Legal Technology

Avvocating: The Disconnect Between Twitter Followers and Influence

By Mark S. Britton
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

Regular readers of Avvocating or the Avvo Blog know that I am constantly counseling lawyer marketers to “Preserve the Core." In our different Avvo Tours, I hear how different lawyers use the Internet and think about their Core business. Not surprisingly, Twitter comes up over and over as a tool for supporting the core -- partly due to my speech (I highly recommend Twitter as such a tool) and partly because Twitter-mania is still raging like a Category 5 hurricane.

I love Twitter -- everyone knows that. But it's worth calling out a fallacy that is helping serve as a cornerstone of the mania. The fallacy is that the number of Twitter followers one has is positively, if not perfectly, correlated to the amount of influence someone has in the marketplace. In this regard, I have heard many self-proclaimed, social media "mavens" shout, "Listen to what I have to say because *I* have thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of Twitter followers." The implication is that they are as influential as Bill Gates, Socrates or Ghandi. Another potential implication is that you should pay them $500 per hour for their consulting services.

I hate to let the cat out of the bag, but ... [Read the entire article.]

The Twitter Revolution

By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

I spoke with Warren Whitlock, the founder of BestSellerAuthors.com, and the author of Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online (Xeno Press, 2008). He is also a social media strategist, who works with authors, professionals and businesses.

We discussed the genesis of the book, the impact of Twitter, best practices for using the short messaging service and the art of engaging in conversation online.  Some of his comments include:

• Pay attention to the market and what is being said.
• It takes very little to move from being a stranger to having a relationship.
• Use search.Twitter.com to identify current conversations.
• The beauty of social media is that it is almost entirely open.
• Generally, use your name as a Twitter moniker.
• Clicking on 'Follow' is like handing out a business card or shaking a hand.
• The key is to be authentic and engage in real conversations with people.
• You want to be seen as being a giver.

You can follow him via @WarrenWhitlock.

Listen our interview by clicking the button below.

*SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT*

FREE webinar TODAY November 12, 2009 1:00pm-1:30pm EST - 5 Easy Ways to Use the Holiday Season to Raise Your Profile - Register here.

Ari L. Kaplan, Esq.
Ari Kaplan Advisors
(646) 641-0600

Follow Me on Twitter and Join My LinkedIn Group

Legal technology writer and author of the Amazon.com bestseller,The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development(Thomson-West, 2008).

'Then and now' -- more of the same

Who said lawyers are not early adopters? Check out "This Week in Law Journal History" in the New Jersey Law Journal (reprinted below). It was only 25 years ago when solo Ben Zander was contemplating computers vs. word processors. Shortly after that, IBM 80236 computers started to proliferate in law offices and the rage was WordStar, then WordPerfect for DOS.

As we now look at quad-core processors and 64-bit computing on Intel and AMD processors, have we come very far? Although computers have more RAM and software, better peripherals, and faster processors, they really haven't come a long ways since the 1980s. Until programmers can exploit the 64-bit instruction across multiple cores, simultaneously, most computers are still doing just one thing at a time, albeit very, very fast.

25 Years Ago

November 8, 1984: The Law Journal 's first reporter-written article profiled Summit solo Ben Zander, one of the first lawyers in New Jersey to integrate the personal computer — still in its infancy --into his daily practice. The author pondered, "Is this the law office of the future --a terminal on every attorney's desk? Or will only a few zealots marry their practices to the computer, while most lawyers opt for word processors, billing programs and legal research data bases such as Lexis and Westlaw?

HP Expands Printing Options for Small Law

Hewlett-Packard Development expanded printing options for solos and small and medium-sized law firms today. The options include a new LaserJet P2055d printer and Eco Solutions Print Console.

The LaserJet P2055d is an ENERGY STAR compliant device and includes HP's Instant-On Technology and a duplexing unit for two-sided printing. Instant-On allows you to print quickly after the printer wakes up from an energy-saving sleep mode. The P2055d boasts an 8-second wait-time from sleep mode to first printing and has an SRMP of $299.00.

