rethink(ip)

Glass cages follow-up: The fungible billing unit

Posted by J Matthew Buchanan at October 31, 2005 12:08 PM

Doug had a great post this weekend about associate life at big law firms.  He commented on the BigLaw Associate blog and some of the ponderings over there about associates leaving big law firms.

BLA notes “…it looks to me like BigLaw is in a deepening crisis. … I keep hearing the same story: associate morale at a critical low with associates leaving at an alarming rate.”

I don’t think the so-called crisis is any worse than before.  Associate morale is always low…and they’re always leaving at an “alarming” rate.

After reading BLA’s observation, I was reminded of some of the best career advice I have ever been given.  The conversation went like this:

“Dude, never, ever forget, you’re just an FBU…”

an FBU? (my innocent reply and inquiry)

“Yeah, a Fungible Billing Unit.”

The advice came from a law school professor who, in a previous life, was a BigLaw partner.  He was giving me advice as a former BigLaw partner, not so much as a professor.  He knew.  He had been under the tent, so to speak.  (As an aside, the “dude” part of the quote is real)

I didn’t appreciate it at the time.  Now I do.  Here’s the take I have on that advice now:

Associates are billing units

We all know that. 

But, don’t forget the F!

Associates are also fungible.

(Google fungible here; wikipedia entry here)

Yep, that’s right, big firms view BLA’s as interchangeable.  Did you ever wonder why they admit 20, 30, even 50 new associates every year?  It’s because they’re building the base of the triangle behind the thinning-out that is occurring at higher levels…

If the thinning-out doesn’t occur, the model fails.

They expect you to leave.  They want you to leave.  They need you to leave.

 

Blackballed - You Are the Brand

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at October 30, 2005 12:37 PM

I guess I am in a branding mood these days.

I just ran across a similar post by John Windsor over at Corante's BrandShift blog.

John rants about a recent airplane experience where an executive sitting next to him didn't exactly leave a good impression of the executive's company.  It's a funny read for anyone who travels on business fairly often, with the "punchline" being:

The only thing I could think about was my loss of respect for the Fortune 500 Company she worked for. The company had just lost a potential customer because of one executive’s unrelated actions.

John's post reminded me of a recent experience I had that was eerily similar.  It is so similar, it makes you wonder how many times such "employee brands" actively work against the "corporate brand".

So, onto my experience:  I was traveling out east to a business meeting a day early and so I was traveling "lawyer incognito" -- i.e. I was in jeans and a sportshirt.  

It turned out the person next to me was a young associate lawyer with a BigLaw firm -- her briefcase was plastered with the firm logo, her legal pads were festooned with the firm logo, and she was writing with a firm logo'd pen.  It was almost like she was a pro athlete with a sponsorship deal.

She was also sick -- coughing, sneezing and generally moaning about her predicament.  I thought I would be nice (Okie friendliness) and offer her a couple of tissues I had in my Booq bag (remember, I was traveling incognito) as well as a couple of cough drops.   

She wasn't all that impressed. 

In fact, she shrieked at me that she would never accept anything "of the kind I was offering" from someone like me.  Everyone sitting around us heard her, the flight attendants heard her and, more importantly, the general counsel of a Fortune 100 company heard her.

So, she suffered through the flight coughing and sneezing on everyone -- and no, she didn't cover her mouth when she coughed. 

After getting into Baltimore, the general counsel walked up to me and commented about her rude behavior.  I remarked that "life is too short" to worry about it but that I would be mortified to have her as an employee in my firm.    The GC asked me if I was a lawyer and laughed when I mentioned that I was and that I was the hiring partner for my firm.  We ended up trading business cards and it may turn out that we can do business with one another.  If not, at least I met an interesting person to have dinner with when I am out east.

As we were walking through the airport, the GC remarked to me that he would be sure to "blackball" the young lawyer's firm from ever doing any work for him.  I asked him why, afterall the young lawyer was sick, probably stressed and the firm shouldn't be held to blame for her poor attitude. 

The GC's response: "everything she does reflects on the abilities, culture and ethos of her firm.  You don't engage the marketing materials, you engage the people.  If she is the type of person the firm thinks is 'top notch,' the firm doesn't have a clue."

