“There are pros and cons to each side of the closed versus open source issue in legal informatics, just as in other disciplines like software development. For instance, closed sources provide added value in editorial services, quality control and currency. Although these endeavors should be rewarded, one can argue that the legal system is publicly funded, its decisions are in the public interest, and hence, primary legal material ought to be publicly available. Furthermore, one can claim that free access to legal source material would provide fertile ground for the development of innovative tools to search, analyze and apply the law.” – Dr. Adam Zachary Wyner, “Text Mining Case Law,” Legal Technology, Law.com

It’s a discussion worth having, and not just because firms continue to search for line-items in their budgets they can trim. Legal research, as we know it, remains a closed source via subscription services offered by two vendors, LexisNexis and Westlaw, with their proprietary tools — head notes, commentary, and advisory services. The World Legal Information Institute is free, independent, and non-profit access to the worldwide law, with 894 databases from 123 countries. While continued development of an open corpora of case law is exciting indeed, there’s one huge problem: the parameters of search.

LexisNexis and Westlaw use Boolean search, a technology that is already 30 years old. Free text search (commonly known as keyword search), as in Google, has its limitations: you get more extraneous information than you need. Both types of searches rely on strings or patterns created by words, not necessarily meaning. What we really need to perfect search in legal databases is semantic search, utilizing syntax and contextual semantics.

I wrote about using Powerset as a tool to search Wikipedia here last year. Powerset has since been bought by Microsoft, and you can get the feel for linguistic search there, but only on Wikipedia. I experimented with disambiguation searches in the Powerlabs while it was in beta, and passed along the suggestion to a couple of the AI scientists that this would be a very cool technology to apply to legal research. Wyner references General Architecture for Text Engineering (GATE).

Imagine the time and money legal researchers would save if they could just type a real question into the search engine in the open source corpora of case law, such as,”What are court rules in all jurisdictions governing the accrual of interest in condemnation judgments?” and get the precise, relevant cases. In my email discussion with Dr. Wyner today, he responded that the research community knows very little about the questions lawyers would want to query in natural language. He wrote, “The more such sample questions we could have as an open research community, the better able we would be to design tools to give the relevant answers.”

While open source and the perfection of text-mining tools through the semantic web will create further disintermediation in the legal industry, transparency and efficiency in legal knowledge systems are worthy goals.

Dr. Wyner’s blog is LanguageLogicLawSoftware.

Kevin O’Keefe has been an outspoken gadfly in regards to Martindale-Hubbell’s Connected, as have I.

Although Kevin is a non-practicing attorney, he has the ability to log into Connected.

I am an in-house director of marketing for a law firm, where I am the proponent for all things business development, yet I have no access.

If my firm ever chooses to subscribe to Martindale-Connected, it will come out of my budget.

If I have no ability to judge for myself the value of the product, if I cannot learn and then train my attorneys on best practices for the product, I will not endorse or pay for it.

So, while Martindale Connected is opening the doors to non-practicing attorneys, they might want to consider opening the doors to the keepers of the money.

As more and more law firms grapple with the economy, business as usual will never be the same for the legal industry.

We have watched, over the past few months, as AmLaw 200 firms shed thousands of attorneys and staff. And while law firm layoffs at Latham, White & Case, Pillsbury and other AmLaw 100 firms make the news and blogs, the smaller firms are flying under the layoff radar.

But law firms are FINALLY becoming more proactive in challenging their same-ol’ business models. We are hearing talk of rolling back the astronomical associate salaries, de-equitizing of partners, cutting back of billing hour requirements, and reducing hourly billing rates.

A big concern in all of this is: what about training the young associates? I keep hearing how clients do not want to pay for summer or first-year associates working on their files, which, in this economy, has lead to many a firm cutting their summer programs and either delaying start dates or rescinding offers to incoming first-year associates.

Has the time not come to require newly graduated law students to complete an internship prior to receiving their licenses to practice law? I wrote about it here last August.

One thing we ALL agree on is that law school does not equip young associates for the day-to-day challenges they will face when practicing law. Seeing the pass/fail rate of the bar exam, law school does not prepare you for that either.

