These are notes are from a panel discussion session with Joan Axelroth, Axelroth & Associates, Anthony A. Licata, CFO of Dechert LLP and Nuchine Nobari, Library Director of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, LLP. The session was moderated by Sarah Mauldin, Head Librarian of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts! 


A panel discussion...

Is it ethical to charge clients for online research?

Axelroth: ABA put together an opinion on  charges other than professional fees - library, computer research, third party providers - should be treated differently. You can charge for computer services, paper, person running the searches, etc. You have to pass on any discounts received from third party providers.

Can firms add a mark up to online search charges?

Axelroth: The fairness factor: is it fair to the firm's clients and the firm's attorneys. Are paid clients subsidizing non-paid clients? (Are you non-paid clients your larger clients who have negotiated this?)

Licata: Dechert model - most libraries have fixed fee contracts with the large providers and pay a retail rate for other 10%. There is risk to chopping up a fixed fee contract - they create a usage model, put all the usage for a month in and then "chop it up". They also look for trends; e.g. February has fewer business days than March, so individual searches that month cost more so they make sure they take a loss on every search. They actually mailed cheques back to their clients because they were able to reduce their online costs. "Usage swings wildly" so they track it carefully.

What are the trends on recovering for services that firms pay a flat fee for, regardless of use?

Axelroth: Percentage of recovery of costs by firms is going down. Indications show this is only going to come back a little.  "Slicing and dicing is getting so complicated" partners are not understanding it and cannot explain it to their clients, so they are writing things off.

Does your firm attempt to recover costs for other services (especially local pay per use services) e.g. BNA, Bloomberg Law, Casemaker, CCH Intelliconnect, Fastcase, Hein Online, Loislaw, PACER, RIA Checkpoint.

Licata: They have tried to take the discussion away from the billing partner. They don't expect partners to; they ask the client finance person talk to the firm's finance person to walk through it. They make the attempt to pass savings along to clients. Clients are welcome to discuss deals up front, but they are not comfortable just billing full cost to clients.

Nobari: it is sometimes comparing apples to oranges. Lawyers would only go to alternative sources if they are as sophisticated sources as Westlaw and Lexis. Her only success is Fastcase; it has fewer bells and whistles for just basic reading of cases. They used this to manage use of Westlaw and Lexis. Lawyers are more reluctant to use Bloomberg Law, so they had less success with this service.

What is the trend with regard to following up on online charges that are written off?

Axelroth: 62% of firms track write-downs or write-offs of electronic research charges to see what can be billed back. The goal is to try to change lawyer habits. You need management to support this, and possible a reward/punishment system.

Licata: library staff don't running around up front trying to figure it out; they put in a "fairly diligent budget process" a few years ago. If the lawyers don't put something on a client bill, it is put into that lawyer's departmental budgets. Budgets got a lot of attention; they looked at because there were other things they wanted to spend their budgets on.

Nobari: spend 2 hours of staff time every week: letting the lawyers know if there is a better way of doing research because they may not know the most efficient way; they email aggressively to encourage lawyers to bill back to clients rather than charge back to office. They have decreased usage of Westlaw and Lexis by 20%. Start with your 20 least effective users and follow up with them.

What is your firm's average rate of recovery for Westlaw and Lexis research costs?

Licata: they recover about 70% of their contract spending. It is a line item everyone understand. Clients don't necessarily understand why lawyers need to have legal research, they expect the lawyers to know. You need better communication with the clients showing value. Help put clients' focus on their overall value from the law firm's work.

Nobari: they fall pretty much within the same ranges. They work with consultants to compare, and they are comparable to others.

What are the trends for using cost recovery tools like OneLog, Research Monitor, Lookup Precision?

Licata: It gives them more data, but he's not sure it helps them recover more. He gives a qualitative "yes it does" because information helps you back up your argument when trying to change lawyer behaviour.

