June 2010

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FreeLegalWeb

24 June 2010 in FreeLegalWeb

In case you haven’t heard via other channels, the FreeLegalWeb beta service is now live.

Personally, I think we’re tops

16 June 2010 in SEO | 2 comments

Have you noticed how recently your site has been doing so much better on Google? Those SEO efforts are really paying off, right?

Wrong! Google is showing you what you want to see.

Actually it’s been going on a long while. In April 2009 Goog introduced Personalized Search for everyone. Basically this means that your Google results are by default customised for you, based on your last 180 days’ search activity (your “Web History”), whether you are signed in to a Google account or not. So if you frequently check out your web pages’ SERPs for particular keyword searches, you’ll see those pages rise in the SERPs until, wonder of wonders, you’re top!

For the cold, hard truth you should turn off personalised search.

A new Legal Web ebook with CPD for solicitors

12 June 2010 in CPD, Legal practice, Legal web | 1 comment

Thanks to Tessa Shepperson for reviewing favourably Delia Venables and my latest Legal Web ebook with CPD for solicitors called Modern Practice Topics for Solicitors.

Are you feeling ignorant about the internet. Worried about wikis? Bothered by blogs? Or intimidated by twitter? You need a bit of professional training and guidance.

Allow me to introduce the answer. This is the new ebook and CPD course from Nick and Delia on Modern Practice Topics for Solicitors.

Nick and Delia have been involved in and writing about the legal internet for years. Must be at least ten, probably more. Both have informative web-sites, Delia runs the best set of legal links on the internet, as does Nick, as Infolaw. Together they produce the fabulous and award winning Internet Newsletter. Every now and again they produce an ebook / CPD product and this is the most recent offering. It is very good.

Read the full review on her blog.

In praise of Small Law

10 June 2010 in Business | 2 comments

I’m usually suitably supplicant in agreeing with future-of-law guru Susskind, but I take issue with the views implicit in his recent Times Online piece Does the Law Society know that there’s an internet generation?

The report tells us that, in 2008, 85.9 per cent of law firms had four or fewer partners, while 44.2 per cent were sole practices. To the business-minded, this looks like a cottage industry, with members who handcraft labour-intensive and bespoke solutions in delivering a face-to-face advisory service.

Where in the report, then, in relation to lawyers, is the radical rethink? Nowhere. There is no discussion, for example, of the scope for project management, workflow tools, outsourcing, wider use of paralegals, economies of scale or shared services centres. The spotlight is never trained on the inefficiencies of traditional legal practice.

I’m sure it is true that a large number of solo and small practitioners are inefficient and behind the times, but there are many who are as efficient if not more so than the “best” large firms and who are at the same time more innovative and responsive than the larger practices can only dream of. I deal with many and they are quite happy to be small.

You’ll forgive me for not reading the Law Society’s report, but I suspect that it does not dwell on Big Law practices because Big Law – whatever their current problems – are big enough do without Law Society support; it is the little guy who needs a leg up.

Scale is not everything – some don’t need paralegals and shared service centres to deliver a good and efficient service. Big Law does not deliver better law any more than Big Business delivers better business or Big Finance delivers better finance. Big has cocked things up recently in the City, in the Gulf of Mexico etc. Small just gets on with it.

Sorry Richard, but Small is beautiful.