Here and elsewhere

It’s time for my semi-regular roundup of articles and items that I’ve written for other websites and publications recently. I hope you enjoy the following entries as much as I enjoyed writing them.

1. Contributing to Stem Legal’s Law Firm Web Strategy blog, as a senior consultant to Stem, is a welcome opportunity for me to sound off on law firm communication, publishing and social media topics. I’ve been especially busy at LFWS over the last couple of months:

• I reflected on the effective use by lawyers of multiple social media vehicles in: “A million tiny pieces: the social media mosaic.”
• I asked and answered the question of the most powerful brand in the legal services landscape with “The No Homers Club: Collective branding in the law.”
• I wrote about the most practical way in which large firms can derive real benefit from blogging in “All together now: the value of practice group blogs.”
• I talked about the content-distribution dilemma facing many law practices in “How to get ahead in publishing (law firm edition).”
• And I examined whether and how large multi-practice law firms can benefit from one popular social-media vehicle: “Can a full-service law firm use Twitter?“

2. I penned two more columns for The Lawyers Weekly.

• The first was a challenge to CLE providers everywhere to take a hard look at their business model in light of a changing market: “The future of continuing legal education.”
• The second was that reliable standby, a top-ten list of significant developments on the Canadian and global legal scenes last year: “2010 brought many changes to the legal world.”

3. I was honoured to be among the first contributors to a great new site called Attorney At Work (“One really good idea every day”), where I also serve as an advisor. If you haven’t yet subscribed to the Daily Dispatch of short but insightful recommendations, you really should.

• My first entry talked about lessons for lawyers from Sean Connery and The Untouchables: “What are you prepared to do?”
• My  second contribution borrowed its title shamelessly from Lao Tzu for thoughts on teamwork: “The art of we.”

4. I wrote a guest column for Canada’s Precedent magazine, which focuses on the lives and careers of young lawyers in big law firms, that talked about merit-based compensation for associates with the admittedly provocative title: “Seniority pay must die.”

5. The good people at JD Supra invited me to join a stellar group of contributors and write about what surprised us in 2010 and what 2011 likely will bring. Here’s what I submitted.

6. Finally, no list of my written contributions would be complete without my column at Slaw. My most recent edition talked about the fundamental irreplaceability of trust in a successful client relationship: “Your client is not your enemy.”

Finally, I was honoured to receive the Sherry Fowler Best Writing on a Blawg Award for my work here at Law21 from Dennis Kennedy in the 2010 edition of his coveted Blawggie Awards. My sincere thanks to Dennis, to all the hosts who invited me to contribute to their excellent publications, and to all of you for continuing to tune in here and elsewhere.