TechnoLawyer: SmallLaw

Originally published on October 27, 2008 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

Last month I spoke with a successful lawyer-entrepreneur who did IT consulting for small and mid-sized firms. Before our conversation was cut short after about 5 minutes he agreed that the legal community had long been in technology's rearview mirror. Then he offered a provocative opinion: the profession had turned a corner when it came to the use of technology. I never got a chance to follow up with him, and ever since have been trying to figure out what he could have meant.

Have we really reached a watershed in our attitude towards, and use of, technology? Based on my experience, the answer is ... a definite maybe.

Maybe So (We've Made the Breakthrough)

Getting RSSified: An increasing number of federal courts now provide RSS feeds of their decisions — quite a mind-bender when you consider that most lawyers don't know what RSS is much less how to use it.

Practice Without a Net: Online suites like Clio are popping up all over, meaning that a critical mass of lawyers now consider them (a) practical, (b) secure, (c) not too complicated, and (d) not too pricey.

Social Networking: This development has accelerated in the last few months and is nothing less than stunning. Networks like FaceBook, Plaxo, and LinkedIn have become virtually choked with lawyers and now feature more than a few federal and state court judges. I'm speechless.

Top-Down Mandate: Nothing beats coercion to enforce systemic change. The more courts incorporate and acknowledge RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, and microblogs, the sooner those tools will become as common as eDiscovery. Enough said.

Maybe Not (Right Back Where We Started)

Despite such ostensibly positive developments, lawyers have yet to use even tried and true forms of technology to collaborate in a sustained way or help one another overcome common barriers like the traditional law-firm pyramid, overpriced vendors, marketing scams, unrealistic judicial and client expectations, or persistent over-regulation.

Where We Stand

So, have we turned a corner? Frankly, I'm not sure. But I do have a few thoughts about what that lawyer-entrepreneur meant:

• Maybe he was referring to the fact that more law firms than ever are networking their computers and using email to communicate with clients and each other. Not exactly the cutting edge, but still ...

• Maybe he was referring to way that the ubiquity of mobile email via BlackBerry, iPhone, etc. has eased a generation of lawyers into the world of always-on technology since email is a "gateway technology" for many others.

• Maybe he just meant more lawyers than ever find that the rapidly changing technological environment favors them — something that was bound to happen as younger lawyers rose to power and reacted to their bosses who simply accepted the status quo.

In the end I'll have to wait for this lawyer-entrepreneur to call me again and explain what he meant. That is, assuming he ever gets around to doing so. It seems he's too busy networking computers in the offices of Chicago law firms to comment on what it was he had in mind. I'll let you know if he ever gets back to me.

Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on October 13, 2008 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

Having long advocated mobile lawyering, I have struggled with the endless quest for the "perfect" laptop. To say the marketplace is cluttered with a dizzying array of laptop choices would be as much of an understatement as saying there's been a "little inconvenience on Wall Street lately."

The essence of my struggle to find the ideal mobile platform is that I've tried to find a single machine to adapt to all my varied usage situations.

For years, I've sought out machines which I refer to as "powerlights" — laptops that strike a solid balance between maximum specification and reasonable weight and battery life. For me, powerlights have generally been IBM ThinkPads, now Lenovo ThinkPads. Today, it's a T61 machine, clocking in at a reasonably svelte 5 pounds with a very quick Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, the Centro vPro platform, dual hard drives for nearly 600 GB of capacity and the obligatory extended 9-cell battery. It's a wonderful machine and has that inevitably magic ThinkPad keyboard and my cherished "pointing stick," the TrackPoint in addition to its touchpad.

So if it's "wonderful," why would I still yearn for something else? Because a standard-sized and shaped laptop presents some practical issues. These include:

• Weight: 5 pounds might not sound like much, but with the nearly 1 pound power brick, it all adds up even inside my wheeled Victorinox bag of choice.
  
  
• Startup: With XP Professional, it's still an irritating couple of minutes — impractical when trying to catch a plane at a distant airport gate. And similar shut down times.
  
  
• Size: On the rare occasions when I fly and don't get upgraded to First Class, I inevitably find myself stuck behind a chronic "all the way back seat leaner" — making it impossible to open my display fully and get any work done.

