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March 10, 2006
The Return of Geeklawyer
Here's the fallout from our Geeklawyer post earlier this week. It features Ruthie and GL's motorcycle named "The Terrible and Inexorable Wrath of God". Told you these British bloggers had attitude.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)
Human and Naked: Brits Who Blawg--Part 2
Interesting statistics from The Economist: In 2000, the United Kingdom had a population of about 60 million, and the US had 285 million, or close to 5 times as many people as the UK. Yet in 100 years between 1901 and 2001 the UK boasted 88 Nobel Prize winners (most of them English) and the US 179. So the UK hatches 50% as many Nobel Laureates as the US with an overall talent pool one-fifth the size.
Moreover, 60 of the 88 UK Nobel prizes were in Chemistry, Physics or Medicine. So Brits [heart] science and "tech", too--and they are obviously very good at it. In legal tech and IP, here are two more Brits who blawg with great sites:
1. Justin Patten at Human Law, subtitled "Law, Technology and People" combines, in a novel and interesting way, IP and Employment Law. This is an active blog by a guy in Hertfordshire, just north of Greater London, who can both write and cover the issues even-handedly.
2. Naked Law, "UK Technology Law Laid Bare by Cambridge Lawyers" is written by the Cambridge office of London-based Mills & Reeve, a relatively large UK firm. It focuses on legal and regulatory developments affecting IT and technology in the UK. I'm going to monitor this one as well--lots of talented people in this key UK firm.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)
The Word-of-Mouth on Word-of-Mouth...
It's here from Larry Bodine and read The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell if you are really interested in this subject and productive "buzz" generally. This is an important (and fascinating) ground of discussion for any law firm under, say, 100 lawyers, which wants to serve clients normally represented by larger law firms.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)
Should We Sell During Client Polling?
Jim Hassett continues an ongoing important discussion amongst top legal marketing thinkers at his Law Firm Business Development blog. It's right here.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)
Patrick Lamb: In Search of Perfect Blawgs.
Visit Chicago litigator Patrick J. Lamb's new and improved site at In Search of Perfect Client Service. The man keeps raising the bar on everything. Pat makes it difficult for mere mortals and country lawyer types like me to keep up.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2006
Fighting Bozo-osity At Your Shop.
From ex-Apple evangelist and guru's guru Guy Kawasaki, who gets more visits to his blog in a day than most people see in a month, these fun but serious two posts on preventing a Bozo explosion and the Bozoification aptitude test (the dreaded GBAT) escaped my attention at first. Law schools and bar associations don't cover this crippling syndrome in ethics classes or CLEs--so feel free to take notes. Consider these a corporate public service announcement.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)
IP Piracy: China Gets Religion, French Rockers Get Hissy.
Because it involves our clients and practice, I've posted about this overall issue before. And yesterday both the WSJ Law Blog and China Law Blog discussed efforts by the Chinese government to take patent enforcement "more seriously". A mainland Chinese company just sued an American company for patent infringement in the US. This is a first. The notion is that China--with its infamously "whatever" attitude about protecting non-Chinese inventions and marks--might have to start taking it all more seriously if Chinese firms want justice here in the US. One step toward the solution, per China Law Blog and yours truly: Dude, register your IP in China.
Meanwhile, the French legislature, the National Assembly, consistently earnest if nothing else, is still struggling with file sharing on the Internet. French rock n' roll artists in particular are not happy with efforts both to eliminate a user's downloading fee passed late last year and to reduce punishments for illegal downloaders.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:49 AM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2006
And the KeyBlog Stat Is...
See Kevin O'Keefe's recent post containing the secret answer at his Real Lawyers Have Blogs. Brace yourself, because Kevin's answer makes way too much sense. Irish guys who try cases rule.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:43 PM | Comments (0)
Brits Who Blawg with Attitude.