Wow.  His comments will make me reevaluate whether or not to buy logo'd merchandise for our firm in the future - but, more importantly, they will be in the forefront of my brain when making hiring decisions in the future. 

Our people are our "brand" - I know what branding message I want to be sending, and it isn't what we saw on that flight.  Are your employees/associates/team members getting you blackballed?

Glass Cages

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at October 29, 2005 02:54 PM

 

Maybe it is just my city. Or maybe it is just me, finally noticing something that has been happening all along. But it looks to me like BigLaw is in a deepening crisis. When I speak to other BigLaw associates from around town I keep hearing the same story: associate morale at a critical low with associates leaving at an alarming rate. Not alarming for me, of course: I personally don't care. But, it should be alarming to partners because associates are leaving when they are finally getting good at their jobs, and when the firms' investment in them should start to pay off.

When will the general public and members of the legal profession look at individuals in BigLaw the same way they look at those smokers in the glass cages at the airport?

 

You know that look -- sadness, bemusement and pity.

Rethink[THIS!] law firm brands

A brand is nothing more than an expectation that customers have of something. So if you're continuously elevating the customer's expectation and delivering on that expectation with an experience such that customers are predisposed to choose your brand at a price which allows you to make a profit, you are growing your brand. How can this be done without growing the "relationship" between the customer and that something?

Help Al!

What a difference a day makes. My wife and I were in San Francisco the weekend that Katrina began to approach New Orleans. We were taking a vacation between the end of my federal clerkship and the start of a new job in September. As we were watching the news on Sunday before the hurricane hit, I thought that Monica and I could just stay on the west coast where I could find some temporary work if New Orleans suffered a direct hit. Apart from my job, we had nothing that required us to be in New Orleans and, if the storm hit, I had good reason to think that the firm wouldn't need me back anytime soon.

After sleeping surprisingly well on Sunday night, I called home to check in early Monday morning. The phone was answered by my tearful mother who told me that my cousin and her boys had been in a wreck the night before, and that my cousin had been killed. A drunk driver evacuating from New Orleans ran a stoplight and broadsided her van. The boys were in the hospital. I immediately went numb, because I knew that my cousin wanted Monica and I to take care of the boys (11 and 7) if anything ever happened to her. Monica and I decided to cut our trip short and immediately headed home.

Fast forward 2 months, we now have custody of the two boys--great kids--and we are living with my parents until we can return to New Orleans. To make matters somewhat more difficult, I lost my job and I have had to start my own practice in a market now saturated with attorneys that are also looking for work.

Despite my efforts of of the last month, I have not been able to locate any regular work. I am now looking for contracting work that can be conducted here in Gonzales, Louisiana. My ability to travel is limited, as my new family is adjusting to school schedules and bed times. I am sharing office space and have access to all the necessary tools to work remotely. Accordingly, I would love to work with a lawyer/firm or two that can provide me steady contract work for the next 2 to 6 months, preferably about 20 to 30 hours per week, to supplement my small case load.

I am a capable researcher and writer and have clerked for a year in federal district court. I also have an engineering degree and four years experience as an environmental consultant. If I might be able to help you, please email me at alrobert (at) gmail.com or give me a call at 504-615-5352. My resume, writing samples, and references are all available upon request.

Can you help Al out? 

I can personally vouch for Al's keen intellect and client-driven outlook toward legal services -- more importantly, Al's spirit and compassion would be of benefit to any project you may have.

The rethinker's firm and the second battlefront: A follow-up to Bill Meade's guest post

Posted by J Matthew Buchanan at October 27, 2005 09:44 AM

We told you Bill Meade “gets it.”

Bill is a fascinating individual who is truly passionate about the development and management of intellectual property.  We consider ourselves lucky to have met him and are looking forward to building on our relationship.

Bill provided us with the Proactive Invention Management article last week — I bet I’ve read it ten times.  His description of proactive invention management as “a war with two fronts” is dead on.  Unfortunately, many organizations don’t recognize the need to deal with both fronts, or, if they do recognize the need, they choose to fight the war only along the first front — the one between the inventors and the IP department.  This choice might be made for any of several reasons, not the least of which is budgetary in nature.

