Category Archives: Education

Did Mikey Like the New, Improved LTWC 2013? Day One…

Mikey Likes It!I've just returned from day one of Legaltech West Coast.  I'd hoped to attend both days this year because my Calbar LPMT colleague, Andy Serwin, presented the keynote this morning,  Alas, it wasn't meant to be…

Leading up to the conference, the meme was that this is the new, improved LTWC with the addition of, "The California Lawyers' Track".  Makes sense.  Depending on which statistic you consult, approximately 20-25% of the lawyers in the United States reside in California.  So, how did all this measure up to their most hard-to-impress critic, Mikey?

(It's me…it's me…I'm talking about ME!)

First of all, it not only makes sense, it's smart.  I'm the first one to admit that virtually all of the programs I present contain at least 50% Ethics content – not only because it's great as far as addressing educational issues that attorneys need to know -  but also because Calbar has a mandatory requirement that California attorneys attain four hours of specialty credit in Ethics every three years.  The specialty credits are notoriously hard to come by and it always results in higher attendance at my events.  I'm sure the gurus at LegalTech understand this factoid.  They also worked in our other specialty credit requirements: Bias & Substance Abuse.  However, three out of the four were presented on the final day
(incentive to entice California attendees to stick around for day two, LegalTech?  Well played…)

If you attended all specialty sessions over two days, you'd satisfy one-hour Bias, one-hour Substance Abuse and two-hours Ethics.  That's four out of a total of six hours required!

Advantage:  LegalTech

Ok, great; the potential is there.  But none of that matters if the programs aren't substantive.  Were they?  If you've been reading me for a while, you know I don't dole out compliments much, but I have to say that I found the content of the three sessions I attended to be excellent; and the final session of the day may have been the best I've ever attended at any conference.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get there early enough to see the keynote speaker, D. Casey Flaherty (and I regretted missing him even more after attending his program in the final session of the day – see below), so I started with "A Panel of Experts: A Candid Conversation".  Judges Jay Ghandi and Suzanne Segal (no relation) discussed the challenges brought by eDiscovery.  If you follow my Twitter feed, you saw the money quote from that session.

Mid-day, I went another direction.  Owen Byrd from Lex Machina was presenting on his article, "Moneyball for Lawyers: How Data and Analytics are Transforming the Practice of Law".  This was also the title of an article Owen wrote for our LPMT Committee publication, "the Bottom Line", which will be published in a week or two.  He showed us how they're using data in whole new ways to give attorneys every advantage in a case.

To end the day, it was back to the judges (or so I thought) with, "Judges' Panel: The Current State of the ED Market".  At first, I was disappointed because the "judges'" panel had only one judge, presenting via Skype.  That ended up working out just fine.  The live panel included one big firm eDiscovery attorney and the aforementioned Casey Flaherty, Corporate Counsel for Kia Motors America.  Here's the deal.  Mr. Flaherty walked us through the painstaking process he followed to procure the best eDiscovery vendors for Kia that he could find.  What did I think?  Read my assessment at the LexisNexis "Matters of Practice" Blog.

Well, that's a wrap for this year.  See you next year at LTWC 2014!

Upcoming Presentation: Calbar Solo & Small Firm Summit: “The Mobile Lawyer & Professional Responsibility: Confidentiality in the Digital Age”

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I didn't intend for this blog to be a billboard for all of my 'stuff', but lacking much time these days, that's what it's been lately.  Since I'm already on a roll, I might as well tell you about a new program I'm presenting at the Calbar Solo and Small Firm Summit in Long Beach, California.  The Summit runs from June 20 – 22, 2013 and my program (#19) is entitled: 

The Mobile
Lawyer & Professional Responsibility: Confidentiality in the Digital Age

Friday, June 21, 2013 
1:15 p.m.-2:15 p.m.

Lawyers
are open for business 24-hours a day. 
They communicate via Twitter & Facebook, on smartphones, tablets
& notebooks – in coffee shops, taxicabs, airports and on airplanes.  This program reviews recent COPRAC opinions
addressing technology
and provides tools to protect confidences and privacy for
both attorney and client.

Hope to see you there!

Shameless Plug Alert: The California Guide to Growing & Managing A Law Office

Grolo2 Cover - Cropped
I heard rumors that people who preordered the book were starting to receive their copies and now it's official.  The book is out.  Obviously, you should buy several copies for members of the entire family as holiday gifts.  After all, what better time to share the knowledge than on, say, Memorial Day weekend?