After considerable thought, I realized what was nagging at me was not that I needed a different laptop. But rather, that I needed *another* laptop. A much smaller laptop, a lighter laptop, a laptop that started up and shut down in a flash ... but not a $3000+ ThinkPad X300 or a tiny, pricey Sony Vaio and certainly not a functionally challenged MacBook Air. All too costly to reasonably justify.

In steps the netbook category. Growing out of the Negroponte-inspired One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) international initiative and initially addressed by Taiwanese PC maker Asus with its ground-breaking EEE series, this newest of laptop segments has exploded, literally out of nowhere in less than a year.

On third and fourth generations, netbooks have overcome their initial functionality challenges: too small to be useful, too little storage capacity, Linux OS, open source apps that are poor substitutes of familiar Windows apps. After experimenting with a first generation, Linux-powered Asus EEE 701, I realized I bought too soon.

Rather than be discouraged, I tried again. With the introduction of HP's Mini-Note 2133 series, a new netbook era had arrived. Following the smaller-than-ultralight original Netbook form factor, this machine arrived with a larger keyboard (keys are 92% of standard size, although closer together), larger screen (8.9" v. 7"), Windows XP and 80, 120, or 160 GB hard drive options — while still tipping the scales at only a touch over 2 pounds.

Enthusiastic about Netbooks again, I was literally about to click and order an HP Mini-Note, when I read a review of Asus' 3rd generation 1000H model. Sporting a 10" display, 1 GB of RAM, 80 GB hard drive, a larger keyboard and Windows XP, with a promotional price from Newegg.com at the time of $549, my lack of any sense of impulse control took over. Two days and 549 frequent flier miles later, my netbook arrived.

Now after three months of use, I can say that I made the perfect decision. I use my Asus 1000H netbook every time I travel and even around the house in the evening. This diminutive, Intel Atom-powered machine has many benefits:

• Quick startup and shutdown times.
  
  
• Amazingly (and this really shouldn't be the case), it feels faster than my Intel T9500-powered ThinkPad.
  
  
• The keyboard is just large enough to be comfortable for my fingers. I can type at my regular, reasonably quick pace.
  
  
• Battery life is very good — around 3 hours typically.
  
  
• The screen is small, but exceptionally bright and easy on the eyes with 1024x768 resolution.

I sync several document folders from my ThinkPad with the Asus — ensuring I have the work product I need always available (via Mobiliti's Network Unplugged). I also use it as an iTunes platform with a subset of my podcasts and music to keep me sane on the road.

So now I travel with both laptops. My ThinkPad T61 fulfills its primary mission as a powerful workhorse with huge storage to maintain my mobile office. The Asus 1000H netbook serves as its friendly little sidekick — an adjunct to the primary system that comes out on airplanes, in airports and anywhere I need quick Web access and some polishing of documents. I think of them as the Lone Ranger and Tonto, or Batman and Robin, or perhaps Penn and Teller.

In the end, I failed to find the perfect laptop. Instead, I found two laptops that work perfectly together.

Written by Ross Kodner of MicroLaw.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on September 15, 2008 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

As any observer of our profession can tell you, the model for aspiring law firms is the pyramid. Rainmakers push work down to the base — the associates, paralegals, and staff. In the end everyone but rainmakers are fungible. Unless crippled by dissention or debilitated by crisis, firms will continue growing their base indefinitely.

You might think this obvious bloat would hurt the profession, but you'd be wrong. Law firms are never punished where it counts (in the wallet) for being over-staffed. Having scores of people running around makes clients feel secure, law schools swoon, and embeds the pattern so deep in our collective consciousness that we cannot conceive of an alternative.

Nonetheless, the result of all this inefficiency is ideological stagnation. In the end, law firms are too timid to change. The billable hour punishes efficiency. Better to obsess over cheaper inputs than look for lasting solutions (Hyderabad anyone?).

Ironically, the people that want to change the system are buried at the bottom of the pyramid, seemingly powerless. And so the story ends. Or does it?

Increasingly, the best and brightest are shunning big firms, giving small firms and sole practitioners another bite at the apple.

Why? Because no matter how well equipped the competition, a lawyer who is not weighed down by the restraints of biglaw is free to opt for something better and more nimble. Let's call it the un-law firm, the army of one, the Ronin approach to practice. And it stacks up to the classic law firm like so:

• Less rigid and more dynamic.
• Less hierarchical and more egalitarian.
• Less partner-driven and more client-driven.
• Less opaque and more transparent.
• Less centralized and more entrepreneurial.
• Less isolationist and more collaborative.
• Less labor intensive and more knowledge-driven.

