^{Published by: . . .}

	" I've been a bit tied up lately, but ... "

With respect to your request that I convene a meeting of all of the interested parties:

• As you may have noticed, I do not have any enthusiasm for having such a meeting at all. Lately, the 'working' meetings I have attended have generally been a disappointing waste of time.

• If you want background information, tell me (Email, telephone, post, ... whatever) what you want and I will try to provide it in writing. At the very least, this will reduce the need to repeat myself for differernt audiences.

• When you think it would be helpful to have a meeting regading some aspect, go ahead and set it up. If you think I would be interested, let me know too and I will either attend or else will send someone on my behalf.

• . . . I could continue on this Subject but I'll stop, rather than turning this into a long rant.

In the following sections I mentioned a bit about the Shared Business Card Database. I believe these ideas have merit in the context of the comming meeting with Ines. If you think about it:

• One of the fundamental services that Librarians are used to providing is a 'circulation' service. I would be very surprised if Ines does NOT provide such a service for some of the lawyers at Miller Thomson. I would like to discuss extending this service to the Clients of the lawyers, since I mentioned this to Carswell and they responded with an expression of 'cautious' interest. In my opinion, this could:

  • Create a bond between the firm and its Clients. Providing me with legal news in the areas in which I have expressed an interest, would be especially helpful. The fear that this would reduce my need for lawyers is laughable to any lay person that has ever read any legal material. In my opinion, I would be much more inclined to call a trusted lawyer and ask for his Opinions on what an item that I find and consider to be important, might mean. This should create more business, not less.

  • Be a valid starting point for a Newsletter service that Lawyers should be providing to their Clients. We have discussed this occassionally over the last couple of years and have yet to do anything about it. At the very least, I think we could use the Forums to start creating the content that we could provide to people, on behalf of their lawyers. I also thnjk that we collectively know enough lawyers that we could build a few quick prototypes just to show what can be done and that we would learn a lot from doing so.

  • ...

• A shared (Universal) Business Card Database would be a useful resource in directing Emails to Lawyer's Cleints on their behalf. Obviously, this does not yet exist (at least not to my satisfaction, although a number of organizations are building versions.) None the less, I think that this Circulation list idea could provide a bit of a pull for this related idea and also addresses other Needs.

• ...

2004-01-20 Roy:

There are several 'ideas' that I think I can sell to the legal profession.

• I have started putting together a demonstration of components that we have already built of the Shared Business Card system that I think should be at the heart of an effective Customer Relationship Management system.
  
  The Interested Parties (so far) include:
  
  
  
  • TomSaar - who has contributed many cards, as well as the Career announcements that he has accumulated during the past 20 years he has been clipping them out of the Globe.
    
    
  • Genna, since she has done quite a bit of preparation by investigating the Globe's on-line resources and by building various tables of the related data.
    
    
  • AndrewMcClanahan, who would really like to build the web interfaces, especially the XML layer, and the database.
    
  
  I clearly recall that you had reservations about this undertaking when you and I last discussed it, in spite of the positive reactions I remember noting in both Sal and Ruth. It would be helpful if you could take the time to give me at least an initial list of your reservations so I start to factor them into my thinking.
  
  
• I am intrigued by what you have told me about MT's Director of Knowledge Management, especially because I am in contact with Carswell, the major publisher of legal refernce books, whom I think I can convince to contribute to funding the development of better automation for the delivery of case law. Furthermore, I have initiated contact with both the Attorney General of Ontario's office and a Court Report I trust. She gave me an excellent over-view of Ontario's failed attempt (costing $350,000,000!
  
  
• I think I copied you on the last note I sent to Connie Brother's legal secretary, who asked if we would be interested in taking on her technical support. There are two reasons that I am interested in possibly doing this.
  
  (1) As you may recall, TonyCrossley recommended Connie to me. I have been sufficiently impressed and I recognize that there is an obvious relationship that may be usefull, should I persist in thnking that Tony is a valuable resource I might wish to deploy.
  
  (2) Connie is typical of the tiny law office that would make an interesting entry point as well as test site for any of our development efforts. I think this type of entry point is particularly valuable given that I believe there are quite a few problems in the General Partnership agreements that drive the large law firms and that helping individual lawyers, who aspire to strike out on their own, could be a lucrative niche. It could also provide the entry point to the large firms, since, as you have frequently said, they prefer to follow another law firm's rather than trying something new. Yet the large firms members clearly stay in touch with their past associates, since (like Tony with Connie) referals are a key growth strategy for all of them.
  
  
• . . .

More later. I've got to do a few other things just now.







































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