My article AI and the Organized Bar: Lessons from the eLawyering Project is now available at LLRX.com.
Thanks to the insightful and indefatigable Carolyn Elefant for publicizing one tip I will include in a followup article:
Don’t allow regulation of AI for the purpose of grinding down people who already have nothing.
Too many lawyers are letting money slip through their fingers. Alabama personal injury lawyer Hunter Garrett was pleased to take a client that three other lawyers had lured but not landed. He observed:
“Later, the client mentioned that I was the 4th lawyer that he called.”
Spending lots of money on the best bait around won’t do you any good if you ignore a fish nibbling at it.
Conrad Saam‘s book Own the Map addresses this and many other aspects of effective marketing.
Ben Schorr is a treasure for Microsofties. His job is making life easier for those using Microsoft products, and he is very good at his job. His recent LinkedIn post publicized an MS news item, a List of 10 AI Terms Everyone Should Know.
Cocktail party experts are a dime a dozen, but lots of people (especially the seniors among us) don’t have time or inclination to master all the intricacies of AI and don’t want to sound stupid either. Getting the vocabulary right is worth something.
One of the best ways for ambitious lawyers to increase their visibility and credibility is to write and publish a book. Many decent writer/lawyers find writing a book in their specialty area to be relatively easy. Getting it published, not so much.
“Vanity Publishing” has been around for years. It’s sometimes referred to as “subsidy publishing.” Basically, the author pays for his book to be published.
Self-publishing is an option. New technologies, including the increased acceptability of electronic publishing and on-demand printing, have made self-publishing a more attractive option.
Always-on-the-leading edge Dennis Kennedy realized this years ago. He switched from conventional publishing houses to Amazon KDP years ago. His most recent books have been published through Amazon, which distributes books electronically through Kindle or in print-on-demand paper versions.
For his new book The Legal Tech Ecosystem Colin Levy decided to go with a publisher new to me, Rames House Publishing. Rames says that its function is to “help attorneys and other professionals independently publish as a way to market themselves and their practices. We work directly with our clients throughout the process—from the raw manuscript to the polished print or electronic finished product.”
The editing and physical quality of The Legal Tech Ecosystem make me think Rames House Publishing is a worthy alternative. I am considering it for my next book.
My review of Colin Levy’s new book The Legal Tech Ecosystem: Innovation, Advancement & the Future of Law Practice is now available at LLRX.com.
In brief, I like the book a lot, though I wish Levy had done more to directly address knowledge management issues. Levy focuses on six problem (which I prefer to call “opportunity”) areas:
Data management, as Levy uses the phrase, seems to be about managing client information. Its primary purpose is “to track the performance of legal teams and service providers, which can help legal departments identify areas for improvement.
No doubt this function is important, but it is very different from knowledge management for lawyers, which I like to describe as helping lawyers “know what you know.” My experience is that if you have good knowledge management, in the form of having command of your law firm’s internal information, everything else becomes easier.
I hope my next book, Knowledge Management for Lawyers: Building A Culture of Success, will increase awareness of the importance of this topic. I’m aiming for a Spring 2024 publication date.
Colin Levy’s interesting new book The Legal Tech Ecosystem is a worthwhile read. One feature impressed me: Levy’s extensive use of quotations from other experts. You are not merely getting Levy’s ideas, but those of a host of other people who also know what they are talking about. I’m completing a considered review.
High emotions generated by the Israel-Hamas conflict make this a time of wild claims and counterclaims. Few subjects are timelier and more critical than the Law of Armed Conflict, (LOAC). Researching LOAC can challenge U.S. researchers and lawyers. There are no codified statutes or well-organized case law of the types familiar to most U.S. researchers
Sabrina Pacifici and I are trying to provide some light on the situation through the LLRX Israel-Hamas War Project. The first installment is our new LLRX.com article Research Guide: Law of International Armed Conflict.
Psakalakis & Saam have it right at Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. Couldn’t have said it better myself:
Blogging used to be the crème de la crème for getting your content to the masses, but somewhere along the way, something changed. Too many blogs traded in engaging, thoughtful posts for years-long spoutings of “marketing drivel,” as Conrad so aptly puts it. But, blogging isn’t dead, and you can learn to do it right.
Schadenfreude is having a field day after the spectacular fall of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. John Lindsey was inspired to link to a fun song parody.
All I need to say about this is in my June article in LLRX.com, Is A Crypto Collapse Inevitable?
Scientific American has a good summary of what the Biden Executive Order says–and doesn’t say. Their bottom line:
Finally, the executive order on its own is insufficient for tackling all the problems posed by advancing AI. Executive orders are inherently limited in their power and can be easily reversed. Even the order itself calls on Congress to pass data privacy legislation. “There is a real importance for legislative action going down the road,” Ho says. King agrees. “We need specific private sector legislation for multiple facets of AI regulation,” she says.
Still, every expert Scientific American spoke or corresponded with about the order described it as a meaningful step forward that fills a policy void. The European Union has been publicly working to develop the E.U. AI Act, which is close to becoming law, for years now. But the U.S. has failed to make similar strides. With this week’s executive order, there are efforts to follow and shifts on the horizon—just don’t expect them to come tomorrow. The policy, King says, “is not likely to change people’s everyday experiences with AI as of yet.”