In a decade, some small firms will look wildly different then they do now, and the movement towards flatter, more egalitarian, collaborative un-law firms will be led by refugees from today's pyramid firms.

Are you un or out? Will you become part of the movement or part of the reaction? Part of the solution or part of the problem? I guess it depends on where you are on the pyramid when the winds of change knock on your door. Knock, knock.

Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on August 18, 2008 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

I've been thinking about what to write this month. I could cover the proliferation of location-based networks (Brightkite, Loopt), or the surge of applications simultaneously living on the desktop and in the browser (Twhirl, TweetDeck). And of course, there's the iPhone 3G, which has helped liberate social networks and become an important new platform for application development.

But not every development in recent weeks occurred online.

This summer marked the first time in five years that I would not serve as chair of the practice management committee at the DuPage County Bar Association. To commemorate the event, I had a dustup last week with the new chair, a nice enough guy who politely warned me to stay the hell out of his way.

I guess now that I'd built up the committee and nearly sacrificed my practice and marriage in the process, it was time for someone else to take over. I was always the loudmouth kid at the bar association's grown-ups table. Now I was old news — look for me on the next episode of Where Are They Now? after the segment on Mindy Cohn.

Which got me thinking.

Bar associations will always be social clubs. They never have, and never will, give up their secrets or focus on merit, innovation, or transparency. That would undermine their power base, their cash flow, and the reason for their existence, which is to legitimize their members. Think about it — bar associations exist to congratulate their members for being ... part of the bar association.

It's a brilliant system, and like the profession itself it thrives on being exclusive and mysterious, but most of all it suppresses dissent or disruptive ideas. After all, if lawyers could form working groups, share information with the public, trade experiences with each other, or collaborate to save time and money without the need for bar associations, there would be no need for ... bar associations.

Could small firms and sole practitioners band together to mount a united, realistic threat to big law supremacy? With the advent of online tools, mobile devices, and cheap hardware, this scenario could occur in the right environment.

To get from here to there, I present this modest proposal for small firm lawyers — let's apply a sliver of our collective intelligence, numbers, vision, and money to secure a brighter future. Thus, let's:

1. Disband state and county bar associations.
2. Eliminate state-based regulation of lawyers.
3. Adopt a nationwide civil-law-style system.
4. Abolish state bar exams in favor of a national one.
5. Measure and regulate bar passage by population.
6. Mandate apprenticeships, public service, and CLE.
7. Mandate periodic retesting of lawyers.
8. Require LexisNexis and Westlaw to provide free legal research.

It's not a perfect proposal, but I'm working on it. You got a better one? Where's Jonathan Swift when you need him?

Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on July 21, 2008 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

Last week TechnoLawyer publisher Neil Squillante suggested mobile lawyering as a topic for my piece this month. Mobile lawyering? Did he mean turning your RV into a law office? Well, not exactly.

Microsoft recently announced plans to offer Exchange and SharePoint on a hosted basis. These two server-based applications have become mainstays of large firms, but despite being offered on a hosted basis today by many service providers they have not been embraced to the same degree by small firms. With Microsoft itself getting into the hosting game and with devices like the iPhone 3G and Treo 800 supporting Microsoft's ActiveSync technology, the situation could change.

That sounded interesting ...

But hardly novel. In fact mobile lawyering was the original legal technology buzzword and as far as I was concerned it still conjures visions of smart-ass first-year law students with sport coats and 24 pound laptops. Now that's mobile! In short, when mobile lawyering was hatched as an idea in the late 90's untethering your practice was not just impractical, it was hazardous to your chiropractic health.

Then a weird thing happened. Al Gore (with a little help from Netscape) invented the Internet.

Suddenly lawyers at large firms began buying into the promise of this wunder medium to enable them to work remotely without lugging around their whole office. And the Internet did not disappoint us for once, delivering innovations such as portals, storage and hosting, ubiquitous access to information, and of course email. The developing online scene for legal professionals was enhanced further by the advent of blogs, RSS, and wikis a couple of years later. And today the stage is set for mobile lawyering right?

Wrong.

