The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, the new book from Between Lawyers' own Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell is now now available for preorder at the ABA Web Store. There's a 15% discount if you preorder now.

The "official" launch of the book will be at the ABA TECHSHOW 2008, where Tom and Dennis will be speaking on the topic of collaboration tools, and will be happy to sign your copy of the book.

The book reflects the idea of collaboration that underlies the Between Lawyers blog.

Here's the book description from the ABA Web Store:

This first-of-its-kind guide for the legal profession shows you how to use standard technology you already have and the latest "Web 2.0" resources and other tech tools, like Google Docs, Microsoft Office and SharePoint, and Adobe Acrobat, to work more effectively on projects with colleagues, clients, co-counsel and even opposing counsel. In The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, well-known legal technology authorities Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell provide a wealth of information useful to lawyers who are just beginning to try these tools, as well as tips and techniques for those lawyers with intermediate and advanced collaboration experience.

Collaboration technologies and tools are the most important current developments in legal technology and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Explained with minimal technical jargon, the book focuses on highly practical and usable ideas that you can put to work straight away.

With practical advice on how to use specific tools and concrete action steps to take, lawyers and law firms at all levels will benefit from working together better.

You'll learn:

+ The basics of collaboration and collaboration tools

+ How to select and implement tools and strategies

+ The best ways to collaborate on documents, cases, transactions, and projects

+ How to collaborate inside and outside the office

+ How to collaborate using tools you already have or own

Technology now makes it easier than ever to work with others -- this is the first guide dedicated to the special requirements of the legal world with the practical steps it takes to do it right.

I encourage you to preorder now and take advantage of the 15% discount or to consider ordering the book here if you are reading this at a later date.

I'm planning to write an article about what I'm calling "MacGyver" technology tricks. I'm assuming that you are familiar with the MacGyver concept (or you can wikipedia it).

As an example, consider using a digital camera or cameraphone as a document scanner in a pinch (or sending a document as a fax to a nearby fax machine when you aren't able to print it any other way).

I'm looking for some good examples and wanted to get a little help from the readers of this blog.

Remember, the idea is not something like using the top of your laptop as a cutting board, but ways to use software and hardware in unexpected, but logical and useful ways, in a pinch when you don't have the normal tools available. Another example: using a video iPod to run your PowerPoint presentation when your laptop won't work with the projector. I'm also looking for something that the average lawyer would be able to do with gadgets, hardware and software (or Internet apps) readily at hand for most lawyers.

However, I'm not looking for examples like this one, because it requires that you have a specific device available.

You get the idea.

Let me know your best ideas by leaving a comment to this post or joining the Between Lawyers Facebook Group and leaving your recommendations as a response to the discussion thread there.

On an unrelated note, be sure to take a look at a great roundtable article on legal podcasts and lawyer podcasting in the latest issue of the ABA's Law Practice Today webzine, with Denis Howell, Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy among the participants.

Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy have posted a new episode of their podcast, The Kennedy-Mighell Report (RSS feed here).

In this episode, Dennis and Tom discuss the use (or potential use) of Facebook by lawyers, giving some potential benefits and risks, practical tips, and observations about their experiments in using Facebook. They also talk about how they use the Google Reader for RSS feeds and Google Docs and Spreadsheets for simple collaborations. They also talk about the other podcasts they listen to and how they listen to them.

It's a good introduction for lawyers and other legal professionals to these topics.

You'll find the podcast episode here and there's an archive of earlier podcasts.

It's also a good time to remind you to check out Denise Howell's podcast - This Week in Law - on which you'll find some of the authors of the Between Lawyers blog appearing from time to time.

And, for Facebook members, we invite you to join the Between Lawyers Facebook group.

TechnoLawyer's new free eBook, BlawgWorld 2007, features a selected post from 77 different law-related blogs. It's a good introduction to the current state of blogging for everyone, no matter what your familiarity, or lack of familiarity, with blawgs. You'll even find a choice post from the Between Lawyers blog.

The untold story of this blog is that the Between Lawyers authors spend more time gabbing with each other via email than posting to the blog. During one of our recent quite extended email conversations, we decided experiment with and open up those discussions in a Facebook group so that friends/readers can also play along.

Without further adieu, you can now check out the Between Lawyers Facebook group.

Denise Howell raises some questions for bloggers and others who embed YouTube and other videos into their blog posts. Even better, she offers some answers to the questions in her post "Embedding a Headache."

