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.

• a personal interview to establish your media-related business development goals,
• an interactive questionnaire to determine your best media options,
• an inventory and assessment of your current media outreach practices,
• a customized strategic plan for using the media to promote your practice,
• a guide to building relationships with key media personnel, and
• a three-month period of telephone and email delivered consultation on media strategy and interaction.

I’m looking forward immensely to delivering assistance through the Media Strategy Service: it combines my dozen years’ experience in legal journalism and communications with my emerging interest in social media for the legal profession. Check out the MSS main page for more details, and please don’t hesitate to drop me a line if you’d like some more information.

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!

Steve is asking nominators to think about “sleeper picks,” blogs that might not get as much attention as more widely-known candidates. Accordingly, while I’m a fan of many Canadian law blogs and would be happy to place them on my ballot, I’m going to give my 2009 nominations to what I consider three underrated and/or important blogs:

1. The Court. Osgoode Hall Law School’s blog covering the Supreme Court of Canada is part of the revolution in how we think about law journals. With regular, sometimes even daily posts about SCC rulings and/or lower-court decisions interpreting those rulings, The Court has become required reading for law students, law professors and lawyers who want to stay up to speed on the rapid evolution of Canadian jurisprudence. I’d put it up against SCOTUSblog or any similar site worldwide for the depth and insight of its coverage.

2. The Cross-Border Biotech Blog. The next generation of law blogs is going to be deeply niched, client-focused, social-network-savvy and above all, about more than just the law. The Cross-Border Biotech Blog scores in all four respects, with industry trend updates, science news, Twitter recaps, and a consistent focus on what biotech clients care about. Jeremy Grushcow of Ogilvy Renault LLP is the lead author, but other contributors come from both sides of the border and a wide range of specialties — possibly the first multidisciplinary law blog, definitely not the last.

3. Fired Without Cause. I wish I could find a regularly updated Canadian law blog that focuses on access to justice and public legal education, because we sorely need one. But Fired Without Cause, the eponymous blog of a Vancouver-based wrongful-dismissal legal services provider, has some of that spirit. Its posts are accessible, plain-language guides to help both employees and employers navigate end-of-employment challenges with minimum damage to both parties. It’s no coincidence that a law blog written to be understandable to the public does not come from a law firm.

Who are your nominees? You don’t have to be Canadian to cast your votes — and if you need a refresher on the potential candidates, check out Steve’s Canadian Law Blogs List. Vote early, because the winners will be announced New Year’s Eve.

This is the first of what will be fairly regular posts at the Law Firm Web Strategy Blog, usually focused on the media, communications and branding, in my capacity as a Senior Consultant with Stem focusing on media and communications issues for law firms and legal organizations. If there’s a topic you’d like to see explored under these themes, drop me a line at jordan@stemlegal.com anytime.