Legal Research

Is there a better way to do (legal) research?

Posted on March 18, 2011
Mary Abraham at the Above and Beyond KM blog has suggested that there might be a better way for fee-earners to undertake research on Lexis and Westlaw. From her blog post;"With the benefit of hindsight, it seems obvious that the current approach to legal research is fundamentally flawed...

A gentle introduction to Twitter

Posted on March 15, 2011
I love this video which has been published to the Dissident blog this is quite literally a gentle introduction to Twitter for those people who are new to Twitter. I've embedded the video below for your viewing pleasure.For more detail on some of the things you can do in Twitter look no further then "Twitter Clinic: #FF, DM and RT explained" this is a great post explaining some of the features of Twitter...

Avoiding social media depression

Posted on March 09, 2011
Someone I'm following on Twitter recently retweeted this blog post and I felt compelled to have a look at why you could become depressed using Social Media.The blog post is actually very interesting and quite compelling. In it the author outlines the concept or idea behind Social Media depression:While the premise of Social Networking is to connect with others to build relationships, if we're not careful we can become much more isolated than before we started communicating onlineWe engage in comparison...

Developing your Intranet in a week

Posted on March 08, 2011
Develop your Intranet in a week, are you crazy? Well apparently it can be done according to the blog post "7 Daily tips for developing your Intranet in a week" on the Intranet Connections blog.There are some great tips here for developing your Intranet in a week although you couldn't feasibly do all of these during a single working week!Monday ? Go socialTuesday ? Make your intranet easy to access > Part 1Wednesday ? Make your intranet easy to access > Part 2Thursday ? Bring the intranet to your employeesFriday ? Make people the heart of your intranetSaturday ? Make your intranet business criticalSunday ? Create personalized digital destinationsThis is a summary of a blog post on the imjon...

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How to Use LinkedIn With Twitter

Posted on March 07, 2011
Are you using both Twitter and LinkedIn? have you thought about how you could use Twitter to assist with your networking on LinkedIn? No, well the Social Media examiner has published a blog post called "How to use LinkedIn with Twitter for better networking" which looks at how you can integrate your Twitter posts with LinkedIn and the benefits of doing this...

LinkedIn magic...

Posted on March 04, 2011
Recently I've been having a lot of conversations with individuals about the value (or not) of LinkedIn. It's really quite surprising how much people don't know about LinkedIn. Most people assume that LinkedIn is simply a place where you can post your work experience (CV) connect with a few people and that's it...

Defining good support

Posted on March 03, 2011
What is good support and how do you define it? This is the question asked by Ron Friedmann in his blog post "Defining good support for Lawyers"In his post Ron looks at the different ways support can be defined, this is especially important if law firms are considering outsourcing support departments and the issue of quality arises...

BIALL Cheese & Wine

Posted on March 02, 2011
Last Friday I attended the BIALL Cheese & Wine event. This was held in the jaw dropping Old Hall at Lincoln's Inn. Depsite the cold evening the wine and conversation flowed freely and it was great to catch-up with some old and new friendsI also had a very interesting conversation about Social Media and Yammer with one Law Librarian which has made me think about the potential to use Yammer within my organisation...

Have you got the skills to pay the bills?

Posted on February 25, 2011
Nicola Franklin of Fabric Recruitment has written an interesting post as part of the Future Ready 365 programme the SLA are running all this year. In her post Nicola asks "What skills will be vital in the future" and challenges all Information workers to be ready to answer the following questions:What?s an information professional for? Why should I ask a librarian instead of just searching Google? I can find what I need myself, why should I use the information centre? Why shouldn?t we just put the sources on everyone?s desktop? Surely it?s cheaper to outsource the research service? Nicola then suggests doing the following "Once you have thought of good, succinct, answers to questions like these, seek out opportunities to use them ? to other stakeholders, not to fellow librarians! That sounds daunting, but in practice it means developing a new skill set, one around writing (blog posts, articles, comments on others? posts), speaking (at internal meetings, at seminars, at conferences) and marketing your information services"For some I know this will be quite difficult even I occassionally struggle with my writing and ofte don't feel I'm contributing as much as I should be but in order to survive as a profession we need to be able to answers these questions and to defend ourselves against the many challenges we face...

Outsourcing, Outrage or Opportunity?

Posted on February 25, 2011
Yesterday I noticed a lot of US law librarians were tweeting about an ARK organised eventcalled "Best Practices & Management Strategies for Law Firm Libraries and Information Centers" You can see all the tweets from this event if you search Twitter search for #ARKLIBOf real interest to me was the Keynote debate which focused on outsourcing, its implications the opportunities associated with outsourcing and of course the challenges...

Tips for Intranet Employee Profiles

Posted on February 23, 2011
What's one of the most important things to get right on your Intranet? Some people might argue it's the lunch menu but for me ensuring that the people search and individuals profiles including photos are accurate is vital to ensure the success of the Intranet...

Bigger does not always mean better...

Posted on February 21, 2011
Toby Ward has written a very interesting piece on the Prescient blog called "Bigger Intranets are not always better" from the introduction to the blog post."Most intranets are awful; they're chronically underfunded, mired in politics, lack any meaningful governance, and use poorly implemented technology"A sweeping statement you might be thinking, but I've seen a few Intranets in my time and 90% of them are as described above...

What technology skills should Library staff have?

Posted on February 16, 2011
From the blog of the iLibrarian; "The LibrarianinBlack, Sarah Houghton-Jan writes for the ALA?s Learning Round Table about Technology Skills Library Staff Should Have. She suggests basic technology competencies that librarians should possess"Sarah divides these skills into the following categories:Terminology Hardware Software Security and Privacy Public Computing Ergonomics Library web presence Troubleshooting Personal Skills Looking at the list I fall down in a couple of categories, how do you do?