Shelley Powers does a great job of summing up some of the key issues and unanswered questions about the Creative Commons licenses in her post "Virgin Bites Creative Commons on the Butt." Highly recommended.

We discussed the Creative Commons licenses (and some of the issues Shelley raises) a few years ago when we started the Between Lawyers blog as an effort to show our readers how a group of lawyers would think about applying a Creative Commons license. Those posts are collected here. I also talked about Creative Commons license issues in the recent Episode 26 of the WordPress Podcast.

Members of the Between Lawyers blog can be heard in a number of recent podcasts.

Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy have posted the latest episode #5 of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, in which they cover the recent ABA TECHSHOW, legal technology trends for 2007, current developments in electronic discovery, and their upcoming book on collaboration tools for lawyers.

Denise Howell has posted the latest episode of This Week in Law, which includes fellow regular Ernie Svenson. An earlier episode feature Between Lawyers' Marty Schwimmer.

Technorati tags: legal technology podcast electronic discovery between lawyers

Between Lawyers' own Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell are pleased to announce that they will be writing a book on collaboration tools that will be published in early 2008 by the American Bar Association. The book is tentatively titled: "Collaboration Tools for Lawyers: Essential Ways to Work Together with Colleagues, Clients and Even Opposing Counsel."

Nearly every lawyer finds that colleagues, co-counsel, clients and even opposing counsel use the Internet and technology to collaborate and work together on documents, projects and cases. In the simplest scenario, lawyers and clients use the "track changes" feature in Microsoft Word to work together on a document. Technology today lets lawyers take collaboration to the next level. Many legal technology tools now include collaborative elements.

At the same time, lawyers increasingly use the Internet in many ways to work together. From document sharing to videoconferencing, there are more tools than most lawyers can imagine for working together, online.

Two key trends are at play here. First, for years lawyers have understood the clear benefits of collaboration and working together as a routine matter. Second, the availability of simple, inexpensive (even free) collaboration technology has created an environment where working together makes sense to nearly every lawyer in nearly every firm. The push forward on both trends is likely to continue.

Two other important factors also come into play. First, business clients are routinely using technology to collaborate and will expect their lawyers to follow. Therefore, collaboration tools illustrate a classic example of a client-driven technology. Second, events in the world from increased travel costs to possible pandemics make it even more likely that these tools will be adopted by necessity.

To the extent lawyers have experimented with these tools, they may have the nagging feeling that they are simply touching the tip of the iceberg of what might be available to them and how they might use these tools to their benefit. We believe that they are right to feel that way, because it is undoubtedly true.

The book will provide intensely practical advice for lawyers and law firms wanting to take better advantage of these tools and the benefits they bring. It will take a look at how to use these tools wells, focus on both categories of tools and specific individual tools, and provide concrete action steps and techniques so that even the least tech-savvy lawyer can catch up with the early adopters and successful innovators.

Collaboration Tools for Lawyers: Essential New Ways to Work Together with Colleagues, Clients and Even Opposing Counsel, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell (expected publication date: early 2008)

Legal marketing guru Burkey Belser takes a few stabs at the recent New York and Florida efforts to restrict legal advertising and communications in his post "Rotten to the Core." I agree with his assessment that the law of unintended consequences will apply many times over with these rules and the risks of arbitrary enforcement are quite high.

The money quote:

One wonders if federal regulation of legal marketing will ever overtake the state-by-state model currently saddling the profession. So many firms have so many offices across so many state lines that the old regulatory model hardly makes sense anymore.

There's good practical advice in the post and a helpful chart you can download.

Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy have published an introduction to wikis and a primer on how they might be used in the legal profession. The article is called "Wikis for the Legal Profession," and it appears in the the February 2007 issue of Law Practice Today.

Ken Adams explores the practical potential of using wikis for contract drafting in a piece called "What Are Wikis?" in the New York Law Journal today. Excellent article.

I agree with Ken's conclusion, but I think that the value of wikis will not come through their use as a drafting tool, per se, but as a way to collect the "knowledge" about how contracts are drafted, when you use certain clauses and why, and the like.

Well, the new New York advertising rules for lawyers are out. They are quite extensive. Fortunately, there are some analytical pieces and summaries out already ready.

As a good starting point, check out Allison Shields' extensive summary here. Larry Bodine does not mince words in his reaction. Carolyn Elefant at Law.com summarizes a few posts. John Caher takes a gentle approach in the New York Law Journal..

I'm sure we'll see more commentary later, but there's a lot to read and digest.