Despite having all these resources at our disposal, we lawyers are only slightly more mobile than we were two decades ago. Don't believe me?  How comfortable are you working on a brief or pleading away from the office? How often do you work that way anyway? Is it about the technology or the attitude?

Which got me thinking ... what good would affordable, hosted versions of Exchange or SharePoint do if lawyers didn't use them?

My answer? I think lawyers will use them. It may take a while of course. But sooner or later enough of us will need access to client files, other member of our teams, and the latest research and information, and we will want it all in the same place. That's when tools like Exchange and SharePoint seem indispensable.

So maybe what Neil meant was that hosted Exchange and SharePoint will enable lawyers (whether large firm veterans, medium firm visionaries or small firm pioneers) to collaborate more effectively and take fuller advantage of the galaxy of tools already available by mashing up the familiar interfaces and paradigms of Microsoft Office with dynamic information to create unique project and case files.

After all, Exchange is about communication among members of the office or team while SharePoint is about folding information from outside the team into their environment. Together these tools could radically alter the collaboration landscape. Hell, maybe they will.

Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on June 23, 2008 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

So June is nearly over and TechnoLawyer expects me to submit a piece every month ... starting in April. They don't call me "Crazy Mazy" for nothing (or at all). Sure I "think different" as the famous commercial goes, but that's the problem. Let me explain.

Think Different ... But Not Too Different

In case you want to begin innovating in the legal space, let me stop you right now. Challenging the status quo over the past few years has cost me relationships with my employees, clients, and colleagues.

For example, take my oft-stated disdain for the billable hour. So sure was I of my position that I decided to put my money where my mouth was and wean my office from the teat of this scourge. Despite scratching out a reputation as a respectable trial lawyer over 10 grueling years and making a passable living by billing clients, I switched to value billing (aka the flat fee) to deliver ... well, value.

My theory was that if I had already been paid, I could concentrate on the work. This new tack would require that I avoid litigation, which often amounts to a bottomless pit for time. I took the plunge, began to rid my schedule of litigation, and felt good about it right away. For a while.

First the Good News ...

At first it was exhilarating not having to spend days writing up billing every few weeks, and the time it freed up on a daily basis was a bonus. Nobody would have to watch the clock. We could focus on our work and clients could call when they needed us ... and they did. Morning, noon, and night.

But that wasn't all. Many came in complaining of one problem for a given fee, only to sneak in new, often unrelated problems. Try explaining that distinction in an engagement letter or trying to charge extra for services under that circumstance.

Worse still, the complaints didn't stop. Our fees were still too high for their taste. As if. Value billing drove down cash-flow, depleted my savings, and resulted in defections or resignations by employees. But the fun was just beginning.

The Beginning of the End of the Beginning ...

The next casualty in my war on convention was the ability to repay creditors on time. Having built up the office, hired, and entered into contracts with vendors based on a steady diet of labor-intensive, hourly litigation, the switch to such flat-fee standards as bankruptcy, real estate, and immigration was ... not smooth.

Soon we began defaulting on obligations and ordering less from suppliers. Next, our credit lines were shut down one after another. Without lines of credit, it became risky to hire suitable employees to replace those who had departed for fear of a cash crunch. But not content (or willing) to complete the backed up work by myself, I hired less qualified, less costly replacements. That didn't work either, and in the end I fired even those employees.

The cycle was complete and I was alone. I had not been without employees for 10 years, but in one fell swoop I had reversed all hints of progress, all in the name of a better way to bill.

Epilogue (Don't Try This At Home) ...

For the past four months I've been putting in 12 hour days, working 6 and 7 days a week without any associates or clerks (except for an intern who has little to offer in the way of practical help). Instead of finding new work though, I have to fix or complete projects my employees claimed to have completed over the past 9 months. Yes, 9 months.

Sure, my life sucks. But it sucks slightly less than it did when I was throwing away thousands of dollars on employees that couldn't get things right or screwed up so badly that it cost me more to complete the project than the job was worth in the first place. Nor was value billing the answer because, let's face it, flat fees are just a way of saying "Here I am, use me!" Clients respond to that like wolves to red meat.

In the end I miss the billable hour. I admit it. I was too hasty in dismissing it. In the future, I plan to return to the practice of billing my time, and God help the next client that asks for a flat fee or the next employee that says they can do something they can't. They won't find a home in my office.

Oh, and by the way ... that's why this piece is late.

Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.