The mantra of these single-front organizations:  Increase disclosures!  Increase disclosures!  Increase disclosures!

Battling that front without addressing the second front — the one of IP capacity — is trouble in the wings.  This is particularly true if you begin to actually win the battle on the first front.  All of a sudden, the organization finds itself with “full access to the genius of the organization,” (Bill’s wonderful language) only to learn that it can’t efficiently process the genius….and valuable intellectual property is lost.

The answer?  As Bill states so aptly – you need to rethink IP business processes and IP business model management.

Now you can see why we’ve grown so fond of Bill.  Not only does he “get it,” but he’s courageous enough to “rethink it.”  Yep, he’s a rethinker, and we love rethinkers.

What can we add to Bill’s article (and theory)?  Simply this — outside patent counsel can help an organization fight the war on the second front.

No, I’m not talking about opening the billables floodgate and adding a massive amount of capacity to the IP department.  That would simply be throwing money at the problem.

I’m talking about help with the rethinking part.

We’ll elaborate more on this in future posts.  For now, consider the following:

• A rethinker’s firm will help you cast a critical eye on your processes…and is courageous enough to return the favor and continually reevaluate its own processes.
• A rethinker’s firm will help you implement changes to your processes…and will follow-through on proposed changes to its processes.
• A rethinker’s firm will offer ideas on how to increase the efficiency of the relationship.
• A rethinker’s firm will help you build specialization…and will spend some of its own money in the process.
• A rethinker’s firm will offer technology solutions that actually improve your processes, not just the latest, must-have, keeping-up-with-the-Jones & Co.– technology.

In short, a rethinker’s firm will help you with the rethinking.

Look for more on this topic in the future, and more from Bill as well.

 

 

Proactive Invention Management, a Guest Post by Bill Meade, Ph.D.

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at October 26, 2005 10:28 AM

Proactive Invention Management
A Rethink(IP) Guest Post by Bill Meade, Ph.D.

The biggest problem managing invention is bias.  Not overt "I'm going to crush your skull because I hate you" bias, but instead bias that is made up of the compounding of ordinary little negative assumptions that crop up in IP management.  These are the cultural assumptions, sociological assumptions, and psychological assumptions that educated, smart, busy people agree about without realizing any agreements have been made.  I'm going to call the kind of bias that chills invention "invisibias."  Malcolm Gladwell in his book BLINK (page 81) discusses what I would call cultural invisibias in relation to race.  He describes a web site at Harvard where you can go to test your bias for or against blacks.  Gladwell describes taking the test dozens of times.  He describes his incredulity at being measured as slightly biased against blacks.  Gladwell is half black.

While I was the IP portfolio manager for HP's LaserJet group I discovered my own invisibias through an odd chain of events.  The chain began by giving invention workshops.  When clients asked, I would run invention workshops for them.  Every client asked for something different.  Some wanted short workshops with few people, others wanted medium or long workshops with many people.  Over a 6 month period I ran a variety of workshop formats that made up a sort of stratified random sample across who attended, how long the workshops were, and how focused the workshops were. 

The next link in my chain of invisibias discovery, was statistical regression.  That is, after about 15 workshops I realized that I had enough data to do some regression analysis to see what factors make high quality invention disclosures more likely.  I regressed filed invention disclosures against number of attendees, and length of workshop.  This produced an explained variation of about 18%.  So, the more people at a workshop, the more disclosures.  The longer the workshop the more disclosures.  But, number of people and length of workshop only explained 1/5 of the filed invention disclosures produced.  

This  told me that I was missing an important variable.  I thought about this and realized that my role as invention workshop moderator was probably an important variable.  Like most production process workers I reasoned, invention workshop moderators must go over a learning curve.  Learning curves have a well understood shape.  This allowed me to look at the 15 workshops in my data, and then estimate where on the learning curve I was for each workshop.  I quantified my guestimate and put these data into the regression. 

