Doug Cornelius .com

The Bar Talk piece in the May 2008 edition of The American Lawyer is focused on Legal OnRamp. To toot my own horn, Brian Baxter, the author of the piece threw in a few quotes from me:

“Social networking costs are minimal-it’s not like sponsoring a table at an awards dinner or printing brochures-so your return on investment is astronomic,” says Douglas Cornelius, a senior real estate associate with Goodwin Procter in Boston. Cornelius says he favors Legal OnRamp over other business networking sites like LinkedIn and LawLink because it’s interactive and offers access to potential clients through its in-house contacts. Cornelius’s one gripe with the site so far is that it has too many Silicon Valley types.

The second half of my gripe (which did not make it into the story) was that there were few real estate and real estate investment management in-house contacts in Legal OnRamp. After all that is my client base.

As I have written about Metcalfe’s Law before, the power of a social network tool or communications tool is increased as more people use the tool. If my client base and peers are not using the tool, it is a less effective tool.

But wearing my knowledge management/enterprise 2.0 hat, Legal OnRamp is a tremendous tool. Even if your clients are not the “Silicon Valley types.”

Since the time of my interview by Brian Baxter, I have seen more and more real estate counsel come into Legal OnRamp. It is becoming more and more useful to me. I would bet that it will become more and more useful to my clients and potential clients.

On Earth Day, the City of Los Angeles enacted a green building ordinance. According to the Sheppard Mullin Real Estate and Construction Law Blog:

The program sets mandatory standards of sustainability for large projects. In essence, the program provides that no building permit shall be issued for projects at or above 50,000 gross square feet of floor area unless “[t]he project applicant…demonstrates that the Project meets the intent [emphasis added] of the criteria for certification at the LEED certified level.” See LAMC, Section 16.10 D.1. Formal LEED certification, however, is not required.

Boston enacted its green building ordinance last year. In January of 2007, the Boston Zoning Commission approved several amendments to the Boston Zoning Code to require all projects over 50,000 SF to be designed to meet the “certified” level.

• Green Building presentation to the Boston Zoning Commission. (.pdf file)
• Boston Zoning Code Green Building Amendments. (.pdf file)

One of the challenges of knowledge management is comparing the ability to find information inside the firm, against the ability to find information outside the firm.

Google, in its quest to organize all of our knowledge, has set the bar very high for us trying to organize all of our knowledge inside the firm.

One of the most common requests I get is: “Make it a Google-like search.” Obviously the information inside the firm is not organized in the highly linked and interconnected way of webpages that makes Google so successful.

But one of the keys in producing content and publishing content is how it comes back in a search for information. It is key in knowledge management to sit down like a regular person at the firm and try to the find the content you just produced. People are not willing to sit down and create a complex query or fill in a lot of fields to get an answer. They want to fill a few words into a simple search box and get results.

One of the new features of SharePoint is the ability of individual list items to be returned in search results. The SharePoint list function allows you to organize information in a structured way. For example, collecting a list of precedent acquisition agreements and noting specific characteristics. You can go into the list and filter for a particular set of results. Or, if the list is structured properly, you can just use the simple SharePoint search to return the individual items on the list.

There are questions that cannot be answered by Google and there are answers that cannot be answered by your intra-firm search. But we need to make sure that more and more questions can be answered.

Photo by snakeplisken.

I just finished reading The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde. Mr. Fforde is a literary jokester, spoofing both nursery rhymes and mystery fiction protocol, including anagrams, secret twins, and the butler who did it. I first started reading some of Fforde’s books a few years ago with The Eyre Affair, followed by the other Thursday Next books.

The Big Over Easy centers around the murder of Humpty Dumpty. At first it looks like the alcoholic Dumpty just fell off the wall. Then it looks like he might have been pushed or shot. Fforde moves through the world of nursery rhymes and mystery cliches.

This book was not as good as The Eyre Affair. Bur it did make for good reading on the train. I was a science major, so I probably miss many of the literary references in his stories.

