What Everyone Else Is Saying

Here's what everyone else around the blogosphere is saying about women lawyers, women and the law:

The good:

• I love Quizlaw.  Not just because it's damn funny blog, but they also have posts like this one regarding Eliot Spitzer's wife, Silda.
• The Legal Ease Blog has a great post: Women's History Month: Great Women in the Legal Profession
• Law and Letters discusses a depressing Canadian study which concludes that: The four mechanisms suppressing the advancement of female attorneys that possibly explain the persistence of stratification and subordination are: 1) self-elimination, 2) over-selection, 3) relegation, and 4) direct exclusion.

The bad:

• It's always depressing when the comments disintegrate following a post about an important issue like the lack of female partners is discussed, such as this post at Above the Law.

The ugly:

• The "evolutionary" theories parroted in this Volokh Conspiracy post regarding the Spitzer scandal:  men can't help but to have sex with as many babes as possible, while women act unnaturally when they have more than one partner.  Ridiculous.  Some of the comments are just as bad as the post, if not worse.

The Negotiator and the Olympic AthleteSoftware Licensing & Master Service Agreements

In my research for this Blog I came across an article that caught my eye. Jeffrey Gordon in his blog licensinghandbook.com posted an article entitled Becoming a better negotiator. Since part of my stated goal for this Blog is to discuss some of the nuances in the contract negotiation process, I felt Gordon's article was a nice fit. His main advice to become a better negotiator is simply to go out and negotiate. Eventually one develops a style. Don't be afraid of failure and learn from your mistakes. If I may be allowed to add a bit of fine tuning, I would also encourage one to learn from their colleagues and to ask as many questions of them as you need to become comfortable with the concepts and the eventual outcome of the negotiation. It is never wise, especially in a contract negotiation setting, to 'fake it'. Ask as many questions as necessary of your opposing counsel during the process.  Your opposing counsel should understand that your goal in the negotiation is to protect your client and limit their risk. If they don't understand your purpose and take a more adversarial approach to your questioning, do not be intimidated. Such a posture could actually be a negotiation strategy on their part. 

I chose to discuss Jeff Gordon's article because he includes the results of a study by the US Olympic Committee entitled Reflections on Success. The Top 10 Success Factors for Olympic Athletes from this study are listed below. I found the results of this study particularly interesting, since the number one success factor is something which I wholeheartedly agree. Persistence is the key to success. If any of you have read my case studies which I have included in this Blog, you will see that persistence in the negotiation process is what I strongly urge for my readers. Although I could never be considered an Olympic Athlete by any stretch of the imagination, I do take some comfort in the US Olympic Committee's validation on this one point.

Top 10 Success Factors

1. Dedication and Persistence: 58.1%

2. Support of Family and Friends: 52.0%

3. Excellent coaches: 49.4%

4. Love of sport: 27.1%

5. Excellent training programs and facilities: 22.3%

6. Natural talent: 21.9%

7. Competitiveness: 15%

8. Focus: 13%

9. Work ethic: 11.6%

10. Financial support: 11.5%

How many blogs do law firm marketing pros read regularly?

Atlanta journalist, Steve Burns, asked at LinkedIn 'How many blogs do PR/Marketing types read/subscribe to regularly?'

Answers ranged into the hundreds for some with the vast majority of professionals subscribed to feeds from at least 20 or 25 blogs.

Tells me that PR people are using blogs for a few purposes. One, as a means of following what's going on in areas they're working on for clients. Two, learning new skills and methods from thought leaders in the PR and communications field. And three, for networking with fellow professionals and mentors.

I question whether PR and communications employed in large law firms are monitoring that many blog RSS feeds in newsreaders. I talk to a lot of law firm marketing professionals who are not using RSS feeds from blogs and keyword searches at all. Some PR and communication professionals have even told me it sounds like a waste of time getting information from unreliable sources.

What are you guys seeing? If you're a law firm marketing professional, how many blogs do you subscribe to via RSS feeds?

Hubbard One law firm video nothing more than eye candy

That's the word from Joe Campos, a Seattle lawyer, who walked through Hubbard One's booth at the Legal Marketing Association Conference last week. Hubbard One, a law firm website development company for large law firms, was holding a contest asking for ideas and concepts about using video for law firm websites.

I agree [with Hubbard One] that web video can be extremely compelling. Sadly, Hubbard's video advocating the use of video is of such low quality it will probably discourage a lot of prospective clients.

For law firms, web video has to be extremely well produced and must deliver something of real value to clients and prospective clients. It can't just be eye candy. The law firm has to deliver really compelling and useful information and create a reason for website visitors to return, learn and ultimately hire the firm.

Video on law firm websites needs to offer useful information to lay people about the legal issue facing them. Otherwise, Hubbard One and Martindale-Hubbell, also hawking law firm video for websites, are just generating incremental income for themselves from their unknowing law firm customers who believe video will generate more legal business.

At least Martindale-Hubbell, which has not produced informational video that I know of, agrees with me that law firms benefit much more from video relevant to the law firm's clients needs.

