On to the roundup: here’s a list of the articles I’ve written (and in one case, the conversation for which I was recorded) in the last several weeks.

Stem Legal’s Law Firm Web Strategy Blog:

• Be remarkable: Online marketing for the smaller law firm
• A timely social media reminder, brought to you by Facebook
• The good, the bad, and the better of legal writing

Slaw:

• The purpose and place of pro bono
• The last Moneyball article: rethinking law firm talent acquisition

The Lawyers Weekly:

• The 24: Canada’s top legal social media influencers
• The inconvenient truth about law school

Attorney At Work:

• The best pricing advice ever
• Ask yourself the Moneyball question

The Lawyer (UK):

• Rise of the machines

CBA PracticeLink:

• Here come the robo-lawyers

Freedom is The New Rich:

• Positioning your law practice for success: Interview with Jordan Furlong (audio)

Edge International Review (Co-authored):

• From Belfast to Gurgaon: The new capitals of law
• Seven business development tactics in a down economy
• Read the entire Fall 2011 issue of the EIR if you have a chance.

First, I’ll be in Toronto this Friday, August 5, at the Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association. I’m honoured to be appearing on a Presidential CLE Panel sponsored by the ABA’s Standing Committee on Technology and Information Systems. “eAttorney, MiAttorney: How Technology Has Changed Communication and Collaboration With Clients” runs from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. at the Metro Toronto Convention Center, Room 716B, 700 Level, South Building. My fellow panelists are the real draw: Dennis Kennedy, Daniel Schwartz and Michael Downey will join me to discuss the impact of technology on the lawyer-client relationship, legal ethics, and the legal marketplace generally.

Secondly, I’ll be in Nashville on Monday, August 22, at the International Legal Technology Association’s 2011 Rev-elation Conference. I’m greatly looking forward to moderating the panel “Offshoring and Outsourcing: What It Means for Your Firm and Your Job” at 1:00 pm in the Governor’s C Ballroom at the Gaylord Opryland Resort. I’ll be joined by two high-profile experts in this field, Toby Brown and Kevin Colangelo, in a session introduced by V. Mary Abraham. We’ll be discussing the impact of outsourcing on lawyers, clients, and law firms’ operations, technology, infrastructure, while forecasting where the future will lead us in  this area.

If you expect to be at the ABA or ILTA conferences, please drop me a line and let me know.

With those two stops noted, here’s my regular roundup of work published elsewhere.

1. Two entries at Law Firm Web Strategy, the Stem Legal blog:

(a) “Politeness, please: Etiquette for LinkedIn and Facebook connections” — Avoiding the “Hey, you!” approach to online networking.

(b) “Law firm branding, social media and strategy” — First you get a brand, then you take it online: putting the horse before the cart.

2. Two articles from Edge International’s monthly newsletter Communiqué:

(a) “The myth of the two-tiered associate track” — In which I try to deflate a popular but misleading buzzword.

(b) “The purpose-driven law firm” — What is the point, from the market’s perspective, of your law firm? Think carefully before you answer.

3. Two columns for The Lawyers Weekly:

(a) “Pricing risk in the legal process” — Risk can be quantified, and lawyers can (and will) prove this as we get better at pricing our services.

(b) “The truth about (online) branding: it’s all about the client experience” — The original column on which the previous Stem post was based.

4. Two posts for Attorney At Work:

(a) “Be the world’s most client-accessible lawyer” — Meet your clients at their times, on their turf, and on their terms.

(b) “Shall I compare thee to a summary judgment?”– I really enjoyed writing this one: poetry as an exercise in lawyer clarity.

5.  Two columns for Small-Firm Innovation:

(a) “When it comes to marketing, small is powerful” — I really think solo and small-firm lawyers are poised for a marketing breakthrough.

(b) “Will your client someday say: You’re Dead2Me?” — Excellent client service is a legitimate competitive advantage. Really.

6. And for a change of pace, one regular column at Slaw:

(a) “Articling: back to basics“– Wherein I take a good, long look at Canada’s articling student system and ask some hard questions.

