Guest Blog: James Swede, Darlingtons.

The concept of Know Your Client (KYC) is well known to most lawyers in the context of money laundering and other identity and bona fides checks, but lawyers should maybe spend more time, when writing on the web, on Know Your Reader (KYR).

There has been an explosion in legal blogging in the last year, but as with many aspects of legal practice, a sheep mentality is perhaps too apparent.

Reading legal blog posts can be painful – many strike us as attempts by 1 lawyer to prove how clever he or she is or knowledgeable about a very specific niche.  Many write on the basis they are writing for other lawyers.

In some cases and on some blogs that is the case, but in the vast majority of cases, readers will be non-lawyers looking for an overview, some practical tips and experience which answers their needs. If the blog post is written in that way, it offers an insight that the lawyer understands the readers needs and may then lead to the reader getting in touch.

As lawyers (on the basis that lawyers may be reading this particular blog post) how many of you check the levels of engagement with your blog posts ? This is very simple to do, just by accessing google analytics or any other web analyticsprogramme.

If you do so, you will find that the average amount of time readers will spend on any legal page or post is around 90 seconds.

Remember the old story that if you can’t explain a new business proposition to a potential investor by writing it down on the back of a cigarette packet, your investor is unlikely to invest ?The same holds true for writing on the web.

For any non-academic writing, we suggest that when writing, lawyers remind themselves of who they are writing for and that, if the post cannot be understood and the main points easily absorbed in 90 seconds, it’s unlikely to have the impact you want from it.

Darlingtons home page, http://www.darlingtons.com 

Darlingtons provide a range of legal advice for individuals (link tohttp://www.darlingtons.com/site/srvindividuals/) and businesses (link tohttp://www.darlingtons.com/site/srvbusiness/).

Last Friday was my last blog for a while.

This weekend, I had a real back to basics experience with the family.  A weekend together, away from distractions, we camped, built fires, played barefoot football and ate around a camp fire.

I started blogging as a cathartic exercise, as a way to vent frustrations with the  pace of change and to rail against “guruitis”.  It has lead me to meet (virtually of course) some wonderful people and a small number of cynical windbags – people I hope to stay in touch with.

What I realised this weekend is that it will be far more cathartic for me to enjoy summer evenings playing football or reading with my children and conversing with my wife – free from the commitment I set myself to blog daily.

Being a private blog, I did it all as an extra-ciricular activity giving myself  a day job and an evening “job”, if you like.

Taking a look at my big picture, that time is better spent with those I love.

I have loved writing, may blog occasionally or may even get “that book” out.

My priority for now, is to keep pushing the market in my day job and to invest all my spare hours into my lovely little family.

Stay in touch.

LexFuturus

An ex-girlfriend of mine used to say:

“Never explain, never apologise.”

At the time, I was too young and too naive to challenge her assertion.  However, years later, and the fires of passion having dampened and died, I look back and think “What a load of b****cks”!

Her attitude of ‘brazening it out’ was not only arrogant but showed a complete lack of understanding of the foundation of relationships.

It is no different for business relationships.  Trust is as much built from the accepting responsibility for mistakes and fixing them, as it is from anything else we do.

Many lawyers confuse an apology with being some kind of “admission of liability”, for them, sorry does seem to be the hardest word.  The challenge will come when new market entrants from “service” backgrounds begin to compete.  Service levels becomes a core element of their “product” and acceptance of “service failures” forms an essential part of their offering – then some lawyers may be face to reevaluate their relationship with the “S” word.

To aid this transition, emotionally, here are some famous apologies from history:

1.  BILL CLINTON TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE for his dalliance with Ms Lewinsky, which he acknowledged was “a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.”
2. MEL GIBSON (take your pick) for his anti-Semitic rant at a Jewish police officer, which he described as “unbecoming” in his  ”inebriated state”. 
3. RICHARD NIXON TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE resigning post “Watergate” – Nixon manages to get through his whole speech without expressly apologising or using the “S” word.
4. NOBEL FOR INVENTING DYNAMITE – and seeking a better legacy through the peace prize.
5. TONY BLAIR FOR:  Slavery, Irish Famine, Historical Miscarriages of Justice – all before his time and then, finally, for Iraq deaths.

Please post any more you can think of?

“We often speak of the violence of the river, but never of the violence of the banks that confine it.”

Berthold Brecht

Unlike the current UK Government (see the utter car crash of an interview with Chloe Smith) – I am happy to admit that I have changed my mind!

For years I have always thought that “open plan” was corporate speak for “crating the workers”.  In fact, even Robert Propst, father of the ‘cubicle’ later reflected on his legacy as a “monolithic insanity”.  In fairness to Propst, his original concept of  the “Action Office” that would give people more space to spread out over, increasing productivity in place of closed off offices with stacked in-trays.

