LinkedIn now allows anyone with a profile to now add a background image.
Once limited to those with Premium accounts, this new capability is now available to everyone with a LinkedIn account.
Continue Reading How to add a background image to your LinkedIn profile
Just because someone is a really good lawyer, doesn’t necessarily mean they are ready for the leadership positions of a large law firm. Marcie Borgal Shunk, President and Founder of The Tilt Institute Inc., talks with us this week about how she helps partners and others in law firms understand the leadership roles they take on. Whether it is a seasoned equity partner, or a newly christened associate just starting out, everyone should have a strong understanding of what it means to lead others. A good succession plan can help ease people into the role, rather than thrusting everything on them when they take over. Marcie discusses what it means to be a leader, and how she helps train them to take on that responsibility.
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Emily Feltren, Director of Government Relations for the American Association of Law Libraries, joins us for her monthly update on government actions on legal information. Emily gives us a year in review report of the wins, losses, and draws of the 115th Congress and the upcoming changes she sees in the 116th… besides investigations. There will be some old friends leaving at the end of 2018. Luckily, Emily is working to make new friends in 2019 so that access to justice and access to government information expands.
Continue Reading Marcie Borgal Shunk on Teaching Leadership Skills to Leaders
I haven’t written in a while–I’ll blame it on too much work and too little time. So I thought I’d highlight the good work of the other Geeks.
Here’s a list of the blog’s top 5 posts for 2018, in true Letterman style.
Continue Reading Top 5 posts for 2018
It’s the episode of The Geek In Review that Greg has dreamed about. Beer law!
Courtney Selby, Associate Dean for Information Services, Director of the Law Library, and Professor of Law at Hoftra University Law School, walks us through the strange and interesting topic of beer laws. Selby has immersed herself in the topic for years, and has an upcoming publication with W.S. Hein on Brewery Law with a national survey of state laws on the topic. Not only does Courtney Selby explain some of the more bizarre rules around beer, ciders, and other alcohol laws, she also give some great suggestions on different beers to try.
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The Geek In Review is now available on Spotify and Stitcher platforms. That brings us up to over a dozen platforms. So make sure that you subscribe on whatever your favorite platform is. Chances are, we’re there.
Information Inspirations:
Rob Saccone’s article, Fractal dysfunction and the mathematics of #biglaw innovation, discusses moving your innovation ideas off of the drawing board and into measurable actions. Saccone brings out his inner-math nerd to walk us through the fractals and the vectors of making innovation more than just an abstract concept. Shout out to Jae Um for her inspiration on this article.
Continue Reading Courtney Selby on Beer Law
On this episode of The Geek in Review, we talk with CEO and Principle of Sente Advisors, Ryan McClead. Ryan is also a frequent contributor to 3 Geeks. His new venture into consulting and solution building is unique, in that his team builds across multiple platforms to find creative solutions for the problems we all face in the legal industry. Just as in life, very few solutions to our problems are found in one place. Ryan discusses what Greg refers to as Legal Jazz Innovation – the combining of things which have never been combined before. Listen as Ryan takes us through the twists and turns of how he uses his experience as a legal technology innovator, musician, writer, and consultant to creatively weave together a solution.
In addition to Ryan’s Jazzfest… there is going to be a Geekfest in NYC on February 21st, 2019. Marlene, Greg, and 3 Geeks’ own, Toby Brown, are going to be speaking at the Ark Group conference on Best Practices & Management Strategies for Law Firm Library, Research & Information Services. (Which is a mouthful to say.)
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Marlene reminds American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) members to take the time to fill out the State of the Profession survey. AALL extended the deadline to December 14th, so go fill that survey out and help your fellow legal information professionals by sharing your knowledge.