7. Finally, I’m always pleasantly surprised to hear from the media and happy to give them my time. Here’s where I’ve shown up recently:

(a) “Ontario attorney makes the case for (legal) poetry in motion” – Montreal Gazette (re: my Attorney At Work post)

(b) “Outsourcing pioneer blazes a new trail: bringing work back from India” — National Law Journal (re: the repatriation of outsourcing)

(c) “Half off: Nevada lawyer bets on discount model” — ABA Journal (re: the coming rise of low-priced legal services)

That’s about enough links for one post. Again, please drop me a line if you’ll be at the ABA or ILTA meetings this month — I’m always very happy to meet my much-appreciated readers.

Jordan Furlong delivers dynamic and thought-provoking presentations to law firms and legal organizations throughout North America on how to survive and profit from the extraordinary changes underway in the legal services marketplace. He is a partner with Edge International and a senior consultant with Stem Legal Web Enterprises.

1. I’ve been especially busy at Law Firm Web Strategy, the blog of Stem Legal, with three recent posts on social media:

• Sponsored stories: Facebook’s legal marketing breakthrough? considers a new advertising gambit by Facebook that might actually make sense for lawyers.
• Explaining social media and why it’s ideal for lawyers generated a lot of interest exploring the what and the why of social media in the legal profession.
• Explaining content and why it’s so hard for lawyers is a flip-side Part 2 to the previous entry: how to deliver great content and why lawyers often don’t.

2. My most recent column for The Lawyers Weekly sparked a lot of feedback: Do what you do best and outsource everything else kind of sums up my assessment of the current legal marketplace and how firms should respond to it.

3. My latest column at Slaw looked at a different question: why are some of the most influential people in law firms also the least pleasant to deal with? The importance of being nice makes the case that collegiality has a business purpose.

4. My newest entry for Attorney At Work reached back to law school to discuss the potential benefits of private knowledge management: Revive your law school study group.

5. My first entry for Small Firm Innovation, a dynamic new blog sponsored by Clio, won’t appear until early next month, but I’m proud to be both a contributor and a member of the advisory board. Check out SFI today for practical first-hand accounts of small-firm success.

In terms of my travel plans, here’s where you’ll find me over the next several weeks.

• Tomorrow, I’m addressing the Toronto chapter of the Legal Marketing Association with a luncheon presentation on responding to the extraordinary changes (including in Canada) to the legal marketplace.
• On June 2, I’m delivering a plenary presentation at the annual conference of the Barreau du Québec in Gatineau, QC, on access to justice: sorting myth from reality and issuing a wake-up call to lawyers about the latent legal market.
• On June 11, I’m co-presenting a full-day conference for the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society in Halifax. Extra bonus (for both the attendees and me): my co-presenter is Matt Homann of LexThink!
• On August 5, I’m back in Toronto as part of a Presidential CLE panel on legal technology during the Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association.
• Finally, during the 2011 International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference in Nashville, I’ll be part of a panel presentation on the impact of legal process outsourcing in the marketplace.

These and other engagements will take me through the summer, so I’m now booking appearances for the fall. If your law firm or practice group is organizing a retreat or your organization is hosting a conference and you’d like to learn more about my presentation packages, please drop me a line. Look for more information about retreats and presentations in an upcoming Law21 redesign as well!

Finally, I want to make one last pitch for your firm, department or organization to submit an entry to the 2011 InnovAction Awards, sponsored by the College of Law Practice Management. The deadline for entries is now just one week away, and based on inquiries and entries already received, I’m anticipating a banner year for submissions; yours should be among them.

Jordan Furlong speaks to law firms and legal organizations throughout North America on how to survive and profit from the extraordinary changes underway in the legal services marketplace. He is a partner with Edge International and a senior consultant with Stem Legal Web Enterprises.

