Thursday, March 18, 2010
Another Ethics Panel Clears Total Attorneys
The state of Washington is now the 11th to close its ethics investigation of Total Attorneys with no finding of wrongdoing. Washington State Bar Association Senior Disciplinary Counsel Jonathan Burke issued a letter saying the state would not pursue complaints filed against 13 Washington attorneys over their use of Total Attorneys for Internet marketing, according to a statement issued today by Total AttorneysAs I wrote here in January, Connecticut recently reached a similar outcome, concluding there was no cause to file charges against five attorneys there. Disciplinary authorities in Illinois, Hawai’i, Vermont, Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Colorado and Alaska have also closed their investigations of Total Attorneys with no findings of wrongdoing.
The investigations came in response to a series of ethics complaints filed in some 47 states by a Connecticut lawyer who maintains that the Total Attorneys model violates ethics rules.
In Washington, the disciplinary counsel concluded, "The websites do not attempt to hold themselves out as lawyer referral services or fit the definition of ‘lawyer referral service’ in Comment 6 to RPC 7.2." He also address the claim that the sites’ pay-per-performance model violated 11 USC §504(a), which prohibits the sharing of fees in bankruptcy cases. The letter says that the attorneys in question "did not share or agree to share ‘compensation’ with the websites."
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 4:06 PM,
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More on Whether to Scrap my Blog
My musings and those of Venkat Balasubramani over whether to shut down our blogs and start afresh with new ones garnered some attention from other legal bloggers, among them Bruce Carton today at Legal Blog Watch, Colin Samuels at Infamy or Praise, Kevin O'Keefe at Real Lawyers Have Blogs, and Ron Coleman at Likelihood of Confusion. Coincidentally, Coleman just faced a similar issue and decided to shut down one of his two blogs and focus on the other.I also received a number of comments on my earlier post and a good number of thoughtful, helpful and kind e-mails.
I have not made a final decision, but I think Kevin made a lot of sense when he said not to focus on the name of the blog, but on the content and what you do with it. Were I to do it over again, I might choose another name. But having lived with this one for eight years, I might just stick with it.
I probably will shut down my second blog, Media Law. I may import its posts over to here or I may just leave it as is, with no further updates.
As for blogging platform, I do not intend to stay with Blogger. Instead, I will probably move to Wordpress. I have used it elsewhere and really like it. The one feature of Blogger I will most miss is BlogThis!, a pop-up window that lets you grab the URL of and content from a Web page and compose your post. (Perhaps other platforms have this?)
Thanks again to everyone who took the time to write or comment. Your input has been very helpful to me.
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 3:04 PM,
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Lawyer-rating Site Avvo Raises $10 Million Financing
Lawyer rating and directory site Avvo has received $10 million in a new round of financing, led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm DAG Ventures. Current Avvo investors, Benchmark Capital and Ignition Partners, also invested in this round. The funds will enable Avvo to further expand and enhance its products and services for consumers and lawyers.Launched three years ago, Avvo has grown to become one of the largest lawyer directories on the Web and one of the most highly trafficked -- with some 2 million unique visitors a month. Its goal is to provide profiles and reviews of every lawyer in the United States. So far, it covers 41 states and the District of Columbia.
This latest investment brings the company's total financing to $23 million. Founder and CEO Mark Britton said the investment will be used to further expand and enhance Avvo's products and services for consumers and lawyers. "We remain supremely focused on building that win-win for consumers and lawyers."
The company's growth so far has been "planned and rational," Britton said, and its future development will continue along that course. "We have a number of initiatives that I feel are game changing. But to fund those initiatives is expensive." He declined to provide further information about the initiatives.
"We will continue to build out these win-win situations for consumers on the one hand and lawyers on the other," Britton said.
Britton credited the company's growth to its employees. "I am proud of the team. We've built something that works, and that works well, and we built it from scratch." Avvo currently has 35 employees and plans to add more.
Labels: Avvo
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 9:48 AM,
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Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Should I Shut Down LawSites and Start Anew?
Could it be that Venkat Balasubramani can read my mind? In response to something I tweeted today, he quite lucidly set out the debate I've been having with myself. Turns out he's been having the same debate with himself.The question for both of us is: Does it make sense to make a clean break from one blog and start anew with another? For both Venkat and me, the question is complicated by the fact that our blogs have achieved some degree of recognition and regular readerships. My blog has even won some awards, including twice being named one of the ABA Journal's Blawg 100.
