We have to stick up for our own kind today and take exception to the article “Five IT Blind Spots That Shut Lawyers Out.” It regurgitates all the worst stereotypes of IT workers to give the impression that IT departments have gone rogue and care nothing for the lawyers and staff they serve. Even worse, the article suggests that IT is off in its own sandbox, using the partners’ well earned money to play with its shiny toys.

No one, in whatever profession, is the sum of their stereotypes. The “assumption” here is that this is the modus operandi of your average IT worker. Sure, we have seen instances of parochial thinking, poor service, and insensitivity, but this is more often the exception rather than the rule. The article makes a number of good points, but by compiling a laundry list of IT faults, it makes an incorrect impression that stigmatizes the industry and law firm’s own employees.

We work with IT staff in many law firms and know their commitment to the firm and their users. Everyday we see the IT staff that work hard to explain difficult technical concepts to laymen; who know the business goals and work hard to align IT to them; who make the added effort to create simple interfaces to complex systems; and who refuse to buy non-essential software or upgrade to non-compelling versions. Maybe the default assumption lawyers and staff should have is that IT is here to help, not to make your life miserable.

Here are a series of posts over at The Wired GC about law firm rate increases that ends with a harrowing set of conclusions for law firms:

• Profit motive appears to be the primary factor; and
• Customers are getting the same thing as before, only it costs more. That means the customer is getting less value.

Click on the blog post to comment on the merits of the author's argument, but we will point out that perceptions quickly become reality. Are your firms offering extranets, easier access to files, or other services to offset the negative value of rate increases?

With Hannukah underway and Christmas around the corner, we will take this opportunity to wish everyone Season's Greetings and a happy New Year.  From everyone at SAGE, thanks for a great 2006 and we wish you the best in the New Year.

Every holiday season, we here at SAGE send out a holiday "card" like every other business in the world. A few years ago our "card" went online, a move that allowed a little more pizazz to the staid holiday card. Check out this year's Card here:

We hope you enjoy it. Our cards from years past are also archived on our site, so you can check out our holiday greetings from 2004 and 2005. Once again, happy holidays and peace on Earth (we sure can use some!)

Although Washington, DC usually shuts down around the holidays, we're unusually busy around here at SAGE. We have been a little light on posts, but the effort will pick up into the New Year. In the meantime, here is what is happening out there on the web:

• Does your head spin trying to keep up with all the Electronic Document Discovery (EDD) tools out there? Us too. Here is a handy little round-up.
• Still want to learn more about Windows Vista.  Wired brings you a screenshot gallery with commentary.
• NY Times tech reviewer David Pogue has provided his insight into Vista with this review.
• If you are still confused about the different versions of Vista, ExtremeTech posted this handy chart to help.
• Tired of meaningless jargon and "action words" thrown around to solve a problem, Kathy Sierra has some good advice on how to be better at anything. Hint, stop using the jargon to look smart.

As always, these links can be found at del.icio.us at our "sagesol" network account. Add "sagesol" to your del.icio.us network and share your links on technology management with us!

Internet and digital technologies remove many of the constraints to providing niche services and reaching audiences across much wider geographic areas. For small and medium-sized law and professional services firms, especially “Boutique” firms that specialize in niche areas, this means that the advantages many large firms and their superior resources once enjoyed are diminishing.

Broadband Internet, Wi-Fi, and VoIP allow small firms to communicate easily with customers that may be half the world away. Collaborative technologies like extranets, web conferencing, and Skype makes servicing far flung clients practical and efficient. Using social networking services like LinkedIn, the cost of acquiring a customer drops dramatically, eroding another advantage of large firms. As access to information and other resources becomes cheaper, the resource advantage large firms once held is shrinking daily (think of the Google vs. Lexis/Nexis subscription for basic research, or RSS feeds compared to costly clipping or news aggregation services).

The phenomena rapidly attracting the public’s attention is “The Long Tail:” large numbers of small sales and niche services that looks like a tail when viewed on a graph of demand. The point is, the Long Tail rivals the “hits” at the head in revenue and profitability. Apply this idea to law and professional services firms, where big firms are the “hits” at the head, and small and medium firms are the long tail. Before the Internet, that tail was much shorter, and couldn’t rival the big firms for revenue in the aggregate. But now, that’s changing.

Reputation and quality of service become deciding factors over sheer resources in many cases. There are still instances throwing lots of people at a problem are warranted, but that’s is becoming less so everyday. As part of the “Long Tail,” small and medium firms can often rival the giants.

SAGE's President George Nicholson has a great saying: "if the client doesn't understand, then we haven't explained it correctly."

It reminds us that the users is the ultimate arbiter of what works and what doesn't. We can't scapegoat our poor design or overly complex solution on user's who just "don't get it." Whether it is helping them understand technologies that can have bottom-line impact, designing solutions that match the user's technical abilities, or providing support such as training or help desk, we in IT have to go the extra mile for the end user, not the other way around.

This post over at Legal Blog Watch talks about some reasons why lawyers and law firms don’t collaborate to the extent that Corporate America does. Citing culture, training, and nature of the work, the authors suggest the command-and-control structure of firms discourages intra-firm collaboration. We would add the conservativeness of the legal community toward new technology.

We don’t see law firms as the dinosaurs the post suggests. Law firms are slowly adopting extranets like MindPort for collaborating with clients, co-counsel, and experts. But if the deck is stacked against lawyers themselves, collaboration should be widely encouraged for other firm employees like paralegals, practice support staff, and other professionals and support personnel. As we have mentioned on the blog before, sharing knowledge and information is vital to productivity and work quality. Demolishing silos where information and expertise is locked up in practice areas or functional groups should be a top priority for any law firm administrator and management.

While many firms have been down the Intranet route (often poorly), extranets that are so successful externally can be applied to many projects and situations internally. New ideas in collaboration such as Wikis, social bookmarking, RSS, and more are coming to the forefront that are often inexpensive and easier to implement.

Here are a couple of ideas to get you motivated for another work week. This article on O’Reilly Radar discusses the importance of an ideal or mission in motivating your team. If your team believes in something more than just working for a paycheck, higher quality, better ideas, and more productivity will follow. Whether the ideal is “outstanding customer service”—our mantra here at SAGE—our “we do it better than everyone else,” there are a host of ideals for your team to aspire to. By giving your people something to believe in, your organization will get higher customer service, quality, and greater involvement. The trick is making them believe, but that stems from the management’s sincerity and adherence to the ideal itself.

So now that you have a motivated team, when was the last time you had a blank check on a project? Yeah, we have never had one of those either. While we like to bemoan the shackles time, money, and management place on us, Chris Anderson of “The Long Tail” fame talks about something we have known for years but too often forget: those constraints can be the source of inspiration. Ingenuity is about overcoming challenges, and IT and ingenuity should go hand-in-hand. So before you complain about a small budget or a small team, think about how your constraints can be a source of inspiration. Just one example: SpaceShipOne—human spaceflight on a shoestring team and budget.