’t spoken with the client in a while and you’re not expecting the call. You’ve been busy with other matters, so you’re not exactly up to date on what’s going on in the client’s industry. You don’t know the status of the client’s open matters because a junior partner has been handling them day to day. What does the client want? You could let the call go to voicemail and call the client back, but you know that one of the reasons your clients like you is because you’re accessible. You could answer the phone, open your intranet client page and hope to skim the status of the matters while you engage in small talk. While you’re at it, open up a web browser and do a news search for the client’s name; do another news search for the industry and the client’s main competitors. Since you’re not sure if the client is calling about a recent bill, or an estimate about next month’s bill, you could stall the client a bit more with chitchat while you open up your time and billing application to see the WIP reports.

Now picture this: It’s that same early morning and the phone rings. As soon as caller ID identifies the client, a search is triggered and the system queries and returns—on one nicely-organized screen—a package of relevant information about the client: the vitals on the client (from your CRM system), including spouse and family information (for additional small talk); a linkable list of recent active matters, including billing information; a live news feed about the client, his industry and main competitors; docket information from your managing clerk software that shows recent filings on litigation matters. All of that “just in time” information right at your fingertips and you didn’t even touch your keyboard.

Caller ID on Steroids

Think it’s too good to be true? Think again. Back in 2006 Intel introduced the idea of “caller ID on steroids” as a part of its Proactive Health Research Project to help people with Alzheimer’s who might “fear that they won’t remember the person on the other line by name alone.” The system “provides senior citizens with a photo of the person calling, a personalized diagram of how they know the caller, and a brief blurb on the topic of their last phone conversation.”

Why should senior citizens have all the cool stuff? Well, Bruce MacEwen, at the Adam Smith, Esq. blog, describes this idea applied to a law firm scenario and says that there is at least one law firm working on such a project.

How’s that for getting the right information to the right person at the right time!

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

When it comes to micro-blogging (“MBing” – I just made that up), Twitter started it all – on the web.

Then came Socialcast (which I covered here), and then the much-hyped Yammer, which won the top prize at TechCrunch50.

Now, there is a new kid on the MBing block: Present.ly.

Present.ly and the other MBing applications are all about constant awareness. According to their website, though, Present.ly is not a micro-blogging application, it is a “micro-update communications tool for your company” that provides your employees with “the ability to instantly communicate their current status, ask questions, post media, and more.”

In addition to short, frequent updates, there are other features, such as the ability to attach files (like documents, pictures, and videos).  It also supports the most popular internet browsers and mobile devices, including BlackBerry and iPhone.  An interesting twist, and one that I think is essential to enterprise adoption, is the ability to form groups – this allows more focused tweets (so that you don’t have to bother the entire firm with your message).  Finally, Present.ly is customizable and it offers a Twitter-compatible API so that you can adapt tools you use for Twitter to Present.ly.

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it. So, should you run out and start micro-blogging in your law firm?  That’s a very personal and firm-specific question.  I noted my doubts about law firm micro-blog adoption and Jevon MacDonald listed some pros and cons of enterprise micro-blogging here and here.

One problem I have with Twitter in the enterprise is focus.  It may sound like blasphemy to some faithful Tweeters, but Twitter is distracting.  There, I said it.  I love Twitter, but I use it when I have a few minutes to kill.  I don’t go there to find information that I need.  For me, it’s background.  It’s the Musak of the Web.  As Susan Cartier Liebel said “Tweeting is backslapping and chatting on the street.”  (Other Tweeters have chimed in about their take on Twitter here).  Yes, I know that in the enterprise, presumably, people won’t tweet about what they had for breakfast or their new shoes, but are we inviting a new form of media overload into the firm?  Aren’t email overload and RSS overload enough?  I’m probably not alone when I say that I need to concentrate on my work to do a good job.  Micro-blog posts from my colleagues every few minutes will not help me concentrate on the task at hand.

Another problem is that the signal to noise ratio on Twitter is low.  People are willing to tweet just about anything; but too much of it is just noise.  If people need to have the right information at the right time, how does Twitter in the law firm help with that?  In my experience, probably a fraction of 1% of the tweets that I skim are actually worth reading.  Does micro-blogging have a place in law firms?  Maybe.  It goes back to the question of: what’s the right tool for the job?  If I have a really important question, I probably won’t blast it out on a micro-blog and sit back waiting for responses.

Here is a brief video introduction to Present.ly (listen closely – it’s quick)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPIk3LF5_b4&hl=en&fs=1]

Here’s a list of enterprise micro-blogging tools.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Web 2.0 Expo Wrap-up Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Thanks to Doug Cornelius at KM Space, I was able to attend the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC.  Instead of taking paper notes (speaking of paper-free, I wish I had one of these), I tapped them out on my laptop, and figured that I would share them with you.  They are rough (so please excuse any typos).