Give advice; answer basic questions; describe what typically happens in relevant matters; provide value with timely commentary. As with all good marketing, if you can put yourself in the shoes of the buyer and empathize with them and give a little value, you're more likely going to win the business.

My guess is that if we're going to see informational video, it's going to come from the firms themselves using YouTube, as opposed to companies like Hubbard One and Martindale. Hubbard One and Martindale are likely to charge a hefty price for video. The result being not much video, video which will stay on the website for months or years, and video being focused on the law firm and its lawyers.

Ind. Decisions - More on "Judge upholds Plainfield sex offender ban"

Updating this ILB entry from March18th, Bruce C. Smith of the Indianapolis Star reports today in a story that begins:

Plainfield has won the latest round in its three-year legal battle to ban convicted sex offenders from town parks.

But the lawsuit of John Doe vs. Plainfield isn't settled.
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Attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana said this week that they will appeal the latest Hendricks Superior Court ruling that found the town ordinance banning sex offenders to be constitutional.

ACLU legal director Kenneth J. Falk said Tuesday, "I've spoken with the client and he's authorized us to appeal."

Falk will continue to challenge the constitutionality of the town ordinance in a filing with the Indiana Court of Appeals within 30 days of Hendricks Superior Court Judge Robert Freese's March 13 ruling.

"We'll continue to argue that the ordinance is unconstitutional. One of the fundamental rights in Indiana is the right to go into public places, but this law attempts to extinguish that right," Falk said.

You want to be a blogging star?

You may not gain the popularity of Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit or Mark Cuban at Blog Maverick, but you can learn from the successful bloggers reports Paul Botin in the New York Times.

• Write about what you want to write about, in your own voice. 'Blog about your passions,' says Cuban. Don't blog about what you think your audience wants. Post because you have something you are dying to write about.'


• Fit blogging into the holes in your schedule. 'Deal with the rest of your life first,' advises Reynolds who slips in posts between classes, as a break from writing law review articles and during slow time at home. 'The blog is best handled by inserting it into the small bits of free time that rest among the bigger chunks of your work.'


• Just post it already! The hurdle that stops many would-be bloggers is fear of clicking the 'Publish' button. Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing says 'Don't bottle up your ideas forever believing you have to hit the same kind of mature, complete, perfect point as you would with a magazine or newspaper article. Blogs are always in progress.'


• Keep a regular rhythm. Whether it's several times a day or a month, establish a reliable rhythm for readers.


• There's no one right length for blog posts, but the most successful blogs, like most professional publications, seem to have their own reliable formats. Reynolds at two or three lines per post, Boing Boing at one to three paragraphs each, or Cuban's browser window length when he's on a roll.


• Join the community by linking back to bloggers whose ideas you reference and they'll link to you. Links from other bloggers increase your readership two ways: they send readers directly from other sites, and they raise your ranking in search engine results.


• Plug yourself by emailing a prominent blogger about a good blog post of yours, post a comment with a link on more established blogs or submit your blog posts to news aggregation sites like Digg, Fark and Boing Boing.


• Allow readers to post comments on your blog for interaction and increased readership.

I'll add be patient. It takes time before you develop your own style and the readership you're looking for. It'll happen by following what the successful bloggers are doing, but you're not going to be an overnight success.

Legal News - LexBlogosphere: 3/23/08

Today is Easter Sunday, and at least one of the posts in the LexBlogosphere today - authored by Bill Statler - makes a note of that fact. For some of our other bloggers, today is business as usual (and offers a free day to catch up on blogging).

• Client experience management revisited: repairing broken windows - Legal business advisor Arnie Herz in his blog, legal sanity
• Focus groups and neuroscience - Las Vegas lawyer Tim Titolo in his Brain & Spine Injury Law Blog
• Easter and the funeral ritual: helping families get past Saturday - Kansas attorney William Statler of Statler Legal Services in his Death Care Compliance Law Blog
• Latinos seek citizenship in time for voting - Texas lawyer Bob Kraft of Kraft & Associates in his Immigration Law Answers Blog
• Trying to find a chuckle or two in bad times - Financial risk manager Susan Mangiero of Pension Governance LLC in her blog, Pension Risk Matters

Lloyd Garver: Dyngus Day

It probably won't surprise you to learn that yesterday Bill Clinton participated in something called, "Dyngus Day." He helped celebrate it in South Bend, Indiana. It's a Polish holiday that is traditionally celebrated on the Monday after Easter. It marks the end of Lent, and also the beginning of the traditional political season. Obviously, these days, the political season starts a lot earlier, so for some politician, every day is "Dyngus day."

The holiday is quite a romantic one in which a boy who likes a certain girl traditionally dumps a bucket of water on her. I assume that certain politicians go behind their wives' backs and dump water on their mistresses. Then, if there are credit card records of them buying a water bucket on "Dyngus Day," they tearfully resign.

Check out Lloyd Garver's website at lloydgarver.com