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...

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s morning briefings have become a staple for many, New Yorkers or not, on the state of  the pandemic. Sunday morning Governor Cuomo ended with a story that he said taught him a lot. A story that taught him to question why we do what we do. To question the bureaucracy. To ask why we can’t do it a different way. Not everything has to be the way it is. Cuomo was of course referencing bringing New York back from the depths of this pandemic,  for which he made clear the worst days are behind. His message struck me as equally appropriate to a couple things near and dear to my heart. One, our attempts to provide consumers and small business people meaningful access to legal services – especially during the pandemic and the years ahead. We need to question the way things have been done and the bureaucracy that holds change back. Despite years of debate and “action,” we have 85% of people never thinking of using a lawyer when a legal need arises. ...

The LinkedIn Legal Blogging Group grew by over one hundred members from eighteen different countries in the last day. Egypt, Poland, India, US, Canada, UK, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Romania, Belgium, Germany, Turkey, South Africa, Jamaica, Nigeria, Argentina and Columbia. Amazing. My teammates and I at LexBlog, moderators of the Legal Blogging Group for the last twelve years, are going to work to restore the group to a valuable place for insight, ideas and networking. In approving requests to join, I was more liberal than usual. I want to help people during the pandemic who want to join and be open to the fact that people from various walks of life and various countries can help each other during these tough times. I looked at the member’s profile who was requesting to join the group – what they did, what their background is, how they would benefit from the group and how they might offer value to the group. I sent a personalized note requesting to connect with each...

We’re not going to see conferences of legal professionals in the hundreds, let alone thousands, in size yet this year. You can glean this from the White House guidelines , which the governors apparently approve of (and make the final decision), and the resulting discussion taking place across mainstream and social media. Even in stage three, the non-risk population (majority of people) is advised to minimize their time in crowded environments. The revenue loss for organizations like the American Bar Association, Legal Marketing Association, American Association of Law Libraries, International Legal Technology Association, among others could be significant – registration fees, sponsorships etc. I’d think organizations and companies doing conferences should announce virtual conferences as soon as possible. My gut tells me there are going to be some innovative and cool ways to do large conferences – with new types of platforms developed now for the years ahead. There will be revenue...