This Economist article opens with:
What do you say to a recent law-school graduate?
“A skinny double-shot latte to go, please.”
Ouch.
Though the best will gain at the expense of the rest throughout professional services, the legal profession seems likely to undergo the most profound structural changes. For the first time—long after IT and finance departments went through the same experience—the corporate legal departments that hire law firms are under great budgetary pressure, and are thus demanding much better value from them.
In a recent paper, “The Death of Big Law”, Larry Ribstein, a law professor at the University of Illinois, argued that after decades without changing, law firms are likely to have an outburst of experimentation with different business models: even the venerable and lucrative “billable hour” method of charging clients is in doubt. The experimentation may include more firms abandoning their traditional partnership model to go public, following in the footsteps of an Australian law firm, Slater & Gordon, which went public in 2007.
(0)List is here. For those who aren’t redditors, the IAMA, AMA/AMAA (I am a …, ask me (almost) anything) community is pretty darn fascinating. In there, people from absolutely all walks of life open themselves to questions from everyone. Some examples:
Some incredible information in there, from people who have been through some very socially taboo experiences to world-famous people.
Oh, although he’s commenter of the year, you’ll want to avoid bozarking’s posts if you have a weak stomach (he seems to have deleted his account, but his legacy remains).
Glee is being aired in Japan and this is the ad they had for it. It’s umm… very Japanese, and it features Akebono – the former yokozuna – who is seen here breaking out into a rendition of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’. (I highly recommend Glee, btw. It’s a fun show to watch.)
(0)Liveblogging for this post has now ended. Please start reading this post from the bottom.
02:23:09 am: Ok, I think we’re done for the night. I better sleep now…
02:22:27 am: Testing auto-line breaks.
Testing Twitter #hashtag auto-linking, and @username auto-linking.
02:21:19 am: Testing minor formatting fixes.
02:13:16am: Testing AJAX auto-refresh.
02:10:19am: Testing image uploading.
Intro: New feature, under testing. Couldn’t find a decent liveblogging plug-in for WordPress so I had to make my own.
(0)
stuloh Definitely the start of the rainy season in the Bay Area.
The Financial Times has a report on stray dogs in Moscow. It identifies an interesting link between the changing state of the Russian economy to how the strays developed. The article is also answers questions about stray dogs in general – where do they come from? Are they any different to pet dogs?
Neuronov says there are some 500 strays that live in the metro stations, especially during the colder months, but only about 20 have learned how to ride the trains. This happened gradually, first as a way to broaden their territory. Later, it became a way of life. “Why should they go by foot if they can move around by public transport?” he asks.
“They orient themselves in a number of ways,” Neuronov adds. “They figure out where they are by smell, by recognising the name of the station from the recorded announcer’s voice and by time intervals. If, for example, you come every Monday and feed a dog, that dog will know when it’s Monday and the hour to expect you, based on their sense of time intervals from their biological clocks.”
Pete tipped me off about Slate Magazine’s wonderful Explainer column. It’s got some great articles, including:
Plenty more there, so check it out. It reminds me of Patrick Smith’s Ask the Pilot column in Salon, except that it’s for everything.
Here are some sites that will be running liveblogs of Apple’s media event on January 27 (10am EST, 1pm PST, 6pm London):
Keep an eye on Apple’s stock price.
The iSlate (or whatever it will be called) announcement will be an expectation. I’m hoping they also announce a Macbook Pro refresh. I need an upgrade right about now.
I’m not so sure about the success of a tablet computer that costs as much as its rumored to cost ($600 or $1,000, depending on who you ask). If it sells well it will be because (a) it has the Apple aura, and (b) Apple has worked out a way to give it a kickass UI. Personally speaking, I’m not sure that there’s any situation where I would find a tablet useful. Between my iPhone and my MBP, the only other device I would need in another context is a netbook – for when I go traveling and I need to travel light (and do some basic photo and word processing), or for somewhere I wouldn’t feel comfortable whipping out a MBP. If the tablet can do what a netbook does, but better, then they may be onto something. Otherwise, it’s kind of a luxury device.
(0)
(0)
(0)I’ve been noticing that some people have written themselves a page of Communication Protocols. These detail media through which a person can be contacted and their preferred method of contact depending on the context of the communication. The best-known set of comms protocols is Tantek Çelik’s. Several people have derived inspiration and made up their own, such as Lisa Brewster, Eston Bond, Kevin Cheng and Carla Borsoi.