The explained variation of this equation jumped for 18% to over 90%.  This told me that I had learned, and that my learning explained a huge amount of the filed disclosures.  So, I leaned back in my chair and asked myself what I had learned over the course of these 15 workshops.  Two words popped into my head "Shut" and "up."

Shut up?  Yes.  You see, unconsciously over the first 15 workshops, I had cut down my presentation.  In workshop #1 I used a lot of formal information like patent trend graphs and problem framing exercises to help people be creative.  These formal techniques put attendees to sleep.   As the workshops progressed I dropped the formal slides and created new slides with answers to best questions employees were asking me.  By the time workshop #15 came around, I had churned the presentation 100%.  My presenting time was down, disclosing time was up, and the quantity of enthusiasm delivered to inventors was way up.  So, addressing the felt needs of the audience was a third link in the chain of discovering invisibias. 

In East Texas during the oil rush of the 1930s, some of the oil was only 6 inches down.  A management professor friend once told me this.  After running invention workshops where high quality invention disclosures began to pour in like an oil gusher, I remembered the East Texas example.  Think about making money from oil 6" down.   What is most important?

The most important problems in proactive oil field management are not the conventional problems of finding oil.  The most important problem is to not drown in oil.  Problem: How are we going to develop this field so that we can get the oil out without wasting it?  Problem: How do we develop the field without painting ourselves into a corner?  Problem: Where are the weak points in our infrastructure in handling unlimited quantities of oil down-stream?  

Likewise when you reduce invention invisibias, you don't have to worry about the conventional problem of finding high-quality invention disclosures.  The problem immediately changes.  For example, in IP departments without flexibility to reorganize and hire, the problem becomes maximizing value captured with a fixed department capacity to process IP.  Problem: What is the annual capacity in patents, trade secrets, and defensive publications of our current IP office?  Problem: How do we optimize our office capacity when we are getting 4x our capacity in good quality disclosures per year?  Problem: How do we raise the bar on quality?  Problem: Why do we have to raise invention quality?  Problem: How do we explain raising the quality bar to inventors?  Problem: What do we do about the applications we started last year that are not as high in quality as the inventions we are reviewing today?

Proactive invention management is a war with 2 fronts.  First, there is a front between inventors and the IP department.  The war on this front is waged to unblock invention and give the IP department full access to the genius of the organization.  The second front is indicated with the internal IP problems that crop up if your dream of capturing all the best ideas of your client base comes true.  You immediately run out of IP capacity.  You need to rethink IP business processes, IP business model management, and IP department specialization.  For the rest of this post, I'm going to ignore rethinking IP management in the IP department.  If there is interest, I'll write another post on this.  For now, back to invention management …

After I discovered invisibias I tried to reduce it by making 3 broad positive assumptions to try to cut out the compounding of many little negative assumptions that were costing invention disclosures. 

1. Big Assumption: We don't know who the most prolific inventors should be. 

It dawned on me that in making assumptions about who my best inventors were, I was excluding the creativity and ideas of the majority of my inventor population.  To reduce the invisibias I introduce into the process, I needed to include as many inventors as possible.  Operationally this meant I needed to stop trying to focus on high-payoff inventors and switch to inviting all employees to invent equally. 

This open door policy was a worry at first, but turned out not to be a big problem.  My patent attorneys were delighted to see the inventions they had been hypothesizing they were missing in prior times.  IP systems are great at killing invention disclosures down-stream.  The biggest problem to IP department capacity comes from invention disclosures that are too good to kill. 

2. Big Assumption: We don't know when an inventor will come up with an idea.
 
My invisibias on this at first, was that inventors invent in the process of releasing a product.  So, initially I thought the best time to capture inventions would be just after product release.  To minimize the bias I introduced by assuming a clump of inventing after product release, it seemed that I needed to assume that ideas were evenly spread across time. 

Operationally this led me to conduct invention workshops at timed intervals and to host weekly "office hours" for inventors where I made a double batch of chocolate chip cookies and scheduled a conference room to help organize isolated inventors into a community of kindred minds.

