February 3, 2012 by Colin O'Keefe

Looking back at LegalTech New York 2012: LXBN TV shoots 39 video interviews at the three-day conference

When LXBN TV's three-man video crew made their way out of the Hilton New York's large rotating doors and into the unseasonably warm sunshine hitting NYC's West 42nd Street, we could barely believe it was all over. Events and projects like this are often chaotic and stressful but, at the same time, over before you know it.

After what seemed like both moments and an eternity since Jared Sulzdorf and I wheeled our guerilla operation into LegalTech New York late Sunday evening—past professional construction crews that may as well have been assembling small yachts as exhibit booths—we shot one last video, looking back at the entire process. 

There was a lot that went into it, and many people to thank. And because I didn't hit everyone in the video, I'm going to try to do so here. Without any of the people mentioned here, this would not have happened: Henry Dicker, Vice President Events, Executive Director of LegalTech; Alexis Burgess, Marketing Manager at ALM; Kevin O'Keefe, LexBlog CEO and Publisher; Kevin McKeown, LexBlog President; Brian Briddle, LexBlog Creative Director; Joshua Lynch, LexBlog Project Manager; Lyda Hawes, LexBlog Director of Client Services and my phenomenal boss; Brian Hefter, LexBlog Developer; and, of course, my two counterparts on the three-man crew: Editorial Associate Jared Sulzdorf and freelance videographer-for-hire Todd Weissfeld. 

With those reeled off, let's take a look at some of the coverage. Here are a few of my favorite interviews:

To see all of the videos—I promise they are worth taking a look at—along with curated blog posts, go check out the LegalTech New York channel on LXBN. We're still rounding up the last 1 or 2 but they should be on there very shortly. There's a lot of superb insight here, and a ton of work that went into it, so have a look.

Again, this was a phenomenal experience. Whether it be at LegalTech again, or another event, I really hope we get the opportunity to do this again soon. Many thanks, again, to everyone who made this a possibility.  

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February 2, 2012 by Kevin O'Keefe

LXBN coverage of LegalTech New York continues on LXBN TV

ALM's LegalTech New York wrapped up yesterday evening, but coverage of the nation's largest legal technology conference continues on LexBlog's LXBN Network.

Over 40 LXBN TV video interviews of legal industry leaders and curated blog feeds from bloggers attending LegalTech continue to run on the LegalTech New York Channel of LXBN.

Here's just one of the interviews from yesterday, Aaron Schoenherr, Founding Partner at GreenTarget Global Group, discussing the growing use of law blogs and social media by in-house counsel.

As allows, follow LXBN on Twitter for legal news and commentary from over 7,000 lawyers around the world.

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January 31, 2012 by Colin O'Keefe

Best in Law Blogs : The LexBlog Network : January 31, 2012

Honestly, after what was a pretty hectic first day of LXBN's LegalTech New York 2012 coverage, I simply forgot to put together yesterday's roundup. But, we're back today, and we have 162 posts from LexBlog Network. Let's get right into it.

 

For more of the best, check out LXBN, a complete review of the top insight and commentary across the LexBlog Network.

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January 31, 2012 by Kevin O'Keefe

LXBN TV at ALM's LegalTech Show

LexBlog, in partnership with ALM (American Lawyer Media), is providing coverage of ALM's LegalTech Show in New York this week.

Using the LexBlog Network, LXBN, allows ALM to extend the reach of its LegalTech show beyond the walls of the conference center to LexBlog's Network of over 7,000 lawyers around the world and to the Internet community at large through the LXBN network site, YouTube, this blog, and Twitter.

Coverage will include video interviews by the LXBN editorial team of presenters, exhibitors, attendees and sponsors as well as a curated feed of blogs and Tweets being published by attendees of the show. You can follow this coverage on LXBN's LegalTech Show Channel on LXBN.

Here's an interview with Aderant CEO's Chris Giglio and VP of Marketing Jim Hammond on the “New Aderant” and Aderant Expert 8.0. Aderant, headquartered in Atlanta, is the largest global independent software provider to law firms around the world.

Follow the Twitter hashtag, #LTNY, LXBN LegalTech NY, and this blog for further coverage.

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January 29, 2012 by Kevin O'Keefe

Reed Elsevier denies reports that LexisNexis is for sale

LexisNexis for saleSalamander Davoudi (@sdavoudi) of the Financial Times reports that publishing giant, Reed Elsevier, denies reports that LexisNexis is for sale.