However, each September we escort these young men and women, in their ill-fitting suits, carrying shiny new briefcases, to a window office near the top of a high-rise, and pay them upwards of $150,000-$165,000 per year, all the while billing them out at several hundred dollars an hour to the client … and they know NOTHING.

The Atlanta firm Ford Harrison introduced their “Year One” Associate Development program in 2007.

“Our goal is to close the gap between what law schools teach and what clients demand,” said C. Lash Harrison, managing partner of the law firm. “By placing the emphasis on learning rather than billing, Ford & Harrison will increase the capacity of its associates to handle greater responsibility earlier in their careers.”

So, while you’re mulling over another round of layoffs, cutting salaries, de-equitizing of partners, and reducing rates to battle the effects of the current economy, why not consider an “on-the-job training through mentoring, hands-on work assignments and direct observation of client matters …modeled after the medical school’s resident approach”?

“If you don’t cut associate starting salaries now, you are nuts. They were too high. Now we have to pay for it.” – Bradford Hildebrandt (as reported in the ABA Journal online)

Most of the biglaw firms just let them go. MacGuire Woods is rolling back salaries of its incoming associate class to $144k. Do I hear $135? $125? How low will the roll back go? In the aftermath of letting 190 associates go, Latham & Watkins has offered its 2009 class $75k to postpone their start date to 2010. Then there’s Simpson Thatcher’s approach: pay associates $60k to work at a non-profit for a year.

Now that biglaw’s bubble has burst, redundant associates flood the job market. Above the Law has some condescending, tongue-in-cheek interview tips for those seeking jobs at smaller firms. (My favorite comment was offered by poster #32, who in attempting to correct a prior comment, said you don’t “hang a shingle”; as any roofer knows, you “lay a shingle.” Now there’s another career option!)

As for hanging your own shingle, Omair Farooqui (an intellectual property associate at Mannatt, Phelps & Phillips) was laid off in June. He partnered with bankruptcy attorney Javed Ellahie, and started Ellahie & Farooqui, a small firm in San Jose, California.

Another push out the door is coming from general counsels who won’t be paying those biglaw fees. Some attorneys are taking their book of business to smaller firms, where cash-strapped clients may follow. The strategy here is to offer flexible rates to existing clients that make you more competitive. As reported in the National Law Journal, Mark Berkoff, a former DLA Piper bankruptcy attorney, offers rates that are 30 percent lower at Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg in Chicago.

In the incredibly shrinking law firm world, there’s a growing market for the virtual law firm as well. Geoff Willard left DLA Piper, started up a virtual practice, and said he was able to cut 25 percent off his clients’ bills. “Everyone realizes the big law firm model is broken,” Willard told the Washington Post.

With contraction of the legal marketplace, what will the new model be? Will there be a niche law firm revolution? Will the billable hour really die? Is this, as Hildebrandt International managing partner James W. Jones said, simply a matter of right-sizing? Do we really think a more corporate model will be any more successful?

I had an interesting query today: A partner asked if I would recommend a 3L accept a job offer from a specific AmLaw 100 firm. On the one hand, it has to be nice to have a job offer in today’s economy. On the other hand, the firm was caught up in the recent wave of layoffs, which now number 3,000 jobs in 12 days.

I would hope that any 3L out there with job offers is extremely careful as to what position they accept. Don’t sit back and be grateful that you received an offer. You MUST do your due diligence:

1) Has the firm had recent layoffs? If so, were 1st year’s let go?

2) Has the firm pushed back start dates for their 1st years?

3) Has the firm reduced hours, cut salaries/bonuses, or any of these?

4) Has the firm lost double digit percentage of profits per equity partner? How’s their revenue?

5) Is the firm diversified in offices and practices? Or are they too dependent in one specific area?

6) Is the firm suffering from flight of the rainmakers?

Run a Google search on the firm. What are the bloggers saying? Have you searched Above the Law??

And, don’t ignore all your other options: mid-law and regional law; public interest/non-profit law; government agencies, and the like.


