Michael Ferguson

This Christmas marks seventeen Christmases of blogs and RSS for me. Blogs represented the democratization of publishing for me in 2003. RSS was the radio signal that enabled bloggers to “broadcast” and have their signal received on a RSS reader on other’s computers. A personal publishing press on your computer for which your copy was distributed for free. Another way to look at it, a personal radio station broadcast to radios, worldwide, again all at no cost. Powerful stuff, when you pause to think about it. What a perfect way for lawyers to publish, or broadcast, relevant resources to select audiences . The little guy competes with the big guy. Need not worry about people you may want to connect with finding your publication or station. It was “if you build it, they will come.” Google surfacing the good stuff and others with similar interests sharing and citing what you published. What a way for lawyers to connect with people in a real, authentic and intimate way. With lawy...

Kevin: This is Kevin O’Keefe for real lawyers have blogs of all things and who am I talking with? Tanya: Tanya Forsheit the chair of the Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz privacy and data security group. Kevin: I first talked to you when you called one evening and said, this is Tanya Forsheit from Proskauer and I’m going to do a privacy blog. How did that come about in your mind? Tanya: It was a really long time ago, I think that was in 2006 or Like that and I was a like a senior associate and I was trying to develop privacy practices at a time when privacy was really not so well-known. As a legal practice, we had breach notification laws and in California, we had some other laws, you know, Cal APA and things like that, but wasn’t that well known. I had an idea, as a senior associate at a large law firm. The idea was, how do I make people aware of my expertise and my knowledge and that I’m doing this and blogging was around already for sure. There were some large law firms th...

Should legal tech companies looking to build the best solutions be seeking the input of lawyers? Frank Ready of Legal Tech News writes today that lawyers want ‘easier’ technology, but legal tech companies aren’t sure what that means. The irregularity and hastiness which feedback does come has left product developers hungry for insights into the legal mind. Ready spoke with various people, inside and outside of law firms, as to how this input can be obtained. In some cases hiring lawyers. In other cases, doing the tech work inside a law firm, for a captive customer, if you will. Others advised spending more time with lawyers and getting to know their language. I’m not sure legal tech companies, when beginning or when working on new ideas and products. need to or should be seeking the input of lawyers. I’m serious. Look at what Steve Jobs had to say on the subject. “Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what...

Of course I have a dog in this hunt, and maybe I am being less than creative with a post on this topic, but hear me out on something that seams to be common sense. Lawyers and law firms are not well served in setting up their own blog sites. On Reddit someone asked this week about setting up their own blog. One person responded that they were a software engineer and that they were interested in learning how to set up a WordPress blog site – and theme – from scratch. He shared it took him a lot of time that could have been better spent blogging. If blogging is ultimate your goal, he said, rather than feeling compelled to know how to set up a blog from scratch, setting up a blog is a major distraction. Along the same vein,  Kevin Vermeulen  of Good2bSocial  wrote  yesterday about the tools lawyers and law firms can use to get started with podcasts. Fifteen tools for various aspects of podcasting. Vermeulen’s post is a good one, but does a lawyer – or most law fi...

I’ve been on the road interviewing successful law bloggers the last couple weeks and I’ll continue with more at the end of this week. I’ll start to post the interviews on a LexBlog YouTube Channel and here on my blog within the next week. By successful law blogger, I’m referring to lawyers who have built a tremendous reputation as a trusted advisor and thought leader, while at the same time establishing relationships with clients, prospective clients and influencers. In many cases, blogging has literally been a life changing event for the lawyer. I walk away from the interviews inspired by what the lawyers have done – all by virtue of the Internet democratizing publishing and business development for the little guy – whether a solo lawyer or a lawyer in a major law firm. Never until the Internet could a lawyer launch a publication on a niche for which they have a passion. And for the publication to attract an audience of highly interested readers. I am struck that the lawyers I ...

As a managed WordPress platform for legal publishers, LexBlog runs a WordPress development shop. Not as web agencies do with custom web development, which is tough to scale for the developer and the customer, but to perform the WordPress development work for our managed WordPress platform which supports all of our legal bloggers. Plugins, upgrades and features are being worked on and shipped by LexBlog all of the time. Just as any other SaaS (software as a service) provider does, we’re constantly maintaining and improving the platform, and accompanying service. LexBlog’s plugin work over the last year included plugins for the aggregation and curation of third party articles and blog posts via RSS. These plugins power LexBlog.com and our growing network of syndication sites such as Illinois Lawyer Now . Another use of these plugins could be the use of delivering aggregated select content to a third-party’s publishing platform. Meaning what? Just as you have a WordPress dashboard...

Over on Reddit, an authority asked about linking to books, other blogs and transcripts of podcasts on a blog they were starting. They wanted to put their spin on what others were saying and writing. Their intent was to link to the authority as part of their commentary. Like the law, the subject of the blog was on a “heavy subject.” I thought some of you may find my answer over on Reddit of help – You are okay doing doing as a describe. In fact, blogging as you describe how you’ll be blogging is how blogging began. Blogging in that fashion also works extraordinarily well in growing readership and subscribers of your blog. Blogging started fifteen plus years ago as a conversation. I saw what you wrote and then referenced what you wrote, often inserting a portion of what you wrote as a block quote in my blog. I then provided my take or why I shared what you had to say. The technology then enabled bloggers to see if another blogger or reporter wrote about us or what we wrote. So ye...

Want to rekindle that belief with which you entered law school? That being that lawyers can change things for the better – even if it’s one person at a time. That lawyers provide access to justice to those most in need. Create a Twitter list of bar association Twitter accounts. Heck, subscribe to mine. Skim through the tweets in the list a few times a week, maybe every day. You’ll see: An Afghanistan veteran returning to the States to go to law school so as to serve others – and move to a small city to be close to a VA hospital to help vets and their families on all aspects of the law. A law student who thought it unconscionable to graduate from law school without first heading to the border to work with immigrants so that he could see suffering first hand and to learn how lawyers could help. Lawyers working pro bono year round with local and state agencies to prepare for the annual hurricanes, and the havoc and legal problems they bring. A lawyer who uncovered that DuP...

ROSS Intelligence announced last week that it was giving law students and faculty free access to its AI legal research platform. The move was part of the company’s mission to improve the delivery of legal services. In its announcement, ROSS made a couple points that are applicable to technology companies, in general, introducing their solutions at law schools. From Andrew Arruda , CEO and co-founder of ROSS: “The legal profession is changing quickly and clients are demanding greater efficiency. We’re building tools to help future attorneys thrive in this new environment. Opening access across the country will provide law students with the 21st-century tools they need to succeed in today’s rapidly evolving legal market.” And from its VP of Strategy and Operations, Thomas Hamilton : ”You cannot underestimate the influence law professors have on the direction of the legal profession, or the responsibility that comes with that influence.“ One, law students need to be using the typ...