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October Tele-webinar: The Key to Every Lawyer’s Success

Written by Lisa Solomon on October 6th, 2009 · No Comments


In this motivational program, presenter Stuart Teicher empowers lawyers to succeed by teaching them the secret to thriving as an attorney: Be Captisuading.TM In an inspiring and humorous way, Stuart explains that learning to be a captivating and persuasive professional improves lawyers’ ability to win cases and attract clients. It also spills over to lawyers’ personal lives. Stuart’s mission is to make every lawyer believe that they have the ability to continue to grow.

Stuart is a lawyer and a professional legal educator. As the country’s only CLE performer, he teaches Critical Lawyering Skills to attorneys throughout the country for continuing legal education providers and conducts training seminars in law firms. He’s also an Adjunct Professor of Law at Rutgers School of Law in Camden, New Jersey (where he teaches Professional Responsibility) and an instructor at the Rutgers University Professional Writing Program. His law practice focuses on sophisticated real estate and business law, and he’s also a civil mediator.

This program will be presented as a “tele-webinar.” In a tele-webinar, you call in to a conference call line to receive the audio portion of the program. If you have access to your computer, you can follow along with a Power Point presentation as well. There is no need to install any software on your computer. If you will be calling in from outside the office, don’t worry: you can view or print the slides before the program, if you wish.

Join us for this tele-webinar on Tuesday, October 20 at 3 p.m. Eastern (noon Pacific).

Your registration includes participation in the live tele-webinar and copies of the audio and video program recordings. To register, visit our Products page and add a Silver Membership to your cart.

September Teleseminar: Distinguish Yourself in the Downturn

Written by Lisa Solomon on September 8th, 2009 · No Comments


While the economy is faltering, those who focus on creating and building genuine relationships will strengthen their potential for career and business development. Learn how to stand out in today’s stagnant economy from the author of The Opportunity Maker: Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development, which the New York Law Journal described as “a must-have treasure box of marketing ideas.”

This program will provide proven strategies to help you:

  • Expand Your Network
  • Raise Your Profile
  • Harness the Power of Social Media
  • Build Stronger Relationships

Ari Kaplan is the author of the Amazon.com bestseller, The Opportunity Maker: Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development. He practiced law with large firms in New York City for nearly 9 years and has been recognized in the Miami Herald, the New York Post, the ABA Journal, Above the Law, the National Jurist, the Chicago Lawyer, GP Solo, the California Recorder and other publications. He provides business development training, career guidance, ghostwriting and individual coaching.

Join us for this program on Thursday, September 17 at 3 p.m. Eastern (noon Pacific).

Your registration includes participation in the live teleseminar and a copy of the program recording.

This program is also included in all Gold, Platinum and Platinum Plus memberships purchased before September 17.

Posse List members receive a 15% discount on all orders from Legal Research & Writing Pro; just enter the coupon code POSSE during checkout

Distinguish Yourself in the Downturn
Price: $97

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Visit our products page to learn more about how Legal Research & Writing Pro can help you transition from a job as a contract attorney to a career as an independent contract lawyer.

October Events: Live CLEs on Social Media, Persuasive Writing

Written by Lisa Solomon on September 2nd, 2009 · No Comments


The spate of fall-like weather we’ve been having lately here in the Northeast reminds me that October is just around the corner and, with it, three live CLEs that I’ll be co-presenting in New York City and Los Angeles.

On Thursday, October 8, social media and legal technology maven Nicole Black and I will be presenting The 6 Things You Need to Know About Social Media as part of two-part program on social media for lawyers. In this program, lawyers will learn about six important principles, applicable across social media platforms, that will help them use social media to promote and market their practices, showcase their areas of expertise, and network with other attorneys

The program starts at 8 a.m., and is followed by Twitter for Lawyers. The second session, on October 14, features programs on Social Media-The Vulnerabilities and Liabilities and Blogs, Facebook, Linkedin For Lawyers. Registration is available for one or both sessions, and a total of 6 CLE credits will be available (pending accreditation). The program is sponsored by and will take place at New York Law School, 57 Worth Street in Manhattan.