Axelroth: using software for recovery is one reason, but you can use it for things like acquisitions decisions and others. Even if you are not charging back (rolling online charges into overhead), have attorneys input client matter number to get an idea of needs by individual clients.  Greg Castanias gave an impassioned talk at the PLL Summit asking us to put pressure on the vendors to give libraries what they need to get results.

Nobari: a research tool to help you qualify and quantify are useful. Librarians are the ones who get calls when something is going wrong with the vendor databases. Make sure you are part of the conversation when your senior management want to change the research services the firm subscribes to.

Are clients pushing back against paying for online research resources?

Yes.

What is the trends for firms no longer charging back?

Licata: you need to understand what your base level of overhead is, and what $ is needed back to keep things going. Firms ultimately will not be recovering less, it will just be recovered in different ways. He thinks clients are asking the wrong questions. Clients who ask not to pay these fees are asking firms to be less transparent.

Nobari: the lawyers' margins on specific work are so thin since they are now moving to flat fee and volume arrangements for clients.

Axelroth: in response to Licata, says you can still track what research has been done for the client. You still want to track this internally.  (Licata's response: he was not saying they would be less transparent, he was just looking from clients' viewpoint).

Q&A

Audience comment: they blocked 1000 "mysterious" client numbers that did not get research billed back;  also, she is seeing dramatic shifts of "new guard" products replacing use of "old guard" products by tracking usage.

Licata: doing what they do depends on the firm culture.; they try to run their firm more like a business than a law firm.

Licata: library costs are less predictable than other firm expenses such as leasing space costs.  He puts the responsibility for recovery of costs on the shoulders of accounting departments, telling law firm CFOs with respect to working with libraries: "If you don't learn what they do and how they affect financial statements, how are you going to teach them about financial statements?"

Q: fixed fees of attorney costs?

Licata: varying levels of usage for all these tools. He encourages discussion around costs early. Sometimes it becomes a volume issue, so it depends on what the firm is doing.

Q: looking at possibly rolling these expenses into overhead and want clients to know this is what they are being charged to.  Thinking of rolling it into a "research charge" charged to all clients equally. Are there ethical concerns?

Licata: being transparent is the right thing to do; however, client doing 15 real estate transactions is going to question 15 research charges.   Law firms don't get all terms of arrangement into the agreements; don't have a handle on how we do research. Need more documentation in the arrangement letters.

Q: Usefulness of the tracking services from the publishers?

Nobari:  Neither PowerInvoice from Lexis nor Quickview from Westlaw provide you with enough information to be used in negotiations later. They are not research tools.

Q: if they role the cost of the two flat rater contracts together and bill clients back according to that, are there any ethical problems with this? They are not looking to make a profit.

A: No ethical problem if you are not making a profit. It is an interesting idea.

Nobari: get an opinion on ethics from a lawyer so that you do not get caught in the middle. Let the lawyers decide how much they want to bill the client.

Comments: Do we add value to the firm when we follow up with lawyers about expenses being written off? You need to also look at actual recovery as well. She asks  the lawyers "Was there a problem with the service? Did you not get the service you wanted?" The third party tools helps her see where someone needs more training.

I am at the American Association of Law Libraries 2011 Conference in Philadelphia. These are notes are from talk by Dr. Barbara B. Tillett of the Library of Congress and John Mark Ockerboom of the University of Pennsylvania.  Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

Dr. Barbara B. Tillett, Library of Congress

DBPedia - example of a linked data, open data project

• Community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and to make this information available 
• covers 3 million things that are interconnected
• meant as proof of concept/prototype, but fully working now
• linking Wikipedia to lots of other content on the web (videos, websites, etc.)
• libraries got involved in the linked data network with University of Sweden getting involved first
• Library of Congress Subject Headings now linked
• Virtual National Authority File also linked

One of three sessions in the PLL Summit Administration concurrent sessions track. These are notes are from talk by Larry Guthrie of Covington & Burling LLP and Doug Malerba of McKenna Long and Aldridge on developing collaborative communities.  Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.


Larry Guthrie on Collaboration in Libraries


Larry Guthrie says that libraries are all about collaboration; collaboration has a positive tone today. There is an emphasis on building a team culture. 