At first blush, the idea has some kind of aura of coolness behind it. We have so many channels of communication these days that it’s confusing (face-to-face, phone, post, e-mail, IM, social networking services, etc). As the number of channels increases, the convenience of being more available to be contacted is quickly offset by the time-consuming nature of trying to keep track of it all. With too many channels, communication actually becomes inefficient – the overheads of checking each different form of media pile up, and messages get lost or overlooked.
Çelik’s stated aim is to capture and collect “some notes on [his] experiences with human to human communication protocols and mediums from [his] perspective … what works well and what doesn’t work so well, and why, in the hopes of maybe helping to uncover and define more efficient habits for purely factual communication between humans.” This is all fine and good, but his page is actually just a list of ways you should contact him depending on what sort of information you want to send him, and his rationale behind it all.
Unfortunately, the page is almost 4,000 words long, which makes the process of just figuring out how to communicate with him highly inefficient. The irony is overwhelming. Let’s say I want to contact him to run a business proposal by him. Firstly, people get scared or turned off when they first seek that comms protocol page. The impression is that if you don’t use the right method, you’re going to annoy him and get snubbed. Not very approachable. Secondly, the summary is confusing. So if I want to write to him (why do Americans drop the preposition “to” after the word “write”?), and I see “personal site, wiki, data-type specific website…” I haven’t a clue what this means. And it doesn’t sound like any of these media are private. Thirdly, I’m not going to wade through the rest of the document. I’m going to get frustrated and either give up or fire off a message on a random assortment of those channels. It’s self-defeating.
I suppose the whole protocol imposes a barrier to entry – if you really want to contact him, you’ll figure it out. I’m sure he’s a busy man. But turning people away at the gate is not really increasing how good a communicator you are.
The protocol pages of others fare a bit better, but not by much. Carla Borsoi’s and Eston Bond’s pages are shorter, but they still contain a glut of text in prose. Are people really going to read through all of that just so they can have the privilege of making their life easier? Lisa Brewster’s page is more streamlined – it cleanly states that her preferred input methods are, in order, Twitter, Blog, Email. Kevin Cheng is even more concise.
But the problem with all of these communication protocols is that they dictate how people should contact them. It somehow smacks of self-importance. I think that being a good communicator is about you yourself being the good communicator – not imposing requirements on everyone that they be good communicators (which is essentially what those communication protocols do). Çelik admits that his protocols are personal in nature, geared to the way he lives, so it’s not like it’s a manifesto for how everyone should communicate with each other… which is what communication protocols really are (think: diplomatic protocols and computer communication protocols).
If you’re some type of counselor and you’re dealing with a patient or client, that person may be a terrible communicator. As someone trying to improve how they communicate, the onus is on the counselor to adapt to the other person, not to impose unfamiliar communication protocols on them. I found it stunning that Kevin Cheng wrote “Telephone: Use Rarely … it’s extremely interruptive and nearly always rude. Txt first.”
As a lawyer, we are our clients’ punching bags when it comes to communications. However a client wants to contact us – email, phone, even dropping by the office unannounced for a surprise 8.30am meeting – we make ourselves available. This can be extremely disruptive, but as long as they aren’t violating etiquette or some social norm (like that surprise morning meeting), it just means you have to adapt yourself accordingly. Things can still run smoothly. (Granted, it does get out of control sometimes.) If you’re in a meeting and you can’t take a phone call, then turn your phone off and let it go through to voicemail. But why should I have to ask permission to call you before I call you?
Of course, we do have communication protocols with our clients, but these are always mutually agreed upon – never unilaterally imposed without an opportunity for input from the other side.
A communication protocols page would be an excellent tool if it was used for getting your own thoughts down on paper – seeing what channels of communication you use, and figuring out how to re-organize the way you do things. As a set of rules for you to follow and not a set of rules for others to follow, they can be very useful instead of being self-indulgent.
One side observation – I don’t understand the fascination with Twitter on these protocol pages. Twitter sucks as a tool for directed communications – talking to someone, as opposed to announcing stuff into the ether. You can’t and shouldn’t really do anything important on Twitter (like telling your daughter that her grandmother died on the weekend), but it has its uses given the right context. Twitter’s great for instant factual reporting, but not analysis or discussion (that’s meaningful, at least).