Nicole and I will be reprising our social media presentation at the ABA GP|Solo Division’s National Solo & Small Firm Conference at the Millenium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles on Friday, October 16, under the title Social Media for Lawyers: Six Important Principles for Effective Participation. It’ll be another early morning, with the program once again starting at 8 a.m.

On Saturday, October 17, I’ll be co-presenting Powerful Writing Techniques to Help You Persuade Judges and Win Clients with Hon. Gerald Lebovits. This program teaches lawyers to write more persuasively by using the same powerful techniques that copywriters have relied on for years. Topics covered in this course include:

  • The greatest challenge your writing must overcome to persuade readers to take a desired action
  • Basic concepts underlying all effective persuasive writing—ignore these and you’re sunk
  • How to write a compelling brief that the judge just can’t put down
  • The role of emotion in jurisprudence and how to trigger the reader’s emotions
  • The things readers absolutely hate—and how to avoid them
  • How to deal with objections to your position
  • Closing the deal: conclusions and calls to action
  • And more . . . .

This program runs from 1:15-2:15 p.m. (thank goodness!).

I look forward to seeing you at these exciting educational programs!

HuffPo Article About Legal Research Gets it Wrong: Everything Old is New Again

Written by Lisa Solomon on August 13th, 2009 · 6 Comments


I eat, breathe and sleep legal research and writing. Although it’s a big part of my life, I realize that the general public doesn’t share my passion for the subject. That’s why I was more than a little surprised to learn that today’s Huffington Post—which, according to Wikipedia, is the most linked-to blog on the web and had 8.9 million unique visitors in February, 2009—features an article entitled The Reinvention of Legal Research: The Future is Now.

The article’s premise is that the application of technology to information has led to “the radical transformation of the legal publishing marketplace.”

According to the author, Peter Schwartz,

Data trumps documents. Legal, regulatory, and court documents – once intrinsically valuable – increasingly serve as mere information containers. New methods for tagging, extracting, organizing, and presenting information in documents create new possibilities for how quickly we can assemble, analyze, interpret, and disseminate this information.

Information is liquid. We now live in an ocean of information, and are swept along by its riptides and currents. The challenge is to manage our relationship to this information so it serves us our higher purposes. We need ways to filter real-time story-telling and reporting so we can identify narratives that have substance and reject those that are ephemeral, partial, distorted, or trivial.

So far, so good. I have no quarrel with these philosophical musings about the nature of information in the internet age.

But Schwartz’s conclusions are dead wrong.

According to Schwartz,

[c]ustomers will not pay for research. When online legal research platforms were proprietary, online publishers imposed per-minute and per-use pricing structures. This pricing model facilitated client cost-recovery and allowed publishers to use law firms as information wholesalers. Because information is now a commodity, law firm clients will no longer pay for online legal research. New flat-rate pricing models for online research products reflect this reality.

The large legal publishers are in trouble. If law firms can no longer pass through online research costs to clients, multi-billion dollar legal publishers such as West and Lexis can no longer support pricing models premised on law firm cost recovery. Because West and Lexis cost structures depend on this pricing model, they are beginning to experience painful margin squeezes, compounded by the entry into the legal research marketplace of both nimble, low-cost competitors and new rivals with deep pockets such as Bloomberg.

Let’s analyze this, shall we?

Customers will not pay for research. Who are the “customers”? The lawyers who conduct legal research so that they may advise (and frequently advocate for) their clients? Or the clients who hire the lawyers who conduct the research?

If it’s the former, then Schwartz’s company, Knowledge Mosaic, Inc., should find a new business model, pronto: they make their money by selling subscriptions to their Securities Mosaic Website and News Service for $1,250 per year.

If it’s the latter, I agree: as I’ve previously written, the ABA’s view notwithstanding, the cost of a firm’s online legal research subscription is a part of overhead that shouldn’t be passed on to clients.

