Legal Technology

Are You an Expert?

By Mark S. Britton
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

Avvo toured the West Coast recently (six cities in five days) speaking to hundreds of lawyers regarding law practice marketing, specifically online marketing.  It was a great trip full of interesting discussions and tips from our different panels of experts.  One of our panelists was the great marketer, Los Angeles divorce lawyer Kelly Chang Rickert.

On our Los Angeles panel, Kelly offered the following advice, “It is important for every lawyer out there to build your reputation as an expert.  Clients want to hire experts.”  On its face this feels like pretty simple advice; but, as Kelly’s point was teased out by fellow panelists (Stephen Fairley from The Rainmaker Institute and lawyer, writer and blogger J. Craig Williams, the power of her suggestion started to sink in and it got me thinking. 

Legal services are a product that offers few differentiation opportunities.  They are not like automobiles or electronics, which can be designed with any combination of marketable bells and whistles. Instead, what any lawyer can offer is limited by what is permitted by the legal process. Yes, there is some creativity in it all; but lawyers are hired to deliver an expected outcome, and as such the differentiation is in the downside rather than the upside. In other words, the differentiation opportunity is similar to that of an airline or drug company -- something to the effect of “Use us because we won’t screw it up.”

I call this “disaster differentiation,” and the only way to succeed in this differentiation is to ensure prospective clients that the expected will occur (or, conversely, that the potential disaster will not). In the legal profession, the “expected” is that you to know more than any potential client regarding their legal issue and the legal system that governs it.  You satisfy this by establishing that you have the expertise to avoid any downside – that, similar to a pilot, you will not lose control of the plane in a storm. 

In Los Angeles, our panelists focused on three principal tools for demonstrating (or do I dare say “advertising”?) your legal expertise:

• Interviews by the press: Rickert talked about television as a powerful medium for establishing your legal expertise. If a credible news channel asks for your legal point of view, who will doubt your expertise? Same goes for a credible periodical or radio show. You can see a number of Rickert’s television interviews on her Avvo Profile.
• Blogging: Offering your opinions on a blog allows others to understand and reference your expertise. If many in the blogosphere, including traditional media outlets, are referring to your blog posts, your status as an “expert” is dramatically enhanced.  
• Testimonials and Endorsements: Politicians have used these for years, and lawyers are only now getting around to using them effectively. One of the reasons that LinkedIn has boomed is because it allows people to speak to and endorse the expertise of another (Avvo offers the same for lawyers). That’s powerful stuff.  Anytime someone takes the time to compliment your expertise, it helps reinforce that you are in fact an expert.

For some lawyers, “advertising” their expertise feels too salesy. For others, it is a critical part of their marketing strategy, and they are out there every day turning their expertise into business. It’s ultimately your call; but, in an environment of limited differentiation, the only real choice is to market yourself as the expert that you are and that your potential clients expect you to be. 

Mark Britton is the Founder and CEO of Avvo. He is a 17-year lawyer with deep experience in the legal and e-commerce industries. Mark is the former general counsel of Expedia.com and has worked as an attorney in large, medium and small law firms. In 2007, Mark was named one of Seattle’s "Top 25 Innovators" by Seattle Business Magazine. He is also a frequent commentator on financial, legal and other business issues, regularly appearing on programs such as ABC’s "Good Morning America," Fox Business’ "America’s Nightly Scoreboard," CNN "Money" and Dow Jones "MarketWatch."

Has the economy stabilized?

By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology blog

I spoke with Mike Kohlsdorf, CEO of Aderant, an application software company that focuses on professional services firms, about the changes in the economy and an increased need for technology solutions at law firms.  We discussed criteria that law firms use to evaluate technology, i.e., quality,  implementation speed and customer support.  He highlighted that great products are architecturally open, scalable, feature rich functionality and have a low total cost of ownership. 

He also offered his predictions for the remainder of the year, noting "We are starting to approach, at least in the legal vertical, some level of stability."  He referenced Citi Private Bank's Managing Partner Confidence Index, which reports, according to this article in The Recorder, "About two-thirds of 133 managing partners or chairmen surveyed said the economy is the same or better than six months ago, and 59 percent expect a stable or improving economy over the next six months."

In fact, "there is a lot more optimism today than there was as little as two or three months ago," Kohlsdorf said.

Listen to our interview here.

Ari L. Kaplan, Esq.
Ari Kaplan Advisors
(646) 641-0600

Follow Me on Twitter and Join My LinkedIn Group

Legal technology writer and author of the Amazon.com bestseller, The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Thomson-West, 2008).

Remote Wrap-Up of LegalTech West Coast 2009

Legal Technology Editor Sean Doherty monitored developments at LegalTech in L.A. One thing Doherty was sure about: The show went on without him. Many vendors focused on mobility features while e-discovery providers touted early case assessment, collection and advanced search tools.

