Innovation, Practice of Law Innovation, Practice of Law

This Speech Sponsored by ...

My pal JoAnna Forshee has (finally) started to do some blogging at her new venture InsideLegal.  She recently hosted the InsideLegal Summit, and it appears to have been a fantastic success.  The one topic that really caught my eye was the debate surrounding the "Pay to Speak" trend.  What is Pay to Speak?  It is when conferences (like LegalTech*) allow vendors to "sponsor" a conference track.  The controversy, which has been brewing in the legal conference industry for a while, is over what level of control the vendors have over their sponsored track, and what responsibility conference organizers have to disclose that control.

Why is this a big deal?  If a (fictional) company XYZ Discovery Solutions pays $25,000 to sponsor the "Electronic Discovery" track at a conference, what do they get for their investment?  More specifically:

  • Does XYZ get to pick the topics for the track?  
  • Does XYZ get to choose the track's speakers, favoring those who sell or promote XYZ products, and excluding other speakers who don't?  
  • Does XYZ have a responsibility to present information the attendees want to hear instead of information they want attendees to hear?

If the answers to any of these questions are yes, do the attendees know that the "CLE accredited" sessions they attend are given by a hand-picked rosterof sponsor-friendly speakers?  And are any CLE accreditation rules compromised?

Right now, the answers to these questions aren't clear, and I'm sure each conference organizer and each sponsor approach the "sponsored track" differently.  I don't think the sponsored track should go away, but I do think some disclosure is in order.  Just as lawyers must avoid actual or apparent conflicts of interest (which in some cases can waived by agreement), conference organizers must recognize the inherent conflicts that arise when a for-profit vendor sponsors, designs and staffs a CLE accredited, "educational" session  

At a minimum, the conference must disclose whether the speakers in a sponsored track are chosen by the conference or by the sponsoring vendor, and whether those speakers are paid by the vendor.

I applaud JoAnna and her InsideLegal partner Jobst, for getting this out in the open.  Your comments are welcome.

* I use LegalTech as an example here only because I know they have sponsored tracks, and the InsideLegal Summit happened in NYC at the same time of LegalTech.  I don't know what the vendors get for their investment and what rules (if any) LegalTech places on the speakers or the content in those sponsored tracks.

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Client Service, Innovation, Practice of Law, Resolutions/Goals Client Service, Innovation, Practice of Law, Resolutions/Goals

(How) Do You Take Credit?

Here's a great idea for ways to remember the folks who've helped you along the way, from this post on How to Take Credit:

So when the time comes to take the stage, remember that you didn’t get here alone: go ahead, grab the microphone and acknowledge your team. Do it before a crowd and in e-mail. Say it with bonuses and baked goods -- but be sure to say it. No one likes to be left out. By sharing the credit the right way, you won't diminish your own accomplishments, you'll add to them by building a reputation as the kind of person people want to work for and for your focus on developing others.

Not sure whom to credit? In their book, Becoming a Resonant Leader, Annie McKee, Richard Boyatzis and Frances Johnston suggest keeping running lists of peers who have helped you along your route to success -- along with notes about what you actually learned from them. Keeping such a list will likely help ensure that you don’t forget them in your acceptance speech.

I really like the idea of keeping a running list of people who've helped you along with a note or two about how they've helped.  This is a pretty powerful way to not only remember how you've gotten to where you are, but to also remind you to give help to others who seek it from you.  More on this in the next post.

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Client Service, Innovation Client Service, Innovation

Simple Solutions, Informally Delivered

Paul Graham shares his product development strategy in a wonderful essay:

Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly. When I first laid out theseprinciples explicitly, I noticed something striking: this ispractically a recipe for generating a contemptuous initial reaction.Though simple solutions are better, they don't seem as impressive ascomplex ones. Overlooked problems are by definition problems that mostpeople think don't matter. Delivering solutions in an informal waymeans that instead of judging something by the way it's presented,people have to actually understand it, which is more work. And startingwith a crude version 1 means your initial effort is always small andincomplete.

Paul suggests that his technique extends beyond startups to any type of creative work, and I'm inclined to agree. 

In the delivery of legal services, what are the overlooked problems that can be simply solved?  How many of us ask our clients (before, during or after they've engaged us) about the one thing we could change in our practices to improve their experience?  Is it something as simple as shifting our office hours to be available when our clients can see us?  Or, is it something more profound like changing the way we charge for our services?  No matter what that one thing is -- and it could be a different one thing for every client -- what's keeping us for trying it?  Just once.  To see if it works.

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Client Service, Innovation, Law Office Economics Client Service, Innovation, Law Office Economics

New Research Explains Billable Hour's Staying Power!

Well, not exactly, but this article in the Telegraph discusses an experiment exploring humans' preference for a familiar (though less efficient) path, and found:

most of us are happy to play follow-my-leader, even if we aretrailing after someone who does not know where they are going andtaking the most meandering route.  Even more striking, even when we are shown a faster route, we prefer tostick with the old one and tell others to take the long road too, afinding that could have lethal implications when it comes to evacuatinga building or ship in an emergency.