My reasons for shutting this down would be very similar to Venkat's. I started this way back in 2002 as an adjunct to my book, The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web. Thus the name, LawSites. I intended to use it primarily to keep my readers informed of new and interesting Web sites. Over the years, however, my blogging interests have broaded -- to media law, technology law, social media and intellectual property. The name LawSites no longer reflects what I want my blog to be.
I addressed this in part by starting a second blog, Media Law. But it makes little sense for me to maintain two separate blogs when neither encompasses the range of topics that interest me.
My desire to decide this question is hastened by Blogger's decision to shut down FTP support. I have used Blogger as my platform since day one. I am thrilled that lawyer Rick Klau is at the helm of Blogger and is spearheading some exciting developments. I would stick with Blogger, but for the fact that I want my blog hosted on my own site, not on Google's servers.
So Wordpress here I come. I have set up and operated other blogs on Wordpress and I like the control it gives me. But that begs the question of whether to go through the process of importing this blog into Wordpress or simply start anew?
If I import this blog into Wordpress, I solve my immediate problem of maintaining its operation after Blogger's FTP shuts down. But I am left with the initial problem -- much like Venkat describes -- of being pigeonholed.
Also, I suspect that I will lose LawSites readers in any event. Even if I keep LawSites and simply move it to Wordpress, my RSS feed will change and the process of converting permalinks is anything but perfect.
So, my options as I see them are:
1. Shut down my two blogs, LawSites and Media Law, and start a new one from scratch. I would keep all the archives of both blogs online but would no longer be able to update either.
2. Move LawSites over to Wordpress and shut down Media Law but keep its archives.
3. Merge the content of LawSites and Media Law and import them into Wordpress, continuing to blog under the name LawSites.
What was most striking to me about Venkat's post was his comment that this question "literally weighed me down." I know precisely how he feels. It seems almost silly to spend so much time pondering the fate of a blog. Perhaps it shows that both Venkat and I remain passionate about blogging, if uncertain about our blogs.
So what advice do you have for Venkat and me? We would both appreciate your counsel.
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 9:09 AM,
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Monday, March 15, 2010
Legal Project Management in the Cloud
Introduced as a beta at LegalTech in February, Onit is a Web-based project management tool described as being for "anyone and everyone who manage projects – big, small, business, legal." It specifically includes a Legal Edition designed for legal matters and cases. During its beta period, the system is free for anyone to use. Even after its formal launch, slated for April, the basic legal edition will remain free. 
The beauty of Onit is its simplicity. Use it to manage multiple projects and coordinate multiple participants. Each project gets a home page where participants can plan, collaborate, budget and share. Participants can provide status updates in the same way they would using Twitter or Facebook, or by sending an e-mail to a special e-mail address that Onit creates for each project.
The project home page provides an overview of the project's current status, upcoming tasks and events, and spending against budget. It also contains the project plan, all notes, all documents and financials, and a list of all participants. If a participant is overdue for a status update, one click sends the person a "nudge." The entire project is searchable.
Onit promises apps for iPhone and BlackBerry that will allow access to these same features. As of this writing, the apps had not been released.
The founders of Onit, Eric Elfman and Eric Smith, are no strangers to legal management technology. They were the co-founders of DataCert, a leading provider of matter management and legal and IP spend management software for corporate legal departments.
Given that Onit is free and simple to use, requires no special software, and can be used for any number of projects and with any number of participants, why wouldn't you get Onit?
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 8:45 AM,
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Join Me This Week at the MBA Annual Conference
Join me tomorrow and Friday at the Massachusetts Bar Association Annual Conference at the Westin Copley Place in Boston. Tomorrow, I am chairing a plenary session at 1 p.m., "Social Media for Lawyers: How to Boost Your Practice and Avoid Pitfalls." On Friday at 3:15, I will be on a Law Practice Management panel, "60 Sites in 60 Minutes." The conference has a great line-up of programs both days and a stellar line-up of speakers on an array of substantive and practical topics. Capping it all off tomorrow night is a gala dinner featuring a keynote address by Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 7:56 PM,
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MoFo? Now There's an App Even for That
The app includes four functions:
- People, where users can view short bios of the firm's attorneys. Browse a list of attorneys or search for them by name, practice, office location or law school.
- News, which provides firm press releases, client alerts, newsletters and articles.
