Michael Ferguson

Traveling to Europe a few times for work over the last couple years made me realize just how myopic I’ve been in looking at the size our market. Until traveling overseas, I looked at the U.S. as our market. We could go down and up in law firm size for customers, we could develop new products and we could look at customers other than lawyers and law firms, such as organizations. All the while though I am swimming in the same sized pond, competing against the same crowd. The competing crowd, which once blew off blogs as ill fitting for legal, selling at too low a price to make any money, and not understanding blogging themselves as an impediment, has gotten a lot bigger. Not that our blog product isn’t better than the competition’s, it is, but unknowing people buy inferior stuff. Introduce our products overseas and our pond grows by multiples. The U.S. is only the third largest country in the world. Introducing our products into the main five Anglo countries, alone, would increase o...

I’m headed to Chicago next week for the ABA TechShow. I’ll be in Chicago Wednesday through Saturday morning. TechShow is as much about the people and companies as it is about the conference itself. The organizers should be proud of what they have accomplished here. TechShow appears to have made a concerted effort to bring tech, in addition to lawyers using tech in more advanced ways, to those lawyers who may proudly call themselves luddites. The result is a lot of sessions which tend to be pretty basic. This is probably okay, but I am not sure that folks leave as inspired to innovate as they may be by attending other tech conferences. Change and innovation is needed now if we’re going to bring access to legal services via lawyers, versus ongoing discussion, something the ABA has a history of. Maybe I am biased, but I also see tech and innovation conferences to be a little better when not offering CLE. If I’m a lawyer looking to bring innovation and technology to my practice in a w...

With LexBlog gradually moving to a distributed workforce, I am taking a page out of Matt Mullenweg’s playbook – that being that as a CEO I should be traveling out to see my team where they live and work. Headed to Boston tonight. I’ll be seeing Scott Fennell , our lead developer, and a highly respected WordPress developer among its open source community, nation-wide, who lives in Portland, Maine. Scott’s being nice enough to take the train down to Boston to accommodate me with having a few other meetings in the city. Next time, I go to Portland. I’ll also be meeting our Robert Ambrogi , the dean of legal tech journalism, who needs no introduction. Bob, who hails from Rockport, Mass, the next cape up from Cape Cod, is a taking brief train or car ride down. Last week, I met up with Andy Walters , our senior project manager, in his home, Austin. Worked out great as I enjoyed Andy contributing to a meeting with one of our state bar association partners. Meeting in a coffee shop in Wes...

Happy Valentines Day from Austin, heading home to Seattle. Meeting a friend visiting Seattle from Atlanta who has traveled the road I have recently traveled, and more. Looking forward to it, enough so to catch a 6 AM flight home and get to up at 3:30 to run up Congress Ave and around the Capitol. Running every morning has certainly made it a habit, so, believe it or not, it’s enjoyable to get up and get out, no matter the time. Though a 5 AM flight could make for an all nighter. Austin was good. The ABA and NABE (National Association of Bar Executives) mid-year meetings were both taking place. Looks like we’ll move a large bar association from their current network website to our syndication portal product. Met with another bar leader as to whom to discuss such a move at their bar as well as a highly trusted bar and law firm consultant about talking with additional bars. It’s really a no-brainer for firms and organizations to run their web presences/publications on SaaS solutions...

I’ll be in Austin on Thursday for the ABA’s Annual Mid-Year meeting. In addition to ABA officials getting together, the National Association of Bar Executives ( NABE ) holds its Mid-Year meeting at the same time. NABE serves the management staff of bar associations and law-related organizations and its membership is comprised largely of employees from such associations. Knowing that relationships with people are the lifeline of any business, especially at LexBlog where we’re often more interested in who you are than what you do, I’m going down to spend time – even if it is only for one day – with people whom I enjoy knowing, and working with. Fastcase , founded and operated by my friends, Ed Walters and Phil Rosenthal, holds an annual dinner at Mid-Year for NABE member executives in appreciation for their using the Fastcase research platform and related products as a member benefit for their association members. I’ve had the honor of being a guest of Ed’s and Phil’s the last few y...

Headed home to Seattle from New York City after my first trip “out.” Nice, but different. Business is taken in context these days. What seemed important in the past, such as scheduling multiple meetings a day, or accepting what others thought important is no longer as important in the context of the important things in life. I did have three or four good meetings discussing LexBlog publishing, innovation and our new syndication work. Syndication to third party publishers by licensing our syndication platform as a SaaS solution continues to be well received. Six meetings now with publishing partners have led to four sales and two very interested publishers. LexBlog is a big believer in startups/innovators sharing their product idea openly, writing about it, stewing on it via online and face to face engagement and if there is an interest, jumping to selling and then, production. Early customers are vested in your success and will help you refine your product via questions, feedback...