Management intends to pursue only small-scale merger and acquisition activity within its five divisions over the next 12 months, according to two people familiar with the company’s plans, and has no plans to sell its Lexis-Nexis Legal & Professional business despite calls for its divestiture. Reed declined to comment.

A couple weeks ago I blogged that Reed Elsevier was under pressure from the investment to sell LexisNexis and that a likely buyer was Bloomberg.

Though Davoudis' reports not all analysts agree that LexisNexis should be sold, there's still reason to believe it's possible.

Lexis-Nexis has been singled out as a likely business for Reed to sell. Its competitive positioning has become a concern for investors amid claims that the division has suffered from under-investment as well as the continued weakness in the US legal publishing market.

Lexis-Nexis is number two in a duopoly in the US after Thomson Reuters Westlaw. But the business, which returned to growth in the first half of 2011, saw a shift in the competitive landscape last summer when Bloomberg bought BNA, the legal and tax information group for $990m, marking the private company’s largest ever deal.

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Morgan Stanley has identified Lexis-Nexis as the “key business for management to address” and has said in a research note that if Reed is to retain the business it needs to “explain the market positioning much more fully than it has done in the last couple of years.”

Add to this that Anthony Habgood, Reed’s chairman, had a “good reputation for disposals” of non-core assets in previous roles, according to Patrick Wellington, an analyst at Morgan Stanley.

Joe Hodnicki at his Law Librarian Blog believes a sale of LexisNexis is unlikely based on a well reasoned analysis of legal publishing financial's position in general.

I certainly have no crystal ball but I will be surprised if any major player in the legal publishing industry does anything more than make bolt-on acquisitions in 2012. If anything is likely to happen, my hunch is Lexis L&P [legal & professional] will bolt on ALM for its legal news properties and its specialist treatises. Why? Well, one reason might be L&P needs ALM's specialist treatises to compete in the enhanced eBook market with TR [Thomson Reuters] Legal's ProView-ing of its long neglected but now deemed valuable specialist treatises published by companies it acquired years ago.

Sale or not, there is a lot of uncertainty with the legal print publishing business. As I blogged yesterday, it may be possible that the legal publishing business, as we know it today, could go up in smoke.

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January 29, 2012 by Kevin O'Keefe

It's not the consumers job to know what they want

InnovationThat quote from Steve Jobs in a story entitled 'The Yin and the Yang of Corporate Innovation' by Steve Lohr (@SteveLohr) in the New York Times this morning.

Lohr was commenting on the different ways Apple and Google have historically approached innovation.

The Google model relies on rapid experimentation and data. The company constantly refines its search, advertising marketplace, e-mail and other services, depending on how people use its online offerings. It takes a bottom-up approach: customers are participants, essentially becoming partners in product design.

The Apple model is more edited, intuitive and top-down. When asked what market research went into the company's elegant product designs, Steve Jobs had a standard answer: none. "It's not the consumers' job to know what they want," he would add.

LexBlog has added a senior leadership team over the last couple years. Though the team members have worked in smaller companies before, they bring experience from also working in the likes of Microsoft, Mitsubishi, and REI. I've also had the experience of working at LexisNexis for 18 months after my last company, Prairielaw.com, was acquired by them.

Larger companies tend to want to survey people and test a product's use, before double downing and getting the product to market. It's tough for me to work with people from those companies because I am more of the thinking that consumers don't know what they want until you give it to them.

Imagine if Jeff Bezos asked the public if they wanted to buy books over the Internet. Most people in the mid 90's would have responded "What's the Internet?" Bezos believed in his vision that the Amazon experience would wow people. He was right.

Though Google is described as bottom-up in approach taking the consumer into account, had Google asked the public if they wanted search in 1998, the answer would have been no. Heck, LexisNexis didn't see the value in Internet search in 2001 when it limited the user generated content it would pay to have searched (companies bought search back in those days from companies like Atomz.)

In 2003, when I started blogging and reading the few law blogs that were ought there, I thought a blog was the perfect medium for lawyers to build trust and enhance their reputation.

Despite the fact that blogs were free, I believed law firms and attorneys would be pay thousands of dollars in annual subscriptions for a professional turnkey blog solution. A solution that covered all the bases of strategy, design, development, hosting, coaching, and SEO.