3. Big Assumption: We don't know what field an inventor will invent in. 

IP systems love to assume that inventors invent in the field of art in which they work.  But, in the information age just because an engineer works on a gear design team, it is not safe to assume that the engineer's inventions will be about gears.  The IP community in the US has for the past 5 years be inundated with ideas submitted by people who work in a technical field of art but who are into Linux, digital photography, or other hobbies.  To operationally reduce invisibias assuming a clumping of inventions in one field of art, I assumed that inventions would be distributed across all fields of art. 

On Open Mindedness

I'd like to close this post with the importance of open mindedness in proactive invention management.  Open mindedness is critical to success because of how people evolved / were created / are socialized.  Whatever his/her beliefs are, a proactive IP manager will realize that inventors are hard-wired to look into their eyes and see what is assumed about the quality of their ideas. 

Rigid open mindedness is the best big positive assumption I've found to police the compounding of little negative assumptions that hinder proactive IP management.  Policing assumptions is critical because little negative assumptions are the essence of bias.  After you get past the who invents, the what gets invented, and the when invented, of managing invisibias, you can still screw up.  You cannot over-do policing of invisibias.  There is always more bias to be removed. 

For example, when an inventor looks into your eyes while turning in an invention disclosure.  If s/he sees you roll your eyes.  If s/he hears you laugh.  If s/he detects any favoritism in how you treat disclosures, the inventor will instantly toggle from being an idealist ("I can help the company with my ideas!") to being a cynic ("Good ideas are pearls before the swine of management in this company.").  

A strongly held belief that all ideas are worth evaluating will allow you to look back into your inventor's eyes and sincerely thank them for turning in a completed disclosure regardless of novelty, non-obviousness to one skilled in the art, or utility.  Think about it, the purpose of an invention disclosure is to capture the minimum information sufficient to allow the company to evaluate investing in an idea.  If you can be proactive and force yourself to be open minded, you can conquer invisibias and have more, and better, intellectual property to manage. 

************

The author, Bill Meade, Ph.D., is the president of Basic IP Management, Inc.

Rethinking invention, innovation and incentives

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at October 25, 2005 05:09 PM

Following up on Matt's post earlier today...it is not often that I come across someone, who (like my fellow rethink'rs) "gets it," but I had the pleasure of meeting one such person a couple months ago.

I was at a CLE on Grokster, where the speaker asked whether any of the attendees in the room had actually used BitTorrent before.  Sheepishly raising my hand, I noticed that there was only one other person in the room who raised his hand....a fact that astonished me.  After the CLE I approached this other BitTorrent user (who I didn't recognize as an IP attorney) and introduced myself.  Bill Meade was his name, former HP employee who had worked extensively on setting up HP's inventor reward programs as well as conducting countless inventor workshops.  The more we talked, the more I realized that he too was an IP rethinker...although from an engineering/inventor side.  We instantly hit it off.

Turns out that after he left HP he set up a consulting business (BasicIP) where he does a wide range of IP development services, including:  creating corporate IP strategies, compiling databases for patent portfolio management, developing rewards programs for inventors (thereby encouraging them to invent more), competitive intelligence, trade secret management, invention disclosure collection, etc., etc., etc.  Consider them IP SeaBees.  He might just be able to help some of YOUR clients generate more invention disclosures and otherwise better capture and protect their IP. 

Matt mentioned:  "Later tonight we’ll describe a project that Bill implemented at HP that met with huge success."  He was referring to an email discussion we had with Bill where he was talking about his involvement with HP's "Invent" program.  Turns out that Bill built HP's automatic invention incentive payment system, a program that resulted in a tripling of inventing within a month, an amazing accomplishment. 

Like I said, Bill comes at rethinking from a completely different angle, bringing his own experiences and opinions to the mix.  So impressed was I with what he was saying that I offered him a soapbox...this blog.  Tomorrow, you'll see his first (of hopefully many) guest posts. 

Until then...

Upcoming guest post - Bill Meade from Basic IP Management

We are pleased to announce another first for Rethink(IP).  Tomorrow, for the first time, we will have a guest author on the blog.

Several weeks ago, Nipper met someone who thinks like we do.  “He gets it” is how Steve described his meeting with Bill Meade, President of Basic IP Management, to Doug and Me on a late night Skype session after his lunch with Bill in Boise.

