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Book Review

The Future of Law: Been there, done that, let’s do it better.

December 31, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

As the saying goes, there’s nothing new under the sun.  What law profs and thought-leaders tout as “the future of law” — from non-lawyer representation or nonlawyer ownership of firms  and form-based, assembly-line style or virtual law practices (for the record, not all virtual practices follow this model) — have their roots in legacy models that the [...]

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The $100 Start Up Is A Great Read For Lawyer StartUps

May 31, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Cruising the airport magazine stand while airing for the departure of my  flight to London last week, the cover of the Chris Guillebeau’s  new book, $100 Start-Up  caught my eye.  My ipad was already loaded with reading material, including Eric Ries’ Lean Start Up  which I’d put off reading for months, so I wasn’t in [...]

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Cloud Computing for Lawyers

April 4, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Cloud Computing for Lawyers, by Nicole Black (my co-author for Social Media for Lawyers) is an extraordinary book. Not just for the exhaustive and well-researched content, which I’ll discuss in more detail below. Rather, what’s so significant about Cloud Computing for Lawyers is that Niki acknowledges the cloud for what it is: a universal trend [...]

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Book Review: Virtual Law Practice: A Useful Guide for Virtually Any Kind of Law Practice

March 17, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Libraries may be nearly obsolete, but somehow we can’t rid ourselves of Melvil Dewey’s fetish for classifying books. We cabin books into narrow, topical silos – the business book, the practice management book, the substantive law treatise – and gravitate to those directly related to our interests, while ignoring the others. If I didn’t blog [...]

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An Ebook on What Matters

December 17, 2009 by Carolyn Elefant

One of my favorite “ideas” people (for want of better classification) is Seth Godin.  Godin has an eye for trends.  No other blogger spots them as far in advance or articulates them quite as well.  This week, Godin is offering a freebie:  an ebook entitled What Matters Now.  The book is comprised of contributions from [...]

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Boo to the Billable Hour: A Book Review

February 18, 2008 by Carolyn Elefant

I finished lawyer John Derrick’s engaging and well written book, Boo to the Billable Hour several weeks ago (and in one sitting), but I’m just getting around to posting my review now.  As I’ll describe in more detail below, Boo to the Billable Hour offers a great primer for lawyers who haven’t even thought about [...]

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Don’t Slash and Burn, Just Slash

February 24, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

Used to be that career advice tended towards the absolute.  Women at biglaw were basically advised that if they weren’t willing to work 80 hour weeks after having kids that they’d have no future at the firm.  So many left entirely, not recognizing the possibility for a happy medium.  And on the listserves that I [...]

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MyShingle Reviews Blachman’s Anonymous Lawyer

July 23, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Let me start this book review with a confession:  when I first heard that Jeremy Blachman nabbed a contract to bring his Anonymous Lawyer (AL) blog to the printed page, I didn’t have high hopes.  While I read the AL Blog before Jeremy outed himself, I can’t say that I was a huge fan; as [...]

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