Check out Caren Luckie’s post on Legal Competitive Intelligence. It’s a great primer to help explain what CI is in the legal field.Continue Reading Ep. 20 – Ryan McClead, CEO of Sente Advisors – Legal Innovation is not a One-Stop Shop
Last week, I had the opportunity to sit with 15 members of a large law firm’s administrative team for about 2 hours as I facilitated a Design Thinking workshop. Design Thinking is thoughtful as well as free flowing, a bit different for law firms. Once the domain of software development, it has been appropriated by
Marlene and Greg went to Raleigh, North Carolina to visit the LexisNexis Technology Center. While there, they got a tour of the facilities and introduction to some of the business techniques implemented by the Lexis team. Jeff Pfeifer sat down and explained Lexis’ new rapid development techniques, including Sprint Design Thinking, and Agile Development Principles. This type of development processes means things move quickly, and problems are broken down into small chunks to solve. It also means that Lexis looks for developers who can collaborate and work directly with the customers to identify issues, and create solutions in days and weeks, rather than months or years.
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Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes or Google (or where ever you listen to your podcasts) so that you automatically get the latest episodes. Comments can be sent to @glambert or @gebauerm. Also, if you like our new theme music, check out Jerry David DeCicca’s new album on Spotify, or iTunes,
Transcript
M: Today we have Jeff Pfeifer, Vice President and Chief Product Officer for North America, for LexisNexis Legal. Welcome to the show, Jeff.
J: It’s great to be with you.
Continue Reading E19 – LexisNexis’ Jeff Pfeifer on Being Like a Startup
The Geek In Review – Episode 18 is ready just in time for your Thanksgiving travel enjoyment. Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes or Google (or where ever you listen to your podcasts) so that you automatically get the latest episodes. Comments can be sent to @glambert or @gebauerm. Also, if you like our new theme music, check out Jerry David DeCicca’s new album on Spotify, or iTunes,
Nicholas Alexiou, Director of LL.M and Alumni Advising at Vanderbilt University Law School joins us for an in-depth discussion of what law schools are teaching students in the three years they have them. In an environment where students only care about things which are on the final, or on the bar exam, should professional development programs be required or affect GPA’s? While 1Ls and 2Ls get lots of attention from the professional development course, 3Ls are left to their own devices. Greg thinks there is room for improvement with 3Ls professional development from the law schools, law firms, and vendors.
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Marlene points out an MIT answer to “What is AI?” Sometimes a complicated concept can be explained on a napkin with a flowchart. This explanation is so simple, even Marlene’s Mom can understand it. Now, if MIT would come up with a flowchart to explain to Greg’s Mom what it is he actually does with a law degree and a masters degree in Library Science.
Continue Reading E18 – Nicholas Alexiou – Professional Development Needs for Law Students
Having recently attended a conference on law firm innovation, I came to the realization that Blockchain has lost its pre-eminent place in the legal BS stratosphere. This is a sad day. Blockchain had a good life and provided tons of opportunities for people to opine on how ‘everything’ will change because of it. I recall one especially insightful article on emerging crypto-toilet paper offerings. Too bad we will never know the warm comfort of crypto-paper making a pass around the seventh planet.
Moving right along – we now will enjoy six to nine months of “innovation” articles, seminars, conferences, white papers, case studies and booze-induced discussions.
Oh sweet pessimism.
Continue Reading Law Firm Innovation – The Newest BS Phrase
No.
I hate it when an article title present a question and then draws out the answer until you are over half-way through the material. So I started with the answer on this post.
Of course you could have guessed that answer pretty easily. But as I have been thinking about this issue lately, another dimension to this question came to mind.
Turning the way-back machine to 1999 – I was involved in a start-up as part of the Dot.Com boom (and bust). We had a technology that provided Enforceable Online Transactions. We calculated that there were 50 billion transactions every hour, or something like that, on the planet. And we only had to capture a fraction of that to get rich. Sadly – that was not the result. But at the time many people would ask me if I was afraid to take the risk of having a job like that. Start ups are a risky place to be. I could lose my job at any time.
Continue Reading Is Your Job Safe?