It’s been three years since the first release of the popular e-book, The Art, Science and Ethics of the 21st Century Representation Agreement. For those unfamiliar, the product included various clauses necessary for an agreement to incorporate 21st century practices like outsourcing, unbundling, credit card payment, flat fees and the cloud – and contained ethics support behind the agreements. I also included some bonus contract provisions that might be needed to start and run a law firm – like website terms and conditions and an independent contractor agreement.

At this point, the book is becoming outdated, so I’m pulling it to make some significant upgrades. That’s where you come in: I want your input on how to make the product as useful as possible to solo and small law firms. So here’s what I’d like to offer:

For the next generation of clients, texting, particularly through mobile apps like Facebook’s messenger app or Snap Chat – is fast replacing email or phone calls as the preferred mode of communication,

according to a Pew Research Center Study released last month.  Based on interviews with over 1900 adults, Pew’s research team found that 36% of smartphone owners overall, and 49% of smartphone users between 18 and 29 are using messaging apps. Of those users 17% overall, and 41% in the 18-29 range use apps that automatically delete sent messages such as Snapchat.

Still, it’s one thing to idly chatter with buddies over text – but would users actually use text apps for serious matters such as finding or communicating with a lawyer? Yes – though I base my prediction on an unconventional but accurate bellwether: today’s dating scene, documented in Modern Romance, a new book by Aziz Ansari describing how technology has transformed romance in the modern age. For example, based on various focus groups, Ansari found that many participants – largely young people in their 20s and early 30s’ had been dumped by text – even those who’d been in serious relationships that lasted months or even years. Meanwhile, phone calls were considered the second to least favored form of communication (with email hardly used) – with several respondents commenting that having a conversation either to ask someone on a date, or to break up later created such a high degree of social anxiety that the phone (or in person communication) was to be avoided at all costs.  The point is that if today’s young people are so averse to phone or in-person communication even for something as personal and serious as relationships, wouldn’t the same behavior potentially apply to lawyers?  

Interacting with a coworker who’s just suffered the death of a loved one is awkward enough in a traditional workplace, according to this June 2015 article from Forbes – which also helpfully offers some best practices on what to do in this situation. But the etiquette of condolence is even trickier for lawyers in solo and small firm practice where relationships with colleague and clients are often sporadic and may not touch on personal matters.

Like many of my solo colleagues, I’d always felt awkward on the giving end of condolences. The situation raises a myriad of questions – either ones that I’ve had or seen posted on list serves. Like:

  • Should I show up at the funeral or wake or shiva if I haven’t seen or spoken with this colleague in a decade?
  • Do I include a business card in a sympathy note that I’m sending to a past client – or will that make it appear as if I’m trolling for business?
  • My colleague hasn’t shared his or her loss – I discovered it on [Google/Facebook/Newspaper Notice – you fill in the blanks]. If I mention it, will I seem like a stalker?
  • What if I say something stupid or offensive?
  • Is it OK to send an email, or do I have to send a card?

Sadly I’m now on the receiving end of condolences. What being in this place has taught me is that even saying the wrong thing (and I did hear a few of these) is one hundred times better than not saying anything at all.  Still, if you want to do more than simply not cause harm, here are a couple of things that you can say or do to ease a colleague’s or client’s loss:

Today, for the second to last time, I snapped a first-day photo of my younger daughter before she departed for the bus. On this go-round, Mira is a junior, so after next year, my first-day photo snapping will end – and as with my older daughter, I’ll have to rely on a screenshot of Facebook to permanently capture the anticipation.

It’s impossible to describe how quickly the time flies; how my two giggly mischievous partners-in-crime morphed into the teen versions of themselves. I can barely remember the  time when my days had a hard stop at 4 pm or the panicked rush to make pick-up after a busy day, often falling short. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I have time on my hands.

Eight years ago, at a conference sponsored by Ms. JD , I attended a gripe-session about the hardships of big law for women, to which I responded by listing the benefits of starting one’s own firm. As I described here, my remarks were received tepidly, and in fact, one woman responded:
Starting a firm is all well and good, but if everyone flees biglaw life, firms will be left stranded as the last bastions of male dominated hierarchy.”
Seems that women aren’t interested in saving big law any longer now that everyone is jumping ship. For example, Joan Williams, who heads the Center for Work, Life Law  (tagline: jumpstarting the stalled gender revolution) has now jumped on the disrupt big law bandwagon, with an article in the Harvard Business Review about the new business models like Axiom that are poaching big law talent, then turning around and “siphoning off the [routine] work that big law used to rely on to balance its books.” Moreover, these ventures are offering superior work-life balance options to both women – and men. Moreover – and while not mentioned in the article, the new business models give women more opportunities to run the show – as a growing number of these lawyer-on-demand services – such as those mentioned here are run by women.

Last week, two of my longtime blogging buddies, Bob Ambrogi and Scott Greenfield tackled the question of why websites dedicated to crowdsourcing legal research haven’t taken off. Citing a quote by entrepreneur Approva Mehta whose own crowdsourcing attempt failed, Bob suggests that the odds are stacked against crowdsourcing from the get-go in the legal industry since “lawyers don’t like technology and don’t like to share.” Despite this inherent obstacle, Bob remains ever optimistic that crowdsourcing legal research can succeed if implemented in a way that facilitates and rewards lawyers for contributing and makes the content useful to others. (But read the comments too). By contrast (and not surprisingly), Scott isn’t so sanguine about crowdsourcing because lawyers – at least good ones — don’t work for free, and derive no benefit – either financial or even “exposure” from annotating or commenting on case law or statutes on someone else’s profit-generating crowdsourced platform.