I’d like to start with a link to the newest edition of the Edge International Review, a semi-annual collection of articles from my partners in Edge. I served as editor of this issue and contributed an article titled: “The talent portfolio: where, how and by whom your work is done.” The Review will be mailed out this week to thousands of subscribers; if you’d like to be added to the subscriber list (or to receive Edge’s free e-newsletter, containing more exclusive articles by Edge partners), please drop me a line.

For the Canadian Bar Association’s National magazine, I wrote a cover story on the most recent round of mergers in the Canadian law firm marketplace. “Merger mania” featured lengthy interviews with the managing partners of Norton Rose, Ogilvy Renault, Miller Thomson and McMillan LLP. I think you’ll find their perspectives on the rapidly evolving law firm landscape to be illuminating.

For the CBA’s PracticeLink online periodical, I wrote an article titled: “How to use old media to access new media,” which talks about how social networks can help you raise your profile in the mainstream and legal press. I followed that up with a complementary post at Stem Legal’s Law Firm Web Strategy blog that added more pointers for joining old and new media in your marketing efforts.

Also for the Law Firm Web Strategy Blog, I welcomed new Stem client Harrison Pensa of London, Ontario, to the fold, and later highlighted the firm’s innovative new privacy policy generator. In addition, responding to a trend I’m seeing among law firms struggling to create original content, I wrote a primer titled: “Reluctant publishers: helping lawyers generate content.”

For The Lawyers Weekly newspaper, I published two columns: one on the strategic management of legal talent, and the other on a subject I wish would get more serious attention in the legal profession. “Law firm diversity beyond the platitudes” cites the example of Nixon Peabody’s diversity initiative, which is the most demanding and the most pragmatic I’ve yet seen.

My regular column for Slaw, “Exploding some law school myths,” generated a remarkably large and intense amount of feedback. Read the article and review the provocative comments to get a sense of popular feelings about law school these days.

For Attorney At Work, I wrote two articles: “Create legal annual reports for your clients” received a very positive response to its idea of preparing yearly reviews and previews of clients’ legal health, while “Demographic business development” talked about generational change from clients’, rather than the lawyer’s, perspective.

Susan Cartier Liebel and her great team at Solo Practice University were kind enough to interview me for a two-part webinar on the future of the legal profession. (Note: if you haven’t heard about my SPU scholarship contest, check it out here.)

Finally, I was honoured to be interviewed or republished by some leading media outlets over the last couple of months.

• CNBC in India reproduced my Edge e-newsletter article about what IBM’s Watson means for the future of law firms.
• The Lawyer newspaper in the UK interviewed me about the dramatic changes underway in the Canadian legal marketplace.
• The ABA Journal interviewed me for a piece on legal process outsourcing companies, and was kind enough to pick up two of my blog posts on the ethics of law blog content and the rise of free-agent lawyers.
• And Canada’s leading French-language legal blog, Droit-Inc., interviewed me about the rise of legal process outsourcing and its impact on both lawyers and Quebec notaries.

A last couple of notes: April 1 finds me in Quebec City addressing the spring meeting of the Chambre des Notaires, the governing body of Quebec’s notaries, while April 4 brings me to Orlando to open the MasterMinds session at the 25th annual conference of the Legal Marketing Association. If you’re attending either of these events, please send me an email and let me know.

Jordan Furlong speaks to law firms and legal organizations throughout North America on how to survive and profit from the extraordinary changes underway in the legal services marketplace. He is a partner with Edge International and a senior consultant with Stem Legal Web Enterprises.

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.

• As part of the newest edition of the Edge International Review – a journal of Edge partners’ essays that is definitely worth your time — I wrote an article about how law firms can find the inspiration for innovation in the most ordinary places: The Law of the Pencil.
• My most recent post at Stem Legal’s Law Firm Web Strategy blog focused on an overlooked aspect of lawyers’ effective use of Twitter: their Twitter biography. What you say about yourself in 140 characters does matter: First impressions: make your Twitter biography count.
• My most recent column for The Lawyers Weekly talked about whether, contrary to popular belief and general hand-wringing, small-town legal practice might actually be poised for a renaissance: The growth potential of small-town law.
• And my most recent column at Slaw discussed the decline of customer service in the marketplace generally and argued that law firms that actually prioritized client service would have an enormous advantage: Your call is important to us.