I never asked attorneys or law firms if they would buy a turnkey solution. I put the infrastructure in place, pulled a team together, and started selling. It wasn't until people started taking money out of their pockets and putting it into mine that I knew I had something.

I also believed that getting feedback from people who were vested in my success (the people paying for my product) was much more important than random information from surveys before hand. I got the product out there and put in the sidewalks after I saw where people were walking.

LexBlog's approach to innovation has been a little bit Apple and a little bit Google. I'm not one to ask what people want before hand, but I do want my customers to be participants in our continued product development.

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January 28, 2012 by Kevin O'Keefe

Could LexisNexis and Thomson Reuter legal publishing model go up in smoke?

LexisNexis Thomson Reuters legal publishing duopolyTim Worstall (@worstall), a fellow at the Adam Institute in London, predicts in Forbes that Elsevier's publishing model might be about to go up in smoke.

Academic publishing is a very good game indeed if you can manage to get into it. As the publisher the work is created at the expense of others, for free to you. There are no advances, no royalties, to pay. The editing, the checking, the decisions about whether to publish, these are all also done for free to you. And the market, that’s every college libarary in the world and they’re very price insensitive indeed.

Back when physical, paper, copies of the journals were an essential part of any scientists’ life the cost structure could, perhaps, be justified. It is expensive to typeset, proofread, complex texts and then print them in numbers of hundreds or perhaps low thousands. However, now that everything is moving/has moved online then the amounts charged for access to the journals seems less defensible. More like the exploitation of a monopoly position in fact.

Elsevier, the scientific and medical publishing arm of Reed Elsevier, is a sister company of LexisNexis, the American arm of the Reed Elsevier legal publishing empire. The same things putting Elsevier's business model at risk put LexisNexis' and Thomson Reuter's legal publishing model at risk.

One, with the advent of the Internet and free access to information, why should libraries and law firms pay huge subscription fees to the LexisNexis -Thomson Reuter (Westlaw) duopoly?

Two, also with the advent of the Internet and access to free publishing tools and free distribution, why would law professors and practicing lawyers do legal writing for free and give up their licensing rights to the duopoly?

British mathematician Tim Gowers, cited by Worstall and who has written for Elsevier, shares a few reasons why he's no longer going to do so.

  1. It charges very high prices — so far above the average that it seems quite extraordinary that they can get away with it.
  2. One method that they have for getting away with it is a practice known as “bundling”, where instead of giving libraries the choice of which journals they want to subscribe to, they offer them the choice between a large collection of journals (chosen by them) or nothing at all. So if some Elsevier journals in the “bundle” are indispensable to a library, that library is forced to subscribe at very high subscription rates to a large number of journals, across all the sciences, many of which they do not want. (The journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals is a notorious example of a journal that is regarded as a joke by many mathematicians, but which libraries all round the world must nevertheless subscribe to.) Given that libraries have limited budgets, this often means that they cannot subscribe to journals that they would much rather subscribe to, so it is not just libraries that are harmed, but other publishers, which is of course part of the motivation for the scheme.
  3. If libraries attempt to negotiate better deals, Elsevier is ruthless about cutting off access to all their journals.

Sound familiar to LexisNexis' and Thomson Reuters Westlaw's 'got you by the short hairs' practices?

The legal publishing duopoly's business model can only continue in the Internet age if law libraries and law firms feel compelled to keep paying the hefty subscriptions so as to keep with other libraries and law firms and academics and lawyers feel compelled to keep giving their content to the duopoly to preserve their thought leadership status.

We've already seen Reed Elsevier's model that 'you have to buy because every other law firm is buying' fail in the case of their Martindale-Hubbell directory. As soon as a significant percentage of law firms stopped paying the hefty subscriptions, other law firms no longer felt compelled to subscribe. A $300 Million a year product is going up in smoke.

We're seeing that getting published in legal journals, periodicals, treatises, and manuals is no longer needed to build a reputation as a subject matter expert. In the Internet age, we have blogs. We also have sharing of content from legal blogs across other social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) to further establish one's reputation as a trusted and reliable authority.

It may take a little time to play out, but it sure seems to me that the legal publishing model of LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters is no longer sustainable in the Internet age.