As with so many visionaries, Propst had failed to foresee the opportunity his system offered to corporates to dramatically reduce and depersonalise working space.

The second problem, historically, with “open plan” is that it does not promote intended challenge to traditional hierarchy as those with the power to choose, have chosen the office as a corporate status symbol.

Well, I was wrong. Yes, the corporate penchant for “packing ‘em in and paying ‘em cheap” remains abhorant……….but the basic principle of Propst remains sound.  Mitchell Kowalski’s “Avoiding Extinction” makes a compelling case for open, flexible working spaces to promote energy, interaction, co-creation, good governance, team working, knowledge share, etc.

A quick survey on Twitter and LinkedIn suggested that most people felt the benefits outweighed any downsides.  However, as you may expect, I think there are some golden rules:

1. It has to be for all, no hierarchy;
2. Rooms for group calls or smaller team sessions should be available;
3. No cubicles;
4. Headsets;
5. Seating flexible so that teams form and sit together for particular legal projects;
6. IT to support mobile and cloud based team working;
7. No desk phones;
8. Decent coffee machines (compensation);
9. Light and open spaces; and
10. Encouraging working from home for head down type work.

Walls are like the banks of the river, they violently constrain creativity.

To be sung to the Pulp, classic, DISCO 2000

I said things will have improved in the year 2012.
Won’t it be strange when fees aren’t by the hour.
Be there at 2 o’clock by the ABS down the road.

* Marshall McLuhan,  was known for coining the expressions “the medium is the message” and “the global village” and predicted the World Wide Web almost thirty years before it was invented. [WIKI-LINK].

“How do I feel by the end of the day
(Are you sad because you’re on your own)“

A Little Help from My Friends, Lennon & McCartney

Saturday night friends invited me to see the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s The Two of Us, the Lennon and McCartney songbook.  Amazing show, amazing orchestra, amazing venue and an amazing city.

The scale of the orchestra and the intimacy of the venue laid bare, to me, the lamentable tragedy of how a partnership borne from mutual respect and admiration, which produced timeless genius, can be wrecked by personal agendas and petty jealousies.

In just ten years, The Beatles were formed, went from five to four and then another four, conquered America, stopped touring, ruled the world and produced 12 of the most timeless albums of pop in history.

In my view, the Fab Four were actually the Super Six when you give the appropriate recognition to Epstein and Martin.

These six produced a legacy which was more than the sum of all its parts.  That is what partnerships do, or should do.

Dennis Norden, when talking of his long writing partnership with Frank Muir said “A partnership really works when it is partner a  x  partner b, rather than partner a + partner b”.

For some of those ten years, The Beatles had this until they lost Epstein and personal agendas finally took over.

Take a long hard look at your partnership, do your partners value your partnership over their own, personal, aims and agendas?  Are you a “partner a x partner b” or a “partner a + partner b” or, doomed to fail in a Dewey-style “partner a - partner b” model of partnership?

 It’s Monday, a new week, are you going to be a Fool on the Hill or get by with a little help from your friend?

Thanks to my friends at Hill Dickinson for a fab Saturday night.

“Guruitis is a scourge of our time, listen people there is no THE answer, there are a number of possible answers.  There is no THE book but a number of books worth reading”.

Stephen Allen, @LexFuturus May 2012

Let me tell you about a book worth reading, in fact I would go as far to say that if you only had time to read one book on the future of the legal services market, then this is the book you should read.

Avoiding Extinction: Reimaging Legal Services for the 21st Century, by Mitchell Kowalski (@mekowalski) is a fictional narrative detailing the visionary law firm of Bowen, Fong and Chandri (“BFC”) and their client Kowtor Industries.

BFC, headed by the mercurial Sylvester Bowen, set out the case of a reimagined legal service  provider to their future client, a new recruit and a member of their board of directors.

So, why do I say this is a must read book?

Firstly, with amazing brevity – less than 200 pages, Kowalski provides the reader with a vivid depiction of what is possible when the starting point is giving the client what they want, rather than trying to fit what you already do to the clients want. I can do little better than to quote BFC’s mantra:

“BFC performs legal services that differ from those of our rivals, or, similar legal services, but in a very different way.”

Secondly, it tackles the “biggies” in terms of: project management; value pricing; technology; knowledge management; recruitment; reward; work space; team work; alternative sourcing; management; and leveraging your assets.  All in this one book, less than 200 pages.

Thirdly, it references the theorists, but through believable examples, including: Boake & Kathuria; Martin; Mayson; Susskind; Parsons; Posner; and Sharp. This book is your “Oh, but where to start?”

Fourthly, because some of it will make you feel uncomfortable by challenging your status quo.  I, personally, have never warmed to the open plan principle but find myself unable to resist the argument (if universally adopted by all).