My first quick read gave my the odd feeling that I was reading a new Miranda marketing warning for legal marketing ("You have the right to remain silent. Anything resembling marketing that you or your law firm may do may be treated as an ethical violation."), but I'll reserve judgment until I can read the rules more closely.

Two thoughts: First, I think that my characterization of the proposed rules as "micromanaging" is even more true of the final rules. Second, I believe that this type of state regulation, which undoubtedly will be picked up by other states, all but begs the FTC to step into lawyer regulation.

I understand that the next item on the New York agenda is a lawyer dress code. ;-) Hmm, maybe that's not so far-fetched. Consider this quote from the Caher article:

Finally, the new rules ban advertising "techniques to obtain attention that demonstrate a clear and intentional lack of relevance to the selection of counsel, including the portrayal of lawyers exhibiting characteristics clearly unrelated to legal competence." That provision was added partially in response to advertisements run by a Long Island, N.Y., attorney who permitted herself to be filmed in provocative poses to tout her real estate practice. Those ads generated complaints from Long Island practitioners who noted that the attorney's cleavage had nothing to do with her legal abilities, officials said.

The one element of these new rules I really like is the use of the all-but-forgotten word "moniker." I assume that the rules on use of monikers may bring the end to Morrison Foerster use of the term of endearment "MoFo." Heh.

I'm quite curious to see what the response of New York lawyers will be to these rules.

It was recorded a while back, but I wanted to recommend the excellent discussion on legal technology and outsourcing you will find on the podcast featuring Ron Friedmann and Ross Kodner that's part of the Coast to Coast podcast series. It's called "Legal Technology: A Doubled-edged Sword?"

Ron and Ross are on top of their games and you'll get some fascinating insights into the ways law firms are using outsourcing and insourcing. We talk about Law 2.0 on this blog on a regular basis and this podcast will give you some practical ideas about what Law 2.0 might mean and what it might look like.

Bar regulators in New York and many other states will be on the phone scheduling meetings to stamp out some of the new and innovative marketing ideas in Ari Kaplan's new article, "Lawyers Must Get Creative About Marketing."

There are some great ideas and insights in the article. I personally would be afraid to try them in today's increasingly "Lawyers Must NOT Get Creative ABout Markeing" environment. The biggest danger: since the suggested methods are reasonable and recommended by marketing experts outside the legal profession, they might work.

As we continue to keep our eyes on the proposed regs in New York and elsewhere and the ongoing efforts of regulators to cause the FTC to regulate the regulators, it might be useful to think about Between Lawyers' own Denise Howell's quote in this article:

Blogging reaches a broader, more distributed audience, and provides a search-friendly, enduring archive of knowledge-oriented breadcrumbs.

There's nothing more fun than when a couple of us here at the Between Lawyers blog actually get the chance to get together in person.

Tom Mighell and I (Dennis Kennedy) just returned home from a presentation on electronic discovery (From Basics to Beyond) we did in Washington, DC for a law department.

It reminded me to mention the obvious. All of us at Between Lawyers are available, individually and in combinations, to speak on a variety of topics for your events, groups or organizations. We'll be posting more information about that soon, but, if interested, be sure to contact us to see if there are ways we might work together to present topics of interest.

Between Lawyers' own Denise Howell has debuted her newest solo blogging effort - Lawgarithms - on ZDNet.

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It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of Open Source software and, as a result, the Open Source licenses.

There's a lot to think about in the land of Open Source these days, much discussion, and much discussiion to come. And there is much rethinking.

This is a discussion that readers of this blog should be following and, where it makes sense, contributing to.

First, consider carefully the discussion opened by Tim O'Reilly's recent post "Open Source Licenses Are Obsolete," which, not surprisingly, has generated some controversy and discussion. However, O'Reilly raises several key points, one of which has been discussed for a while - how do software license models, including Open Source licenses, work in a world that is moving toward "software as a service" models?

At the same time, work on a major revision of the General Public license continues. The current draft of version 3 of the GPL is here. John Paczkowski's humorously titled post is a good intro to the GPL revision, covering Linus Torvald's objections and giving some good links.

I've written about the Open Source licenses in what I hope is a practical and understandable way (links here).

The Open Source licenses, Open Source software and the Open Source philosophy and community may well be the most significant and influential area of technology today. It's a subject that you must educate yourself about.

Anyone else flummoxed by the proposed new advertising rules for lawyers in New York? Take a close look at this Law.com article and the text of the proposed amendments to the rules and let me know what you think.

As I read the rules, EVERY public communication is an advertisement and any communication that isn't an advertisement is probably a solicitation. That should cover almost every communication between lawyers and the public.