And here are links to some articles for which I’ve recently been interviewed.

• The Legal Intelligencer quoted my thoughts on the cascading effect of manifold changes taking place throughout the legal services marketplace in two articles: Law Firms Feel Pressure From a New Breed of Competitors and Will UK Management Trends Influence US Law Firms?
• The Lawyers Weekly asked me and others what we thought about Norton Rose’s decision to merge with Ogilvy Renault and its impact on the Canadian legal landscape: Ogilvy merger with Norton: the start of a merger trend?
• The Connecticut Law Tribune spoke with me and others about the changes underway in the legal services marketplace, with a focus on how larger law firms and their clients will be affected: And What About the Next 35 Years?
• Lawyers Weekly USA spoke with me about how generational change in the workplace is affecting methods of communication, which might help explain why associates don’t pick up voice mails and senior partners love email: Lawyers communicating across generations.
• Paul Lippe’s ABA Journal column “The New Normal” was kind enough to recommend my Twitter feed as one worth following within the legal profession: Should Lawyers Tweet?

Finally, I’m especially honoured to report that for the third consecutive year, Law21 has been chosen among the top 100 law blogs by the ABA Journal. Here’s the LawBiz category in which Law21 appears. If you wanted to cast your vote for this blog, well, I certainly wouldn’t stand in your way.

My congratulations to all the Blawg 100 nominees, and my sincere thanks to the ABA Journal and, as always, to everyone who reads this blog.

1. “Letting the client decide,” Slaw: Brand new this morning, my newest column looks at a UK firm whose portfolio of alternative fee arrangements includes an offer to give the client the right to set the final price.

2. “Rethinking the case law update: who are you talking to?“, Law Firm Web Strategy: one of two recent columns at Stem Legal‘s blog, this one asks why we still rely on that old legal publishing standby, the case law update.

3. “Talk to me: putting an end to canned conversations,” Law Firm Web Strategy: My second Stem Legal column continues the recent theme of “lawyer communication” issues by examining voice mail in law firms.

4. “Associate compensation meets the merit system,” The Lawyers Weekly: The first of two recent columns at The Lawyers Weekly reviews the latest developments on merit-based associate pay systems.

5. “Law schools and the risk of irrelevance,” The Lawyers Weekly: This column generated a lot of Twitter activity and direct emails, which tells me the disconnect between law school and law practice is hitting a nerve.

6. “The 21st-century law firm,” CBAPracticeLink: Finally, an article published at CBA PracticeLink pulls together several diverse strands of lawyer innovation and marketplace evolution into a model of the future law firm.

1. Two blog posts in the last month at Stem Legal’s Law Firm Web Strategy blog have focused on social media in the law firm enterprise context. Here’s what I had to say about Facebook for law firms and Twitter for law firms.

2. Also at Stem Legal is an announcement about our new Media Strategy Service, under which I’ll be providing communications, media and social media consulting to law firms and legal organizations.

3. Over at The Lawyers Weekly, my new column — a primer on legal process outsourcing and what its impact on the legal services marketplace will look like — has now been posted.

4. Christopher Hill at Construction Law Musings kindly invited me to provide a guest post on how to be an effective construction law client, but it applies to clients in any area of law practice.

5. Shortly after addressing the ABA’s Bar Leadership Institute in Chicago last month, I recorded a series of very short interviews with ABA Now, in which I talked about new mentoring approaches, the evolution of preventive law, and the importance of relationships for bar associations.

6. Before my presentation to a symposium at Georgetown Law School last week on the future of law practice, I recorded a brief interview with Greg Bufithis at MyLegal.com that talked about some of the changes now underway in the legal services marketplace.