6 types of collaboration by libraries

• historical perspective - libraries were originally a collaboration e.g. most monasteries created one place to hold all their books.
• through inter-library loan - "the more we share, the more we have" - libraries by nature are collaborative, helping each other as well as those inside our own firms. 
• in various locations - telecommuting, embedding librarians in branches, face-to-face meetings are preferred
• using various communication techniques - social media (wikis, blogs, Twitter, etc.), Harvard's 5 Tips for Better Virtual Meetings (purchase required), communication across generations.
• over various disciplines - with other fields and specific areas of interest - the public library can be the hub for a number of communities, can facilitate this with social networks. New book coming out: Collaborative Governance by John D. Donahue and Richard J. Zeckhauser.
• for activism on behalf of librarianship - library associations are partnering with other organizations to advocate on various issues. Librarians need to work with other information professionals to lobby on behalf of libraries.

One of three sessions in the PLL Summit Technology/Tech Services concurrent sessions track. These are notes are from talk by Joelle Coachman, E-Resources Librarian at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP and owner of Info-2Go Legal Research Services, on integrating new technology into your library.  Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.


Joelle Coachman gave a lively talk comparing the law librarian profession and law firms with Star Trek.


Note that different generations relate to different generations of Star Trek. Summer associates see William Shatner as the "Priceline Negotiator", not Captain James T. Kirk. 

• When you first set up your Twitter account, watch it for a while. It takes a while to fine-tune it specifically.
• You don't have to follow the world; it is your private domain; follow who you want.
•  When you first start, know who you are following. 
• If tweeting, keep in mind you cannot speak on behalf of your law firm. Keep in mind you are doing both personal and professional mixed together.  Know your purpose and know what you want to say. She personally tweets about library and personal topics "all mixed together."
• People often take key phrases from speakers and tweet them, and then have "little spurts" of discussions. Mark those tweets with tags. 
• You need to know the language of the interest group you are speaking to. Use hashtags to connect with those and other interest groups. So often we keep what we do in the back as "housekeeping" but if you share with the larger world, they will gain respect for what we do.  This is horizontal engagement.
• Cultivate and share who you are. It gives you the opportunity to be individualistic.
• Earn the right to tweet the link.
• Organize your social house. She recommends using a third party dashboard such as Hootsuite to allow for following different channels of discussion from the broader community. Otherwise you have to actively build habits to go search certain hashtags. TweetCaster, Tweetdeck and others are available. 

• Mobile devices help. If you are not mobile, you will have to work that into your engagement. You don't have to text message, but if you can get a device that allows you to follow conversations, it will help you be connected and be relevant in a fast-paced environment. 
• LinkedIn - 2 billion people are using it; possibly 500 million are engaged day to day; it is growing and there is a definite change in the way people are using it.  Use it for external sharing - how many people shared that you are going to be at this event today? Don't just share with your peers, but share with others you are connected with to show you are active professionally.
• There is nothing wrong with asserting ourselves and talking about ourselves. 

One of three sessions in the PLL Summit Technology/Tech Services concurrent sessions track. These are notes are from talk by David Curle of Outsell on transformations in the legal publishing industry.  Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.


$15.5 billion - publishers in the legal, tax and regulatory industry worldwide


2008 was the first year they went into negative growth; came back slight in 2010; expect it to take another 3-4 years to get back to where they were pre-2008.


Three companies dominate the space: LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters and WoltersKluwer hold about 70% of the market place. BNA is next with about 2% market share. It has made it difficult for anyone else to break into the market because they keep getting "gobbled up" by one of the big players.


It is difficult to describe the major players because depending on what part you see, you see something different. We tend to think of the "big three" as legal publishers; however, they serve a number of markets. Curle has broken the top three by type of legal information; about a third of their revenues is U.S. legal information. About a quarter is non-US legal. The rest are other areas such as corporate, government, academic, tax, governance and compliance areas. So only about $3.5 billion is generally derived from US law firms.