Because information is now a commodity, law firm clients will no longer pay for online legal research. New flat-rate pricing models for online research products reflect this reality. The information itself has always been a commodity: it was just limited to hard-copy form in the past. Back then, lawyers understood that the cost of maintaining a library was no different from the cost of keeping the lights on: it was overhead, and the expense was considered when the lawyer set a fee for services provided. Conversely, as the ABA materials demonstrate, today, many lawyers (with the encouragement of West), are divvying up the cost of their legal research subscription plan amongst their clients.

The large legal publishers are in trouble. If law firms can no longer pass through online research costs to clients, multi-billion dollar legal publishers such as West and Lexis can no longer support pricing models premised on law firm cost recovery. This is refuted above. And, while I don’t keep up with the financial health of the two 500-lb legal research gorillas, I don’t see them going out of business any time soon.

Like it or not, Mr. Schwartz, Knowledge Mosaic isn’t the disruptive entrant into the legal research market that you try to paint it as. Following in the footsteps of West (and, to a lesser extent, Lexis), the company does many of the same things that these traditional legal publishers do:

  • stored search capability (Westlaw’s Alert Center, anyone?)
  • on-call customer support and research assistance “during regular business hours (typicially with no wait)” (Hello, 1-800-REF-ATTY, 24/7)
  • search pages that allow you to target data buried in filings, including risk factors, exhibits, etc. (searching by field)

Based on the information on the Securities Mosaic website, the company has done a great job fulfilling the information needs of a niche market within the legal community. If it can do that better than Lexis and Westlaw, fantastic. But, despite its location in the trendy “industrial underbelly of Seattle—in modern facilities amidst train yards and commercial fishing docks,” it’s really not all that, just as Axiom is a dandified contract lawyer staffing firm, and not the “entirely new kind of firm” it bills itself as. But that’s another rant for another day.

August Teleseminar: Joke and Grow Rich

Written by Lisa Solomon on August 6th, 2009 · 1 Comment


The law is serious business but speaking about it doesn’t have to be. In fact, if you’re serious about establishing yourself as a leader in your field by speaking at conferences and workshops, developing a sense of humor is a must. In a crowded marketplace, the ability to entertain as well as inform will make you stand out from the herd.

In this raucous program, Sean Carter, America’s foremost Humorist at Law, will show you how to add a spark of “lawghter” to any presentation. He’ll demonstrate:

  • Why humor sells better than anything else (including sex)
  • Why humor is always welcome
  • How to find “the funny” in any topic
  • How to blend humor with practical and useful information
  • Tricks of the humor trade

Sean Carter is the founder of Lawpsided Seminars, a company devoted to solid legal continuing education with a healthy dose of laughter. Since 2002, Sean has crisscrossed the country delivering his Lawpsided Seminars for state and local bar associations, law firms, in-house corporate legal departments and law schools. Each year, he presents more than 100 humorous programs on such topics as legal ethics, stress management, constitutional law, legal marketing and much more. He’s the author of the first-ever comedic legal treatise, If It Does Not Fit, Must You Acquit?: Your Humorous Guide to the Law. His syndicated legal humor column has appeared in general circulation newspapers in more than 30 states and his weekly humor column for lawyers appeared in the ABA e-Report from 2003 to 2006.

Before becoming the country’s foremost legal humorist, Sean practiced for ten years in the areas of corporate securities and mergers and acquisitions.

Since August is all about vacations, we’re giving our live teleseminars the month off. The teleseminar recording will be available starting on August 20. Everyone who purchases a Silver Membership before then will receive, as our gift, a free copy of If It Does Not Fit, Must You Acquit?: Your Humorous Guide to the Law.

To register, visit our Products page and add a Silver Membership to your cart.

Which One of These is Not Like the Others?

Written by Lisa Solomon on July 7th, 2009 · 1 Comment


Remember this?




This lesson comes in handy when reading a new Law.com article entitled Law Firm Cost Recovery is Here to Stay. The article discusses the results of a survey by Mattern & Associates about law firm cost-recovery practices. Among the types of costs studied are overnight delivery, outgoing faxes, copies, telephone calls, legal research and “contract attorneys and legal assistants.”

