My Shingle

Are data-driven matches between lawyers and clients always made in heaven?

January 30, 2013 by Carolyn Elefant

With the dawning of the Age of Big Data, increasingly, we’re seeing the rise of the data-driven match.  Yesterday, I came across a primitive example of this concept (primitive because it’s based on user-input rather than analytics); a new matchmaking site, Same Plate.com where users can select dates based on food preferences. Likewise, some colleges [...]

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Ethics Follow Up 2: Will Virginia law blogger’s challenge to discipline deprive other blogs of First Amendment protection?

January 28, 2013 by Carolyn Elefant

In October 2011, I blogged about a Virginia lawyer Horace Hunter’s challenge to a disciplinary charge  for failing to include a disclaimer on his blog stating that results in past cases handled by the firm (and reported on the blog) are unique to the facts and do not guarantee a similar outcome in other cases.  Hunter [...]

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Ethics Follow Up Part I: New Jersey bonafide office rule improves but still fails to recognize reality of the cloud

January 28, 2013 by Carolyn Elefant

For those of you who track ethics developments at MyShingle, there are a couple of updates to report.  Here’s Part I; Part II (on blogs and the First Amendment) is Ethics Follow Up 2: Will Virginia law blogger’s challenge to discipline deprive other blogs of First Amendment protection? Back in March 2010, I mocked New [...]

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The Siren’s Song of the Unlaw Firm: Will Today’s New Business Models Help Solos…or End Their Careers?

January 25, 2013 by Carolyn Elefant

Call it the un-law firm.  As big law crumbles and some solos struggle to compete with national non-lawyer providers like Legal Zoom, new business models for law firms are cropping up to fill the void.  From Virtual Law Partners  and  Rimon Legal  to branded networks of solos and franchise offices, alternatives to the standard law [...]

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Open Letter to New Lawyer: You should be dragging me into the 21st century not the other way around

January 17, 2013 by Carolyn Elefant

Dear New Lawyer, At 48 years old, I am old enough to be your mother.  And you should be ashamed of yourself.  Here you are, coming to me for a legal job when you don’t know the first thing about RSS feeds, blogging (reading them, let alone writing them), Twitter, Pinterest or YouTube.  And what’s [...]

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MyShingle Will Pay THREE Readers $125 To Test Out Divorce Discourse/Lee Rosen’s Networking 101 Program

January 16, 2013 by Carolyn Elefant

Regular readers know that MyShingle is all about original content, all the time, almost always authored by me rather than guest posters (though I’m always open to high-quality submissions).  But when a recent bout with the flu rendered me at less than full-capacity for over a week, I’ve had no choice but to revise my [...]

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Serving The Needs Consumers Didn’t Know They Had

January 10, 2013 by Carolyn Elefant

So, I’m finally back to work and blogging after some highly aggressive bout of flu or sinusitis knocked me off my feet for almost five days.  When my symptoms reached the point where I felt too nauseous and feverish to leave my bed, I knew that it was time to seek medical help. As has [...]

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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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Continue Your Education with Skillshare.com

December 26, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

When it comes to post-law school learning, most lawyers think of continuing legal education or CLE.  And while it’s important for lawyers to stay fresh on law-related developments in their respective practice areas, in these dynamic times, lawyers — and particularly solos — need to learn other skills as well.  While large firm lawyers or [...]

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Quick Thoughts on E-Newsletters and E-Annual Reports: Time to Send is Now

December 18, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Because I’m an avid blogger, for years, I resisted sending an electronic newsletter as part of my law firm marketing portfolio.  If potential clients wanted a sample of my legal analysis, they could follow my blog, I reasoned.  Plus, I assumed that my newsletter would get lost in the hailstorm of big firm client alerts [...]

Read more Marketing Trends 2 comments

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