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January 28, 2012 by Kevin O'Keefe

Search versus social : What's preferable source of traffic for law blog?

Fred Wilson, a New York City Venture Capitalist and top notch blogger, writes this morning that many websites get more traffic from social than search.

For Wilson's blog, AVC - musings of a venture capitalist in New York, social is the hands down winner.

...[I]f we break the top ten into three categories, direct is about half of the top ten [sources of] traffic, social is 40%, and search is 10%.

My blog has received six times as much traffic from social (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Stumbleupon, other blogs) in the last month as search.

For attorneys and law firms publishing blogs, social is probably much better than search as a source of traffic.

Being a trusted authority is what it's all about in getting hired as an attorney. Social traffic signals trust, rather than being the subject of a random search.

Who do you trust more as a source of news, information, and commentary? Someone you're following in social media because you trust them or Google?

This is why it is so very important to engage others when blogging and build social media equity through the effective use of ancillary social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

You need to get people following your blog, following your Tweets, connecting with you on LinkedIn, and connecting with you socially on Facebook. If you don't, you'll be relying solely on search, a bad bedfellow for the long run.

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January 28, 2012 by Kevin O'Keefe

Social leads the pack in most trusted media

Social Media Law FirmsBrian Reich, SVP and Global Editor, Edelman, (@brianreich) reports social leads the pack when it comes to trusted sources of media.

Referencing Edelman's 2012 Trust Barometer:

Social-networking, micro-blogging, and content-sharing sites (Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr) witnessed the most dramatic percentage increase as trusted sources of information about a company, rising by 88, 86, and 75 percent, respectively. Search engines and news/RSS feeds also saw a jump (18 percent together). The findings suggest that some of the trust that audiences have in social media was transferred from other media. For example, in China, Trust Barometer data showed double-digit decreases in television as a trusted source, plunging from 74 to 43 percent, and trust in Chinese newspapers fell by 20 points to 34 percent.

But trust in social media jumped: micro-blogging sites and social-networking sites in China went from virtual distrust at just one percent each to being greatly trusted by 25 percent and 21 percent, respectively. The rapid growth in social media usage within China is best exemplified by Weibo (the Twitter equivalent in China), which at the end of 2010 had 60 million users and by the end of 2011 had grown to more than 310 million users.

In addition to massive growth, major news stories, including the corruption of the Red Cross and a high-speed train crash, were first reported on Weibo, and they became central to discussion about political and other issues.

What's it mean for attorneys and law firms?

  • You'll want to reassess your public relations' efforts to get mainstream media placement. Rather than go with expensive PR to get into major publications, you may better served, especially from an expense standpoint, to use social media to enhance your reputation and get the word out.
  • Your content in the form of articles, newsletters, alerts etc has to be socially enabled. Storing items on your website and distribution by email will not get them the trust, let alone the distribution, as if the content is distributed buy others via social media.
  • You have to blog. Long form content which is not engaging, brief, and written in a conversational style is not likely to get shared. Edeman's report is strong evidence that you need to get your insight and commentary shared (not pushed by you), for your insight to be trusted. Plus blog content is RSS enabled. RSS is the oxygen needed for syndication of content.
  • Law firms and individual attorneys have to learn social to survive as a trusted authorities. And being a trusted authority is what it's all about as an attorney and law firm.

At the same time, the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer shows an overall decline in trust globally, with steep declines in the levels of trust in business. Your law firm is less likely to be trusted than ever when out in front with firm branded marketing.

Your firm is much better served strategically using social media to get the word out for you. Note again that strategically using social media does not mean using social media as bullhorn. It means establishing the trust and social media equity needed to get others sharing your content with others who trust them.

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January 27, 2012 by Colin O'Keefe

New blogs joining the LexBlog Network for the week of 1/23-1/27

Another week flies by and it's once again time to look back at the publications joining the LexBlog Network. We have one firm giving their blog a new look and a new name while another launches their first on the LexBlog Network. And, again, be sure to follow along on LXBN as we cover LegalTech New York next week.

