Matt asked me about 5 new technologies, but I decided to stray and discuss 5 aspects of a single technology that lawyers have attempted to incorporate into their practices, but have generally done a pretty bad job of it. What I'm saying is that there are attorneys like Matt and Evan Schaeffer who get it, but the majority of firms that deal with the tripartite corporate relationship do not:

The web aka the internet aka WWW.

1. Where is your law firm web site? Most law firms have them, but there are still some holdouts. Even when firms do throw one up, they are massively un-navigable. The firms generally make it very difficult to find any attorney by practice area, and even harder to find where they are located or how to contact them. All I want is to be able to copy and paste their contact information into a spreadsheet, because I may want to retain them. Why frustrate your potential customers?

2. Search Engines. If you're an attorney that wants to market yourself to new clients and your name and/or the name of your law firm is not the first result in either google or yahoo and I have to start doing "searches" and multiple searches then I become annoyed. You see, I don't use a rolodex. I use google. If I can't find you doing a simple search, then why should I send work your way if I can't even find you're phone number.

3. Email. I understand that many firms don't want their attorneys using this new technology, but letters and faxes get lost or go unread. Send me an email to update the status of the case. Send your bills via Pony Express.

4. Knowledge Management & Distribution (via email or your corporate web site). Lunch and after hour drinks work on many corporate clients, but I'm much more interested in the accumulation of knowledge. Sending me (along with the rest of your clients) a quarterly email or when an important decision affecting our business is handed down. Post some knowledge (or at least use a hypertext link) about recent decisions or articles you've written to your attorney bio page is key to your acquisition of new business.

5. Associate Blogs. There are a couple examples of attorneys using content management systems for the distribution of knowledge about legal issues (see above). But outside of the anonymous blogs, there aren't too many (any?) examples of associates at law firms posting their thoughts to the web. I think as long as they avoid discussing client sensitive topics this can only be a benefit to your firm's marketing strategy. Unless your firm sucks to work at, that is.

Bonus: New technology not to adopt: Stop using flash. Text works fine.