How much revenue do law firms bring in? About $400 billion. The largest firm brings in about $2 billion. It is a very fragmented industry, making it difficult for providers who work for anything from $2 billion business all the way down to a solo practitioner. 


$40 billion - the 10% of law firm expenditures that firms see as needing to cut. Legal vendors looking to expand into this space, the "business of law" such as in the IT area such as servers hosted in firms, etc. Vendors are pretty entrenched in their existing legal information areas and need to look to these ways to expand.


What do law firms do?

• Develop strategy
• Deliver legal services
• Run their businesses
• Market themselves

• Thomson Reuters' role, 1996  > were not addressing these four areas
• Thomson Reuters' role, 2009  > expanding into these four areas
• Thomsone Reuters' role, 2011 > purchased services in these areas, now starting to compete with their own clients e.g. Pangea3, a legal outsourcing area; Hildebrandt and others

• A continuing divergence of products and sub-groups; more targeted products. Offerings may even be by size of firm. LexisNexis is putting a push on to get back to smaller firms and solo lawyers, for example.
• More niche players and disrupters - especially as legal information access becomes more open. New information companies can come along and make new products out of it. In the past the three big vendors had control of the information.
• Law libraries need to invest in strategic planning and vendor portfolio management - what competencies and skills do library staff have that can serve the firms? Is there anything we need to give up doing? (He referred to Steven Lastres' comments in the KM session earlier today).
• Move toward Susskind's upper quadrant - providing more services directly to clients, the same as legal information providers are trying to do - high value, client-proximate solutions. 
• Help to shake off the primary law mindset - most law graduates have a primary law mindset, jumping directly on Westlaw (or more likely Google) to pull up primary information. So much legal work is pulling up primary legal sources "in a hap-hazard way"; he sees this as a shame. What is being lost is the sense of context and legal doctrine they used to get from working with legal treatises. Small firms and non-lawyers will start to use more free and cheap legal services. Lawyers in big firms need to be able to use other higher-value sources.
• More collaboration and peer-to-peer for content creation - libraries need to help facilitate this. You get better information from getting people talking to each other than from experts (knowledge sharing among peers). Need to help corporate counsel and non-lawyers collaborating and help to create the legal information e.g. building code information. This should be part of knowledge management efforts.
• Vendor relations needs to be about data: ROI, usage and pricing. Introduce more and more data into the evaluation and purchase of products. There is no trust that vendors are providing right and appropriate data; the law firm librarians need to introduce this as an idea.

One of two lunch speakers at PLL Summit. These are notes from a talk by Greg Castanias, Partner at Jones Day on how librarians (and library partners) add value to their law firms.  Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.


Greg Castanias related a story about how their libraries came to be coordinated under a global library partner.  He talked about how their various offices are being supported by the libraries. 


He outlined who law firm librarians work with:

• Library customers
• Firm management
• External vendors

• putting out a newsletter
• publishing photos of the professional staff so people know who can help them
• put tips into the firm newsletter
• making services seamless so that library staff in other offices can take over work

The second half of the morning at PLL Summit allowed attendees to attend 2 out of 5 summaries from the PLL's Law Firm Management webinar program (we got to choose which two). These are notes are from a 30 minute session with  library and information management consultant Joan Axelroth on law firm administration. Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.


Rather than summarize her webinar, Joan Axelroth asked us to work through the questions that James Jones posed to us in the morning.


Q:  How will these likely changes in law firm management models impact traditional library/information services?


A: Obvious answer: budget cuts, reduced staffing and access to services.


One law firm embedded their librarians into departments; this was very successful. Their billable hours have increased (doubled!); they may be a way to use this to justify more staff. 


Has anyone thought about not pricing library time hourly?  In some firms it may depend on the arrangement with the clients - some time billed to clients; some written off.  Even if the firm is using alternative billing methods, they still need to account for time and still ask the library staff members to track their hours.


