Tim Travers Legal Reflections

Plus 3,000 Legal Firms To Go Bust?

Tim Travers — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 19:40:39 +0000

Headline this evening in The Lawyer “Firms to go bust will top 3,000, says Mayson”.

TAKE NOTE.

Mayson is Professor Stepen Mayson, director of the College of Law’s new Legal Services Policy Institute, who is giving his inaugral speech tonight.

This warning echoes similar warnings made by Professor Mayson at a Law Society presentation I attended back in mid February on Alternative Business Structures under the Legal Services Act. That night, he began his address by saying he was alarmed at the general “complacency” and “ignorance” within the profession about its future, based on his experience of talking to firms up and down the land. His talk then still resonates. So will his speech tonight.

UK Legal Big Bang Delayed till 2010

Tim Travers — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 12:30:38 +0000

When I collected my real world post this morning, I almost fell over when I read the main headline in Legal Week "Big Bang put on hold as Legal Services Bill delayed till 2010". I was lost for words. The implications of the delay will take time to consider, especially as many organisations have been gearing up for the earlier change.

Quoting briefly from the article, Bircham Dyson Bell public law partner Nick Brown told Legal Week: “I am surprised there is a delay. I cannot see it is necessary to take so long as there has been a lot of preparation for this legislation.”

One can only imagine the forces at work behind the scene.

The arrival of this story this morning on the timing of change in the legal world contrasts markedly with the constant theme of thousands of blog posts I have read in the last few weeks, which is the exponential change currently taking place in the world of new media and social tools.

The "Did You Know?" video from 2006 will be very different from the 2008 version and certainly very different from the 2010 version. A change of UK government may also have something to say on the subject.

KM Activities in Global Law Firm 20 Examples of “Upside Down Thinking” (1998)

Tim Travers — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:19:47 +0000

On Tuesday this week in Manchester, Tom Peters and Charles Handy, appeared together on the same stage for the first time in "Transforming Life, Work and Organisations". I would love to have been there. As a poor substitute, I have read through all 184 slides of Tom's presentation, which he has made available for download on his website, and together with other materials from the day on his new UK business website, the future shape of the winner. Even in the absence of the spoken work, these are inspirational, and I commend them to you if you have not already read them via your own RSS feeds.

I have not yet been able to locate any copies of Charles Handy's presentation to link here, but seeing the two names in print together reminded me to dust down a single A4 sheet I prepared nearly 10 years ago. I called it "KM Activities in Global Law Firm / 20 Examples of “Upside Down Thinking”".

I created the following list in August 1998 as part of my preliminary work in making a career change from private practice into consultancy to be independent to develop my ideas on changing law firm working practices through process change and technology. The list was inspired by reading Charles Handy’s “The Age of Unreason”. I used it as part of my portfolio of thinking and value proposition that I might be able to offer the first consulting clients I targeted.

"1. PowerPoint SlideShow Presentation/CD Rom for Client Instruction Letter, summarising the deal and the steps.

2. CD Rom flyers to make presentations.

3. Correspondence File replicated on screen with advanced search functions.

4. Competitor Documents scanned on screen with your usual amendments to them blacklined.

5. Productivity incentives/penalties for bible production/file closing.

6. Incentives for extracting and codifying valuable knowledge from completed deals.

7. Retailers’ Bar Codes used for documentation assembly.

8. Retailers’ Loyalty Schemes for clients and employees.

9. Dedicated Research & Development teams in place to spot future trends and maximise the firm’s local and firmwide objectives.

10. Stopwatch facilities available to collate accurate data on how long standard pre-defined tasks and processes take / should take.

11. Centralised delivery service among the world’s leading law firms.

12. Separately financed and stand alone Secretarial School of Excellence.

13. Creation of Distribution Centres in low cost locations.

14. New Year and Summer Sales of certain products.

15. Specialist IT team to interface with outside consultants to progress Internet Services.

16. Video Conference Facilities at your screen – to facilitate inter office communication.

17. More holiday time for increased productivity.

18. Buddy/penpal system across two offices to promote integration and innovation.

19. Global sport and other recreational competitions with finalists playing in a foreign country – does not have to be fully subsidised, only partly.

20. Human Resources’ influence to promote alternative careers with XYZ Law Firm clients, where necessary – plus maintain strong Alumni Association."

Like any writer, one has ...

Video Search Technology Marvel More IBM Social Tools

Tim Travers — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 13:28:44 +0000

Hot on the heels of my Social Tools Conference posts yesterday, at which two IBMers spoke, there is yet more evidence today of the influence of Big Blue’s social tools armoury.

Last week the BBC was announcing its deal with YouTube for YouTube to provide various BBC content on its platform. Today the BBC announces that it is partnering with IBM to use IBM’s new video search techology, Marvel, to search across its vast content catalogue. The idea is to move away from manual tagging and use much more powerful automated tagging to “to unlock huge latent value in [BBC’s] long tail of content”.

