Books

John Grisham and Legal Influence

Bill Gratsch — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:28:41 GMT

In light of John Grisham's new book, The Appeal, The Wall Street Journal Law Blog posed an interesting question this week in the post John Grisham & Judicial Elections:

[John Grisham] is clearly trying to influence the legal system. What impact has he had on it through his books? For better, for worse?

According to the WSJ Law Blog's post, the question arises from the storylines of Grisham's books and Grisham's other writing and commentary. To wit,

The story [The Appeal] plays out with a chemical company found guilty of dumping toxic waste and liable for the deaths of scores of people in a fictional Mississippi town. The owner of the company tries to get out of paying a $41 million jury verdict by spending millions to help elect a Mississippi Supreme Court justice to influence the appeal.

“There’s a lot of truth in this story,” Grisham writes in an author’s note. “As long as private money is allowed in judicial elections we will see competing interests fight for seats on the bench.” This morning on the Today show, Grisham told Matt Lauer, “Electing judges is a bad idea.” His solution? “You start with a nonpartisan commission, you screen the judges, you get good people, you get them appointed. If they serve a number of years, let them run maybe for an election with no private money involved in the election. Keep the private money out. But you’ve got to clean it up.”

A series of comments have been left by readers on WSJ Law Blog's site. If so inclined, you can add your own two cents as well.

Post: John Grisham & Judicial Elections

Book: The Appeal

Randall's Craig's Personal Balance Sheet

Bill Gratsch — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:28:23 GMT

Forty years, 10,000 days, 80,000 hours. Measure it any way you like, but this is about the length of your career. With so much of your life spent working, why not spend a bit of time planning your career in an organized, strategic, manner? - Are you a bit fuzzy on your career goals? - Is your work-life balance not under control? - Have you achieved some career success and are considering change - but to what? - Are you uncomfortable discussing career issues with your manager? This book addresses these questions, and provides practical, real-life advice on managing your career successfully.

So begins Personal Balance Sheet, a new book on career planning from consultant, speaker and author Randall Craig (who also has a weblog, Make it Happen). Figuring there is never a bad time to revisit my own career plan, I recently started Mr. Craig's book and am finding it a worthwhile read.

As Mr. Craig continues:

Career planning ensures that you are spending those 80,000 hours in a fulfilling, challenging and enjoyable way.

Given your significant investment in your training and your valuable business experience, career planning ensures that you find the highest and best use for your time: a career return on investment.

The latter point, in particular, is very interesting; a career return on investment. Thinking about your career in terms of the return on your investment (which I take to mean education, experience, etcetera), may provide you a different lens through which to assess your own career plan.

The "return," suggested in return on investment does not equate simply with money. Obviously, there are many other items to consider, including work-life balance, challenge and your own personal happiness in your chosen occupation. Mr. Craig does a great job in Personal Balance Sheet of touching on these "other items," helping to frame the processes we all go through in assessing, developing and executing our career plans.

Another aspect of the book that I really like is that it can be digested as a whole or in chapter-by-chapter chunks. I have been particularly time-starved in recent months and rarely have the opportunity to just sit and read for extended periods. Instead, I try and take advantage of small blocks of time to stay current with my reading. Personal Balance Sheet is organized to accommodate just that reality, with chapters that get right to the point, often with highlighted sections or bullet points that ensure the key pieces of information are readily digestible. Indeed, it is the type of book that you can flip through, stop on a random page and start reading without feeling like you jumped into the middle of a story that needs a beginning.

There are also quite a few exercises outlined in the chapters to help you go through your own personal assessment and planning processes. The end goal being assisting you with your own career plan, whether you are starting one from scratch or just doing a little updating or fine-tuning.

All and all, Personal Balance Sheet is an enjoyable and very worthwhile book that I foresee ending up on my bookshelf as a continuing reference. If you are interested in finding out more, you can check out the book on Amazon or by simply visiting Personal Balance Sheet.

Off Topic: Driving this Weekend? The Story of Oil

Bill Gratsch — Fri, 25 May 2007 10:31:02 GMT

More than a bit off topic this morning...but the price of gasoline is a topic front and center in my mind these days, especially whenever I fill up my car.

