Michael Ferguson

I shared  my thoughts a couple weeks as to how legal bloggers and LexBlog, in combination, could help people facing legal issues arising out of the pandemic. Our thoughts have jelled into an actionable plan that lawyers, associations, law firms, and LexBlog have put in motion. Here’s the need, the plan, and the action being taken. The people facing legal issues arising out of the pandemic include consumers, small business people, large corporations, associations, government agencies, and other legal professionals. All of us. And their need for information will continue for years to come. Issues never faced before are requiring the interpretation of codes, regulations, and case law as applicable to a pandemic. Pandemic law was never taught in law school. To get this information, insight, and advocacy takes lawyers with niche expertise and lawyers with a desire to learn a new niche. Blogging lawyers. We need to aggregate Covid-19 related legal blog posts from existing blogge...

Someone asked me my thoughts on virtual conferences vis a vis typical conferences we’ve always had before March of this year. They were doing an article for a publication. I thought I’d share my thoughts with you. Those of you that know me know that I am a people person. I enjoy social interaction and have found legal technology and publishing conferences over the last twenty-five years to be fun, inspiring and rewarding. But I’m very pro virtual conferences. There’s no question that virtual conferences can bring energy, excitement and learning opportunities on the topic and cause of conference and the hosting associations. Virtual conferences also democratize conferences – and this is big, if your focus is giving. Most top shelf live conferences are limited to an exclusive group of people who can afford the cost of registration, airfare, hotel rooms, and in some cases, childcare. Assuming a person can personally cover all those – and most cannot, they will attend few conferences ...

I spoke about the pandemic’s impact on law firm business development with Jack Newton , the co-founder and CEO of Clio, a couple weeks ago. The emphasis was – at least for me – that this is the time to be as different and unique as possible. Being the same as other lawyers and you may not survive – literally. What’s does it mean to be different? It can be as simple as doing something that no other lawyer in your town or state is doing. Let’s take a Workers Compensation law practice. People are not working, so they’re unlikely to get hurt. Administration claims may be slowed or stopped, so getting claims resolved has become near impossible. Defense lawyers can defend those claims not moving forward. At the same time, hundreds of healthcare workers are being sickened by COVID-19. Here’s a story on such healthcare workers in the State of Washington, alone. Publish a blog for the State of Washington healthcare workers COVID-19 workers compensation claims. You will quickly become th...

I’ve been noodling on ways that my at LexBlog team and I can help people impacted by the pandemic. That’s most everyone on the world. You’re getting my thinking out loud on the ways LexBlog can help by quick iteration of our existing technology and harnessing the passion and expertise of legal professionals. It’s the latter who’ll drive this. Who are the people we can help? Consumers, small business people, corporations, government agencies, fellow legal professionals and more.  We all have legal issues and a need for information and insight arising out of the pandemic – and likely will for years to come. We also need to know know where to turn for help. Interpretation will be required of existing codes, regulations and case law on matters never anticipated by legislatures and judges. Add to that the executive and agency orders coming down from the states and the federal government. It takes lawyers with niche expertise, or the desire to learn, to provide the needed inter...