The LexPublica Blog

SLIDE 1 – TITLE

SLIDE 2 AND 3 – PRESENTERS

• Martin

• Zak

• The advance billing for this seminar was that it’s a technology seminar. Actually, we’re going to focus on the impact of the internet on social and professional relationships, like lawyer-client relationships

  • This isn’t about efficiency or productivity software – not about document management or anything like that

• We want to leave you with 2 key points:

  • The internet is about relationships between people – something lawyers are already very good at developing

  • The ways to build and maintain those relationships can feel very different on the internet – and it’s important to develop comfort with that now, when there’s room to make mistakes and learn and before it becomes an essential part of lawyering over the next 5 years or so

• If we have time, I’ll also cover some more provocative thoughts about the impact of the internet on law firms

• Audience poll:

  • How many people (1) read blogs, (2) write on a blog, (3) have LinkedIn profiles, (4) have some other kind of online engagement?

SLIDES 4-10 – REACH OF VARIOUS MEDIA, PER UNIT OF COST

• Dramatic drop in costs has dramatic impact on industries/markets

• Cost of copying and sharing information is nearly zero – free – via the net

• The cost of communication on the internet has dropped to nearly zero, too

• Dramatic drops in costs (especially as costs drop to near-zero) open up opportunities for whole new business models (while they may disrupt old ones)

• Examples of industries impacted: music (Apple & iTunes) and newspapers (Craigslist and Google)

• Doesn’t mean that the product of those industries (music and news) doesn’t have value – it means new business models are required to maintain profit

SLIDE 11 – PEOPLE TALKING

• Those two forces (drop in information sharing costs and drop in communication costs) are creating new dynamics for social engagement (i.e., for relationships between people)

• To be clear, the internet doesn’t change ANYTHING about human relationships

• Offline or online, people’s needs for interaction with others and their motivations are fundamentally the same

  • Social (friends and family), professional (networking, career), business (clients, potential clients)

• There are, however, some key differences in HOW that interaction takes place

• Those difference can make the interactions FEEL very unnatural

• For example, interactions can be:

  • Not face to face

  • Private or public

  • Broadcast (to the whole world) or narrowcast (to a select group but not the whole world)

  • Borderless (opens new possibilities for maintaining relationships with far-flung acquaintances – or even creating relationships with people you have never met)

  • Real-time (vs. asynchronous – i.e., with messages back and forth, spread apart in time like faxes and postal mail)

  • Archived (forever and ever)

  • Searchable

• But none of these factors changes the essence of the interaction

  • It’s a conversation between human beings

  • With all the benefits and challenges that entails

• In fact, if anything, the internet takes us back to more genuine human interactions

  • In contrast to the broadcast model, which is akin to a loudspeaker – one-way, talking but not listening

  • The emerging model of interaction on the internet is conversation

    • Listening and talking

    • Engaging with people as opposed to sending a controlled message

• When it comes to lawyers, some of these aspects are second-nature (say, building relationships)

  • But some (say, not being able to control the message) may be very uncomfortable

SLIDE 12 – ATTENTION IS SCARCE

• Let’s shift gears

• One consequence of the near-zero cost of information and communication is the overload of information and content

  • It’s always been a challenge for lawyers to manage large quantities of information – in legal developments and in specific cases or deals

  • For everyone and for lawyers especially, it’s now like drinking from a firehose

• Before the internet, content and communication were scarce

  • It was expensive to create information and expensive to communicate it – that’s why the broadcast model existed

• Now, there’s tons of content

  • We all feel this pain: it’s hard find & filter what you’re looking for,

  • and it’s hard to be open to finding new, interesting things when you’re overwhelmed with irrelevant or only mildly relevant information

• There’s an even bigger challenge:

  • Information overload is not just a problem for recipients of information

  • It’s an enormous challenge for senders: for anyone who needs to reach – to communicate with – others

  • For example, lawyers wanting to reach and engage potential clients (or market to potential clients, to use traditional language)

SLIDE 13 – ENGAGING ON THE NET

• So how can engagement or participation on the internet solve SOME of that information overload problem?

• The same way human beings have always dealt with information problems: TALK TO OTHER PEOPLE

  • Online, we use communities and conversations to filter information

  • We naturally turn to people we know for advice and recommendations

    • So we don’t have to wade through bodies of knowledge in which we’re not experts

    • We turn especially to people we trust

  • Much like a lawyer walks down the hall to ask another lawyer a question – for advice, an opinion, a precedent, etc.

• Again, there’s some KEY POINTS here for senders – for people who want to reach others

  • Like lawyers who want to reach potential clients

• Key Point One:

  • Being online isn’t a choice. It’s required for business – to attract new clients and engage with new and existing clients

  • Offline lawyers are invisible to online clients

• Key Point Two:

  • Lawyers need to build an online presence and a network of trusted online relationships

  • Need to be part of the online web of relationships and online conversation

  • So when people look for a lawyer, you’re part of people networks who will send potential clients your way

• Key Point Three:

  • It’s easy to consider your existing clients here and think, “Well, they’re not online and they don’t participate in these sorts of online communities and conversations”

  • That’s changing

  • And more to the point, think about changing demographics – your clients 5-10 years from now will be people who are naturally at ease on the net

  • These points don’t just apply to clients who are individuals, they apply to business clients as well

    • Again, looking at changing demographics over the next 5-10 years, the client contacts in businesses large and small will be people more and more comfortable on the web

SLIDE 14 – TRADITIONAL LAWYER ACTIVITIES: THE ONLINE ANALOGUES

SLIDE 15 – ENGAGE NOW

• Pick out activities you already do and start with moving those online

• SUMMARY:

  • It may feel hard and unnatural to be online

  • As difficult as it is today, it’s much easier to start now than it will be a few years now

  • In ~5 years, being online will be critically important to attracting clients and serving clients

  • Today, you can explore and experiment, without much fear of consequences

  • Later, that will be more difficult