In some firms, marketing departments are now hiring librarians directly. This new market is forcing librarians and other departments to partner more to get things done. One librarian related a story of creating a business analyst position within her library; within a year it was moved to the Marketing Department.


The mantra is to break down silos, but it is difficult to collaborate. 


With vendor products aimed at different departments, they try to use economies of scale to share services between departments.


In one firm the CIO was put in charge of the electronic resources. This was expected to be horrible; however, it turned out to be useful. It brought departments together to talk about the resources; it reduced duplication and also helped the CIO understand how difficult it is to turn down an attorney when he or she needs a resource simply based on cost.


What have you done to support the changes your management has been making in response to the economic downturn?


One response: they had to write a monthly report. It was dreaded at first, but forced the library director to set down what they were doing, geared them up for what was coming up.  


Some partners are now micro-managing more. What is the budget, how far off are you on your budget, do you have any new contracts? You have to address what they want to know. How do you get them to listen? You need to say it in a way they will hear - the value they will get.  Put it into terms they will listen to e.g. dollars and cents. If you don't find the right approach, try it again. Do they want a quarterly oral report, do they want a written report, do they want one page, bulleted? 


Some tips from the group discussion:

• You should be reading what Hildebrandt is blogging and publishing. 
• Be ready for an elevator speech. 
• Follow clients in the news and be ready to talk about them.
• It is amazing how much your vendors know about your organization - they may be able to point you to people internally to speak with.

The second half of the morning at PLL Summit allowed attendees to attend 2 out of 5 summaries from the PLL's Law Firm Management webinar program (we got to choose which two). These are notes are from a 30 minute session with Steven Lastres, Julie Bozzell and Toby Brown on law firm libraries and knowledge management.  Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

KM is about working smarter. KM strategies are a way for law firms to become more competitive. Firms need to make their young associates as smart as they can be, as fast as they can be. Teaching them the tools to get to the actionable items should be the focus. KM helps improve client/customer service - e.g. library staff share what they have done and learn with others, especially if they are in a global environment - you need to capture the links, documents and PDFs that were found during research.

KM Projects that require librarian competencies:

• Intranet/portal content development
• Creation of expertise databases
• Database development & maintainance
• Taxonomy, development of controlled vocabulary
• Project management
• Statistical analysis
• Search engine optimization

Second on at PLL Summit is Esther Dyson on technology changes in business and libraries.  See her website: http://www.edventure.com/ Note: these are my notes from this Q&A session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.


She started out with a response to James Jones' talk. She characterized the changes in law firms as part of the larger movement we are seeing "from fuzziness to clarity," allowing us to commoditize legal work. She suggested that librarians join outsourcing firms where information is the core business rather than law firms where we have supporting roles. 


Is the world getting smarter or stupider? Dyson quoted William Gibson "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed."  You are getting more and more at either end of the range. Google is not destroying our ability to think, but it is changing what we are finding as important to remember. Lawyers think logically--someone still needs to read the laws to determine if they are fair and just and internally coherent. Google affects our ability to think deeply.


What percentage of AALL PLL's membership is female? It is a female dominated profession working in male dominated organizations. Dyson says it is wonderful to see a group of women in this area. She started as a reporter and fact-checker. As a young female reporter she was able to get a lot of high level executives to "be indiscrete" in what they shared with her. However, she didn't work in a male-dominated organization. 


Talking in global terms, she says it is easier to get rid of a government than it is to re-build the government with a new social contract. In social networks you can leave if you don't agree with something; it is harder to leave a country if you don't agree.  Help people know they are not alone.


In the US there is a tolerance for failure and taking a risk that is not tolerated elsewhere. People who step out of line may be despised or even shot. US individualism is mostly good, and not appreciated. Americans are not as kind and generous without social circles, but willing to take a risk. 


Young people in other countries don't have a lot of role models to try something different; they look to the US for those role models. They see what Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have done, but not what their local people have done.


She sees the future of search as more oriented toward actions or transactions: search with verbs when you want to do something. She wonders about a legal search engine that focuses just on legal information put into context.