Yet there’s a third reason why crowdsourcing legal research won’t take off: because it doesn’t work for – and may potentially harm – solo and small lawyers, the silent majority in the legal profession.  Unless solos and smalls can be engaged, crowdsearched research platforms will have to develop a product that big firms will pay for in order to become financially viable (in fact, that’s my guess why JD Supra ’s original “give content, get noticed” mission added a for-fee service to help large firms circulate content more widely).

Maybe all those new age start-ups that anointed themselves industry disruptors weren’t exaggerating after all. As Tech Crunch reports, Zirtual , an online, on-demand provider of administrative services did just that: today, Zirtual, without advance notice suspended service, due to “market circumstances and financial constraints” — causing enormous disruption for customers who had come to rely on company for virtual assistance.

Ironically, many of the selling points that Zirtual claimed set it apart from using Craig’s List or personal referrals to find an assistant — such as quality control, established systems for the VA to follow, and guaranteed refunds or replacements for under performers – have now exacerbated inconvenience to customers resulting from the service suspension. For example, as I learned from my own month-long trial of Zirtual, assistants are required to transmit all written assignments – such as research summaries or list of websites on dog-sitting – through posting to Google Docs. By corralling assistants into one system used by many (but not all) potential customers, Zirtual could truthfully claim that it “trained” its assistants. Unfortunately, in practice, this “training” made the service less useful to customers. This is because Zirtual imposed time limits on the availability of information in Google Documents and if it wasn’t downloaded within a week, it would disappear.  As a Zirtual client, I wasn’t a fan of this system – many times, I was too busy to immediately download the information, and since I don’t use Google docs as a base system, it was inconvenient to be forced to go into yet another portal. And as a Zirtual client whose service has now gone down, I’d be really ticked off if research that I’d requested vanished into the ether.

Likewise, while Zirtual promised a refund or back-up if an individual assistant didn’t work out, it never contemplated – and customers never expected – that the entire platform might vanish. Having grown dependent on a steady stream of Zirtual services – which is what Zirtual wanted – customers must scramble even harder to find replacements now that supply has been cut off.

For solo and small firm lawyers, on-demand services for virtual assistants, bookkeepers, house-cleaners or handymen are a good idea in theory because they spare firms from the investment of a full time hire, and instead, allow them to pay for only those services they need, when they need them. Still, even though on-demand services don’t require a long-term commitment, as the recent Zirtual experience shows, these services aren’t risk-free. Below is a short checklist of ways that you can enjoy the benefits of an on-demand administrative assistance while minimizing risk.

The following is a guest post by Jack Dawson,  a web developer and UI/UX specialist at BigDropInc.com.
16 Characteristics of a Good Business Mentor Relationship

From time immemorial, people have always passed on skills from one person to the other through a direct relationship between the person in the know and the person acquiring the skill. This is what a mentor relationship is all about.

In business, entrepreneurs should be in charge of mentorship programs if they are going to oversee the success of the business. If mentorship is done properly, business growth can be accelerated because a large pool of expertise on the job tasks will be developed and this can improve efficiencies and effectiveness in performance.

Earlier this summer, when gifted a large watermelon, I accidentally discovered an easier approach to cutting it.  After splitting the watermelon in two, instead of balancing the watermelon on its rind and slicing down on the fruit, I found that flipping the watermelon over and cutting directly into the rind enabled me to finish the job in a matter of seconds – and with more uniform, attractive slices besides.

Admittedly, mastering watermelon is a small task (plus one I could have figured out years ago if I’d consulted the internet – duh!) – but it’s made a huge difference. Since my discovery, my daughters and I have easily consumed a dozen watermelons (not to mention watermelon feta salads and watermelon fruit water) – whereas typically, we would have indulged only at picnics or other events where someone else was doing the cutting.

My watermelon experience got me to thinking: are there are small, seemingly insignificant tasks in a law practice which if changed could produce far greater financial benefits or personal pleasure?  Again – I’m not talking about big structural reforms like adopting a law practice management system or hiring an employee, but rather simple changes in habits that alone or collectively improve your mood or your bottom line.

Here are two quick examples from my practice:

Six weeks. Long time to go not just without posting, but without even reading other blogs. Now I am back.

Resuming blogging was hard because my husband was here for the hundreds of posts I’ve penned except for this one.  Every post I write from now on, he will never read, never see. The posts I amass from here on out will only serve as physical evidence of the time he has been gone.

For 23 years, my life looked a certain way. I had a husband; a partner to come home to every night. Someone to share ideas with, to gossip with, and just to sit next to, in parallel play on our laptops.  I thought it would continue like that forever. But my life is different now, and it goes on whether I want it to or not. I can stop blogging, take a break and step out, but the world continues and I have to go on. I have two daughters to raise and put through college. And truth be told fair, I want to go on. As much as I miss my husband and wish he were here with me every single day, I want to go on and see what’s next even if I have to do it without him.