If you are a lawyer in the favorable position of moving laterally, this one’s for you. I’m sure the COOLER think tank can add some more. Go for it!

Thinking outside the box…. for lawyers who are anticipating a move, or are being forced into a move, it might help you to have some of this in the playbook–so to speak –and be ahead of the game.

The Lateral Publicity Checklist:

  1. Save critical files to flash drives. Be mindful of proprietary work product.
  2. Update your Web profile. Make it match as closely as possible to the format of the new firm. Craft it to speak to benefits and value proposition, not just features.
  3. Upload your contact list to Plaxo. Your moves and your contacts’ moves update automatically in your address book (with a few clicks). Realizing that not everyone in your contact list is on Plaxo, it’s still a really great (and overlooked) tool.
  4. Secure digital copy of attorney photo. Don’t waste any time getting an updated photo done to match the new firm’s web site. Alternately, shell out the $250 to get a really good one. Show your firm you are willing to invest in your own success. (Entitlement is a thing of the past.)
  5. Write a short, to the point, press-worthy profile to be used with media releases. (This is different than web profile.) Don’t wait for the law firm marketing staff to have to pull it out of you. Help yourself by helping them. They ARE your advocates. They want you to succeed. They are on your team…right?
  6. Then, relinquish authorship. They are the pros.
  7. Respond immediately to all requests from new firm’s marketing department.
  8. Have marketing department prepare and print new business cards before start date.
  9. Search online for all iterations of your name. (Marital and pre-marital name too. While your at it, make sure your relatives and your mate have respectable foot prints. Oddly enough, it matters.)
  10. Search your name AND your old firm(s) + your name on MSN, Google, Yahoo, Twitter. Print off results and file.
  11. Set up a Google and/or Yahoo alert with your name and new firm/old firm.
  12. Do a search of your name every 2 weeks just to make sure things are moving forward with name association with new firm. Don’t forget #yourname or #yourlawfirm on Twitter.com.
  13. Begin building new content to push down any mentions of you with previous firm. (Sign up for new sites – see below)
  14. Update ALL social profiles as soon as possible. This will also send out update alerts to those in your networks.
  15. Mention your new firm name in any status updates on FB, LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc. several times in the first 3 months. Don’t forget to Tweet some content.
  16. Add a line to the beginning of your email signature: Please note new address. Keep it there for several months.
  17. Join JD Supra. Open profile with new firm information. Upload articles…quickly. They will likely return high on search result indexes.
  18. Join ABA social network Legally Minded, Legal OnRamp.
  19. Flesh out articles that you can re-purpose for publishing on new firm Web site, guest bloggging, Legal OnRamp, JDSupra, Legally Minded, etc.. They don’t have to be long. They need to have keywords and make sure that your by line reflects your new position. Get exposure. Get noticed.
  20. Press release should go to as many digital and print outlets as possible including law school, undergrad, and military alumni publications, as well as standard regional, national or international print media outlets. Don’t forget your hometown newspaper. Mom will love it. You never know where new work will originate. It’s all about connections.
  21. Notify directories. E.g. Findlaw, Martindale Hubbell, Chambers, Best Lawyers. New versions typically come out in the spring and early summer….hurry!
  22. Notify all organizations for which you might be listed as a board member or even on a membership list. (This may turn up in your Web search.)
  23. Create eNewsletter announcement for new firm’s general mailing list. Include your photo.
  24. Send hard copy letter to all clients letting them know of your new move. (I have a sample) Welcome them to inquire about your new firm –if this is not disallowed by any agreement with old firm.
  25. Send out personal email to your contact list (which you exported from Outlook to a CSV or Excel file to a flash drive…. see #1). Make it memorable. Include a photo and something unique about your new firm and how you make it stronger. Your new marketing department may have a branded template for your use. ALWAYS coordinate with your marketing professionals.
  26. Make a list of 15 people you should call or take to lunch in the next 90 days.