And, with Memorial Day and the Summer driving season upon us, I am guessing I am not the only one thinking about the subject. So, I thought I would mention a book worth reading on the subject.

Lisa Margonelli has penned Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline, which follows the life of oil (and natural gas to some degree) from ground to pump.

Ms. Margonelli visited each stop along the life cycle of oil as it is discovered, pumped, transported, refined, distributed and, ultimately, pumped into our cars.

Putting aside whether you agree with all of her opinions for a minute, the book does a really great job of just laying out the whys and hows of gasoline. I recommend it to anyone wishing to find out a little more about the backstory to why prices keep going up, up, up.

For more of Ms. Margonelli's recent material, you can also check out Toward an Energy Efficiency Trading System or listen Lisa Margonelli, Concerned with 'Oil on the Brain'

Have a nice Memorial Day weekend, everyone...

Worth Reading: The Starfish and the Spider

Bill Gratsch — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:39:05 GMT

If you are looking for a book to add to your 'to-read' list, you might consider The Starfish and The Spider. It has been out for some time now and you have read something about it in the press. I am most of the way through it myself and finding it well worth the time.

Here is a snippet from the dust jacket:

If you cut off a spider’s head, it dies; if you cut off a starfish’s leg it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish organizations are changing the face of business and the world.

What’s the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women’s rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths? After five years of ground-breaking research Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom have discovered some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional “spiders,” which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary “starfish,” which rely on the power of peer relationships.

The book's authors suggest the working title for the book was the "The Decentralized Revolution" and from my own reading of Starfish, I think they were dead-on.

The authors begin by looking at the music industry, and the impact peer-to-peer file-sharing technologies have had on the sale of music. While the music industry was able to seek legal remedies against companies, like Napster, which utilized a centralized 'hub' as part of the file-sharing process, countless other file-sharing programs soon launched which not only did not have a corporate sponsor parent, but which worked in true peer-to-peer fashion. It has become increasingly difficult to stop these programs, as they continue to morph and spread across the world. And, mostly not for any commercial gain or purpose.

We all might think that our future competition will be other commercial enterprises, but for some businesses and industries, that simply may not be true. Some industries, like the music industry and digital music, may well find that their biggest competitor may be thousands of individuals providing the same or similar services for free. And, even when the competition is another commercial enterprise, that enterprise may be a couple of people in India, Australia, China or Iowa, targeting a specific niche and making it financially viable for their small business.

In legal, knowledge and information have significant financial value. Thus, as I tend to think about how knowledge and information related to the legal world is being created, compiled and disseminated, I likewise wonder about the whys and hows of strategic thinking at the big knowledge and information providers serving legal? How will these businesses and professionals protect their business models against new competitors that may nibble and pick at pieces of their businesses, perhaps providing the same or similar knowledge and information at a significantly lower cost (or free)? Sure, huge information-based companies like Google have barely even looked at legal to this point, but with the cost of increasingly powerful technologies dropping exponentially, it may be the hundreds of little players that, in sum, ultimately provide the biggest competitive challenge.

What is to stop a few lawyers, law librarians or other visionaries from tackling a legal niche about which they have deep knowledge and lots of information? And, then organizing and disseminating that knowledge and information in a way that is commercially viable? Or just giving it away as a service to the larger legal community? Or perhaps hundreds of legal entrepreneurs set up shop in India, hiring (very low cost) lawyers there to write case summaries to dump into databases made available worldwide at a fraction of today's costs. To me, the above possibilities have always been there in theory. In practice, the technology required to turn these ideas into viable businesses has been too complicated and too expensive for small enterprises. But, these barriers are rapidly disappearing.

Starfish organizations are taking society and the business world by storm, and are changing the rules of strategy and competition. Like starfish in the sea, starfish organizations are organized on very different principles than we are used to seeing in traditional organizations. Spider organizations are centralized and have clear organs and structure. You know who is in charge. You see them coming.

Starfish organizations, on the other hand, are based on completely different principles. They tend to organize around a shared ideology or a simple platform for communicaton- around ideologies like al Qaeda or Alcoholics Anonymous. They arise rapidly around the simplest ideas or platforms. Ideas or platforms that can be easily duplicated. Once they arrive they can be massively disruptive and are here to stay, for good or bad. And the Internet can help them flourish.
So in today’s world starfish are starting to gain the upper hand.