In either case, a shocking number of draconian and micro-managing rules will apply.

I'll let others consider the free speech and other aspects of these rules, but I'd love to see some marketing experts analyze what the actual marketing effectiveness of any communication that satisifes these rules will have. My tentative conclusion is that if an "advertisement" or "solicitation" might in even a limited way be effective, it will violate the rules. If it has even been recommended as an effective form of marketing, it will probably cause you trouble.

This seems to be another in a series of recent regulatory efforts by state bar regulators that seem woefully out of touch with the Internet era.

Should you care? Well, consider this quote from the rules: "A lawyer not admitted in this jurisdiction is also subject to the disciplinary authority of this state if the lawyer provides or solicits any legal services in this state." Take a quick look at the definition of "computer-accessed communication" in the amended rules and consider how a website or blog located anywhere is likely to be treated by the plain language of these proposed rules.

Once again, we see a concern about a limited problem being turned into wide-ranging regulations that will have enormous unintended consequences and seem designed primarily to protect established, successful practices from new competition.

Are we seeing the last gasp of an attempt to apply 19th century concepts to a 21st century world, or will lawyers be the only group able to roll back the changes the Internet has brought to the rest of the world? I'm betting on the Internet, but I'm quite curious about what others think about these proposed rules and others like them. It might be a good discussion topic for a summer Friday.

In an interesting bit of irony, PodTech.Net takes the occasion of the move of leading corporate blogger Robert Scoble to its ranks to unleash a breathless story (and accompanying podcast) about the dangers of corporate blogging. In the article and podcast, Allen Weiner, a media analyst and Research Vice President with Gartner, Inc. says he thinks companies need policies that govern in-house blogging, or, "all hell breaks loose." Yikes!

Weiner adds that “Unsanctioned corporate blogging is absolutely a tough call. And it happens in just about every organization.” Hmmm . . . "just about every organization," he says. I'd love to see the stats backing that assertion. In fairness, I'll note that I pulled the quotes from the overview article and suggest that people listen to the podcast of the interview of Weiner to get a fuller picture of his views.

Let me simply say that in "almost every organization" there probably is a corporate communication policy or Internet use policy already in place that comfortably covers blogging and bloggers. As we've mentioned many times on this blog, considering policies in a vacuum, or rushing in with standardized and ill-conceived "blogging policies" will be the recipe for making all hell break loose. Any reasonable approach to these issues involves a three-sided approach, reasonable policy, consistent enforcement and excellent training. Skimp on any of the three and you will have problems. Focus only on the "blogging policy" issue (especially without integrating the other aspects of corporate communications) and all hell may break loose.

We've covered the issue of "blogging policies" repeatedly and, we believe, reasonably on the Between Lawyers blog. It's sad to see that the hype and selling of corporate blogging policies continues unabated. For a very reasonable approach to this issue, see Denise's recent post "Blog in Peace." She doesn't talk about hell breaking loose even once in the post.

It'll be interested in seeing see if and how PodTech.Net implements Weiner's approach with Scoble, won't it? We'd certainly hate to see all hell break loose at PodTech.Net because of Scoble's blogging. I'm just noting the irony of the timing of this article and Scoble's move.

What might be quite useful to the blogging community at large would be for PodTech.Net and Scoble to share the "blogging policy" that will apply to Scoble so it might be analyzed and critiqued and possibly used as a model for companies taking progressive approaches to employee bloggers. Just a thought and an example of what we call open source lawyering might look like.

There is a growing discussion of the relevance of our current court system and the ways lawyers want to use it in the Internet era. More accurately, there is a concern about whether the system continues to be workable.

Ernie points to a recent (and some might call mind-boggling) ruling of a federal judge that requires the opposing attorneys in a case to settle their latest dispute with a game of "rock, paper, scissors."

Ernie does a nice job of explaining the basis point of our court system and concludes, succinctly, that:

Hell, when a federal judge has to tell the attorneys to use a child's game to resolve their disputes then you know the system is completely broken.

I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, but I completely agree with Ernie. This isn't Law 2.0.

Where do we go from here? What client is going to be happy with this kind of ruling and the behavior that leads to it? Will lawyers chuckle at this and similar stories as they reap the unintended consequences of breaking the court system? If lawyers make a joke of these matters, why should we expect others to take us or the court system seriously? Consider Ernie's comments carefully.

More on the underlying story here.

The phrase "the interstices of ivory tower and pop culture" that Denise quoted in the