From time-to-time I pull together a reading list of business books and share with my peers. Here's the last list from May 2008.I've just started playing around, and will be sending the links over to my attorneys to get their impressions, but, well, WOW!! You can search by case, by topic, by legal issue.What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.Features of Google Scholar
- Search diverse sources from one convenient place
- Find papers, abstracts and citations
- Locate the complete paper through your library or on the web
- Learn about key papers in any area of research
I know that Google Scholar is still in Beta, but ... WOW!! Legal Research has entered a whole new millennium.
I was watching Akeelah and the Bee with my daughter last weekend when Laurence Fishbourne's Dr. Larabee challenged Akeelah's grammar when she used the word "dissing" (only words found in the dictionary were acceptable during their lessons).unfriend - verb - To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as FacebookWord of the Year Finalists (who knew there were finalists, lol):
Technology
- hashtag - a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets
- intexticated - distracted because texting on a cellphone while driving a vehicle
- netbook - a small, very portable laptop computer with limited memory
- paywall - a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers
- sexting - the sending of sexually explicit texts and pictures by cellphone
It was only yesterday that I was blogging on how law firms should consider lowering billing rates as part of their marketing mix. And this morning I see that Reed Smith has cut billing rates by 20 percent. Yes, they are cutting associate salaries, but they are also cutting the billable hour requirements to allow for, gasp, more training:Reed Smith Global Managing Partner Gregory B. Jordan said the moves were in response to a very clear message from clients and the marketplace.
"As part of the reset that's going on in the business world, clients are expecting their law firms to drive their costs down," Jordan said.
One of the biggest areas of friction was starting salaries for entry-level associates, he said. And it's really the rates that most directly affect cost, so the firm decided to take a swing at both, he said.
As part of the reduction in salary and billing rates, first-year associates will also see a reduction in their billable hour targets from 1,900 to 1,700 hours. That was done in part, Jordan said, to ensure they could take advantage of the new training programs that go along with the competency-based advancement model.
I say, kudos to Reed Smith. You're listening to your clients, adjusting your business model, and you are doing so in a transparent manner.
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