- Locations, which provides information about any of MoFo's offices, including addresses, directions, and nearby transportation hubs, restaurants and hotels.
- Play, which brings up a maze game. As you complete levels, you are rewarded with "MoFo Factoids."
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 12:18 PM,
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More Evidence 'BestAttorneys' is Clueless about Attorneys
I wrote here last week about BestAttorneysOnline.com, the dubious new lawyer-rating site that can't seem to get lawyers' practice areas or even their locations straight, listing lawyers as among the top 10 in practices they have nothing to do with and in states in which they have no ties. I followed that with a second post about legal reporter Caryn Tamber's adventures with the site. Now, I have even more to report that only underscores the conclusion that the people behind this site are the gang that couldn't shoot straight of lawyer ratings.A woman who is an information-resources executive with a law-related company sent me her e-mail correspondence with Rick Jannings of the Indiana company responsible for the site, Best Attorneys Online LLC. (I could not find Jannings' title, but I did find a press release that identifies him as the company's contact.) The woman asked me not to identify her or her company.
It started innocently enough, with the woman sending a query to the company's generic e-mail address, info@bestattorneysonline.com:
So I was browsing your website to see if I felt it was worth registering for, but can't figure out how to do an attorney search. is there any way, if you have an attorney name and want to see where he/she is ranked in any of your lists or whatever, to do that?In reply, Jannings sent her an e-mail that not only failed to respond to her question but that went on to rudely -- and cluelessly -- dress her down and brush her off:
Just go to the site and do a search. There is a search bar right in the middle of the home page. Click the practice area, state, and hit the button find an attorney.I was about to write, "The best line in that e-mail is ...," but there are so many good lines. The only messages this e-mail manages to convey are that this company knows nothing about customer service or about the legal industry.
That will show you a listing of attorneys.
If you want to see rankings click on attorney rankings at top of page.
Now, with all due respect, we do not consort with directors of information resources upon making decisions regarding whether we want to promote your firm or not. Our direct contact must come from the Attorney that runs the business. Period. If you choose to register for your firm, you will be eligible ONLY for a FREE listing. Which will garner you no clients. It will only serve as a means to send clients as a validating website that you’re a top firm. This site is for ONLY top law firms and in order to evaluate them properly we deal only DIRECTLY with the Lawyer who owns the firm. This is not meant to be offensive, that is just the way that it is. In order to be RANKED, and promoted as one of the very best firms out there we do an enormous amount of work for you, and that value and understanding of that value has to be directly understood by the man or woman writing the check for the service. We don’t allow for any “translations” of perceived value from any or all assistants, marketing directors, or any other said help.
If you are the head of marketing or something for a huge law firm and you actually write checks for marketing campaigns on behalf of your clients, fine. Otherwise, there is much more to our site and its methodologies than the “typical” let’s go spend some marketing dollars in certain areas that we might think are effective.
We need to do further evaluations if your firm fits our criteria as a firm that we would like to promote.
Our correspondent capped this exchange with her own reply to Jannings (and with company and law firm names altered to protect the innocent):
I did that and all never get any results. I guess you just must not have the attorneys I'm looking up as examples, though I'm trying some of the largest rainmakers at the largest firms, but I guess you are not quite there yet. Thanks anyways.In her note to me forwarding the e-mails, she describes Janning's reply as "perhaps the most arrogant and rude email I have ever received to such a simple question." What is surprising to me is that I see a number of law firm advertisements on the site. Is this questionable company actually able to convince lawyers to advertise on this joke of a site? As I said in my original post, when I look at this site, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
As for the rest of your email, you may not intend to be "offensive," but your email certainly is rude and unexpected. I simply asked a question to verify I was using the search correctly. By register, I had no intention of registering my company has part of your database. I assumed register meant solely to get access to more advance searching to find attorneys. The company I currently work for is not a law firm and thus would not be in your market area although we might have used your site to find attorneys to work with since we do work with most of the AMLAW 200. However I recently left, on very good terms, LawFirm1 who I do not see in your list of top law firms (even though they are #2 in the country), and I will be sure to forward this email to their head of marketing/bd (as well as to my marketing friends at LawFirm2 ) so they can be aware of how you treat the people with whom they work and to recommend that they look for other "more effective" ways to spend their marketing dollars.
It's too bad that you felt the need to be so rude. While I may just be a "director of information resources" with whom you do not consort, I do have the ears of a lot of people with whom I suspect you would like to consort since generally it is the IR group the chooses the databases and even marketing databases and resources to use and support with in the firm s . But c'est la vie as they say.