The Eco Solutions Print Console is a program disguised as a console. The console aims to help the firm design an appropriate environment to conserve energy that includes product design, energy efficiency, resource conservation, digitally green alternatives and reuse and recycling, as well as focusing on reducing your environmental footprint in our operations and supply chains, like toner and ink. The new console will bring together previously collected data points and printer configuration options with an aim to conserve energy and reduce costs. The new console aims to help SMBs manage a printer's energy- and paper-saving settings directly from a PC to reduce its environmental impact. The tool will be available later this winter as a free download at www.hp.com/go/printconsole. At first, the new console will be specific to the LaserJet P2055d and P2055dn printers. Later, the console will be available for other printers.

HP also announced that small businesses in the Village of Suffern and Town of Ramapo, N.Y., are participating in a community-wide environmental initiative where HP and 25 small businesses will work to collectively reach mutual environmental goals. When the results of this collective become available, I will post the information for review.

Marketing tip: If you are using a third-party printer to produce marketing brochures, look into HP's ColorLok Technology. Although I was never a big fan of inkjet printers, lately, inkjet color printing is brochure-quality on recycled paper and, with an in-house printer like the new OfficeJet 8500, you can print marketing materials timely and on demand for the office or external distribution.

Windows keyboarding tip: use sticky keys

For those of you with carpal tunnel syndrome or if your fingers, hands or wrists tire after a day's work on the keyboard: use sticky keys. Sticky keys can be found by selecting START --> CONTROL PANEL --> ACCESSIBILITY OPTIONS. The default tab "Keyboard" has the option to turn them on or off.

Get to know the options before you give up on them. With sticky keys, if you tap the SHIFT, CONTROL or ALT keys once, that key will stay depressed, without keeping pressure on that key, for the next key stroke you apply. In effect, you do not have to keep the SHIFT, CONTROL or ALT key depressed to do any of the following examples:

• print a capital letter using SHIFT-[abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz];
• move to the start or end of a document using CONTROL-[Home|Down];
• access a menu item in windows using ALT-[fevath];
• cut and paste using CONTROL-x and CONTROL-v (respectively); and
• switch between running programs using ALT-TAB.

It takes a bit of practice to get started, but once you do, it will relieve a lot of stress on the muscles you use for keyboarding throughout the day.

No. I do not know how to do this in MacOS. If someone does, please reply.

Searching for a Smart Social Media Strategy

By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

I spoke with Nancy Fox, the founder of HubStreet, a professional networking site for lawyers, accountants and lenders (recently featured in Law Technology News).   She is also the President of Fox Coaching Associates, a coaching and training organization that is focused on business development for lawyers and other service providers.

We discussed the genesis of HubStreet, which she describes as an online representation of the two-year-old MetroRoundTable networking organization targeted at complementary trusted advisors. Fox also remarked on the ways that legal professionals are using technology for business development, why social media is such a hot topic for lawyers and the best way to get started (including visits to law-related sites, such as JD Supra, Legally Minded and Legal OnRamp).

Listen our interview by clicking the button below.

*SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT*

FREE webinar - Thursday November 12, 2009 1:00pm-1:30pm EST - 5 Easy Ways to Use the Holiday Season to Raise Your Profile - Register here.

Ari L. Kaplan, Esq.
Ari Kaplan Advisors
(646) 641-0600

Follow Me on Twitter and Join My LinkedIn Group

Legal technology writer and author of the Amazon.com bestseller,The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development(Thomson-West, 2008).

The Call for Certification of Legal Professionals in E-Discovery

By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

I spoke with Chere Estrin, chairperson of the Board of Directors for The Organization of Legal Professionals, a non-profit organization established to provide e-discovery certification to attorneys, non-attorneys, vendors and technicians through education and collaboration.  Estrin is also the editor of SUE magazine for women litigators and KNOW magazine for paralegals.

We discussed the timing of the OLP's launch this fall, its partners (including DLA Piper's Browning Marean and Verizon's Patrick Oot), and the certification process, among other issues.