Bill does get it.  So we got him.

Prior to founding Basic IP Management, Bill served as the laser printer patent portfolio manager at HP and played a major role in that company’s famous “Invent” campaign.  He’s a big thinker with big ideas on the invention process and patent life cycle.

We’re happy to have Bill involved with the blog and hope that you enjoy his post.  Please join us in welcoming Bill to Rethink(IP).

Later tonight we’ll describe a project that Bill implemented at HP that met with huge success.  Tomorrow, we’ll post Bill’s guest article, which will focus on proactive invention management.

Whoa.  Invention management?  Proactive?  Yep.  I told you he gets it.

Stay tuned.

Tech tip - city mind maps

Posted by J Matthew Buchanan at October 19, 2005 11:30 PM

If you haven’t tried MindManager yet, you’re really missing something.  I’ve been hooked on this program for the last couple years.  It has changed the way I organize information…and the way I think about information.  Everything has a place.

I have found all kinds of uses for the program in my practice — including mapping of competitive intelligence information.  But, that’s another post altogether.  I thought I’d share a simple tip that you can put in practice on your next business trip — city maps, er, city mind maps, that is.

Here’s the idea.  When I travel, I gather all sorts of information that is related to a particular city — not by doing anything special, but just through the regular activities everyone does on a business trip…I meet new people, learn about local culture, local industry, etc.  This information comes to me from various sources, including the activities I participate in while I am in the city, discussions I have, news I hear on the hotel television, etc.

Before MindManager, all of that information was lost because I relied solely on my memory to recall it at some point in the future, or my ability to find scraps of paper on which I scribbled cryptic notes. 

Now, I create a city mind map to organize all of the information.  I use an “anytown USA” template map I created (see the screen shot below) and throw every bit of information I can think of onto the map…usually on the plane trip home.  I link relevant Outlook contact records into the map, add tidbits of information about local “legend and lore,” add flight details to and fro, and even add a brief description of each of my visits.

Why on earth would I do this?  What value does it have?

It pays off during subsequent trips to the city.  Prior to making those trips, usually on the plane ride there, I review the map.  Everything comes right back to me.  I might remember a local tidbit that helps with small talk during a meeting or be reminded of a favorite restaurant.  And, because the Outlook contacts are linked, the map provides a great way to review contact records for people that are connected to that city (much easier than sorting/searching Outlook in an attempt to find those contact records).

And here’s a bonus tip — as soon as I create a new city mind map, I assign an ActiveWords keyword to it using the airport code.  The result…no matter where I am headed, all I have to do is enter an airport code, hit the space bar twice, and up pops an organized map of relevant information.

It’s a beautiful thing.

 

Pass It On - A nice occurrence

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at October 15, 2005 03:56 PM

Things we hate about the uspto.gov website - #2

Posted by J Matthew Buchanan at October 14, 2005 02:12 PM

Let the uspto.gov bashing continue. 

One of my biggest pet peeves about the site is the linkfarm structure of several key pages.  Look at the main “Patents” page, for example:

 

 

 

 

Is there a better example of a web1.0 linkfarm out there?  I think not.  How is this helpful to anyone?  I use the site all the time and still struggle to find what I’m looking for.

For those of you not familiar with the site, please visit the farm here, so as to see it in all of its glory.

Controlling RSS Overload...Animal House Style

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at October 13, 2005 10:45 PM

Did you know that RSS is a disease? If you've ever had RSS overload-itis, you know what I'm talking about.

Blogging is a bit like (as I've mentioned before) ostrich farming...and ostrich farmers like to promote the eating of more ostrich...leading us to often say "you should read this new blog," "this blog is a must read," "blog, w00t w00t blog," etc.

If you followed all of the "must read" advice you received, soon you'd be overwhelmed with hundreds and hundreds of blogs in your aggregator, reminding me of my grandmother and owls (she collected owls...plates, pictures, figurines, etc...she must have ened up with thousands and thousands). While it makes for an interesting conversation piece, "who" has time for it?

One of the first visible symptoms of RSS overload-itis is an urge to delete blog posts en masse just to clear them. Been there, done that.

