No option for Law Firm

I saw an interesting post on the Personal Branding Blog last week, written shortly after the Michael Phelps cannabis story. It referred to a “Google CV”.

What’s a Google CV? I’m not sure Dan Schawbel actually coined the term, but on his site it’s referred to as

“A Google CV is the Google search results page returned for a name search.”

There have been countless cases of the impact of the negative Google CV, people sacked for something said on facebook etc. But I suspect the more savvy HR departments and employers will start to use the online you more positively and begin to complement your paper CV with your Google CV.  So just as you take time to prepare your paper CV, maybe now is the time to take a look at your Google CV and make sure it’s one that you want to show a potential employee?

So here are 6 tips for maintaining your Google CV

1. Unless you’re quite confident that your non-work persona is perfect for the workplace AND that your social network of friends fulfil the same criteria, then create a dual online personality.
2. Get at least two email addresses (make sure they’re not both from your own domain!!), one for signing up the professional you to social sites and one for the personal you. Most social sites use the concept of a “friend searches” that use email addresses.
3. Make sure your online presence is up to date. And unlike your paper CV that is gathering dust, keep it up to date. A two year old Lined In profile with 1 connection may send a wrong impression.
4. Use Google itself and services like  123people to look at the online you, find all those sites you’d forgotten you’d signed up to and tidy up those you don’t want people to find!
5. Obvious one, for those personal social sites (facebook, bebo, myspace), lock them down to your friends. Here’s a great post on facebook privacy.
6. Get the professional you on LinkedIn or other similar social sites, set yourself up a blog related and/or contribute to online forums that relate to your field of expertise. Basically heighten the chance of that HR person finding the professional polished you on Google!

If you’ve any more suggestions why not post a comment?

The whole music and film industry against “the internet” is getting a little ridiculous. From the Pirate Bay trial (follow it on twitter) this week to the Davenport Lyons debacle (yes, debacle! a friend of mine got a letter and the one piece of evidence? An IP address, I mean come on!)

Through following Stephen Fry on twitter I come across this law being put into effect in New Zealand. From what I can tell a section of this law will allow “for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny”. Basically if you’re accused, your internet connection is taken down!

Find more details at http://creativefreedom.org.nz/

I don’t even think the whole copyright theft or illegal file sharing is the root issue. I think it’s the fact that the music industry and film industry know they were too late to the internet party and rather than use technology to innovate they got scared and decided to use what they know, the law.

There is so much in the news about the economic turmoil. Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Hammonds making redundancies, we’re questioning the very make up of our firms, Osborne Clarke outsourcing staff, the list goes on and on. Then there’s the commentators all over the media predicting the worst recession since 19xx and our own Prime Minister making a “slip” and claiming we’re in a world depression! What with the weather as well (Brits, we always give a mention to the weather!), you just want to bunker down and hope it goes away quickly, right?

So is now the time to ask whether we’re ready for the upturn?

I say “Yes I think we should” and I think others are starting to give the same answer. Seth Godin this week makes a case for getting some breathing room and being creative at times like this to “change the game”. Lee Bryant of headshift, again this week, puts forward a case for using the recession as an opportunity to introduce web 2.0 into Law Firms.

Now is a time for support departments in law firms to shine, a time to equip the firm for the upturn. While the lawyers work hard to keep the clients and win the business in a difficult market, the support staff can ensure things are ready for when the firm begins to grow again. Because irrespective of all the comment on whether things will get worse or when things will end, one thing is for certain, it will end and there will be an upturn in the economy!

What can we do?

• For years in the “good times” we’ve wished for a period of consolidation to shore up the foundations. A chance to get those IT systems “sorted”, a chance to really look at costs and get even better deals with suppliers, exploit the the systems we have rather than add more systems, a chance to exploit Knowledge Management and show the value it can really deliver (I’m not a KM practitioner, but read Karen and Toby’s articles), etc
• It’s a time to look at those destructive technologies. How can we get these into organisations, ready to be exploited when the upturn appears. And not be chasing the pack trying to implement these systems when they are the norm and our firms are growing. Remember some of the new technologies now will be the next equivalent of corporate email (and email will probably be dead!).
• Time to be wary and look after your remaining staff. Growth will bring churn into your departments, there will be opportunities galore for people as other firms grow and need to move beyond the skeleton staff they’ve had to operate with under current times. Your best people will be out the door first if they haven’t been “looked after”.
• Maybe now it’s time to use any downsizing to re-organise and refresh your teams, mould them for what’s to come. Not for what is now!

But basically get out of the bunker, be creative and get ready! The upturn is coming!

Update: I wrote this Wednesday evening and scheduled it to post on the blog today. Every day though I realise getting back in the bunker is so easy to do, today I find a relative is facing redundancy and all those questions and worry creep back! I still stand by the post though, the upturn will come and for those of use fortunate to keep our jobs the time to look ahead and get creative is now!

Seven years ago we had a training day for the IT department, we were set a task to set a task to prepare a very short presentation on “The Law Firm of the Future”.

The reason I remember this was thanks to an article I saw re-tweeted on Twitter last week from the Financial Post in Canada. The article was about changes in law around the globe that effectively enables law firms to launch an IPO.

This reminded me of a slide we put together in that 2002 presentation:

Looking at the rest of the slides some of our other points weren’t bad either.

• Fixed price contracts for legal work, leading to lawyers working on projects rather than cases.
• Full project management expertise for the legal project manager who has a team of lawyers, secretaries, IT personnel etc for each project.

These two bullets may be specific, but I think we were trying to point out that the traditional bill by the hour partnership model would not last. Quite in line with current “in vogue” thinking during the today’s economic climate (for example, see Optima Legal’s warning on small firms and the Adam Smith, Esq. blog report from the London City firms)

Not bad thinking for a bunch of IT geeks!

Back to the IPO point in the Financial Post though. I wonder how long it will be before we see the first IPO of a larger firm? Given the current economic turbulence, probably not soon. But thinking about the proceeds an IPO would probably realise for partners of a top 200 firm, surely it can’t be that long before someone tries!

Following on from my post yesterday I caught this post from Thoughtful Legal Management. Overall I think David’s and my sentiments are similar, we are both looking at how IT can help efficiency or productivity.

I can’t help pull up on the point within the post though “ Their IT technicians, I suspect, have set up their system in a matter that does not fully meet the business needs of the law firm and the staff and lawyers working there.”

This is where we (the collective we, IT and the lawyers) are going wrong, the lawyers think IT need to see the world through the same lens as them and IT wish that the level of IT knowledge in the lawyers were higher. For IT to work we need both sides to understand each other.

Much as the media would like to portray the geek in the basement advocating it should be “turned off and on again” we’re not all like that. I like to think that although I’m in IT I do know a bit about how lawyers work just like when I worked in the utility industry I took time to understand the requirements of that business. But I know I’ve still plenty to learn, but I see it as my responsibility to do so.

Back to David’s post though, I’d like to see “Microsoft to focus on productivity from the ground-up; by paying more attention to the smaller business user rather than the consumer market” too and in my opinion they should start to learn the mantra “less is more”!