 
Can you figure out which one of these is not like the others?

As explained in ABA Formal Op. 08-451, if a firm bills the cost of a contract lawyer to the client as a disbursement, the firm may not add a markup to the fees that the contract lawyer has charged the hiring attorney. However, if the firm bills the contract lawyer’s services to the client as a professional fee, the firm can add a surcharge to the cost paid by the hiring attorney, provided the total charge to the client represents a reasonable fee for the services provided to the client. As the ABA explained,

[t]his is not substantively different from the manner in which a conventional firm bills for the services of its lawyers. The firm pays a lawyer a salary, provides him with employment benefits, incurs office space and other overhead costs to support him, and also earns a profit from his services; the client generally is not informed of the details of the financial relationship between the law firm and the lawyer.

In light of this language, it’s clear that the ABA believes that contract lawyers have more in common with associates in a firm than with photocopies. Therefore, in my view, the services provided by a contract lawyer should always be billed out as a fee, rather than a disbursement. After all, just because you can include a markup when you’re billing a contract lawyer’s fees out as a professional fee rather than as a disbursement doesn’t mean you have to. Moreover, I doubt that the mid-sized and large firms that responded to the Mattern survey bill their contract lawyers out at cost. If those firms are charging a markup, the Mattern survey shouldn’t have included contract lawyers as a type of “cost” to be recovered.

July Tele-webinar: Leveraging the Media: How to Establish Your Name and Expertise in the Mainstream and Legal Press

Written by Lisa Solomon on July 6th, 2009 · 1 Comment


Who says mass media is dying? As newspapers and magazines migrate onto the Web, the reach and brand power of these periodicals is actually going to grow—along with their capacity to promote your practice. With reporters and editors hungrier than ever for low-cost, high-quality copy, there has never been a better time for lawyers to build relationships and leverage their expertise with both mainstream and legal media.

In this course, you’ll learn how to get noticed by, published in, and interviewed by the publications that lawyers—and clients—read:

  • initiating contact and building relationships with editors and journalists
  • establishing your credentials as the go-to person in your area of practice
  • understanding the media perspective: what they need, when they need it
  • writing for print versus web publications; writing for lawyer versus client publications
  • preparing for an interview: setting the ground rules, preparing for surprises
  • turning your media profile into a marketing advantage

Presenter Jordan Furlong is a lawyer, journalist, award-winning legal magazine editor, and award-winning legal blogger. His blog, Law21: Dispatches From a Legal profession on the Brink, tracks the extraordinary changes underway in the legal marketplace. He is the Editor-in-Chief of National, the magazine of the Canadian Bar Association, and chairs the InnovAction Awards at the College of Law Practice Management.

This program will be presented as a “tele-webinar.” In a tele-webinar, you call in to a conference call line to receive the audio portion of the program. If you have access to your computer, you can follow along with a Power Point presentation as well. There is no need to install any software on your computer. If you will be calling in from outside the office, don’t worry: you can view or print the slides before the program, if you wish.

Join us for this tele-webinar on Thursday, July 16 at 3 p.m. Eastern (noon Pacific).

Your registration includes participation in the live teleseminar and a copy of the program recording (mp3). To register, visit our Products page and add a Silver Membership to your cart.

ATL’s David Lat on Contract Lawyering’s Appeal to BigLaw Associates, MSM Coverage of Legal Job Market

Written by Lisa Solomon on June 24th, 2009 · No Comments


David LatThe last two posts here at LRWP have focused on issues that arose in the wake of my participation in a panel discussion on alternative legal careers that was part of Getting Back in the Game: How to Restart Your Career in a Down Economy, a day-long seminar on June 16 sponsored by the New York City Bar and Vault.com. The day after the program, I noted that that the New York Times coverage of the program focused almost exclusively on the day’s first panel, which discussed how to (eventually) break back into a large law firm, and decried the fact that the ABA Journal’s coverage was similarly one-sided.