Ultimately, while you agree with the authors above-noted contentions or not, they are worth considering.

I have been astounded at how quickly my local newspaper has become a shadow of its former self. I likewise look at old line companies with huge, "protected," marketshares, like Kodak, quickly fall apart as a result of miscalculating how fast the transformation would occur. In both cases, I believe that these businesses spent too long waiting for something to happen instead of proactively reinventing themselves.

In times of great change and transformation, proactive thinking and planning seems to be a better course of action than sitting back in a reactive mode. As I believe the The Starfish and The Spider points out, the decentralized revolution may be here sooner than any of us realize. And, nobody wants to be left behind...

Books: New Edition of Best Legal Websites...

Bill Gratsch — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 16:53:50 GMT

Robert Ambrogi, who is constantly scouring the web for "new and intriguing web sites for the legal profession," has released a new, updated edition of his law website compendium, The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web

You can also keep up with Mr. Ambrogi's latest discoveries and web site reviews at his longstanding blawg, Lawsites.

Book: Myth Of Legal Management

Bill Gratsch — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 22:57:31 GMT

An interesting read making the rounds is H. Edward Wesemann's new book, The First Great Myth Of Legal Management Is That It Exists: Tough Issues For Law Firm Managing Partners And Administrators.

Published in the Spring of 2004, the book is a quick read that offers a healthy dose of skepticism regarding a number of hot law firm topics that have ebbed and flowed, including the need for a strategic plan, knowledge management, cross-selling and new classes of partnerships. While I didn't agree with everything that Mr. Wesemann set forth, he clearly knows his subject matter and I found that many of his points were right on target.

Mr. Wesemann also offers a some new insights as to the causes of the implosion of such large law firms as Brobeck and Altheimer Gray in the last few years. In his opinion, the causes were largely missed by the mainstream media in its reporting (hint: it was less about debt and more about compensation).

A final plus about the book is that it offers more than just a critique and opinion; it also offers a list of suggestions for improving law firm management and a view of the future for law firms. All in all, a good read.

You can find out more via Amazon at the link above or at your favorite bookseller.

Radio Userland Reference Guide

Bill Gratsch — Thu, 08 Jul 2004 16:01:26 GMT

For anyone who is using Radio Userland for their blawg, there is a help guide and book on the subject available via Amazon, etcetera, called Radio Userland KickStart. Written by blogger Rogers Cadenhead, KickStart has been receiving solid reviews and appears to cover both the publishing and content aggregation functions of Userland as well as offering general overview information.

Radio Userland KickStart by Rogers Cadenhead

Really Simple Syndication, the Book

Bill Gratsch — Sun, 05 Oct 2003 08:00:00 GMT

I recently ran across a 2003 O'Reilly book covering Really Simple Syndication (RSS), which is clearly a leading standard for content-sharing in the blawg community.

Written by Ben Hammersley, , you can find the book at Amazon and other leading booksellers.

Content Syndication with RSS.

Book: How Businesses Buy Legal Services

Bill Gratsch — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 18:18:57 GMT

Ran across this interesting book covering the topic of how businesses buy legal services.

Inside Outside: How Businesses Buy Legal Services
by Larry Smith, Richard S. Levick

My own sense is that businesses, especially larger businesses, still make decisions based on old line factors such as personal relationships, networking and lawyer/firm reputation. Decisions based on technologies that a lawyer/firm can bring to the relationship, seem the exception rather than the rule. Part of this reality likely results from a lack of knowledge as to what technology can offer. Indeed, as Law.com recently acknowledged in this article, corporate legal departments often lag well behind the law firms that serve them in terms of technology use.

And, yet, in survey after survey, corporate counsel respond that they would love for the lawyers that serve them to offer technology solutions that enhance the legal relationship, especially in the area of administrative and document control efficiencies.

Perhaps as the leading edge of the Blawg community continues to push for a greater role for weblogs in legal marketing and knowledge management, it would pay dividends to explore how potential clients think and make decisions with regard to their legal spend.