But I'm not pushing…not…pushing…

ReInventLaw Silicon Valley: GoldenState & the Three Bears

RILSC 2013
What the hell was that???

I’m speaking of the all-day ‘experiment’ (that’s what I’m calling it), ReInventLaw Silicon Valley 2013 conference this past Friday.  Is that a criticism?  Not at all.  This was the kickoff event of a collaborative effort; law students, professors, technologists, investors, inventors, attorneys and everything in-between, all convening in one place (The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, to be exact) to talk about the future direction of law practice.  Approximately 40 speakers in all.  You read that right; 40 speakers in a single day (enough to make an LPMT Chairman cry).

And what did we see?  Good talks, bad talks, decent talks, shameless sales pitches, moderately-shameful sales pitches.  Terrible speakers with outstanding messages, outstanding speakers with terrible messages & mediocre speakers with mediocre messages.  Speakers who went on too long, speakers who didn’t go on long enough and speakers who were juuuust right (yes, this was the LPMT-equivalent of the Three Bears…).

And of course, live streaming Tweets hosted on a PC with an IP-address conflict (DHCP, my friends; old school!).  There were funny tweets about there only being five ties in the room (I happened to be one of them).  My response was to create the hash tag, #thesmartesttiesintheroom.

In other words, I had a great time!  It’s very easy to criticize something like this, I suppose, but the organizers were able to land many hard-to-attain speakers while simultaneously coaxing approximately 350 people (by my rough count of how many actually showed up vs. the 500 tickets that were distributed) to convene in one location for a healthy exchange of ideas.

I gotta go…my porridge is getting cold…

Upcoming Presentations: eDiscovery Fortunes & the San Francisco Exchange!

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Beware the Ides of March…(or technically, four days afterward)…

March 19, 2013 – 1:00 P.M. to 2:00 P.M.:  I'm presenting a co-branded webinar for both the State Bar of California's LPMT and Intellectual Property Law Sections, entitled: "Discover
a Fortune Hidden in a Computer: A Practical Guide to E-Discovery
".

As we know, depending on the results of any forensic exam, it might result in misfortune for one side or the other.

March 26, 2013 – 8:30 A.M. to 6:00 P.M.:  I'm also delighted to be added to the faculty of Today's General Counsel's, "eDiscovery for the Corporate Market", aka "The Exchange".  On the first day, I'll be one of the moderators of two panels; Session 2: "21st Century Considerations: Data-Security, Social Media and the Cloud", and Session 6: "Effective and Efficient Project Management".

I'm surrounded by some impressive heavy-hitters on this one and as I've stated in the past, I really like the roundtable approach, which fosters great participation and discussion (which is why I was happy to join the faculty).

Hey, at least I didn't say, I liked it so much, I bought the company…

Calbar Looking at Limited Law Licenses: It’s all about Standards

MP900341927An article in the February 2013 issue of the California Bar Journal states that the Calbar Board of Trustees is examining the possibility of creating a class of "limited-practice licensed" individuals.  Among the reasons provided as the catalyst (e.g. lower cost to consumers, path to eventual Bar passage), ostensibly, the Board also believes this would circumvent instances of unauthorized practice of law (UPL).  UPL (Rule 1-300) falls outside of the Bar's jurisdiction and is normally addressed as a misdemeanor charge via a criminal complaint.

A form of certification already exists within the Bar (or at least, it used to), called "Certified Law Clerk".  I know it well because I was one when I worked at the L.A. County D.A.'s Office during law school.  From memory, some of the criteria to be certified included being a 3L and having already passed the Evidence course, among other things.  Certification allowed me to perform more duties than a standard law clerk.  Obviously, I see some benefit to the idea.

However, I also see detriment, and the first one that comes to mind is expectations.  What level of expertise will a client of this class of legal professional believe they are – or should be – receiving?  Who will guard the line between limited-practice and unlimited practice to ensure that the provider doesn't cross it?  Who is at fault if the provider doesn't meet the standards the client believes they should meet?

Is a new tort called "Limited-Malpractice" going to spring out of this plan?  Will it ultimately 'dilute the brand' of what being a lawyer means?

Considering that I'm Chair of the Law Practice Management and Technology Section Executive Committee, if this new class is ultimately created, my Excom will likely be front and center during the implementation process.

Either way, I'll say this; the Board has their work cut out for them!