By contrast, I have been very favorably impressed with blogger David Lat’s balanced coverage of the event. (For those who may be new to the legal blogosphere, Lat is the founding editor of Above the Law, a powerhouse legal blog that receives over 6 million page views a month.) Although ATL is known for reporting primarily on BigLaw news (scandalous and otherwise), Lat devoted a detailed ATL post to each of the day’s four panels (Breaking Back into a Large Law Firm: How to Make Your Way Back into a Top Law Firm; Casting a Wider Net: Small to Mid-Sized Law Firms; Career Alternatives for Attorneys; and Start Up LLP: Creating Your Own Law Firm). In fact, Lat’s post on the Career Alternatives for Attorneys panel provided fodder for my most recent post, in which I respond to ATL commenters who complained about bar ethics opinions that allow outsourcing overseas.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Lat between panels (he spoke on the BigLaw panel, adding some levity to an otherwise fairly grim discussion). When we continued our conversation via e-mail, he shared his views on some issues of particular interest to contract lawyers:

Solomon: I found it very interesting that there was so much interest among audience members in the idea of working as an independent contract lawyer (the first three or four questions for the alternative legal careers panel were about that topic). Do you have any insight as to why the (presumably) BigLaw associates in attendance would be particularly interested in taking that career path?

Lat: As the Biglaw world suffers through the downturn, lawyers from that world are looking for new modes of practice. They tried the safe path of going to a large law firm, only to find out that it wasn’t as safe as expected. In light of all the layoffs from large firms, folks are looking for greater independence—the ability to practice law regardless of what some management committee has to say about it. I think the independent contract lawyer model is appealing for these reasons.

Solomon: What are your thoughts on how the mainstream media covers the current legal job market?

Lat: While all media outlets, from the mainstream ones to the new ones, could always do a better job covering any given topic, I don’t have any huge objections to media coverage of the current legal job market. People are attracted to dramatic stories, and the fall of Biglaw is dramatic. That’s really all there is to it—I wouldn’t chalk it up to any kind of conspiracy.

While I continue to believe that the legal press should be spilling more ink on stories about, and of interest to, small firms and solos, Lat’s point about the drama of BigLaw makes a lot of sense: after all, good news (especially about the small guys) doesn’t sell many papers to the general public.

In Which I Respond to Lawyers Who Complain About Bar Ethics Opinions that Allow Outsourcing Overseas

Written by Lisa Solomon on June 22nd, 2009 · 3 Comments


As I mentioned in my last post, last week I participated on the alternative legal careers panel at Getting Back in the Game: How to Restart Your Career in a Down Economy, a day-long seminar sponsored by the New York City Bar and Vault.com. On Friday, David Lat posted his report on the panel over at Above the Law, as part of ATL’s series on career alternatives for attorneys.

Sprinkled among the snarky, juvenile and despairing comments (which are par for the course, if you’re familiar with ATL) were some comments that attacked bar ethics opinions that approve of outsourcing legal work to foreign countries. For example, commenter 19 asked:

Didn’t the City Bar Association (the same group hosting the ‘alternative pathways’ meeting) issue an Ethics Opinion in August 2006 saying it was OK to outsource legal jobs to other countries’ workers?

Here’s my response:

19 – you’re right: in Formal Opinion 2006-3, the NYC Bar did say that it’s ok to outsource legal work to other countries. Here’s the digest of the opinion (which is available on the NYC Bar website):

A New York lawyer may ethically outsource legal support services overseas to a non-lawyer, if the New York lawyer (a) rigorously supervises the non-lawyer, so as to avoid aiding the non-lawyer in the unauthorized practice of law and to ensure that the non-lawyer’s work contributes to the lawyer’s competent representation of the client; (b) preserves the client’s confidences and secrets when outsourcing; (c) avoids conflicts of interest when outsourcing; (d) bills for outsourcing appropriately; and (e) when necessary, obtains advance client consent to outsourcing.