Thank you for making it so clear that you do not wish any business.
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 8:48 AM,
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Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Video Highlights the Work of the Mass. Bar Foundation
As regular readers of this blog might know, I am a trustee of the Massachusetts Bar Foundation, the premiere legal charity in Massachusetts devoted to increasing access to justice for all, regardless of income or status. I also have had a long-standing relationship with the talented folks at the Legal Talk Network, who have produced my Lawyer2Lawyer podcast for close to five years.So when the MBF was looking for help producing a video to commemorate its 45th anniversary, it made sense for me to introduce them to the LTN's founders, Lu Ann Reeb and Scott Hess. Lu Ann and Scott not only agreed to produce the video, but to do it for free! The result was outstanding. The video was overwhelmingly well received when it had its premiere at the MBF anniversary dinner in January. On Friday, the video will be shown again at the Access to Justice Awards Luncheon during the annual conference of the Massachusetts Bar Association.
Here is the video:
Massachusetts Bar Foundation Story from Legal Talk Network on Vimeo.
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 2:49 PM,
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Monday, March 08, 2010
Podcast: The Google Books Settlement
Is Google Books the greatest-ever collection of human knowledge or a massive infringer of copyrights? A lawsuit brought by authors and publishers said it is the latter. In 2008, the Authors Guild and Google reached a settlement of that lawsuit, but the settlement requires the approval of the court. Recently, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in New York held a hearing on the proposed settlement, which has garnered voluminous feedback both pro and con.This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we discuss the Google Books litigation with two guests: James Grimmelmann, associate professor at New York Law School and a member of its Institute for Information Law and Policy, and Jonathan Band, a technology law and policy lawyer in Washington, D.C.
Also in this week's episode, we are joined by Lee Ann Enquist, vice president of West Professional Development, to discuss the new partnership between West LegalEdcenter and Legal Talk Network by which you can earn CLE credit for listening to Lawyer2Lawyer or any of the LTN podcasts.
Download or stream this week's Lawyer2Lawyer.
Labels: Lawyer2Lawyer
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 8:21 PM,
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Listen to Lawyer2Lawyer, Earn CLE Credit
For more information about this, see the Legal Talk Network's announcement.
Labels: Lawyer2Lawyer
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 10:00 AM,
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Friday, March 05, 2010
Planned Law and History School Launches Web Site
A planned law and history college that is gearing up to open its doors to students in August has taken another step in that direction with the launch of its Web site. To be based in Salem, N.H., the American College of History and Legal Studies will be an undergraduate "completion college," offering only junior- and senior-year courses.As I noted when I wrote about the planned college last June at Legal Blog Watch, the college is being launched by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. After students complete their junior year at the college, they will have the option of starting law school at MSL. They will receive their bachelor's degrees after the first year of law school.
The college's curriculum will focus exclusively on American history and legal history in the context of world history, the Web site says. MSL Dean Lawrence Velvel will also be the college's dean.
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 11:49 AM,
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More on Dubious 'Best Attorneys' Site
Caryn Tamber at The Daily Record in Baltimore picked up on my post yesterday, Beware New 'Best Attorneys' Site, and did some digging of her own. Like me, she found lawyers ranked as best in practice areas that they have nothing to do with. As one of those lawyers remarked, it would all be funny, but for the fact that there may be consumers out there who take the site seriously.Tamber reached one of the people responsible for the site, Jeev Trika, for comment. His explanation, she writes, was confusing.
At first, he said the site takes its data from lawyers who set up profiles with the site. When I said it didn’t sound like the folks I spoke to had even heard of the site, he said his people also take data on practice areas from combing the Internet, such as lawyers’ own Web sites and other lawyer-evaluation hubs like Avvo and Martindale. So if bestattorneysonline.com gets it wrong, “it would certainly be an indication that that information is incorrect on other sites as well; I can tell you that,” Trika said.Remember, this is a site that bills itself as conducting independent evaluations of rated attorneys, using an "experienced research team." From what Tamber learned, it would appear that research includes random scraping of content off other sites. Additionally, she found, lawyers can pay to be considered for these prestigious rankings -- "just" $500 per practice area. Of course, even those who pay are still subject to the site's "rigorous evaluation process."
This is a site to be avoided by consumers and lawyers alike.
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 9:53 AM,
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