Tag Archives: blog

UK big law partner caught blogging

Let me guess you clicked on that link for the same reason you might click on a sports link of “Ryan Giggs signs for Liverpool” or a politics link of “Gordon Brown resigns”, it seems so unlikely that you have to find out more.

Blogging is old hat, the term was first coined back in 1997. However this doesn’t mean they are obsolete by any means, in that time they have grown to the position where they are starting to really challenge television and newspapers when it comes to breaking and shaping news stories.

In the US blogs have been used widely in business for a number of years and with great effectiveness in politics. In the UK there are some great blogs out there and bloggers (especially political bloggers) appear regularly on the 24 hour news channels now. However I would argue that blogs really haven’t hit the mainstream in business and certainly not in UK law.

There are some UK legal bloggers out there, but your average big law partner isn’t blogging. It’s probably a similar argument that a certain MP for Salford used “I’m not against new media. YouTube if you want to. But it’s no substitute for knocking on doors or setting up a stall in the town centre”, this may be true but why not use both?

So to all the lawyers, what’s stopping you?

And if your IT dept hasn’t given you the software or shown you how here are some resources:-

What is a blog? Watch this video “Blogs in Plain English”

How do I start? Start by setting up a blog on WordPress.com or Blogger.com

That’s pretty much all you need.

So go on give it a try I’m sure your clients would appreciate hearing from what you have to say, you never know it may also lead to some business coming your way!

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We all need to blog and twitter to get news of Workshare 5.2 SR3

If anyone wants an example of why you should blog or use twitter, read on!

Since starting this blog back in January I have built up better relationships with legal IT suppliers than I have ever managed with any “account manager”. Through blogging and through twitter I’ve managed to discuss their products directly with the people inside those companies who are involved with developing them.

An example today relates to comments I’ve made over the past month in regard to Workshares products, first about their recent 5.2 SR2 release and then about a possible protect workflow problem here.I’ve been contacted a couple of times by Workshare through this blog and through twitter (@jesbreslaw), but today I got some good news relating to two specific points I raised in the posts indicated above.

  1. My comment on 5.2 SR2 – “The PDF Combine functionality is only available from the local file system!!”
  2. My comment on how Protect and Autonomy iManage Send & File together could annoy lawyers.

Here’s what Kevin Docherty, Product Manager had to say:

I just wanted to clarify a quick point that you mention… re “The PDF Combine functionality is only available from the local file system!!”- I suspect that you are using the first Beta as the second Beta fully supports DMS interaction.

This is great news as I see this peice of functionality being really useful for things like Bible creation etc. Then on the second point Kevin continues:

yes, we know that this may provide a challenge to the basic Protect workflow. We are obtaining a pre-release version of Autonomy very soon and will be looking to get it set up ASAP. We’re specifically targeting Protect Workflow in the SR 3 version of Professional (Oct/Nov) so I will hopefully have some feedback for you around this area soon – and how we will be looking to cope with the multiple Autonomy pop-ups.

I’ve no idea how Workshare found the blog, but regardless I’m impressed that they took time to read and respond to their customers. More companies should follow suit and get their product development and sales staff on twitter and other “web 2.0” technologies to get dialogue going with people who use their applications.

If you want dates for the Workshare releases I got told the following:

  • SR2 Beta refresh– April 17th
  • SR2 General Availability –  May/June
  • SR3 estimated release – Oct/Nov
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