More recently, in Formal Op. 08-451, the ABA gave its stamp of approval to sending legal work overseas.

What those who complain about these opinions (and other opinions like them) fail to realize is that the same principles that allow firms to send legal work overseas also allow law students – including (gasp!) summer associates at AmLaw 100 firms – and law grads awaiting admission to do actual legal work when they’re working at firms, rather than making copies and getting coffee for the partners. These principles also allow lawyers to work as contract attorneys in jurisdictions in which they are not admitted.

So, actually, these ethics opinions are good news for US lawyers, if you understand all their implications (check out my post on this, entitled “ABA Formal Op. 08-451 Good News for US-based Independent Contract Lawyers and Hiring Attorneys”).

Lest anyone think that I (and others like me) have been able to create successful and fulfilling legal careers outside of BigLaw because we’re not crushed with debt, the only reason my law school debt from NYU wasn’t over $100k when I graduated is because it cost only about $30k a year to attend when I was in school from 90-93. I’m still paying off my loans.

And for those complaining about doing doc review for $35-$40/hr: when I worked for Lexis as a law school trainer, I was making $17/hr, and during school vacations that year I temped as a secretary. I sucked it up and did what I had to do to get by.

One commenter didn’t like that answer:

To 50 (Lisa S.): To the extent you support the recent Ethics Opinions that have authorized the outsourcing of legal work to other countries when such work could be performed here in America by lawyers with families to feed (not law students), you’re a dunce and a traitor to our profession.

My response:

58 – You can’t have it both ways: the same principles that allow outsourcing to foreign countries also allow “outsourcing” within the United States. US contract attorneys have to distinguish themselves on other grounds than cost – just like other successful US companies that have cheaper foreign competition must distinguish themselves in order to survive and profit.

There are plenty of agencies that place contract/temporary lawyers. Some unemployed US lawyers think that kind of work is beneath them.

I encourage any lawyer in the US who wants to start an independent practice as a contract lawyer to do so. In fact, as I say right on my website, I think there is amazing pent-up demand for high-quality outsourced legal research and writing services (and, to add to that, any high-quality outsourced legal services).

I suggest you read my post entitled “What Susskind’s ABA Techshow Keynote Means for Independent US-Based Contract Lawyers.” As I explain in that post, in an April speech at ABA TechShow, Richard Susskind, author of The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, discussed his central thesis, which is that, in the next ten years or so, advances in technology will change, in fundamental ways, how legal services are delivered.

First, Susskind explained that the provision of legal services will increasingly be decomposed into component tasks that can be “multi-sourced”: in other words, each component task can be delivered, by different providers, in a manner lying somewhere on the following continuum:

bespoke (customized) > standardized > systematized > packaged > commoditized

A few of the types of multi-sourcing he listed fall squarely within the experience of today’s contract lawyers. Of the twelve types of sourcing models Susskind touched upon, “outsourcing,” is one of the broadest (and is the term that is probably most familiar to contract lawyers). As Wikipedia defines it, “outsourcing” is “subcontracting a process . . . to a third-party company.” In this sense, all work performed by a contract lawyer has been outsourced by the hiring attorney. Susskind also separately mentioned subcontracting as a sourcing model; I would be interested to learn more about the distinction he draws between outsourcing and subcontracting. Most contract lawyers are also a prime example of homeshoring, which, although commonly defined as “the transfer of service industry employment from offices to home-based employees with appropriate telephone and Internet facilities,” can also include the provision of professional services from a worker’s home.

Second, although Susskind predicts that, under pressure from clients who seek lower cost and greater predictability, an increasing percentage of legal work will be provided in a manner that falls farther and farther towards the right side of the continuum illustrated above, Susskind specifically noted in both his speech and his book that litigation practices would be affected the least by technological changes because litigation matters are very fact specific, and because litigators must necessarily appear in court. The fact-specific nature of litigation means that there will always be a demand for contract lawyers who can provide high-quality legal research and writing services. The “face time” required in many litigation matters means that busy solos will continue to seek the assistance of contract lawyers who can handle “outside” work such as depositions and court appearances.