Our firm's practice has taken us to the southern UK quite a bit: London, Suffolk, Kent, and Cardiff, Wales. During one of those trips I detoured to Lindsey, in Suffolk, a still tiny village where my mother's side of the family left in 1632 via Ipswich, England to go to a place called Groton, Massachusetts, named for another tiny village near Lindsey. I got hooked on the countryside, and on the people, too. So I like the English. Not because I "claim" them, or even that they claim me. Indeed, English clients and lawyer friends alike used to openly worry that socially I'm too outgoing and "American friendly" for tea time.
It's true that the English are wordier than Yanks; it's also true that they are about 10 times more careful than Americans are about what actually comes out of their mouths. Socially, an American is always an embarrassing accident waiting to happen. Brits assess the terrain.
But whether they admit it or not--and they generally won't--Brits are very much like Americans, and in ways other than government, law and a shared language base. They mix humor with business, they are driven, they address personal and professional difficulties with optimism, self-deprecation and grit. And they vent, rant and even attack like us. In this sense, two of the English legal weblogs I discovered in our search for good non-U.S. blawgs are operated by true American cousins:
1. Diary of a Criminal Solicitor by "Gavin", who gives you detailed and funny blow-by-blow tours of his often frustrating days through Legal London, along with sounding off about "anything and everything" that gets up his nose; and
2. Geeklawyer, by an IP lawyer who once did R&D in the U.S. for the "evil American empire" and who blogs about IP, civil liberties, the legal system, and "angry liberal" things. He's got a motorcycle named "Ruthie", too.
Both of these are worthy reads-- besides, these guys are fun.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)
My New Hero U.S. District Judge Clark..."Attaboy!"
See yesterday's WSJ Law Blog at "Judge Rejects Inscrutable Motion, Cites Adam Sandler’s 'Billy Madison'".
Posted by JD Hull at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)
March 06, 2006
Blawg Review #47 is Out, and...
...it's a thoughtful, even-handed, spirited and comprehensive scan of last week's posts by Unused and Probably Unusable.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
Jim Calloway: "The Client-Centered Law Practice"
In two parts by Jim Calloway - Part 1 and Part 2 - and originally appearing in the Oklahoma Bar Journal. These were just included in Jim's new Starting a Law Practice Web Directory by the Oklahoma Bar Association Management Assistance Program. The title alone shows Jim Calloway gets it.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
"Do Short-Term Victories Mean We're Smart and Our Business is Strong?"
And, more importantly, do those successes keep you from seeing entrenched fallacies and faulty assumptions in your thinking that will bite you in the wazoo when you aren't looking. See "Never Mistake a Bull Market For Brains..." at Adam Smith, where lately there has been post after post of sober thoughts about thinking and planning for the long term.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)
Calling All "Foreign" Blawgs: "Amazing Countries, Amazing Practices!"
And often with legal systems amazingly similar to our own--apologies to Gerry Riskin but I love his blog and its name.
Any more re: western Europe or Asia blawgs out here?...Rupert White at the UK's Law Gazette--a magazine with circulation of 110,000 published by The Law Society of England and Wales, the regulatory and representative body for 116,000 solicitors--was kind enough to do an article about our efforts at What About Clients? to identify, link with and learn from non-U.S. blawgs. The article is "US Litigator Reaches Out To Euro Blogs". In the interest of disclosure, the bracketed expression "[an exercise in navel-gazing]" in the article's quote of me was a prudent and kind substitution by Rupert of my characterization of the sometimes insular nature of American blawging. (I had used the term "wankfest".) Anyway, to break that pattern, a few weeks ago we started asking for recommendations on active but good western European blawgs and Asia blawgs. The idea is at the February 23 post in "It's All Happening At The Zoo". The results so far are in the comments and linked to this site.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2006
Do What You Love: Hero 1 - Chris Abraham
From D.C.-based Chris Abraham--friend, marketing consultant, inspirer, writer, Renaissance dude, interpreter, learner-teacher, person-who-gets-it, and the guy to spend time with when I want new ideas. And he's got the best laugh. I talk to him and read him to get back on track. He actually likes lawyers, and helps them. Those of us who consult him worry he'll go to law school. "Do What You Love", which he's covered better than anyone, is here.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:31 AM | Comments (0)