Last week also saw IBM announce that it was offering another of its social tools, corporate 'Jamming', to to help organisations keep in touch with large and dispersed workforces through online brainstorming sessions.

The message to business is clear. Social tools are changing the way we have conversations, collaborate and participate in our workplace.

Social Tools Conference - Part 8 Web 3.0

Tim Travers — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:55:24 +0000

This is the eighth of eight posts on the recent Unicom conference “Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the new participatory cultures”.

Nick Kings, BT concluded the two-day conference with a view of the future through the semantic web. Nick explained how Web 3.0 will be about trying to do more things automatically and that Web 3.0 required an ontology. No need for more notes from me, other to say that Nick brought an end two days of excellent speakers and opened our minds yet more to the future.

Nick has a nice little summary of what Web 2.0 means in a video video clip on Dave Gurteen.

A personal thanks from me to Dave Gurteen and his caste of speakers for providing a rich learning experience for all involved. Each speaker is formally listed and attributed in Part 1 of this Social Tools Conference post.

Social Tools Conference - Part 7 The Legal Angle

Tim Travers — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:07:00 +0000

This is the seventh of eight posts on the recent Unicom conference “Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the new participatory cultures”.

By Justin Patten, Human Law. A fuller version of much of what Justin spoke eloquently about is contained on his Human Law blog.

In short what hit me particularly about this talk was:

(a) the power of Google search results negatively to affect a brand, or even destroy it; and

(b) the advantage to a corporation of having its own Blog space in place, so as to be ready to conduct a PR campaign in the online world in response to negative publicity, as part of an overall campaign using all relevant media.

Social Tools Conference - Part 6 Virtual Worlds

Tim Travers — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:06:00 +0000

This is the sixth of eight posts on the recent Unicom conference “Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the new participatory cultures”.

Roo Reynolds has written up a full summary of his presentation on his own Blog.

Apart from the obvious wow factor of Roo’s excellent presentation, what hit me most about the possibility of living a second, third or other virtual world life is that people might, and probably will, learn things in their virtual lives that make them lead better real lives, whether in personal real life or business real life. I certainly think I would. I also understood Roo to be saying that IBM have had success stories from what they are doing in Second Life which they have used in the real IBM to good effect.

Social Tools Conference - Part 5 Social Tools Toolkit

Tim Travers — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:05:00 +0000

This is the fifth of eight posts on the recent Unicom conference “Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the new participatory cultures”.

Phil Bradley listed all sorts of interesting tools in his talk and why you might wish to use them in your business. I cannot do better than point you to Phil at Phil Bradley, where he provides links and a brief explanation to all manner of tools.

Ian McNairn, IBM, described various components of the IBM suite of in-house tools, many of which are or will be packaged up for sale to external customers, such as its corporate ‘X - Jamming’ service, which the FT and others announced within a few days of the conference. Ian was extremely enlightening. I sensed the general audience was somewhat in awe of the toolkit which IBM has assembled internally. I was.

Ian has a nice little summary of what Web 2.0 means in a video clip on Dave Gurteen.

Social Tools Conference - Part 4 Social tools in law firm Allen & Overy

Tim Travers — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:04:00 +0000

This is the fourth of eight posts on the recent Unicom conference “Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the new participatory cultures”.

By Ruth Ward, Allen & Overy

The focus of Ruth Ward’s presentation was on simplicity and practicality.

Very interestingly, Ruth mentioned that her first experience of social tools was in the business context of the knowledge management project about which she had been invited to talk.

She described Blogs in the context of a place for “Latest Discussions” within a particular practice group.

The template for each Blog was very simple.

Search within each group Blog is by Category, Theme or Date.

Categories are set by the principal owners of the Blog.

Themes are set by the individual contributors to the Blog, but the Blog owners can go in and add additional Themes.

Wikis as a term was not initially used by the law firm, for fear of scaring users off. Instead the simple term Group Space was used.

Wikis are used for various purposes, not only in the Wikipedia sense, but also, for example, project management, questionnaires, surveys and training sessions.

In Ruth's opinion, this project (which is still continuing) has been ...

Social Tools Conference - Part 3 Adoption of social tools in business

Tim Travers — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:03:00 +0000

This is the third of eight posts on the recent Unicom conference “Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the new participatory cultures”.

Suw Charman suggested a simple five steps approach to the adoption of social tools in business. Also, in her introduction, she was at pains to stress that users are not just users, but people like you and I and they need to be treated as such. Don’t ignore psychology was her overriding message.

Step 1 Identify key user groups. Find inefficient behaviours and replace them with efficient behaviours.

Step 2 Talk with them. Find weak spots and turn them into personal benefits.

Step 3 Turn plain users into evangelists. Take advantage of the loads of unofficial networks within organisations to spread success stories.

Step 4 Turn evangelists into trainers. Keep the training a simple process.

Step 5 Support emergent behaviour. Allow small talk as it encourages people to use the system and make it better through doing things they like doing (e.g. “place your orders for the Starbucks run on the Team Wiki, I’m leaving in 15 minutes”).

Managers need to be seen ...