In my view, independent US-based contract lawyers are well-positioned to ride the wave of technological innovation into the legal landscape of the future. Are you ready?
______________

Want to grab a piece of the outsourcing pie? Great: that’s exactly what I teach other lawyers to do. There’s also a book called The Complete Guide to Contract Lawyering, which you can find on Amazon, BN.com, etc. There are also plenty of books that provide guidance about how to start a solo practice, including the excellent Solo By Choice by Carolyn Elefant.

Finally, if I’m such a dunce, why am I in the post, while you’re hiding behind an anonymous comment?

As another commenter noted (quoting Bruce Springsteen’s My Hometown from Born in the USA), “these jobs are going boys/And they ain’t coming back.” Will laid-off and wannabe BigLaw associates keep chasing the past, or will they embrace the future?

Media Coverage of Major NYC Bar/Vault Legal Careers Panel is Unbalanced

Written by Lisa Solomon on June 17th, 2009 · 2 Comments


Yesterday, I participated on the alternative legal careers panel at Getting Back in the Game: How to Restart Your Career in a Down Economy, a day-long seminar sponsored by the New York City Bar and Vault.com. So I was understandably eager to see how the press covered the event.

The first article I had a chance to read today was a New York Times piece entitled Unemployed and Struggling Lawyers Seek Solace. After reading it, I knew I had to comment, so I posted:

Like commenter #73, I’m disappointed that the Times has chosen to focus almost exclusively on the content of the first of four panels that took place yesterday – the panel entitled Breaking Back Into BIGLAW: How to Make Your Way Back Into a Top Law Firm. Perhaps I shouldn’t be disappointed, as the Times (like the New York Law Journal) often focuses on the world of BigLaw almost to the exclusion of other lawyers in the city—not to mention the state and country: in a 2000 statistical survey, the American Bar Foundation found that 48% of lawyers were solo practitioners and another 15% worked in firms with 2-5 lawyers, while only 18% worked in firms with 51 or more lawyers (http://www.abanet.org/marketresearch/resource.html#Demographics).

In the panel about the rise of solo and mid-sized law firms, Ron Geffner, a partner in Sadis & Goldberg, LLP, explained that his 28-lawyer firm—which is one of the top firms in the country in his practice area—has not laid off anyone, has no debt, and is even expanding.

In the afternoon, the attitudes of the presenters on the panels about alternative legal careers (on which I spoke) and about starting a solo law practice (whose panelists included Carolyn Elefant, author of Solo by Choice: How to be the Lawyer You Always Wanted to Be and publisher of http://MyShingle.com, a long-running blog about solo practice) was much more positive, and the audience response was enthusiastic. But I guess that doesn’t sell newspapers in New York City.

Although my comment should have appeared as #87, it didn’t. I think this is explained by this entry on the Times’ blog comments FAQ page:

What about criticism of The Times?

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don’t want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies, and we will moderate accordingly.

Unfortunately, the ABA Journal’s coverage of the program relies exclusively on the Times’ coverage, and is therefore similarly one-sided. (This might be explained by the fact that the ABA Journal’s article was posted at 2 p.m., 15 minutes after the third of the four panels started. The Times article was originally posted around noon; although it was updated just after 5 p.m., the update doesn’t mention the afternoon panels). At least Vault.com’s coverage (here, here and here) is more balanced.

David Lat, of Above the Law, also reported about the program, but acknowledged that his post covered only the first panel (on which he spoke). Although ATL is about as BigLaw-centric as you can get, David stayed for the entire day, and told me that he’ll be posting about the other panels as well. (Stay tuned for more from David later this week.)

Please share your views about how major legal and non-legal publications cover the legal job market in the comments below.

Update: At some point after I published this post and tweeted about it, my comment was apparently green-lighted, and appears here as #88. Although the reporter, Jenny 8. Lee, admitted on Twitter that she didn’t attend the afternoon sessions, that fact is not revealed in her City Room post, which purports to cover the entire event.