How to Work Less and Be More Successful

By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

A few weeks ago, the Total Practice Management Association sponsored the Get a Life conference, which it describes as an event to help attorneys "manage all the moving parts of a successful law practice and still have a life."  I spoke with Kevin Chern, the President of Total Attorneys, Inc., which founded of the Total Practice Management Association and served as the principal sponsor of the conference.  There were purportedly 250 live attendees and over 2,100 unique log-ins to its real-time web stream.

Kevin highlighted:

• By doing things smarter, you can work less and be more successful, e.g., instead of managing staff, hire virtual assistants.
• There is a misconception that you have to start working at 9am and leave the office at 5 or 6pm.  By having balance, there does not need to be a strict demarcation between your personal and professional life.

His ultimate message:  You can have a better quality of life and be more successful while working more reasonable hours.

Learn more by listening to our interview here.

Ari L. Kaplan, Esq.
Ari Kaplan Advisors
(646) 641-0600

Follow Me on Twitter and Join My LinkedIn Group

Legal technology writer and author of the Amazon.com bestseller, The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Thomson-West, 2008).

Equivio launches 'Relevance'

Equivio, known for managing data redundancy, announced the launch of “Relevance,” a system designed to enhance the e-discovery process by automatically prioritizing documents. But Equivio learned from the 2008 Text Retrieval Conference, or TREC, and incorporates expert human guidance in Relevance.

At base, Relevance takes input from a lead attorney and uses statistics and self-learning  techniques to calculate relevance scores for each document in a data collection. This, combined with a statistical model to calculate precision and recall, aims to provide a new level of measure and control for e-discovery -- but one ultimately guided by a legal team.

Relevance also generates a list of key words that characterize the documents in a collection. A legal team can use these to enhance its original set of keywords and home in on relevance.

LegalTech Show Updates

The LegalTech show in Los Angeles is heating up and we are starting to get the summer’s newest updates in e-discovery and legal technology. This just in from CaseCentral.

CaseCentral just announced an “Early Case Assessment” tool that integrates with their review and production software. With CaseCentral, there may be no need to lease a Clearwell Systems unit to get an idea of what you have prior to a 26(f) (“meet and confer”) meeting with opposing counsel on discovery matters.

CaseCentral’s new ECA offering follows advice from George Soch Jr., Esq., of Socha Consulting. That is, early case assessment should be an integrated approach that works with the analysis and review process to provide “transparency and consistency” of relevant data from the onset of litigation. End point: The ECA tool integrates with CaseCentral’s litigation review and production software that includes a collaborative feature to bring outside counsel into the fray.

As I have said before, vendors like CaseCentral listen to customer needs and aim to satisfy them. Their ECA product offering sounds appealing to in-house counsel to reduce costs and keep data inside their own firewall, safe and secure, for analysis, review, and production.

Big Law Bang

The current literature is replete with the dispersion of Big Law attorneys out into the wilderness. With that, many events peculiar to Big Law are now making their way to small firms and solo practitioners with the help of technology. For example, bidding on legal projects.

LawBidding.com is a new Web site that allows individuals and organizations to post legal issues for attorneys to bid on. The site is free to use and aims to connect people with legal issues, with attorneys.

The postings will not contain the confidential nature of the legal issues, i.e., the identification or contact information of the poster. Attorneys who have registered with the site will be able to browse through potential projects by location, type of law, and keyword. A discussion thread will allow public and private communication between attorneys and potential clients.

And, per the sign of the times, Lawbidding can also be found on Twitter. Surprise, surprise.

Stay 'InTouch' With Your Computer

Lawyers can be away from their computer for as much time as they can be in front of it, or more. When you are away from the office, if you can’t be without the resources on your computer, you can either take it with you or access it remotely via software such as Symantec PCAnywhere or a service such as Citrix GoToMyPC or 01 Communique I’m InTouch. This review focuses on I’m InTouch.

Is Anybody Really Using LinkedIn?

By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

While researching for my article, Tap Summer Associates' Web 2.0 Savvy, I spoke with Steve Matthews, the founder of Vancouver-based Stem Legal, which helps lawyers with SEO optimization and coordination of their social media efforts, about the usage of LinkedIn by legal professionals.  In tracking the tool for over a year, Matthews found that about 100,000 members of the legal industry worldwide maintained LinkedIn accounts in April of 2008.  At the beginning of June of 2009, that number increased to over 800,000.  He offers insights on that rise and suggestions for taking advantage of LinkedIn to help raise your profile.

Listen to our interview here.

Ari L. Kaplan, Esq.
Ari Kaplan Advisors
(646) 641-0600

Follow Me on Twitter and Join My LinkedIn Group

Legal technology writer and author of the Amazon.com bestseller, The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Thomson-West, 2008).

A slow tech news day in the U.K.

It's obviously a slow tech day in the U.K., when reporters have more to say about each other than technology.