The Greatest American Lawyer

The Lessons of Format and Familiarity How To Take Your Blog To The Next Level and Build a Strong Reader Base

There are a few things that I have learned over the last four years and 1500+ blog posts.  In retrospect, it surprises me that it took as long as it did for me to figure out the blogging thing.  One of my more recent changes is to generate content within a format.  We have recently launched Regurgitation Thursdays, in which I read some of my early blog posts and provide further insights on GAL Radio. We have also started Top Ten Tuesday.  Of course, I tend to blog about five key issues including alternative billing, law firm innovation, the state of the practice of law, internal/external communications (extranet and dictation) and the advantage of smaller niche firms who can innovate and deploy technology at a rapid pace. 

Digital Dictation Presentation: The Grand Traverse-Antrim-Leelanau Bar Association

I’m standing in front of a group of about 25 people doing a presentation on digital dictation.  For those of you who follow the blog, you know that digital dictation is one of my favorite productivity tools.  Here is the link to the resources that we’ve made available to the attendees today, which I am now making available to you, as well. 

Technology Lets You Work from Anywhere

Technology allows you to work from anywhere.  Most of our clients are not local companies.  But we connect to those clients through our Extranet, GoToMeeting and related applications.  Here are a few things about where I live in Traverse City Michigan.  Last week, I had to slow my car to avoid a family of porcupines crossing the road and several deer bounding across both lanes of traffic.  The people here are amazingly genuine and friendly, unlike the big cities where most lawyers toil.   Every time you go to the grocery store, you see people you know. 

Most lawyers are stuck practicing for big-law in the big city.  Don’t they realize that technology would empower them to successful working from paradise?

Should ICANN be Responsible for Registrars such as RegisterFly?

For those of you who don’t know, RegisterFly is an ICANN accredited registrar which has tumbled into chaos.  The two owners have been fighting including in court.  One owner turned off the website for a period of time last Monday.  Registrants are scrambling to move their domains off of RegisterFly.  For more information, check out the Traverse Legal Cybersquatting blog here.

[update] ICANN has really turned up the heat on Registerfly in what is turning out to be a huge test for ICANN's enforcement and accreditation standards.  This is the first registrar to melt down in full public view, placings tens of thousands of domain names at risk.  Learn more at the registerfly investigation page here.

It's Amazing What People Will Say in the Blogosphere

It has always amazed me how many bloggers come right out and say pretty darn close to what they think about family and friends. Our society is becoming more "reality" based. I’ve always believed that the industrial age was built in part on maintaining pretenses and illusions. Many of our social norms made no sense. But that didn’t stop society from providing disincentives from anything that deviated from the norm.

Virtually every other show on TV is some sort of reality program. Blogging has generated the interest of, by some estimates, 16 million people.

Our society is evolving from the industrial age to the information age. It is my hope that the information age is based on people making rational, conscience and intelligent decisions based on reason, rather than dogma.

Let's Embrace the Anonymous Blogger

Damn it. Why have we not seen this before? How could it have been right in front of our face and just left it sitting there all this time?

Why isn’t the blogosphere, at least that part of it devoted to change which the majority of us believe is substantial, promoting people to be anonymous. Being Anonymous Rocks. Let’s face it people. We rarely say exactly what we think in life. Yet virtually every bulletin board system and many blogs require registration. This requires a valid email address put in someone else’s hands.

The point is this, we need to lower the barriers for people to speak anonymously. We need to encourage people who really have something to say to speak out.

Who Am I Really

I had an interesting thought the other day. Do you really know who I am by simply learning my name and the name of my law firm?

Through all the controversy about anonymous bloggers over the years, I have to say that on the eve of coming out that anonymous blogging is critical to the continue success of blogging in general. You know me better because I was anonymous. You know me better because I was anonymous from the get-go. You know me better because I thought I could say whatever I wanted to say, directly from the heart.

What is lost in accountability is gained in candor. But the most compelling thing to me is this. How many people don’t blog because they would never want their employer, their friend, their associate, their partners, there family, their community, etc., etc., etc., to know what they really thought?

What if anonymous blogging was embraced and promoted. I envision an army of tens of thousands of employees and partners working for big corporations telling their story.

So let’s rethink our ambivalence of the anonymous blogger. Yes there will be those like Jeremy Blackman at the Anonymous Lawyer Blog to fool us. But there will be more of us who recount life at a personal level that would otherwise be lost for lack of a forum.