What does she think about the new web domains? We have no shortage of domain names; the shortage is space in people's heads. E.g. you could have a domain name and add 1,2,3,4 etc. She doesn't see the need for these new domains. She doesn't see the need for having to buy domains with all different extensions.


Re: access to your genome information. The issues are more around privacy than healthcare. If you want information private, don't put it online. It is your own information and you have the right to it. In terms of health, your family history and lifestyle are more important right now for predicting your health; however in the future knowing your genome will become more important. She also thinks checking your blood on a regular basis will provide a lot more information in the future--can show changes in your health. 


The only problem is that people get the data but don't change their behaviour; however, social networks can impact this. She compares it to frequent flyer cards, what people do to get free miles and get status. If you had a similar card that measures how many steps you take that gives you the perks for your health care - earning status. Sharing data with friends and competing or collaborating (such as through Facebook or iPhones) is going to be more motivating than seeing just your own data.


People are far less naive than 15-20 years ago as far as advertising goes; they may not understand the advertising industry, but they know what it means to get an online service for free and where the revenue comes in - you get the service for free because it is supported by ads, for example. She talked about http://www.patientslikeme.com/ where people with diseases can voluntarily share their data to pharma companies etc. to allow them to help fight the diseases. https://www.23andme.com/ allows people to share their genome information with their doctors. You can do it with a fake name if you don't want your insurance company to find you. You can also share genome information with friends.


Is Facebook uniquely American or uniquely Internet? When she sees people use online tools in other countries, she sees they may be more open but they are still the same people, e.g. Russians online are still Russian. The culture online will be affected by the users. However, the Internet is making people more open with the people they don't know. It is changing people all over the world; she sees the idea of the "global village" is "way overdrawn."


She is trained as a cosmonaut with 6 months training in Russia, which she says is generally not useful in the rest of her life. Most people in law like logic - when you search online you cannot currently get the whole context. People who do that will have an advantage of people who don't. People who think and value knowledge will be needed and have an edge. 


Google's "filter bubble" that provides you with information filtered for you - she sees value in going beyond your own filter bubble. She speaks metaphorically - people have the choice to go beyond their own filter bubble or they don't. We have more opportunity for regret; we have more opportunity to do exciting things.


She feels the US government has not done a good job of getting people excited about space travel, which has led to the cancelling of the space shuttle. She is on the NASA advisory council, gets to visit the research centers; however the people who need advice is Congress, not NASA. They cut back budget on needed programs; they keep fostering projects that are way over budget. It is all about to be privatized, and she expects it to blossom.


Space law will become interesting.

First up at PLL Summit is James Jones of Hildebrandt Baker Robbins helping us to understand trends in firms and where we are today.  Note: these are my notes from his talk; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

James Jones took us through a summary of recent history, from 2007 to the present. After the economic crisis, in 2010 we started to see some return to stability although not growth in law firms. Firms were starting to see the benefits of significant cuts in 2009 since you typically do not see benefits of cuts in the years they were made. In 2011 you would not see the same benefits as you could not make the same cuts, and expenses previously delayed would have to be paid. As well, firms that made too deep of cuts to associates would be hiring some back at increased cost.

In 2011, legal business will stabilize although not at the levels seen in years prior to the economic downturn in 2008.

As we see more competition in the market, firms are going to need to spend money and start investing resources to compete in the new market place. He sees this as a delicate balancing act. He predicts firms will see modest profit (in the single digit range). He sees 2 to 3 years of ongoing "slugging it out" before we start to see recovery by firms.  As well, some things will not come back to where they were.

Other factors:

Aside from the economy, there have been other driving factors for changes to U.S. law firms:

Availability of information

Notably, more competitive information has started becoming available. Jones theorizes law firms were not a proper market because market information was not available for clients; "law firms controlled the whole scene."  This started to change in the past three decades with publications such as The American Lawyer and LExpert. A lot of information started coming from the trade press. A lot of effort has now gone into rating firms such as with Chambers ratings. As well, the courts have had an effect; any time the bar associations have tried to put anti-competitive rules in place they have been struck down.

