Lawyers have been using the internet in several new and interesting ways over the last year.
Here is my personal selection of some of the most exciting developments.
Blogs, News Feeds, Podcasts and Mobile Computing
A blog is a website designed for frequently added news items which can be set up using
various templates and where the detailed work of running a website is done for the blogger by
the blogging service provider. This enables interesting (or indeed, uninteresting) people to give
us their views without delay.
A news feed is the way that you (the end user) can identify the blogs you wish to see and have
the latest entries automatically brought to your computer. The process is called RSS (Remote
Site Syndication) and you download special software to set this up. The blogger has to provide
the information in a particular way to enable this to happen and not all blogs offer this facility.
And not all people who read blogs want this information “popping up” on their screen when they
are in the middle of doing something else.
A podcast is an audio programme in MP3 format, designed to be “broadcast” to mobile devices
such as the i-pod (whence the name), various PDA’s and smart phones. The programmes can
also be downloaded to any modern PC, which provides a method of accessing podcasts for
those for whom downloading music and then listening whilst working out at the gym is a skill
too far! For real devotees, the process can be automated with RSS so you are notified of all
new podcasts and can download them very easily for later consumption. Podcasts have
suddenly leapt into the public consciousness because of Ricky Gervais’ current series of
podcasts for the Guardian.
There are quite a few legal blogs and Justin Patten, of the Human Law Blog, writes about
blogging for lawyers in the current issue.
An earlier article (but an excellent tutorial) on
RSS feeds by Nick Holmes was in the May/June 2004 issue.
There is also an article by Tony Fisher of Fisher Jones Greenwood on
podcasting - the first UK law firm to offer this facility for clients.
e-conveyancing, HIPs, HIPAG, Electronic Signatures, IT and Pisces
This is the topic which will dominate the thinking of many High Street firms over the next year.
We started the year with
e-conveyancing - the story so far
by Alastair Rhodes in the January/February issue, considered
Lawyers and Electronic Signatures by Stephen Mason in
the July/August issue, moved to
Ten things a firm should be doing now for e-conveyancing
by Tim Platel in the November/December issue and asked
PISCES - what is it? answered by
Osman Ismail, also in the November/December issue.
In the current issue, Rob Hailstone of HIPAG describes how
Home Information Packs (HIPs) are going to work and how HIPAG is setting up a trial
to produce HIPs online for its member firms.
Note - the links to articles in past issues above are given with relative addressing.
If these do not work for you, here are the absolute web addresses of past articles:
RSS feeds
e-conveyancing - the story so far
Lawyers and Electronic Signatures
Ten things a firm should be doing now for e-conveyancing
PISCES - what is it?.
Portals and SharePoint in Particular
Most commentators think that Microsoft’s SharePoint is the must-have application for all law
firms needing to bring together different departments (with different knowledge bases), multiple
offices (possibly in different countries) and multifaceted access for clients (with different needs
and access rights). SharePoint brings together a document management system, a website
(content) management system and a knowledge management system - and it makes the coffee
too. At the moment it is probably beyond the reach of most smaller firms but this will change
over the next year or two. There is an article on
SharePoint - what is it and what can it do for you by
Alastair Morrison.
Volunteers please! I need someone to write about how they have set up a Sharepoint portal,
with all the practical problems they may have encountered and (if possible) the solutions.
Descriptions of how people have installed other portals would be welcome too.
For Barristers in Particular
The majority of chambers now have good web sites with easily accessible (and cross
referenced) information on the barristers, the special work areas and quite often cases and
other legal resources as well. This is an enormous improvement over a couple of years ago.
However, the improved web sites are only the tip of the iceberg. Chambers and clerking
services are developing which are based on the ability to be anywhere. The article in the
September/October issue on
Chambers without Walls by Neil Goodman-Smith described the
operation of the first and largest internet chambers, BarristerWeb, and an article in the
March/April 2006 issue will describe a very significant online clerking service, ClerksRoom.
Even for “normal” chambers, the internet is making new methods of working possible as
described by Martin Poulter, in
How Barristers Use the Internet, July/August 2005.