Listen our interview by clicking the button below.

*SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT*

FREE webinar - Thursday November 12, 2009 1:00pm-1:30pm EST - 5 Easy Ways to Use the Holiday Season to Raise Your Profile - Register here.

Ari L. Kaplan, Esq.
Ari Kaplan Advisors
(646) 641-0600

Follow Me on Twitter and Join My LinkedIn Group

Legal technology writer and author of the Amazon.com bestseller,The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development(Thomson-West, 2008).

Computer voice stress analysis is polygraph-reliable

Sex offenders can now be subject to an examination by a computer voice stress analyzer as part of their post-release supervision to determine their veracity, according to the federal court in the Northern District of New York and Chief Judge Norman A. Mordue. Mordue ruled that a CVSA test is analogous to polygraph examinations, which have been accepted by the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as a way to monitor the activities of those under post-release supervision. Testimony before Mordue indicated that approximately 1,800 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. have the devices available for use, most of which were manufactured by the National Institute of Truth Verification, a Palm Beach, Fla.-based company that has been producing the devices since 1989.

United States v. Johnson, 446 F.2d 272 (2^nd Cir. 2006), held that both the CVSA and polygraphs were reliable, that they could be validly related to the post-release supervision of an offender and that they did not deprive a defendant of his rights under the Fifth Amendment.

Advocates of voice stress analysis technology state that research demonstrated that CVSA devices can detect otherwise inaudible voice inflections in responses to questions that can indicate whether a speaker is telling the truth.

Small Firms and Solos Can Best Leverage Their Work With KM

Special to the Law.com Legal Technology blog
By Bryan Redding

There are more than 850,000 lawyers in the U.S. currently practicing as solo practitioners or with small firms (less than 20 attorneys). This demographic is faced with challenges that firms of all sizes face, albeit on a more pronounced scale: smaller budgets, fewer support staff and the need to spend more time fulfilling clients’ needs on a personal, hands-on basis -- all while providing increased value at lower costs in this tough economy. As a result, more small firms are thinking strategically about making cost-effective investments in technology like knowledge management to help them meet these challenges while growing their practices. Read the rest of this article.

Avvocating: Web Site Analytics

By Conrad Saam
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

A while ago, I wrote about the importance of using Web site analytics tools to track the success of your online marketing efforts. Google offers a free tool (appropriately named Google Analytics) that many attorneys use. If you don’t have Google Analytics or a similar tracking system installed on your site, stop reading this and do so -- it's free! However, in some cases the lawyers I’ve spoken with are confused and overwhelmed with the tool. What do all the numbers mean? What are the important numbers? What should I be looking at and what should I be ignoring? Let me try to offer some clarity. Read more.

The Posse List Revealed - Part II

By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

I spoke with Greg Bufithis, founder and chairman of The Posse List, a membership based organization that provides information to the legal market about e-discovery and ESI management.  Its members include contract attorneys, forensics consultants, paralegals, in-house counsel, law firm attorneys, solo practitioners, legal vendors and others. 

In this second part of our discussion, Bufithis talks about the recent Association of Corporate Counsel conference and the increased focus on technology that streamlines the in-house legal department, the dilemma for in-house counsel who are facing increased responsibilities with fewer resources, and the trend from ECA (early case assessment) to EIA (early information assessment). 

As noted in the earlier post, Bufithis, a former bankruptcy lawyer, is also responsible for Project Counsel, The Posse Ranch and the E-Discovery Reading Room.

Listen to part II of our interview (part I is available here):

*SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT*

FREE webinar - Thursday October 29, 2009 1:00pm-1:30pm EST - 5 Easy Ways to Create Opportunity in a Down Market - Register here.

Ari L. Kaplan, Esq.
Ari Kaplan Advisors
(646) 641-0600

Follow Me on Twitter and Join My LinkedIn Group

Legal technology writer and author of the Amazon.com bestseller,The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development(Thomson-West, 2008).