Drive toward customization

He referred to Richard Susskind's The End of Lawyers? - Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services.

Most lawyers see themselves as doing "bespoke" work; they see the other option as commoditized ( such as downloading your will).  However, most law is done somewhere in a range between the two:

• standardized - form file developed by individual lawyers
• systemized - form files developed between lawyers, rudimentary knowledge management systems
• packaged - starting to make some of the forms available to clients to fill out

1. How will these likely changes in law firm management models impact traditional library/information services?
2. How will this drive for efficiency and cost-effectiveness impact ways in which legal research is undertaken?
3. How might librarians/information specialists help in partnering with clients and in supporting "one-to-many" knowledge sharing models?
4. In an age of "disintermediation," how can information be rendered more useful and actionable?  (Trends we have seen in other industries, we will start to see the same thing happening in law...lawyers will no longer be gatekeepers of esoteric information)
5. What roles might librarians/information specialists play in the management of new firm "products" - e.g., various tools for on-line guidance and services?
6. What roles might librarians/information specialists play in the development of "just-in-time" training resources.
7. How might the growing importance of information management impact the roles that executive librarians play in their firms?

I am currently in Philadelphia at the American Association of Law Libraries 2011 conference. Today I am attending a full day hosted by the Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section, a day they call the PLL Summit. The theme this year is "Change As Action."  See the full agenda.

The room is chocked full of law firm library managers and directors. This is a very popular day.

I am planning to live blog as much of the day as I can, so hang onto your hats!

Update - here's the full list of blog posts:

• James Jones on Understanding Law Firm Trends
• Esther Dyson on Technology Changes in Business and Libraries
• Steven Lastres, Julie Bozzell and Toby Brown - Moving Beyond the Library Walls to Support Strategic Knowledge Management
• Joan Axelroth - What Law Firm Administrators Want Librarians to Know
• Greg Castanias - How librarians add value to their law firms
• David Curle on transformations in the legal publishing industry
• Joelle Coachman - Resistance is Futile: Integrating New Technology into Your Library
• Larry Guthrie and Doug Malerba on Developing Collaborative Communities

I have been involved in PodCamp Toronto since it started in 2007, and have been part of the organizing team since 2008. Check out the video below, and the description below it by Daniele Rossi.

I hope you will consider joining us over the weekend! More details at http://podcamptoronto.com.


Introducing PodCamp Toronto 2011! from PodCamp Toronto on Vimeo.
We are excited to be producing a video podcast for PodCamp Toronto this year! Here’s our first episode giving a brief overview of what the event is all about and to encourage you - yes YOU - to participate and sign up for a speaking session.

This episode is hosted by 4 members of the enthusiastic organizing committee, Mark Van Tol, Connie Crosby, John Leschinski and yours truly, Daniele Rossi. A special thanks to videographer Andrey Tochilin who did a fantastic job with this first episode!

You can subscribe to the PodCamp Toronto video podcast RSS feed (information on podcamptoronto.com) or watch right here on Vimeo.

If you shoot and upload videos (and other content) during PodCamp Toronto, please tag them with #pcto2011 and release under Creative Commons.

We hope to see you at PodCamp Toronto 2011!

I've been on Twitter pretty much forever. Well, since March 2007 anyway. Four years! So forgive me if I forget to share lessons about Twitter as I go along. To me it has just become a mainstream form of communication, to connect with people in my life and get to know others I haven't met yet. It is a fantastic resource for many aspects of my life and work. And yet, I get into a rut using the same tools and not exploring what is new.

I want to share a couple of interesting blog posts from today that nicely pull together some Twitter thinking and Twitter tools:

From Charlene Burke (@charleneburke), a fellow member of AIIP, she describes the tools she uses for Twitter searching in 12 Twitter Search Tools. I had only used a few of these, so I thought this list to be particularly valuable. She says this is culled from a list of 60 tools that she uses to search Twitter--wow! I appreciate that she has shared her favourites.