However, I've found a solution Dean Wormer would be proud of. Probation, double secret probation.

Most aggregators allow you to create "groups" for your blogs. I have groups for "blawgs," "bored," "technology," etc. (see a picture below). The most important group of all is called "Probation." Into the Probation group goes every new blog I add to my aggregator. EVERY one. Consider it a quarantine tank for your RSS aquarium. Once a month, go through your Probation group and cull the herd, promoting some to the big leagues, while giving others the boot.

Shoot...when a blog starts getting lame, I demote it to the Probation group, a first step on the way out of my aggregator.

So...do yourself a favor and put new blogs on probation.

Got Blawg, Want Blawg?

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at October 12, 2005 05:49 PM

No, this one is not for sale, but the guys at LexThink (Matt, Dennis) have put together a conference on Blawging 101.  Entitled "BlawgThink 2005," if you are interested in blogging, you really should (1) send Matt/Dennis a request for an invite and (2) put November 11-12 on your calendar.  Here is what they both previously said about it:

They have even talked Matt, Doug and myself into being guest speakers on collaborating with other bloggers/group blogging.

Speakers include:  Matt Buchanan, Ben Cowgill, Dennis Crouch, Fred Faulkner, Peter Flashner, Brandy Karl, Cathy Kirkman, Rick Klau, Jim McGee, Steve Nipper, Kevin O’Keefe, Evan Schaeffer, Doug Sorocco, Ernie Svenson, Jack Vinson, and J. Craig Williams.

Finally...check out Matt Homann's recent post "Why is BlawgThink Important."

See you there...

UPDATE: Mr. Homann reminds me that we (as speakers) have a number of invites to give out. Thus, let us OR Matt Homann know if you are interested in going.

Friday Night Lights: Rethinking as a means for survival in the face of sea change

My family and friends know one thing about me – football is life.  I love it.  I love everything about it.  Can’t get enough of it.

I’ve been passionately following my beloved Ohio State Buckeyes since Woody threw that fateful punch.  I have only missed a single game in the last 20 years – I had a wedding to attend….my own.  My wife graciously agreed to schedule our nuptials on a weekend of a relatively easy game…and my groomsmen, all avid Buckeyes, agreed to provide me with updates throughout the day as they deemed appropriate.  My wife has since told me that she was happy the Buckeyes didn’t score during the actual service because she wasn’t convinced that my friends would have viewed that as an inappropriate time to pass on such great news.

It’s not just college football for me, though.  It’s any football.  Heck, if a few kids are lining up in a sandlot on the side of the road getting ready to knock the snot out of each other as one goes deep and another hurls the pigskin, I’ll do a double take from inside the car as I drive past…and analyze the play for several minutes afterwards.  My wife really loves this about me.

Lately, I’ve been able to reconnect with high school football.  My son and I are having fun watching the local high school team (tough season so far, but they did manage to beat the daylights out of their cross-river rival).

This has tuned me into a rethinking phenomenon that I hadn’t taken note of before — local sports, sportscasts, and sportscasters.

Have you watched the local sportscast lately?  Especially the Friday late night edition, in the fall?

I can’t speak for all areas of the country, but here in Ohio, where football is king, the Friday night sportscast is all about the Friday night lights.  The newscast has even been extended to show the feature in all its glory (some go an extra 15 minutes…sorry Jay and Dave).  Each station has highlights from an unbelievable number of games.  The shows have really invigorated the local sports scene.  Schools invite the sportscasters (and their cameras) to pep rallies and cheerleaders do special cheers to promote the features (“the Perrysburg Yellow Jackets looooove Friday Night Frenzy….goooooooo Jackets…).  Yep — the feature from each network even has it’s own slogan (in the Toledo area, we have  “Big Board Friday,” the “Powers Pack,” and, of course, “Friday Night Frenzy” (affectionately known as “the Frenzy”)).

This wasn’t the case when I was growing up in these parts.  I played high school football here in Ohio…and, believe me, they never showed highlights from our games or any others.

Something has changed.

But what?

I thought about this last Friday evening as I watched the Frenzy.  Then it hit me.