On March 11, I’ll be in Chicago to deliver a plenary speech and moderate a roundtable discussion for the American Bar Association’s Bar Leadership Institute, an annual gathering of more than 350 new bar leaders from across the United States. The subject of the address will be the rapidly evolving nature of legal practice and its impact on bar associations. I’ll be fortunate to share the stage with two people whose work I admire: Edward Adams, editor and publisher of the ABA Journal, and Carole Silver, executive director of the Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown University and a member of the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20. Here are full details of the event.

On March 18, I’ll be returning to the ABA, but this time by phone. I’ll be co-hosting a webinar on alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) for the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section, along with my Edge International Consulting colleague Rob Millard and Valorem Law Group founding partner Patrick J. Lamb. The webinar, titled “Rethink Legal Billing: Align Your Firm to Alternative Fee Arrangements,” will open with an assessment of what AFAs are and why they’ve suddenly emerged as the hottest topic in lawyer-client relations. The discussion will continue with an in-depth look at the project management and business process engineering aspects of successful AFAs, and close with first-hand experiences with AFAs in real-world situations. Watch the ABA LPM home page for registration information.

And on March 22, I’ll be in Washington, D.C. at the afore-mentioned Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown University, which is sponsoring a symposium titled “Law Firm Evolution: Brave New World or Business As Usual?” I’ll be part of a panel discussing new lawyer training methods at some innovative U.S. law firms and contrasting them with Canadian law firms’ articling programs. But the real draw will be the luminaries at the podium throughout the event. Check out this partial list of panellists: Richard Susskind, Stephen Mayson, Dan DiPietro, Bruce MacEwen, Susan Hackett, Leah Cooper, Mark Chandler, Jeff Carr, Aric Press, and managing partners or senior partners from several global law firms. Here’s a downloadable PDF of the agenda.

(Also in Washington, on March 17-18, my colleagues Gerry Riskin and Karen MacKay will be hosting the first of a series of Law Firm Leaders Development Workshops designed to help managing partners and practice group leaders grow their leadership skills and perfect profitability and change management. Highly recommended.)

Finally, although it’s a few months down the road, I’ll also let you know that I’m speaking at the Law Society of Upper Canada’s 5th Annual Solo and Small Firm Conference and Expo in Toronto on May 14. Since I’m appearing there in my dual capacity as an Edge partner and a Stem senior consultant, I’ll speak once on strategic/future of law matters and once on social media opportunities for lawyers.

These sorts of events are always extremely interesting for me — speaking both with other panelists and with attendees is a great opportunity to take the profession’s pulse. If you or your organization would be interested in having me speak or facilitate at an event, by all means please drop me a line or read more about it. And if you’ll be attending any of the foregoing events, please let me know!

With the indispensable help of Jesse Collins of Moxy Webworks and Tony Delitala of Delitala Design, I’m very proud to show off Law21′s new design. You’ll see that while many features remain the same or similar, you’ll find many more are new and, I hope, interesting. In addition to a cleaner, more open feel to the site, we’ve added these elements:

• The tabs across the top of the page – which will always stay on top of the page; try scrolling down and see – will bring you to information about the consulting services I’m offering through Edge International and Stem Legal. You can also access this information by clicking the Stem and Edge icons at the top of the right sidebar column.
• My five most recent Twitter updates are now featured continuously just below those icons, and they’ll constantly refresh whenever I make a new Twitter post. If you want to join the 1,300+ people already following the micro-blogging and micro-publishing service I’m operating on Twitter, a simple click of the Twitter icon will do the job.
• I’m making a lot more speaking appearances these days, so we’ve installed a feature that tells you where, when, and to whom I’m giving a presentation in the upcoming months. If you’re interested in having me come speak to your firm or organization as well, click on the “Consulting Services” tab at the top of the page for more information.
• I also thought it was time to provide some links to articles I’ve written and podcasts or teleseminars I’ve recorded. So again, down the right-hand column, you’ll find lists of both types of publications and links to where they can be found online.

As is the case with every blog and website redesign, the form is only a point of entry into the content. So I’ll continue to strive to provide you with the very best articles I can at Law21, to justify and provide real return on the investment of your time and attention here. Thank you, as always, for reading.