Today’s Workshop: Enterprise 2.0 Jumpstart

• Old office systems were clunky, required too much IT involvement, etc.
• The consumer web started to change – offer improved direction and features: blogging, etc.
• the volume of information changed: email, IM etc. have greatly increased to amount of data floating around the enterprise.
• People started to realize that Individuals — regardless of rank — offer solutions.  So, there was a need to give them the tools – the ability to contribute.

Vander Wal described his Four Rings of Social Enterprise:

1. the tools: blogs, wikis, feeds, social bookmarking, voting, profiles, widgets, mashups, favoriting, comments.
2. interface / ease of use: this is the platform, e.g., oracle, SharePoint [1&2 combine to make up the usability; eventually, the tools get out of the way, if the software is smart enough, it can take unstructured data and know what to do with it to make it actionable (e.g., stikkit.com)]
3. Sociality: what are your relationships you have with others?  who do you want to share with?  everyone?  select people or groups?  [tools and sociality combine to make intelligence and business needs].  There are “spheres of sociality”  personal, selective, collective, the mob.
4. Encouraging use: this is easy for younger employees.   [The combination of encouraging use and sociality leads to"social comfort"] – show success stories regularly; buiild and show use cases; manage the community – promote contributed content.  Show how good ideas in one part of the organization can be applied to another part of the organization.

Benefits and Cautions of Enterprise 2.0 (Inside, Outside and Through the Firewall)

What good is social networking if you can’t use it to get a recommendation from your contacts?

A friend recently asked me for a recommendation for an immigration lawyer in New York City. Although I’m a lawyer, I don’t personally know any immigration lawyers; but I thought that some of my social network friends might be able to point me in the right direction.

Twitter

My first thought was Twitter. About 125 people “follow” me (as LawyerKM) on Twitter [you can too!]. There are about 80 people who “follow” me on Twitter under my personal Twitter account [you can too! - email me at lawyerkm at gmail.com for details]. There is some duplication among followers, so, there’s not really over 200 prospective followers. My tweet was: “need an immigration lawyer in New York City – please @lawyerkm … with recommendations.”

Then I thought about Facebook. I’ve got 90 contacts on Facebook. I personally know many (but not all) of my Facebook contacts. As a little background, I started using Facebook as a strictly professional networking platform; my profile was “all business.” As I became more comfortable with it, I loosened up and started adding more non-work related information, and personal friends; not just KM stuff. (On a KM-related note, I also started a Facebook group called Knowledge Management for Legal Professionals, which you may join.) I reached out to my Facebook contacts by way of a status update, which said “looking for an immigration lawyer recommendation. Anyone?”

What I thought would happen and what really happened were two very different things. Both Twitter and Facebook are very popular these days, and everyone is talking about them. My Twitter contacts are very active, and many of them are lawyers or in the legal industry. My Facebook contacts are pretty active, as well, but Twitter seems to have Facebook beat on the activity scale (this is a purely subjective observation).

Based on my Twitter contact types (law-related), I expected to instantly get dozens of recommendations from my Twitter contacts. I didn’t expect much from Facebook, however, because my contacts there are more diverse.

Surprise! In reality, I received no Twitter responses and a relative flood (no fewer than five) of Facebook responses – some within minutes, others within a few hours. Even more surprising was the quality of the responses. They were from real-life contacts (i.e. people I know) who actually used the lawyers that they recommended.

I passed the referrals along and my friend was pleased.

So, why did I get such good results on Facebook and bad results on Twitter? This, of course, is speculation, but these factors may have something to do with it.

Twitter's posting interface

The platforms – Twitter vs. Facebook Twitter is simple, but not so feature-rich. It basically allows you to post short (140 characters) messages for the world (or your followers) to see. Direct messaging to other Twitter members is another option. You can include links to web pages, but that’s about it. Your posts (or tweets) are listed in reverse chronological order. Since Twitter can only display so many tweets, the messages of the people you follow will be displaced by newer messages. So, with the really high rate of tweets out there (at least among the Tweeters I follow), you’re bound to miss a lot of posts – unless you keep a consistent eye on your Twitter account (or if you have those tweets fed to you via RSS for later consumption in an RSS reader). If your followers haven’t checked their Twitter accounts recently, they probably will have missed your latest posts.