Top tips for dealing with an uncertain world

Posted on February 14, 2011
How do you cope with uncertainty in the workplace, keep working and ignore everything that's happening around you? or something else...This article on the Information Today website looks at how Information Professionals can deal with change in their workplace...

Sharing information isn't risk free!

Posted on February 11, 2011
It's easy and potentially costly to fall foul of copyright in the Interet age. We're increasingly presented with more sophisticated ways of sharing information and collaborating with each other yet individuals regularly share and display information that is copyright protected...

Top 10 reasons for updating your Intranet...

Posted on February 09, 2011
I love this post from the Socialtext blog which asks "Are you ready to make your Intranet social" and then goes on to list the Top 10 reasons why you need to urgently update your Intranet.I've reproduced these below *note some American terms are used, but you'll get the gist...

The end is nigh...maybe

Posted on February 07, 2011
It seems like you cant move these days without reading about another Law Firm outsourcing some aspect of their support function.Early this year news came that the CMS Cameron McKenna project to outsource its entire business support team in conjunction with Integreon could affect up to half of the support staff currently employed...

Taxonomy vs Information Architecture

Posted on February 04, 2011
Okay before I get into the heart of this blog post I want to say one thing. I'm not an Information Architect and if someone was to ask me about Information Architecture I'd really struggle. I do know a little bit about Taxonomies, having worked on a project developing a Taxonomy, albeit a while ago...

Are you a good Intranet KISSer?

Posted on February 02, 2011
Easy of use and simplicity should be the foundation of any good Intranet. But how many Intranets have you seen that fail to do exactly that? In an excellent post on the Intranet Connections blog Rachel Lai says "Keep it simple" when thinking about all aspects of your Intranet, but in particular:Keep your homepage simple - People need to see new information quickly and efficientlyKeep your content simple - That means thinking carefully about what you write and how much you write - less is more in this case!Keep your navigation simple - That means using an intuitive structure for your Intranet and where you need to apply labels make sure it's obvious what you mean!As Rachel says in her summary "Keeping your intranet simple might sound easy, but it takes careful consideration and planning...

A Better Strategy for Law Firm Librarians?

Posted on February 01, 2011
VMaryAbraham at the Above and Beyond KM blog has written an interesting post in response to Greg Lambert's post on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog. Greg's original post "Testing your law Library strategy" looked at how the "McKinsey tests" could be used to evaluate your Library's strategy...

Linkedin maps!

Posted on January 31, 2011
Following fast on the heels of Jennie Law and Karen Blakeman I've created my own LinkedIn Map, shown here>>>As Karen Blakeman on her blog says, the result is very pretty, but frankly quite messy and I'm not entirely sure what it says.I have identified some of the groups indicated by the different colours, but some of them I've really struggled with...

Mr Motivated!

Posted on January 31, 2011
What's been happening this year? If I was to be honest I'd have to say not a lot...for some reason I've not been feeling motivated at all. I'm sure this happens to everyone at some point but I've been feeling like this for a while.This blog for example has been sorely neglected...

It's all about the tips!

Posted on January 17, 2011
It's a new year, albeit 17 days old which means you're probably setting some new years resolutions and if you're anything like me thinking about how you can improve your Intranet.Thankfully you don't have to do much thinking (if you don't want to) as there have been a number of blog posts recently describing how to improve your Intranet...

SharePoint: An Intranet Manager Perspective

Posted on December 23, 2010
What's going to be a hot topic for Intranet managers in 2011? You guessed it SharePoint 2010, this is unsurprisingly the theme of Martin White's article on the CMS Wire blog.So what's so great about SharePoint 2010 that is making people look twice at is a tool for collaboration and for managing an Intranet...

Tweet for your life!

Posted on December 22, 2010
"Businesses need to start taking Web 2.0 seriously if they are to join the bigger conversation" is the theme of this article from the CBR Online.In it the author discusses how businesses are finally beginning to see the value of using tools like Twitter as part of their IT Strategy...

Practical applications of Web 2.0 in Law Libraries

Posted on December 21, 2010
Connie Crosby has prepared another excellent presentation using Prezi. If you've not seen Prezi used before you should definitely take a look at Connie's presentation.Unfortunately I haven't been able to embed the presentation here, so head on over to Connie's blog or Prezi itself to view the presentation...

Cloud Computing in Libraries

Posted on December 18, 2010
Do you know the difference between SaaS, Paas and Iaas? no, well you'd better have a look at Ellyssa Kroski's excellent introduction to how Cloud Computing is being used by Libraries. In it she looks at how Libraries are and could be using Cloud Computing services and explains the differences between SaaS, Paas and Iaas...

Social Media inside the Enterprise

Posted on December 18, 2010
No I'm not talking about Star Trek before anyone gets too excited. This is actually the title of an excellent looking talk by Connie Crosby at the recent KM World Conference.In the presentation Connie looks at how Blogs, Wikis, Video and Microblogging tools are being used...

Social Media and the workplace

Posted on December 16, 2010
The folks at Commoncraft have done it again with another excellent video. In their latest video they look at how the world of external company communications has changed thanks to social media.Key points include:Companies need to think of new ways to understand and react to what is being said "socially"How companies can confront a "social" crisisThe role of policies and guidelinesHow companies can add value and build trust using Social Media[Photo credit Martin Diller from FlickR]

Using Social Media to drive innovation

Posted on December 15, 2010
Almost exactly two weeks ago I spoke at Online Information. I was a little bit nervous as I hadn't spoken at Online for a couple of years. I needn't have worried though as the audience seemed very "pleased" with my presentation. I got some great feedback from the individuals who came and talked to me afterwards and I've even had two requests to write posts for others sites/blogs...

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