Finally, because I have worked on a proposition that would have delivered to Kowtor’s RFP and that has demonstrated, in reality, many of the lessons set out in Kowlaski’s book.

However, both of us have come to a similar answer, quite independently of each other and without knowing, at the time, of each other’s existence.

This puts me in mind of Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin who, quite separately, came up with the theory of evolution.  Darwin published the Origin of the Species (dedicating it to Wallace) and Wallace was just happy having his own theory endorsed by recognised great thinker.

Mitchell Kowlaski is Darwin to my Wallace, I am happy to know my theories are shared by someone who is clearly such a great thinker.

Both of us, like Darwin and Wallace, are interested in understating how to avoid extinction, if you are too then read this book.

Post script. A number of people have advised thhe the ABA site is not apply to supply and that Amazon is unable to supply until December.

I am reliably informed that Ben McNally Books in Toronto will send copies to the UK – email the owner at ben@benmcnallybooks.com and ask him for a copy.

So, the three largest legal regulators in the UK have decided to launch a Legal Education and Training Review (“LETR”), to consider the education and training requirements of the post Legal Service Act “regulated” and “unregulated” worlds.

I like that fact that they are looking at training but I am less keen on their looking at education.  Of course, they need to set the entry requirements for those wishing to take a training course with them – I get that.

I also understand why the regulatory bodies need to set the “qualifying” criteria for someone wishing to start a training course.

But that’s it.  Law degrees, whilst a useful course for lawyers are not there for the sole purpose of producing lawyers (we’ve got too many now!).

No, studying law is an excellent discipline for young aspiring minds – even if they have no wish to be a practicing lawyer.  The skills we develop through the study of law can be applied to a number of careers which do not necessarily require us to know “legal fact”.  Not dissimilar to studying psychology.

In fact, one of the great skills learnt on a law course is learning to think in a structured way. I fear that if the professional bodies get their hands on the law degree, then young aspiring minds may be “overstructured” thinking as a practitioner rather than as a scholar.

This is not new, the study of law was the very origin of scholastic pursuits.  Doctorates being issued by “Gloassators” (forebears of the university) were law degrees and the first ever University, in the beautiful city of Bologna, was a law school.

Studying the law meant learning to assess facts, understand the machinations of society and judgment.  It was seen as a foundation degree for many other fields of study.

Even Dr Faustus studied law. Ok, not a great example.

Separate the academic and the vocational and maybe those that go on to be practitioners may learn more than the practice of law alone can teach them.

Perhaps then, the professions can stop living in the recent past and get back to the future…

“Always remember that one day all this drug monkey business will be legal. They won’t leave it to people like me… not when they finally figure out how much money is to be made – not millions, [freaking] billions. Recreational drugs PLC – giving the people what they want… Good times today, Stupor tomorrow. But this is now, so until prohibition ends make hay whilst the sun shines. “

Layer Cake, (2004)

A film about the (obviously illegal) cocaine business may seem like an unlikely source of “good business” lessons but there are, amongst the expletives, the guns, the egregious drug references and wide boy gangsters – some fantastic nuggets of philosophy.

Please, in reading these, exchange any references to the drug trade to the legal service industry.

1.   On sticking to the plan and calling time:

“Well I’m honored. But for me this is all over. I’m getting out. What was true then is true now. Have a plan. Stick to it. So I’m sure you must have lots to discuss… but I have no business being here. I’ve got someone to meet. Adios, amigos”

2.   On availability for clients:

“England. Typical. Even drug dealers don’t work weekends.”

3.   On standing on ceremony and not getting on with it:

“What the [freak] is this? A vicar’s tea party?”

4.   On sustainable business models:

“It is vital that we work to a few golden rules. Always work in a team. Keep a very low profile. Only deal with people who come recommended. And it’s like selling anything else: washing machines, hand made shoes……. As long as you don’t take the p*** people will always come back for more……never be too greedy.”

5.   On being a businessman over a one-dimensional “professional”:

“I’m not a gangster. I’m a businessman whose commodity happens to be cocaine.”

6.   On seeing the big picture and avoiding micro-management:

“Details, details. Things to do. Things to get done. Don’t bother me with details, just tell me when they’re done.”

7.   On creating an exclusive brand:

“Everyone wants to walk through a door marked “private.” Therefore, have a good reason to be affluent.”

8.  On selling out:

“Opera Tonight. The damnation of Faust. Man Sells his soul to the devil. All ends in tears, these arrangements usually do.”

9.  On not seeing the benefits of staff advancement:

“You know why people like you can’t leave this business? Because you make too much money for people like me”

10. On the essence of business:

“The art of good business is being a good middleman”

The lessons of business are universal,remember just don’t take the p****, don’t be too greedy.