In the study, participants were led from one room to another. When asked to return to the first room, almost all took the familiar path back, even when they were aware of a shorter path:

All but one person took the route they had beenled. What we were surprised by was how strong this effect was, evenwhen the alternative route was much shorter .... They preferred the long route even when the experimenter had drawnattention to the alternative route, or when the experimenter took thelong route solely to pick up a fallen poster, eliminating thepossibility that participants thought the experimenter had a good, butunknown, reason to take the long route. By askingparticipants to collect the next guinea pig in the experiment, thescientists observed that each person in the chain copied the route ofthe participant before them: a simple tradition that meant thealternative route was never discovered.

Interesting food for thought, don't you think?

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Innovation Innovation

Go Ahead, Write on Your Walls

I'm certain that I think better when I'm standing in front of a dry-erase white board, so my perfect office (or house, for that matter) would have dry erase boards everywhere.  If you are like me, check out Markee Dry Erase Paint.  According to the website, it is a clear paint that turns any smooth surface into a dry-erase board.  It is about a hundred bucks a gallon.  If you've tried it, I'd love to know your results.     

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Law Office Economics Law Office Economics

Don't Forget the List

My friend (and XPLANE co-worker) Bill Keaggy put together The Ultimatest Grocery List that you should check out and modify for your office.  Create a list of all the things you regularly buy -- even once a year -- for your practice and add each item to the list.  Check off the boxes when things are getting low, and you'll save at least one or two trips to Office Depot or Best Buy each year.    

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Web & Tech Web & Tech

I LOVE Tripit

If you travel at all, you have to check out Tripit.  You can forward all of your travel confirmation emails (from airlines, Hotwire, Expedia, hotels, etc.) to one email address and Tripit organizes your itinerary for you.  I've been using it since the early beta period, and I love it.  Highly recommended!

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Client Service Client Service

Debrief your Client (Engagements)

LifeHack has a great list of questions has a great list of questions to answer once you get finish a big project that should go on every lawyer's file closing checklist.  You have one of those, don't you?  Here they are:

  • What was the outcome of this project?
  • What is good about the outcome of this project?
  • How do I feel about my performance?
  • What mistakes did I make that slowed or otherwise negatively affected the completion of this project?
  • How could I avoid making those mistakes in the future?
  • What was the best part of the project? What was the worst?
  • What strengths did I discover in the completion of this project?
  • What new abilities or knowledge have I learned from doing this project?
  • What do I wish I had known when I started this project?
  • In one or two sentences, what were the lessons of this project?

You should answer these questions (and some others posed in the article) after every client engagement.  However, don't file your answers away with the now-closed client file-- especially the answers to the last two questions.  Instead, keep them in two documents titled "What I need to know before starting a project," and "Lessons I don't need to learn again" that you review every time before accepting a new client.

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Innovation Innovation

Use Haiku to Get to the Point

I just returned from VizThink, where I facilitated a few exercises for the nearly 400 attendees.  My favorite -- and the one I used to close out the conference -- is one I call PowerPoint Haiku.  Here's how it works:

  1. Everyone gets three "slides" (one each for the questions they have to answer) that can be notecards, 8.5 " x 11"  cardstock, or even (gasp) actual PowerPoint slides.
  2. You pose three questions to the group.  At VizThink, they were:  "Why did you come to VizThink?"  "What did you learn?" and "What are you going to do next?"
  3. Each question is answered on a separate slide with this Haiku-like twist: The first question MUST be answered in 5 words, the second question in 7 words, and the third in 5 words.  And yes, I know that in true Haiku, you count syllables instead of words.
  4. Everyone can then take their "slides" and add a drawing, picture or other visual images to each one.
  5. The mini-presentations are then shared around the table.

Here's the VizThink recap from the VizThink Blog.  I love this exercise, and use it in almost all of my XPLANE sessions to understand "what good looks like" to the stakeholders.  It is fun, and often provides startling insights.  Give it a try with your clients.  Ask them:

  1. Why are you here?  (5 words)
  2. What can I do for you?  (7 words)
  3. Why is it important to you? (5 words)

Let me know what happens.   

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Law Office Economics, Practice of Law, Resolutions/Goals Law Office Economics, Practice of Law, Resolutions/Goals

Kill Your Projects, Not Your Clients

Here's an interesting idea from Scott Young that may just help with your growing to-do list:  Set up a Project Kill Day. In short, you schedule a distraction-free, off-site day to "kill" off one of your projects.  Check out the entire post for his step-by-step guide.

Not sure which projects you have that merit an entire day?  Try writing down the first client-related task you think of in the morning and the last one you think about before bed.  If it is the same one for more than a day or two, kill it before it kills you!

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