Advanced efforts include:

  1. Notify local, regional, national reporters that YOU know. Feed them background information on special topics or areas of interest. Or, provide your marketing PR folks with that information so they can help you. ALWAYS listen to your marketing people. My bets are that they know what they’re doing.
  2. Follow niche topics on Law.com and add comments to blog posts. Particpate in the social Web generally. Join the conversation. Pick your spots. There are dozens of special interest blogs – e.g. www.greenbuildinglawupdate.com
  3. Send internal email to your new partners (and associates) with a personal introduction. (not a mass email)
  4. Walk the halls and say hello. Not just once, but a lot. Have coffee, (If you’re in Minnesota this is not a problem. There are more coffee joints per square foot in the Skyway than any other place on earth. 🙂 ), do lunch, make time to establish key relationships. Talk to your marketing department for direction. They KNOW. Those key relationships aren’t always obvious.

Enjoy the adventure and congratulations!

Disclaimer: This post is cross posted at www.virtualmarketingofficer.com

“No one seems to be worrying about the next generation of lawyers.” – Richard Susskind, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services.

I’m not writing about this topic because my daughter just happens to be a 1L at Seton Hall University Law School, although it does weigh on my mind. Surely you have noticed the overwhelming disproportion of associate and staff layoffs compared to partners. (BTW, we need to come up with a novel adjective, something other than black: Black was Thursday, Monday, and Tuesday in the stock market crash of 1929; and Black Friday connotes retail profits in the shopping day after Thanksgiving.)
At Adam Smith, Esq., Bruce MacEwen writes about the “The Great Deleveraging” of biglaw. He’s building a case for non-lawyer capitalizion and public ownership, and perhaps it is time for something along the lines of the Clementi Review in the U.S. In today’s blog, he develops an insightful take on leverage:

Why does leverage matter? For starters, as I noted in my 2005 column I quoted at the outset, leverage is your best friend in good times and your worst enemy in bad times. While we’ve heard the drumbeat of client complaints about paying for useless junior associates for years, this is suddenly the kind of environment where it will grow sharp teeth and bite hard. Either: (a) massive litigations will not be pursued because they’re too complicated, uncertain, protracted, and expensive; and/or (b) if they must be pursued, contract attorneys, staff attorneys, and outsourcers will provide the human throw-weight needed for massive document review; and/or (c) corporations will simply insist that document review be completed for flat fees of $X/unit [$1.00/page? $0.50/page?]. In any event, no one I talk to–absolutely no one–believes that the litigation “factory” model with one partner overseeing half a dozen or more associates who are billing ’til the cows come home will be a predominant source of revenue going forward.All well and good, but I think a more interesting calculation compares the ratio of non-equity partners to equity partners.


Now let’s consider the impact of non-equity partners. MacEwen asks, “First, why have no firms announced partner layoffs? Isn’t this the worst kind of cronyism, safeguarding one’s peers, taking it all out on the “little people,” and demonstrating lousy business judgment to boot, when the cost savings realized by offing (say) 10 associates could probably be realized by tossing a single partner overboard. ” What is the impact of non-equity partners on the firm? MacEwen says they are the most expensive form of leverage. But the consequences they have on the culture of the firm are most instructive as MacEwen calls it:

  • The culture shifts from “excellence or else” to “good enough.” I don’t think that “good enough” is sustainable in this environment.
  • In the palmy days of 2001–2007, having a flexibly extensible non-equity tier served as a crutch for firms that wanted to avoid making difficult decisions about people or having awkward conversations with them. I don’t think that those difficult decisions and awkward conversations can be postponed in this environment.
  • One of the reasons we’re seeing widespread associate layoffs–apart from the pure economic imperative to cut costs in order to match revenues to capacity–as to do with morale. It’s dreadful to morale to walk the halls seeing a bunch of your colleagues with too little to do, who are then guiltily sneaking out at 5:30. The non-equity tier, with nothing to aspire to and perhaps psychological speculation on my part, which I am shockingly unqualified to offer) feeling themselves ever so slightly “damaged goods” only exacerbate this. None of us, none of our firms, have room for morale-busting zombies in this environment.
  • The ranks of the non-equities grew not by design but by happenstance and, frankly, inattentiveness. While it may be true, as Oliver Wendell Holmes famously remarked, that “the life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience,” it’s time to apply some analytic logic, some serious and rigorous strategic evaluation, to the weed on steroids that has been the growth of the non-equity tier in too many firms over the past palmy period. And no, we cannot afford to do otherwise in this environment.