Facebook tab menu

Facebook is a much more complex platform. There is more to it. People can share a lot more information about themselves. Work, school, hometown, religious, political, photos, etc. And this is key: there are non-linear, non-chronological connections on Facebook. Click on your home page and see your “news feed” – i.e., information about your Facebook friends. Check out their status updates, and their photos, too. It sucks you in. You’ll find yourself clicking around to see what’s going on with your friends. What groups have they joined? [My favorite, other than my own, is the group "I Secretly Want To Punch Slow Walking People In The Back Of The Head," which has close to one million members.] You can also send Twitter-like updates to your Facebook friends, too (that’s how I got the word out). Bottom line: there’s a lot more information about your friends and a lot more ways to get to it. The interactions on Facebook, I think, are more meaningful. That level of connectedness, which is lacking on Twitter, makes all the difference. It makes people want to interact.

What about LinkedIn?

Ironically, when I set out to find a lawyer recommendation, I didn’t even think of LinkedIn – the business networking website. It wasn’t until the next day that I thought of it. But then I thought: how would I even go about using LinkedIn to get a recommendation? I didn’t want to spend a lot of time searching by keywords only to bring up second and third degree contacts, which require me to request introductions from my first degree contacts. Too much work. I finally decided to update my LinkedIn status with “looking for an immigration lawyer recommendation…” The result: nothing. There just isn’t a good way (at least as far as I know) to reach all of your LinkedIn contacts like you can do on Facebook.

Your thoughts / experiences?

So, have you had similar experiences? Have you successfully used social networking sites to make business connections? What’s worked? What hasn’t?

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Plastic Logic's electronic reading device is thin.

Look out Kindle, there’s a new e-reader coming to town.  Check out TechnoEsq’s blog post on a new, up-and-coming electronic-reading device from Plastic Logic.  Unlike the Amazon Kindle and Sony E-Reader, the Plastic Logic device is aimed at business users.  About the size of a legal pad, this device shows some potential to catch on in law firms.  Check out a video of a demo of the device in action on TechnoEsq’s blog, as well.

Want one?  You’ll have to wait.  It’s scheduled to ship in the first half of 2009.   Cost?  Your guess is as good as mine.

Is this a giant leap toward the paperless office?  Probably not paperless, but perhaps less paper.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

I attended a webinar from NewsGator called Deliver ‘Facebook for the Enterprise’ with SharePoint

NewsGator, Deliver Facebook for the Enterprise | Knowledge Management

Here are my rough notes, so please forgive typos:

September 11, 2008

Speakers:

• Deb Bannon Senior Product Manager at Microsoft
• Laura Farrelly – Marketing at NewsGator

What is social computing (SC)?

• examples – Facebook, LinkedIn, Wikipedia
• a collaboration mechanism using the Internet

Many employees are demanding the same type of web functionality in their companies

Social Computing is in the “collaboration spectrum”

• SC – really about the connection with people rather than about content.

Enterprise 2.0

• the enterprise use of web 2.0 technologies
• power is moving from institutions to communities
• moving from a top down to a bottom up model

Business Drivers for SC:

• drive collaboration & social interaction
• capture and share tacit knowledge
• discover content in new ways
• capture “wisdom of the masses” via social feedback
• build sense of connection to the company
• easy search and find relevant subject matter and subject matter experts
• encourages participation
• increases efficiency, productivity and speed

Growth in the Market

• expected to by over $5B in 2013

Employees want the technology, but IT departments want to make sure the platforms are secure, manageable, and compliant

SharePoint (SP) can be used to bring web 2.0 into the enterprise

• includes blog and wikis
• enterprise search
• consistent user interface and one-stop place for all such collaboration tools
• easy to customize
• NewsGator can integrate with SP

NewsGator Demo

• “Facebook for the enterprise” – short review of what Facebook looks like.
• Facebook Groups reviewed also
• There is a risk of using consumer-based social networking products in the enterprise (for obvious reasons)
• NewsGator’s answer is a dedicated platform for the enterprise (NewsGator’s platform, of course)

Live NewsGator Demo (very much like Facebook):

• based on fake pharmaceutical company
• recent activities section
• anytime a name is displayed, it is hypertexted to the the person’s profile
• there is a social network graph (this is nice) the closer (physically) the contact, the stronger the connection (not sure how the relationships — or thier strength — are established) Update – Laura Farrelly has clarified this blow in the comments – Thanks Laura!
• can add tags to communities
• communities are auto populated with info from SP and news feeds, emails, etc.
• discussion threads are accessible via email – so that people can contribute via email.
• RSS feeds (which is NewsGator’s forte)

Example from Universal McCann, which is using SP with NewsGator

• global media communications agency
• BTW – Universal McCann’s website is pretty slick (although maybe too slick – it’s a bit hard to navigate)
• built communities based on area of interest rather than geographic location or projects
• they use the platform also to connect with their customers
• Universal McCann has a white paper on their site called The Social Butterfly Effect
• Link to Universal McCann video case study.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

I’ve written before about the various generations of workers in law firms (see Generation X, Y, & ME in Your Law Firm and Attorney 2.0 – Generation Y in Your Law Firm).