Quite a few individual barristers are also using the internet to raise their profile and deliver new
services, and Daniel Barnett describes how he is offering
lectures based on a combination of
the “ordinary” telephone with web technology. Gary Webber described the
Benefits of maintaining a website
(he maintains the Property Law site) in the July/August issue. Several
barristers offer free newsletters on particular topics and I hope to cover these more fully in a
future issue.
Absolute web addresses:
Chambers without Walls
How Barristers Use the Internet
Benefits of maintaining a website.
Will Microsoft Rule the World?
Well yes, probably it will. However, there are a few brave lawyers who continue to experiment
with alternatives. In the November/December, Robert Newey looked at
Alternatives to Windows,
possibly in combination with PC’s
in a normal office. This theme is continued in the present issue with an article on
Why I use the Apple Mac by Stephen Mason and
Why I use Firefox (as an alternative to Internet Exporer) by Andrew Barrett.
BAILII is the Biggest and Best
The wonderful BAILII continues to prosper and grow - see Joe Ury's article on
The Open Law Project, which is aiming to make historical materials (not just current ones) free for
everyone to use. But do not rely on the fairies to keep this project in existence! See my appeal
at the end of that article.
Libraries are Continuing to Change
The inexorable shift from printed legal resources to online services continues, but not without
demanding major changes from legal libraries, librarians and their users. Jane
Clavin of Dublin firm A&L Goodbody considers
how electronic resources affect a library and in particular
at how the physical space of the library is changing
as well as its contents. She considers the impact of online resources on supervision, training and
(most of all) the library budget.
Providing Legal Services on the Web
There are very few high street firms actually selling legal services from their sites and quite a
few of the firms which started to do this three or four years ago have now quietly dropped these
facilities from their web sites.
Why is this? It is actually very hard to make money from selling services online and it requires
major web skills which few smaller firms can muster. Even if they succeed, they are reaching
the lowest cost part of the market with only modest financial returns and they risk irritating their
"normal" clients ("Why are you selling these contracts for £200 on the web when you have just
charged me £500?").
Larger firms do not generally try to sell services directly over the web but find ways, instead, of
delivering services or information over the web, tailored to clients' requirements, which then
forms part of a larger client service, charged in a more traditional manner.
Nick Holmes writes on
Online Legal Services - what the big firms are doing. He considers client
extranets, deal rooms, premium advice and know-how and document automation, with
examples of each. Perhaps this is the path which smaller firms will take in future - particularly
if improved software (like SharePoint) make the provision of services such as extranets, shared
workspace (dealrooms) and access to particular knowledge bases, available much more easily.
On the same general theme, Alex Heshmaty looks at the concept of Virtual Lawyers and asks
How far can it go - and how far should it go?
Using the Web for Marketing
It used to be the case that the search engines were impartial but no longer. Firms and
chambers are vying with each other to maximise their position in the search engines, and
paying for a placement is one option.
This is a topic we cover on a regular basis. Nicola Webb wrote
How to get into the Search Engines
for the March April issue and David Rose wrote
Web Marketing for Chambers for the
November/December issue. Nick Holmes will be writing a major article on Search Engine
Optimisation for the March/April issue. This will be a substantial article, too long to be printed
in the newsletter, but it will be provided as a downloadable (and free) supplement for newsletter
subscribers.
Absolute web addresses:
How to get into the Search Engines
Web Marketing for Chambers
Broadband Gets Faster
Broadband speeds are getting faster and cheaper, which is extremely helpful for the many
applications now using the internet as a basis for the transfer of information. "Ordinary" ADSL
can now reach 8Mb but hot on its heels is ADSL2 with speeds up to 12MB and ADSL2+ with
speeds up to 24Mb. First to offer ADSL2+ is Lawyers Online (see advert).
I hope to be able to provide some reports of actual users of these new speeds soon.
VoIP - Voice Over Internet Protocol
We haven’t covered this at all yet but it is certainly going to be a very hot topic over the next
year or two.
Would anyone volunteer to write about this?
And of course, the first legal e-book - Whither the Legal Web? by Nick Holmes and me
Essential reading for anyone who wants to consider the “Where are we going?” as well as the
“Where are we now?” - and you can earn CPD too.
More details here.
And a Happy New Year to you all!
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