ESPN.

No one (in my generation, anyways) gets their sports news from the local guy anymore.  If you want news on any of the major pro or college sports, tune in to SportsCenter.  Duh-da-dunt.  Duh-da-dunt. (yep, my wife loves that, too).

Here’s my thoughts on what happened.

At some point in the last 10 years or so, local sportscasters had probably grown concerned.  ESPN was taking over their craft in large measure.  What did the future hold?  How would they survive in the face of such a beheamoth, especially considering the unbelievable success of the innovative network?

Somewhere, someone did some major rethinking and formulated a plan.  From an outsider’s perspective, the plan appears to have been the following:

Focus on the core.  Focus on what the local sportscasters can do better than anyone….local sports.  And don’t just do it….do it to the nines.  ESPN-it.  Take it to a whole new level.

They have.  And it worked.

These rethinking local sportscasters should be respected by all.  ESPN was (and still is) a major threat to their craft, and maybe even their livelihood.  But they stepped up.  They courageously grabbed the bull and stared it in the eyes while they rethought everything.

In my book, that’s genius.

And everyone has benefited from it.  The local guys have developed a beautiful niche that is truly theirs.  Local sports fans are getting local sports news like never before.  And local athletes are getting a little exposure.  In my eyes, these are all good things.

Go Bucks.

Lawyers as Leaders of Change in Customer Service by Professionals

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at October 11, 2005 10:50 PM

Kudos to fellow rethinker Matt Buchanan who has an article in this month's issue of Law Practice Today entitled "Lawyers as Leaders of Change in Customer Service by Professionals."

Things We Hate About the USPTO.GOV Website, #1

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at October 10, 2005 01:29 PM

We've joked a number of times internally about things we hate about the USPTO's website and how we should compile a list of grievances.  Today I stumbled onto one of the things I "hate" and it spurred me to start the list...

Grievance #1:  Why in the world is the "LOGOUT" button above the search form boxes on the trademark search page (picture below).  I don't know how many times I have loaded that page in a hurry and clicked that button by mistake like it was a "NEXT" or "ENTER" button.  I think it is akin to putting a "delete all" button right next to a "save" button.  ARGH! 

What drives me nuts is that the Logout button is the first thing you see when you come to the page...just in case you changed your mind before you do the search and want to logout.

Feel free to send your own grievances over and we'll add them to the list.

Learning from Doctors--How to Not Be Sued

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at October 6, 2005 12:30 AM

Upon the recommendation of a friend, I recently picked up a copy of the audiobook (via Audible.com) for Malcolm Gladwell's book entitled "Blink."  [Amazon.com Link]

Blink is about (in my own words) gut impressions...reading people, reading situations...going with your intuition.  It is a very fascinating read (listen).  Via Amazon you can even read an excerpt that gives you a good sense of what the book is about.  Anyway...

Section five of the book is entitled "Listening to Doctors."

[Replace the word doctor with the word lawyer in the rest of this post (yes...it is painful to do that, but trust me).] 

In that section, Gladwell talks about various studies on the incidences of malpractice among doctors.  Do you know what studies show?  They show (paraphrasing Gladwell) that the risk of being sued for malpractice has little to do with the number of mistakes you make...no, in fact there is another element. 

That element is...how the patients were treated on a personal level by their doctor.  Did they have a relationship with their doctor?  Was he snotty with them?  Negative?  Condescending?

One study Gladwell mentions provides some interesting pointers to all of us lawyers...doctors who spent even a few minutes longer in consultations with patients, who gave orienting comments explaining the process, who were active listeners and who had a sense of humor/tried to be funny were much much much less likely to be sued for malpractice even though they made just as many mistakes as other doctors (who WERE sued).

Gladwell points out that it is all about your tone of voice with your clients, are you dominant or concerned?  That one aspect (tone of voice) makes all the difference in the world.

So...how are you treating your clients these days? How long does it take to you return a client's phone call? When was the last time you sat down with a client to actually explain your opinion letter to them?

Update: I noticed that Ernie Svenson mentioned Blink a few months ago in a post entitled "Strange book recommendation for lawyers."