The basic concern is this: the workers with the most knowledge and experience (Baby Boomers and “Matures” (those born 1900 to 1945)), will be leaving the workforce and they are not interacting with and passing along their wisdom to younger generations.  This is according to a Financial Week article called, Failure to communicate: Survey reveals big generation gap in the workplace.

What to do? A combination of technology and good, old-fashioned interaction could be the key to combat this institutional brain drain.

According to the article, the “Atlanta-based Randstad USA’s annual 2008 World of Work survey found that the four generations now in the U.S. workforce—Generation X, Generation Y, baby boomers and “matures” (those born 1900 to 1945)—rarely interact with one another.  That lack of communication, the study found, is keeping key institutional job knowledge held by the boomer generation from filtering down to younger workers.”

“The current pressure for productivity—the pressure for people to do more with less creates that barrier,” [Eric Buntin, managing director of marketing and operations for Randstad.] says. “Employers need to be aware that people just don’t have time to interact.”

The article hits on the importance of “creat[ing] functional work teams to bring employees together” and the need for “collaboration on jobs that makes older and younger workers feel as if they’re both contributing to business goals on new products or handling service issues.”

The dodo has been extinct since the mid-to-late 17th century

What about the next generation? The article fails, however, to address another aspect of knowledge management: codifying a company’s “intellectual capital” to make some of that tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge.  This is important because organizations need to think beyond one generation.  The knowledge transfer that occurs with project collaboration may help a Gen Y worker learn from a Baby Boomer, but what happens when both workers leave the organization?  We must remember that younger generations tend not to stay in one organization as long as Boomers.  Company loyalty seems to have gone the way of the dodo.  In fact, the U.S. Department of Labor says that one-third of the American workforce changes jobs every year.

If there is no systematic way to capture a worker’s tacit knowledge and distribute it in an asynchronous way (so that a skipped generation can access it), then the knowledge transfer that occurs during project collaboration will just serve to delay the inevitable organizational brain drain.

So, yes, failure to communicate is bad; but failure to capture that communication may be worse.  And now, for your viewing pleasure…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fuDDqU6n4o&hl=en&fs=1]

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Will law firms will use Twitter? So far, not many are. The main reason that most firms will not likely use it as a way to communicate among their attorneys is that it is a public platform. Twitter can be set so that messages are private and viewable only to trusted users, but I can’t imagine that any law firm will be willing to post messages (other than for marketing purposes, e.g., law firm web sites and substantive blogs) on the web.

But will law firms use an internal Twitter-like micro-blogging application that is not open to the public? Socialcast announced Socialcast 3.0, which gives them the opportunity to do so.

“Socialcast operates as a ‘Twitter for the enterprise,’ enabling SMBs to capture the tacit knowledge of workers and leverage mindshare to bridge the gap between generations of co-workers,” said Tim Young, CEO of Socialcast. See the press release. You can try an online demo of Socialcast here.

I have my doubts that law firms will adopt this type of application anytime soon. From a KM perspective, I am not sure that 140 characters (the Twitter / micro-blogging limit) is enough to make a meaningful contribution to the enterprise knowledge base. Don’t get me wrong, I like Twitter. I think that it has potential as a knowledge base and expertise resource. And yes, micro-blogging would, in theory, enable people to capture tacit knowledge. However, I question how much value lawyers can derive from such snippets – unless those snippets are “attached to” other pieces of intellectual capital, like models, samples, forms, and other lawyer work product. In this way, micro-blog posts could become what I like to call “little KM.”

Little KM. More on this later, but in a nutshell, “little KM” is about “how” and “big KM” is about “what.” Little KM helps people find the big KM. Little KM consists of tags, comments, “diggs” or votes. Little KM points lawyers to the substantive stuff (the big KM) that they need: the model agreements, the sample pleadings, etc. Tags, comments, votes, and the like can help lawyers decide which of the firm’s documents (the big KM) to use for the task at hand.

With some adjustments, perhaps, a micro-blog post (or “tweet” if you’re using Twitter) can be a kind of little KM. A lawyer could post: “Here’s a great seller-friendly purchase agreement <insert link to the agreement>.” If your enterprise search engine indexes the micro-blog, then others may be able to find that agreement (via the micro-blog) when they search for seller-friendly purchase agreements. To me, that seems a bit clunky. Why not just encourage lawyers to add their little KM right within their existing work flow? Give them the tools to add tags, comments, and votes (little KM) right to the document; for example, in the document management system, in Microsoft Word, or in SharePoint after they locate a valuable document.

Twitter is cool. But is it right for the enterprise? Time will tell. There are many who, at first, said “why in the world would I want to use that?” Some of them are now the biggest users (and promoters) of Twitter.

So, do you expect to see a micro-blog in your firm? Discuss…

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms