The British blawg / law blog

Welcome to the June 2011 UK Blawg review, a quarterly round up of British Blawgs (legal blogs) and discussion.

In the last Blawg Reivew, Brian Inkster took the past as his theme. Speaking from his newly materialised Time Blawg, he took us on a journey back into the mists of 2006 (or even earlier), before whisking us back again to see where those original bloggers were today.

Today I am going to see if the UK Blawg time rotor can give us a peek into the future. One of the things I will be looking at is whether blogs are just a frivolous fancy, or whether they can be a serious support to a law practice.

Because this is the year when everything changes. Deregulation is coming in October (2011) as the Legal Services Act 2007 finally comes into force. Lawyers (they say) are going to be forced to do things differently. Will blogging be a part of this new future?

I start with a serious and thought provoking post, the time is now from Viv Williams on Legal Futures which discusses the problems raised by deregulation and the options available to law firms. Well worth reading if you are a law firm principal. We all need to think about these things.

But back to blogging.

#Lawblogs

Blogging inspires passion among its practitioners, and there have been several law blog events, none of which sadly I have been able to attend (living as I do in the wilds of Norfolk – or Norwich as many people call it). The most recent event took place on 19 May 2011 and had as its theme the future of legal blogging.

It appears to have been well attended and was reported online by Siobhain Butterworth of the Guardian who commented that “blawgs seems to be in blossom”. (It was also reported in the Times but I can’t show you that as it is behind their paywall).

The event brought forth an interesting crop of blogs on what the future of legal blogging might be.

James Wilson writing on Halsburys Law Exchange  feels that legal blogging ensures more debate about the rules that govern us, and keeps better scrutiny on those who make and enforce them, which has to be a good thing

Adam Wagner writing on the UK Human Rights Blog  is more concerned about the ethical side of blogging – do lawyers have a duty to correct errors in the press about legal cases, and explain the law to the general public?

Law student Dylan White found the event inspiring and thinks that the current crop of law students is the future of blogging

Emily Albon writing on Lawbore Future Lawyer  thinks it is a great way for law students to show their engagement with the subject, and has many benefits to the student blogger, not least helping them find a job in due course.

But, firmly grasping the commercial nettle in his canny Scottish fist, Brian Inkster asks is law firm business development the elephant in the #LawBlogs room?  A question answered in part in the vigorous debate which followed in the comments section. Brian’s posts generally attract vigorous comments – a sign of a good blog.

So we have a number of themes identified there:

• Providing informed comment on legal topics and news items
• Educating the public
• Correcting reporting errors
• Keeping a scrutiny on law makers and enforcers
• Supporting a law firm / promoting the writer

I think I would add to that, writing for the love of it. Anybody who chooses to write a blog and keeps it up for more than a year, must enjoy writing or they wouldn’t bother with it.

So lets go look at British law bloggers blogs and see what they are doing.

The top ten blogs of 2011

Where can we find law blogs? One place I discovered recently is Cisions list of top ten Law Blogs.  Cisions is a resource for PR and communications professionals – lets see which blogs they put at the top. In reverse order:

No 10 is Pangloss from Lillian Edwards, Professor of E-Governance at The Law School of Strathclyde University who writes on online privacy and security law, cybercrime, online intermediary law, etc etc. Recent posts include Do you want to know a secret about twitter and superinjunctions and Return of the Robots! and Hay on Wye Festival! which looks at re-drawing (Sci fi writer) Asimov’s laws of robotics.

No 9 is Pink Tape – a blog from Lucy Read of the family bar. She covers all manner of things, from a talk by HH Judge Bellamy (not y’know, the wildlife bloke, but the other one), to legal blogging goes boom

No 8 is my blog - The Landlord Law Blog. Here I mostly have educational posts for landlords / tenants such as What can you do if your tenant just WON”T GO!, and comments on news items such as Tenancy Deposits – the law that never was plus there is the newish blog clinic where I publish readers problems, such as International students still waiting for their deposit after three months

No 7 is the Marilyn Stowe Blog – a very professional looking blog and the winner of the UK Blawg awards 2010 no less! This is a family law blawg – and she has recently considered what makes a good family law blogger , as well as looking at Michelle Obamas sound relationship advice and how to avoid the CSA.

No 6 is Law Actually an amusing blog from “a typically deranged law graduate, with a poor taste in blogging and too much spare time on his hands” who in between posts works in-house for a wholesale business telcoms operator. He serves up an entertaining mix of commentary such as Woman goes hyper at dunkin donuts, lawyer in waitering funds law degree by dropping trousers and the unfortunate (although probably fictitious) story of  Employees & the right to erm … play at work.

No 5 is the well respected Head of Legal blog from barrister and former government worker Carl Gardner. I can remember Head of Legal from way back in the early days of legal blogging. He comments on legal stories in the news such as can the Danes ban Marmite? and Mosely v. UK.

No 4 is the UK Human Rights Blog – from barristers chambers One Crown Office Way publishing several human rights posts daily. This blog burst upon the blawgosphere fairly recently but is up there with the best. Recent posts include  why religious freedom does not stop at the prison gate and how the police may have a duty to inform victims of phone hacking .

No 3 is Tim Kevan’s barristers blog. This is fairly self promotional at the moment with lots of posts about reviews of his book and a few sponsored posts and book reviews.

No 2 is the Magistrates Blog – another long running and very well respected blog. The Magistrates Blog is anonymous and and all names in cases are changed. A recent oddments from the front line post had a very sad and telling comment from a South London JP on the day his court closed and the insensitivity of HMCTS, and plate sin with gold looks at the nature of theft.

The top spot (cue drum roll) is taken by Charon QC, an enormously popular legal blog which has been around for a very long time. Charon QC himself apparently does not exist (so how come he does all those podcasts then?) but is a figment in the imagination of law lecturer Mike Semple Piggot.

In view of this it is perhaps not surprising that in a recent post the learned QC (or maybe his alter ego) had a few things to say about the new college of humanities. Other recent posts include episodes from the continuing story of that ever popular and ethically rock sold law firm Muttley Dastardly LLP plus various law reviews, for example on Legal tweeters on TV – Miscarriages of Justice – Politicians interfering with the judiciary?

Charon QC is probably the best known of all the legal blogs, partly because it has been around for such a long time, but mainly of course because it is a stonking good blog.

So thats the Cisions top ten for May 2011. Its also interesting to see what their top ten was the last time they reviewed law blogs in September 2009.   All of the blogs listed are still going (albeit some maybe in a slightly different format).

The top ten blogs of 2009

Here the countdown was as follows:

No 10 – PJH Law – an employment law blog, rather difficult to find from their sites home page, recent posts include wasted costs – acting in pursuit of profit and payment in lieu

No 9 – Family Lore from John Bloch – John is a long established and well known family law blogger, and I was surprised not to see him in the 2011 list. I have a soft spot for Family Lore as it was reading this which inspired me to start blogging way back in 2006. Recent posts include one on how divorces can be aimiable and one about a considerably less amiable couple spying on each other on facebook His blog is also home to the family law wiki.

No 8 – Yay! Me again! – Landlord Law Blog

No 7 - Current awareness from the Inner Temple Library. This seems to be mostly extracts from online news reports and links to them. Looks like it could be a good source of stories for the law humour blogs.

No 6 – the Barrister Blog (Tim Kevan) again

No 5 – Nearly Legal. I know the Nearly Legal blog very well as it deals with my area of law, ie Landlord and Tenant, although NL covers all the social housing cases whereas I just do the private sector. Nearly Legal himself is actually a good example of how writing a blog can help with your career. He started it back in 2006 while unqualified (hence ‘nearly legal’) and has since qualified and works now at a good London legal aid firm (I was going to say a quality firm but that word is now perhaps best avoided).

Nearly Legal is now written by a team of solicitors and barristers (including the original NL) and provides what is more or less a legal reporting service on case law in the housing area. It is hugely respected and rightly so. Generally the reporting is straight and serious, but I commend to you Hot tub lovin’, the Daily Mail and Article 8 (don’t ask) and Oh Cluck where NL considers setting up a specialist hen and rabbit practice.

No 4 – panGLos (as aforesaid)

No 3 – Baby Barrista from Tim Kevan – formerly in the Times but now (since the paywall came in)  in the Guardian and on its own site here. This as everyone will know is the account of a fictional junior barrister. Recently he has been considering selling off the Inns of court and upholding the rule of law.

No 2 – Binary Law from publishing consultant Nick Holmes (who also produces, with Delia Venables, the excellent Internet Newsletter and who initiated the Free Legal Web). Nick has probably been blogging longer than any of us, as he set up in February 2004!   Nick tends to concentrate on publishing related posts such as Innovations in law publishing and the death of (some) print but of particular interest to us today is his post Too many #LawBlogs?

The no. 1 post in 2009 was the excellent  Magistrates Blog, so not a lot of change there as it is No 2 now.

Some more blogs

A few (well quite a lot really) other notable blogs I need to mention are as follows

The Jack of Kent blog, from London lawyer and writer provides intellectual comment on the news, with some philosophical musing thrown in. Posts range from legal gags on Wikileaks to whether Pippa Middleton should have a page on Wikipedia (answer, yes).

Trouble Ahead from Mike Scutt is specifically about UK legal services deregulation. Recent posts include the The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Legal Services Act and countdown to the LSA where he provides a handy list of acronyms.

Mike also blogs as Jobsworth on his legal specialism Employment law where he asks whether the government should cap discriminaton awards and whether stressed workers are more at risk of redundancy.

Legaleaglemhm is from Scottish law student Michelle containing her diary of a trainee solicitor.  A recent post includes Legaleaglemhm TOP TIPS for Law EXAM revision

Julian Summerhayes is a solicitor turned coach / consultant and blogs about legal practice and social media. Recent posts include why lawyers hate the telephone and people learning and development

In house lawyer looks at how lawyers can uses social media to best effect, for example looking at what Linkedin map says about Linkedin and reflecting on contract law

Alrichs weblog from journalist Alan Rich looks at legal related items in the news such as the Jonathan Sumption debacle and Privacy, human rights, horizontality and the issue of judicial underwear

Steven Mather has a rather snazzy blog which covers legal, mediation and geeky issues among others.  He is asking if chimps are more intelligent than most under 16s and looks at Ken Clarke’s plans for compulsory mediation of small claims.

piBlawg from 1 Chancery Lane covers personal injury issues eg we are the village green preservation sociey, God save Donald Duck, vaudeville and variety and the fashon for fraud

The William Flack Blog is another housing law blog from social welfare lawyer William Flack, who is wondering if the telephone gateway to legal aid services is a good thing and has a few thoughts on Sharon Shoesmiths sucessful appeal. William has also set up a social welfare law wiki

Paul Hajek’s Clutton Cox site has a number of different property related blogs, for example a post on setting up home with an unmarried partner and the perils of undervalued probate properties

Legal 2.0 is from Jon Busby, Business Development Director at Epoq Legal. He wants to know if you want the truth or somethig beautiful and talks about how legal tech can do much more than make you accessible (well he would wouldn’t he?)

The LegalBratBlawg is from Tim Bratton general counsel at the Financial Times, who has recently looked at the case for self regulation – however I found his white font on dark background blog very difficult to read – am I alone in this?

John Floods Random Academic Thoughts is another long established blog, recently he has been telling us that we might not have realised that the world was ending,  and looking at risk management in from father confessor to compliance officer

Law and lawyers from Obiter J looks at legal issues in the news and is currently running a very helpful series our law and the legal system, the most recent post being on the Judges

The Bizzie is an in house lawyer who has been considering how aliens can help you write off your debts and the state of the union

Motoring lawyers online blog supports Steve Williams online motoring law service and discusses relevant issues such as drink drive limits to remain the same and drink driving defences

Likewise Shireen Smiths Blog supports her trademark / copyriight law practice – recent posts include twitter etiquette – twitiquette and innovation as differentiation

Jonathan Lea’s Posterious blog is more of a place where he thinks aloud – currently he is wondering if social media can replace the banks and considering the future of law firms.

Penninsulawyer is from Jon Bloor in the Wirral, where he is looking at format shifting copyright and the cloud and the differences between writing for print and screen (if you blog – just read it!).

The Pain Smith landlord and tenant blog is very well known to me, working as we do in the same field, and is full of excellent posts, and sometimes breaking news of their own cases. For instance in the Potts v. Dansley Pays case. It is also, like many blawgs, reminding people that Bailii is appealing for funds.

Finally, I would like to include a blog which I have enjoyed for some years, Technollama. The author, formerly a lecturer at University of Edinburgh School of Law has now returned to his ancestral acres in Costa Rica but as his blog remains as entertaining as ever, I venture to include it.  For example in a recent post on the internet nobody knows youre a meme he has some excellent advice for dealing with strangers on the internet.  He also wonders if we should have any expectations of privacy in the internet age.

Pause for reflection

So, having had a whistle stop tour around the legal blogosphere (with apologies to anyone who has accidentially been left out), what does it say about blogging and the future of the profession?

There is as we have seen a huge range of blogs, running from the mostly commercial, which are mainly about the authors products, to the blogs (particularly the anonymous ones) which are written purely for the love of it with no expectation of reward..

There are numerious examples of blogs dealing with all the themes identified at #lawblogs, with many blogs falling into more than one catetory. Lets take a look.

Providing informed comment on legal topics and news items

Most blogs do this to some extent or other. Some are humorous such as Law Actually, and some mainly comment on political and current news items, for example Head of Legal blog and Alrichs weblog. Others keep readers up to date in their particular field, such as the Pain Smith blog and Technolama.

Educating the public

Most blawgs consider this to be one of their main raison d’être. For example if you want to know what it is like being a Magistrate – read the Magistrates blog. If you want to know want the top human rights issues are today – read the UK Human Rights blog.  If you want to know what its like being a trainee solicitor, read LeagleagleMHM’s diary of a trainee solicitor.

For those of us who blog under our own or our firms name, it is not entirely altruistic. ‘Content marketing’ as it is called, is a proven method of marketing. It consists providing useful and helpful content to the public on the basis that it will raise the bloggers profile (and the profile of their business) and improve their chances of survival in a hostile world.

For example, my Landlord Law blog publishes a lot of educational material, as does Steve Williams Motoring lawyers online.  Then, some excellent blogs are written with lawyers as potential customers in mind, for example Julian Summerhayes and Legal 2.0 from Jon Busby.

Free Legal Web. On the theme of education, I must mention again the innovative and rather wonderful  Free Legal Web. This collects legal articles and blogs published around the blogosphere and publishes them all in one place to make life easier for the seeker after legal knowledge.

The FLW is presently concentrating on housing law, and the three main housing blogs (Nearly Legal, Pain Smith and my own – although we are not the only contributors) all have special categories on our blogs for FLW so posts can easily be uploaded to the beta housing law pilot. However I believe Nick has plans to extend FLW to other areas of law. You can read more about it all here.

Correcting reporting errors

The barristers blogs do a very good job with this, for example the Human Rights Blog and Nearly Legal (although NL has both barrister and solicitor writers). However there are sometimes restrictions on what barristers can say about their own cases – discussed by Adam Wagner on the UK Human Righsts blog here.

Keeping a scrutiny on law makers and enforcers

Lawyers blogs, due to their specialist knowledge, are well placed to do this. For example most blawgs are united in condemning the gradual dismantling over time by government of our once proud legal aid scheme. In my own area we have all been highly critical of the tenancy deposit legislation. Other niche blogs will do the same for topics in their area of expertise.

Supporting a law firm or promoting the writer

One reason why many of us blog is to support our business, and there is nothing wrong with this. But does it work?

Brian Inkster asked this question on the Time Blawg – do clients search online for a solicitor?  The answer seemed to be probably yes. My experience has been very much “yes” and Paul Hajek has also had a big success with his property blogs. It would be great if some legal bloggers could leave a comment below about the effect their blog has had on their practice.

Writing for the love of it

I suspect that this applies to most blogs, certainly the ones that last. I first started blogging because I wanted to write and express myself. It takes a lot of effort to maintain a blog – it should be something you enjoy doing – otherwise why do it?

Many of the blogs discussed above deal with things which interest the writer, and are perhaps written more for themselves or other lawyers than for clients. For example Jon Bloor’s Penninsulawyer and Brian Inkster’s Time Blawg. And indeed the blog you are on right now (or should be, unless this post has been scraped), my Solicitors Onlne blog, which I set up when I decided to limit my Landlord Law blog to landlord and tenant topics only.

We’re all publishers now

One of the wonderful things about this new interconnected world we live in, is that we can all be publishers now. Gone are the days of having to kow tow to ‘them upstairs’ for a book contract or a column in the paper. All it takes is a bit fiddling around on blogger or one of the other free providers and Bobs your uncle!

So are blogs set to grow into the future? You bet they are! As we have seen, there are masses of thriving and interesting law blogs out there covering a huge and diverse spectrum of legal topics. Their authors do not look like stopping any time soon.

But what do YOU think?  You’ll find a comment box just below…

Charles Dickens blogging photo by Mike Licht

The Copywriting Phrasebook

Words.  My life is made up of words.  I read them, I write them, I speak them and (professionally) I interpret them.  As a writer and a lawyer they are the tools of my trade.

And yet there are still times when I stop mid way through a blog post halted by the need for a word.  Not any word, but that one, that one on the tip of my tongue, …

Then if you are a blogger, there is the business of headings.  All the gurus tell you that your heading is really important, but it is often difficult to know what to say.

Help from Amy Harrison

Well I have recently bought a little book that might help.  Its an ebook (many of the books I buy nowadays are ebooks – you get to read them so much quicker) by a British copywriter called Amy Harrison.

As I said it is quite short.  It has a section on headlines, and then sections with suggested words and phrases to help create different effects, along with words to avoid.  This could be very useful, particularly for lawyers, for we often find it hard to write in the vernacular – our training tends towards long words and pompous phrases.

Although actually, I quite enjoy writing for a legal audience.  Only then can you use hereinbefore written,  as aforesaid, and hereinafter.  Our deeds end by effluxion of time, our briefs complain about noxious fumes, and we baffle the unknowing with our talk of mens rea, inter alia and the ratio decidendi.  Strange characters stalk through our writings – the officious bystander, the man on the  Clapham Omnibus and of course Regina (or her father, Rex).  We have our own secret meanings for execution, consideration and pleading, not to mention prayer, taxation, and being on all fours (a condition much sought after by Counsel).

But when writing for the public, these guilty pleasures must be put aside.  We must use snappy phrases, contractions and slang.  Short sentences and a casual approach.

If you are a lawyer and this is all too much for you, then Amy’s book will be a great help. And its only (at the moment) seven quid, give or take a dollar or two.

For more information see HarrisonAmy.

This is the sort of business book I might have written myself, had I thought of it. Although I run a legal business and not a software company, a lot of the book resonated with me.

For a long time I have shut my eyes and done things my way, ignoring what you are ‘supposed’ to be doing, and what everyone else does.  Now it seems that the boys at 37signals have been doing the same.

For example, here are some of the chapter headings (the chapters are very short):

Planning is guessing.  How true!  When I set up my business (back in 1994) I did write a business plan, but the business I eventually ended up with turned out to be nothing like what I had naively envisaged.

Doing the plan was not a complete waste of time.  I got the bank loan, and typing it up helped me learn how to use my new computer (and also incidentally discover the internet and my future ..).  However had I  stuck to my ‘plan’ I probably would have gone bust. You have to feel your way towards what works and what is right for you.  I’m still getting there.

As they say in the book ‘unless you are a fortune teller, long term business planning is a fantasy’.  And in a fast changing world, how can you plan properly based on the past?

Why grow? Indeed.  Initially it was me and the cat.  Now I work with my husband.  We did discuss taking on staff and growing, but I never really wanted to.  I don’t want to manage people.  I prefer to write and develop new ideas.  Having a lot of staff would get in the way of that.  I may take on a few staff eventually, but I now outsource things, such as telephone calls (I use Moneypenny) and web design rather than have employees.  Much better.

As they say in the book ‘What’s the attraction of big besides ego?’ …  ‘Small is not just a stepping stone.  Small is a great destination in itself.’

Put yourself into your product.  To quote from the book: ‘If you’re successful, people will try to copy what you do.  Its just a fact of life. But there is a great way to protect yourself from copycats.  Make you part of your product or service.  Make it something no-one else can offer.’  Yup!  Done that too.

Outside money is plan Z. Maybe with the new regulation rules for solicitors I might be able to get outside funding, but do I want some investor telling me what to do?  Do I hell!

You get the picture.  Go with what you think is right and what feels right, rather than what tradition and other people tell you is the thing to do.

If you are running a business, read this book.  It will help you see clearly.

You can buy the book ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever from Amazon (affiliate link).

The Legal Web

Are you feeling ignorant about the internet. Worried about wikis? Baffled by blogs? Or intimidated by twitter? You need a bit of professional training and guidance.

Allow me to introduce the answer. This is the new ebook and CPD course from Nick and Delia on Modern Practice Topics for Solicitors.

Nick and Delia have been involved in and writing about the legal internet for years. Must be at least ten, probably more. Both have informative web-sites, Delia runs the best set of legal links on the internet, as does Nick, as Infolaw. Together they produce the fabulous and award winning Internet Newsletter. Every now and again they produce an ebook / CPD product and this is the most recent offering. It is very good.

The ebook is in five parts.

1. New ways to organise firms.  This is largely about virtual firms and to me was the perhaps most interesting part of the series. The first article is an introductory one by Delia, followed by studies of three different ‘virtual’ firms.

I have to say that I was HUGELY impressed with the article on Blacklaws Davis, a mostly legal aid firm based in South London and the internet. Of all the articles in the book, this is the one which stayed with me the most and made me happy to look at the ebook again for this review. What a fantastic system them have! If I were a legal aid solicitor I would be beating a path to their door. I also enjoyed the article by sole practitioner Dick Jennings, and quite agree that SPs can be far more innovative than the (often patronising) larger firms.

2. Social Media for law firms. This is an intelligent look at the usual suspects, blogging, twitter, wikis, facebook and LinkedIn. Well worth reading if you are thinking of using these platforms but don’t know much about them.

3. Referral and Marketing companies. This section did not hold many surprises for me as, actually, I wrote much of it! My articles are on Quality Solicitors (which you can read on this blog >> here), Contact Law (which you can read on this blog >> here) and LawNet (which you can read >>here). Delia did an article on TakeLegalAdvice and Justin Patten did one on legallybetter.com.

4. Your website – accessible, interesting and productive. All law firms with a web-site (and that should mean all law firms) would do well to read this section. The first part looks at making websites accessible for disabled people. The second is about ‘converting browsers to business’ and looks at the AIDA principles of marketing. The third looks at online legal drafting software company DirectLaw, creators of that ‘destructive technology’ Rapidocs. Finally there is an article on client satisfaction surveys.

5. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Another very helpful and interesting look at an important subject which can be a bit (whisper it) boring … It features articles by Nick Holmes, David Gilroy and Susan Hallam. (Although I just use Scribe now.)

So there you are. If you fancy finding out more about all these topics AND getting five hours CPD, you want to hop on over to Nick’s site >> here where you can read more and buy it online.

Have you bought this or any other of Nick and Delia’s ebooks? How did you find them?

In my change of direction post, I said I had been reading a few books.  I thought it might be nice to tell you about some of them.  This is good for me too as it gets me to look through them again.

I read somewhere, a long time ago, that when you first read a book you learn a bit from it.  If you then read it again, you absorb a bit more.  Most people take their examinations at this stage (it was a book about studying you understand).  But, the writer went on, if you read the book a third and a fourth time, you take in much more from it.

That struck a chord with me, which is the reason why I changed my revision strategy from trying to condense the whole of the law of England and Wales onto one A4 sheet of paper so I could learn it off by heart, to reading around the subject a lot more.  I think it worked.  I passed the exams anyway.  But I am rambling.  Today I am going to tell you about The E-myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber.

The E Myth book is a good book.  A very good book.  Which is why, of course, it has sold over 1 million copies (as we are helpfully told on the cover).  It goes on a bit in places, and I did get rather tired of Sarah and her pies (read it and you will understand), but I feel he gets to the heart of things.

The book starts out by saying that most businesses fail within a few years (cue glow of smugness on my  part as I have been self employed now for over 14 years).  The reason they fail is that they don’t think about their business in the right way.  Everyone, says Gerber, who runs a business has three elements, three types of business person, warring within him:

• the entrepreneur
• the manager and
• the technician

The entrepreneur is the visionary.  He lives as it were, in the future working out what could be.  The manager sorts things out and organises them.  The technician does the work.

I have to say that I identified very strongly with the entrepreneur – who says Gerber, has a strong need for control, who creates a deal of havoc around him, and who often regards people as ‘problems who get in the way of the dream’.  I did actually laugh out loud when I read that (not a thing I do very often) as that is very me. As my husband would no doubt agree.

However I can see the other elements in me also.  I like systems.  I am a sole practitioner working without support staff – if I did not have systems and precedents I would never get anything done.  You need the systems in place, then you do not have to re-invent the wheel, and can find space and time for the dreaming and the thinking. Which for me is the most exciting and fulfilling part.

But, Gerber says, most business owners just carry on being technicians. Doing the work.  Because they are good cooks, or mechanics, or accountants, or whatever.  That is why they fail.  What you need to do, he said, is look at the business from the outside and set it up, with systems in place, so it can work without you if necessary.

The heart of the book is about franchising.  Looking at your business as a product in itself, something that is so well organised that it will work perfectly, like a well oiled machine, so that you can then eventually sell it for lots of money.

That sounds rather cold and clinical, which is not what Gerber (who is a bit of an old 1960s hippie at heart) means.  Far from it.  The system should be set up to be as caring as possible, so people enjoy working  in it and the customers enjoy using it.  He describes a hotel where customers are asked their preferences, which are then noted on the system and never forgotten.  The service is then tailored to the customer, so he feels cared for and looked after.

He also says that consistency is important.  Having systems in place to produce the perfect whatever (burger, hotel experience etc) so that this is reproduced *every time* without fail.  Customers will then appreciate the reliability and come back, again and again.

He is right of course.  That is a good way to set up a business, and will make it far less likely to fail.  Reading the book again for this review, I have rediscovered the setting up of systems part, the planning to provide the perfect experience for the customer.  Which is very timely as I am now planning a major change for my online legal service, so, hmmm.

So yes, highly recommended for all business owners and aspiring business owners. You can buy it here from Amazon.

And I think I had better read it again …

When I wrote my earlier post here, I said I had been doing a lot of research.  In this post I set out some of the sites that I have been using.

Probably the best blogging site is Problogger which is  written by Australian blogger Darren Rowse.  He is a full time professional blogger who apparently makes a very good living from it.  If anyone is contemplating starting a new blog, I highly recommend an evening reading the Problogger site.

He has also written two books.  One is an e-book called 31 days to build a better blog, and is excellent.  I bought it some time ago, and often read it when I am stuck for ideas, as it gives me inspiration.  Although it is an electronic rather than a ‘real’ book, this is actually really useful, because it makes it so much easier to follow the many links out.

The other book is called ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income, and is also very good although not, for me, as useful as the 31 days book. But if you are thinking of blogging professionally, worth a read.

Finally Problogger has now started a blogging forum, which I joined when it was very cheap (I think the price has gone up substantially since).  It also is very helpful, as you can ask questions if you are stuck about something.

The next person whose blog has helped me is Grant Griffiths, a former American Attorney who blogs as Blog for Profit. His son, Clay, wrote the Headway theme which is used for this blog, and his blog has also been a bit of an inspiration to me. Perhaps in some ways more so than Problogger, as he understands lawyers. He has now given up the law and runs a business designing blogs, mainly I think for lawyers.

In October 2009  he ran a series, called 31 days to Kick your Blog in the Butt (not a title, I am sure, that would have ever been chosen by an British solicitor, but there you go, its another country over there), which was also extremely helpful, particularly as at that time my web designer and I were building my new Landlord Law Blog. After his 31 days, Grant too turned his series into an e-book, which is also highly recommended, and you can buy it from his web-site, along with a work book and helpful book on twitter.  Although actually you can also read the blog series here.

Those are the main two sites that I have used.  However there are several other sites which I have found very helpful.  Blogussion, which appears to be run by a  bunch of school boys and college students, is a brilliant site and just shows that we old ‘uns can learn a lot from the modern yoof.    Copyblogger has some great posts on writing, although recently I have been finding some of them a bit irritating.  Lawyerist is another blog about legal blogs, interesting but not as good as Blog for Profit.  Remarkable Communication is a helpful blog on marketing, particularly online marketing, and if we are talking about marketing, we also ought to mention Seth Godins blog, considered by many to be the master of marketing, and whose blog is good for ideas.

You will probably have noticed that none of these blogs are British.  I haven’t really found anything similar here, mainly I suppose because we have not taken up blogging to the same extent as in other countries, or have not been doing it for as long (I set up my Landlord Law blog in February 2006 and I was one of the first legal bloggers here, Problogger (an Australian)  however started way  back in 2002).

What do you think of these sites?  Had you come across them before?  Have you found any sites you would like to recommend?

I recently listened to an interesting webcast of an interview of Richard Susskind here. Susskind is promoting his new book, The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the nature of legal services, having written several groundbreaking books on the use of IT and technology in the internet in the past.

Susskind covers quite a wide range of legal IT related topics in the interview, but it is some of the comments at the end which are most worrying (for lawyers). Both he and his interviewer make the point that lawyers are not (on the whole) natural innovators and tend to be resistant to new developments, particularly if they are making a good income as they are.

However he believes (and I have to say that I agree with him) that technology and the internet will have huge implications for the profession, and it is worrying that the Law Society and the government are planning new rules and regulations for the future of the profession, without really taking these properly into account.

For example one thing he mentioned was shared knowledge on forums and how this may develop in the future. In fact however this is happening right now, as there are a number of consumer forums where people exchange information about legal matters, for example this forum here on tenancy deposits. Shared knowledge of this kind could well reduce the need to use qualified lawyers in the future.

The conclusion, more or less, was that there will always be a place for some lawyers and the subject is an interesting discipline in itself, but that the profession has probably passed its high point and things will never be the same again. He also made the point that new lawyers are entering an uncertain profession and many law students should be prepared to use their law degree for something other than practising as a lawyer.

Anyone in the legal profession who is at all interested in the development of legal services on the internet should sign up for the Internet Newsletter (full name internet Newsletter for Lawyers & Law 2.).

Run for many years by the superb Delia Venables (who runs the best legal links site on the internet) it won a major award a few years ago. Delia now runs the newsletter jointly with Nick Holmes (who also has his own site, Infolaw, which has been online since about 1995). It is snip at a mere £45 pa for six issues.

I have been a subscriber to the Internet Newsletter for more years than I care to think about, and it has always been interesting, informative, and thought provoking. For example in the current issue (May/June 2009) there are fascinating articles on LegalOnRamp, blogging for lawyers, writing for the internet, and email campaigns.

I cannot recommend the newsletter highly enough. If you are a solicitor and do not already subscribe you can do so here, or email delia@venables.co.uk.