  • The excellent Tough Times for Lenders, a Winstead publication, is now Lenders360. Providing news, information and commentary on important issues affecting the financial services industry, the publication is authored by  leading attorneys who serve mid- to large-sized, with Keith Mullen as the lead writer.
  • The Washington Estate Planning & Dispute Resolution Advisor, is published by Tim Burkart of Seattle-based Kutscher Hereford Bertram Burkart. We always pride ourselves on having some of the best lawyers out there on The LexBlog Network, and Burkart fits the bill, as he was selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Trusts and Estates, The Best Lawyers in Washington by Seattle Business Magazine and Best Lawyers in the Puget Sound by the Puget Sound Business Journal.
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January 27, 2012 by Kevin O'Keefe

Twitter to censor content by country

yoshiffles via FlickrAs reported by the Wall Street Journal's Loretta Chao (@lorettac) and Amir Efrati (@Amir_Efrati), Twitter is going to exercise Twitter's ability to to withhold content from users in a specific countries while keeping it available to the rest of the world.

The effort underscores thorny issues for Internet companies as their websites become more global and interconnected among different countries, and as they must cooperate with diverse views on Internet content control. For websites like Twitter as well as social-networking site Facebook, this has meant being blocked in countries like China where controls are more aggressive.
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Twitter has been blocked for more than two years in China by Web filtering technology. Some loyal users use circumvention tools to access the website, but most microblogging users in China now use Chinese services, including by Sina Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Some loyal users use circumvention tools to access the website, but most microblogging users in China now use Chinese services, including by Sina Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd.

These websites have grown quickly and collectively have hundreds of millions of user accounts, despite censoring content, and new regulations that require users to register for their services using real-names.These websites have grown quickly and collectively have hundreds of millions of user accounts, despite censoring content, and new regulations that require users to register for their services using real-names.

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As [Twitter] expands elsewhere, the company will have to comply with local law or its employees could potentially face prosecution or other legal action.

Twitter acknowledges the dilemma it faces in what is going to be viewed by many as censorship. From Twitter's blog yesterday on withholding content by country:

One year ago, we posted "The Tweets Must Flow," in which we said,

“The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact … almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits.”

As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.

Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

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One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user’s voice. We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can't. The Tweets must continue to flow.

We've got a real clash here between the need for Twitter as an indispensable communication tool for people around the world, and the free speech that comes with it, and Twitter's need to grow in markets that don't condone free speech.

As Chao and Efrati report, "Twitter has been instrumental in helping people to organize revolutionary or political protests in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, the U.K. and U.S."

While China, the largest market in the world, is going to do all it can to prevent an Egypt.

China has more Internet users than any other nation. Local Web firms in China employ dozens or hundreds of staff to police user-generated content daily, and are required by law to take down a frequently updated list of banned keywords for varying lengths of time, including those related to calls for peaceful political action.

Though no one expects China to allow Twitter overnight, Twitter appears to be working with China, to some extent, just as Google has.

By limiting content by country, Twitter can also address the issue of whether it should be shutting down the Twitter accounts of terrorists, as I have blogged about earlier.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has stated that the company is "the free speech wing of the free speech party," but we're seeing censorship creeping in so that Twitter can expand to more markets while by not being blocked or running afoul of criminal laws.

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January 27, 2012 by Kevin O'Keefe

I will be in NYC next week : Welcome meeting you

New York City OKeefeI'll be New York City next week, Sunday the 29th, evening through Friday, February the 3rd, afternoon.

LexBlog, as a marketing partner of ALM's, is providing coverage of ALM's LegalTech Show on our LXBN Network.

I'll also be talking to law firms at LegalTech about the effective use of social media as well as meeting with a number of our New York law firm clients and prospective clients. LexBlog currently works with over one-third of the AmLaw 200 law firms, most of whom have offices in New York. So New York is always an enjoyable place to visit.

While in town, I want to make myself available to law firm leaders and other business professionals who may be interested in discussing how firms are using blogs and other social media as an effective means of client development.

If you are interested in getting together, I will be around the LegalTech Show at the Hilton on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday through Friday, I'm available most of the day to visit your office or meet for coffee or a meal.

I am not there to sell anyone on anything. I've been a lawyer for 30 years. Both my company, LexBlog, and I have a reputation for helping lawyers and law firms. Networking through the Internet is not about technology. It's about how we as good lawyers have always gotten legal work. By building relationships and by word of mouth. I'm committed to helping lawyers understand that and improving the image of our profession at the same time.

Here's my email and my cell (206 321 3627) to reach me.

Have a great weekend and look forward to seeing some of you next week.

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