So there you have it – one of the best analyses of the future of the pyramid in the legal industry and a harbinger of things to come in Q2 as the recession continues. And now a word on the War for Talent: Fresh talent and innovation will still be necessary. As Susskind writes, “It is our children who will shape the profession, because they are tomorrow’s lawyers and clients….In the world of technology today and in law tomorrow, the child will be father of the man.”

As we all know, this has not been the best week for Big Law and layoffs. It appears that it is “California” week. It started out with Orrick, traveled south to Latham and O’Melveny, and today it moved back north to my former big law experience, Pillsbury.

So what do you do when you read something like this, about your former colleagues:

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman laid off 55 lawyers, 10 legal professionals (i.e. paralegals and docket specialists), and 90 staffers across all of its U.S. offices today, according to a firm spokesperson.

I put in a couple phone calls to my peers, colleagues and friends at the firm. We had spoken the other week when the impending layoffs were leaked by a partner on a train.

I have found that human contact is what many of those caught up in the layoffs need right now … well, that and a job. Times are tough, and I do not envy those who have been caught up in the latest wave of layoffs. I will personally do all I can to help network, reach out, follow up on leads, forward resumes, etc. for anyone, but a lot of the jobs have simply dried up.

While marketers are resourceful and have skills that can quickly adapt to new industries, I really worry about the lawyers. For those of us who work in-house at law firms, we know how difficult it is for attorneys to quickly adapt. I wonder how many of them have any other skills, or job experiences, other than being a lawyer at an AmLaw 100 firm?

And what about the administrative staff? They are least able to afford losing their jobs at this time. From what I have heard out there, temp positions are nil, so what are the administrative staff going to do?

But through it all, my greatest concern is that so many people are still just sitting around, doing their jobs, yet not managing their careers. Today is a great day to market yourself, because no one else will. When the first signs of trouble occur, don’t let your head go in to the sand.

Here are a few signs that it might be time to update your resume:

And, new to the list,

Hey, I could be wrong about all of this, but, then again, I might be right.

And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

David Bowie, Changes

One thing we can all agree on is that there is never a dull moment when it comes to the economy and the business of law.

More layoffs, depressed revenue and profit reports abound, and they are coming from the gold standard of firms, such as Cravath, Latham, and Orrick (and it’s only Tuesday!!).

For those of us who are lucky to still be in the trenches with a job, you can feel the tension, either with your colleagues at other firms, or perhaps even those down the halls.

Yet with all the uncertainty there is one thing certain: The status quo of the business of law will change. The AmLaw 100 will look different in a year’s time.

Change is not necessarily a bad thing. I hate to go all “Pollyanna” on you, but I do believe that, in the not too distant future, we will reflect on the recession of 2008-2010 and see how it was the catalyst for the changes that lead to a better way of carrying out the business of law.

Latham & Watkins is laying off an additional 190 associates and 250 staff. Citing the deepening recession, Chairman Robert Dell told the American Lawyer on Friday, “The health of the global economy is likely to remain poor this year and so staffing levels have to be better aligned with client needs.”

As of February 18, Law Shucks Layoff Tracker has accounted for more than 4,500 jobs lost in the legal industry, including the casualties of Black Thursday. One of New Jersey’s largest firms, Lowenstein Sandler, announced last Thursday it would cut 21 attorneys and 32 staffers, and rescinded 3 associate hires. We will see more of this before the end of the first quarter as firms struggle to make Darwinian decisions that strive to protect the profits per equity partner:

  1. Firing and freezing.
  2. Skin in the game.
  3. The urge to merge.
  4. Cherry-picking.
  5. Hopping laterals.
  6. Dissolve.

For details, read my article, “Managing the winter of our discontent” in today’s issue of NJesq online.