So, how do I manage my communications?
My input channels include:
The key to managing all of these is to centralize the place where I deal with all of them. So, the number of input channels doesn’t matter as long as I can deal (ie, read and respond) with them all in the same place. This is how I centralize things:
1. Almost everything forwards to Gmail. My primary email account is my fissure.org address because I’ve had it for yonks, and it’s under my ownership so I can always control where it goes. However, it, and almost everything else, forwards to Gmail. Gmail labels emails by the address they came in from and acts as a central repository for all my emails. When I’m traveling, I only have to check one place for all my correspondence. My iPhone hooks into Gmail via IMAP, so it gets everything as well. Gmail’s search function also is brilliant for searching through the 5 years’ worth of mail stored in there.
I was doing some contracting work recently and the client asked me – I have several email addresses for you, which one do I use? I just answered, “Any of them, it won’t make a difference.” Makes things easy.
2. Outlook as primary mail client. I primarily use Outlook as my client for several reasons. Firstly, it’s great at workflow management. My inbox acts as my to-do list, and I try to keep it as empty as possible. I often work on replying to multiple emails at once (I rarely write long emails in one sitting), so each reply window is its own action item. The folder hierarchy is great for sorting mails. It has good calendar/task integration. I can modify the subject lines of emails to things that are more descriptive. Secondly, it’s an offline client, so it works in the increasingly rare occasions where I don’t have net connectivity (offline Gmail doesn’t quite cut it). Third, it acts as a local backup of all my mail. Unfortunately, Outlook can be pretty slow and its search function is atrocious.
3. Sent items are also captured everywhere. When I send emails from Outlook or my iPhone, Gmail captures these in its “Sent Items” folder too. When I send emails using Gmail, it sends a copy to Outlook. Everything is synced. You can even reply to Facebook messages via return email now.
4. No need to centralize voice and IMs. If I miss a phone call or IM, that’s fine because people get instant feedback about whether they got through to you and will try something else if they don’t get through. (Not always true with IMs – I’ve known Skype to mysteriously delay delivery of messages for days where the sender thought they got through – but nothing’s perfect.) E-mail and voicemail is different because people don’t normally acknowledge receipt and senders assume it’s got through. Therefore, it’s more important to keep a good handle on those channels of communication.
5. Residuals. Not everything fits with email. I use Google Reader for RSS feeds (which would otherwise clog up my mailbox), and a Twitter client for my desktop and iPhone (which I use rarely). I try and link everything up so I don’t have to duplicate posts (eg, how Hear Ye! pushes out tweets automatically).
Google Wave needs an email hook, like Facebook has (or even an IM hook). I don’t want to have to check another website on a regular basis – I want things pushed out to me. Then if I need to respond, I’ll hop onto the website to do it, if I can’t do it by email/IM.
In summary: My communication protocol
I haven’t eaten chocolate crackles for ages. There are two reasons for this. The first is that it’s been a long time since I’ve been 12 years old. The second is that one of the key ingredients doesn’t seem to exist in the States: Copha.
Like Violet Crumbles, Cherry Ripes, and Musk Sticks (my supplies of which have sadly all run out), it is one of those Australian things that I find myself missing. But the other day I happened across a Copha-substitute at Dittmer’s in Mountain View. That’s Dittmer’s Gourmet Meats & Wurst-Haus, which is better known for being a deli popular with ze local Germans. They sell Palmin, a German manufactured version of Copha which is essentially coconut fat (or Kokosfett, as the packaging says). It’s not cheap, but at least now I’ve managed to satisfy my cravings. Here’s the quick ‘n’ super-easy recipe:
Ingredients:
4 cups Rice Bubbles
1.5 cups icing sugar, sifted (powdered sugar, or confectioner’s sugar in America)
3 tablespoons cocoa
1 cup desiccated coconut (optional)
250g Copha (or Palmin)
1. Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.
2. Melt Copha over low heat. Let cool slightly.
3. Pour liquified Copha onto dry ingredients and mix well.
4. Spoon into paper patty cases.
5. Chill until set.
Makes 24.
(0)| 133 days spent in current location | |
| Previously | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| » Currently | San Francisco, CA (22/12/25 12:52am) |
| View full itinerary... | |
5:03pm 