In another sign that the commercial real estate sector is not in the same trouble as the residential sector, many REITs still have good ratings from S&P.

According to Business week in the first quarter of 2008, the group posted a 0.8% total return, at a time when the S&P 500 index fell 9.4%. (REITs Show Strength)

Business Week put together a list of 17 REITs that have a 4- (buy) or 5-STARS (strong buy) rankings from S&P Equity Research:

(Disclaimer: Some of these REITs are clients of my employer.)

Andrew K. Burger has a story in CRM Buyer: CRM in Law Firms: The Jury’s Still Out. Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch pointed out this story in her post: Law Firms Still Not Relating to Client Relations Management Software.

The Firm uses Interaction as its CRM. I find Interaction to be much better in theory than practice. I think everyone agrees at a firm level that the sharing of contact information and relationships across the firm is a terrific goal and adds tremendous value to the firm. In my experience, attorneys are willing to share contact and relationship information with members of the firm. Yes, they are cautious how it is used and want some some credit for the relationship. But that position is true for all knowledge sharing.

As Carolyn points out:

[T]he larger barrier to integration of CRM is institutional: Most lawyers simply aren’t willing to take the time (or sacrifice the billable hours) to input critical data. Then, when CRM fails due to lack of lawyer commitment, lawyers blame the software and subsequently grow even more resistant to CRM efforts.

Knowledge sharing is a marketplace. If I am going to take time to contribute something, I expect to get something back in return. Increasing the knowledge resources of the firm is not enough. I previously wrote about this in Personal Knowledge Management and the Knowledge Market. A lawyer is more likely to use a new tool if it provides more functionality to them then an existing tool. Why should I enter information into a clunky public space instead of a persona space where I can organize the information in the way that makes sense to me.

I want the CRM system to make it easier for me to do my job. Contributing contact and relationship information into a public repository creates little or no marginal value to me. All of that information is already sitting in my email contacts, in my head and other local places. The current CRM system does very little to help me manage that information. I would spend much more time using Interaction if it provided much more functionality to me as an individual. All of its extra function is derived from collecting information from others, not in providing function to the individual.

Unfortunately, CRM systems only provide a small margin of additional benefit to the individual lawyer. That margin is too small to motivate lawyers to change behaviors or to learn the new tool.

This scenario is true of lots of first generation knowledge management tools. They put the emphasis on the benefit of sharing knowledge across the firm. They did not focus on making it easier for the individual to manage their own knowledge or the knowledge of a small group.

Perhaps there is some future hope for Interaction and CRM for law firms. The article in CRM Buyer has this quote:

“The foundation for incorporating Web 2.0 applications, such as wikis, blogs and other social networking tools, into InterAction are likewise already in place, and LexisNexis is moving in that direction, according to [Tracey Blackburn, LexisNexis product marketing manager].”

For now, InterAction does not even have a field for linking to a person’s LinkedIn profile. That is a place where people are updating information about themselves and who they know. If InterAction could combine external information about people, with our internal information and give me a better way to organize and manage my contacts, that would make it useful for me.

One of the obstacles to implementing Enterprise RSS is getting the firm to agree that enterprise RSS is a good investment.

RSS is still not a well known technology. People are more likely to keep going back the webpage instead of subscribing to the RSS feed. Relying on people to keep coming back to the blog or wiki to find changes will make the tools less effective and less likely to spread within the firm.

RSS producing tools are less effective without Enterprise RSS. If you have to rely on the people to sign up for RSS feeds themselves, they are less likely to do so.

Of course if you don’t have many RSS producing tools inside the firm, then enterprise RSS would not seem to be a good investment for the firm.

So which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Which comes first, the enterprise blog or the enterprise RSS?

The other challenge to enterprise RSS is the broad group of skills needed to chose a vendor and implement. You need desktop applications to test the integration with the email client or the standalone RSS feedreader. You need the network guys to integrate the enterprise RSS server. You need the web developers to integrate enterprise RSS with the RSS producing tools. You need the telecommunications people to integrate the RSS feedreaders on mobile devices. You need the librarian and researchers to help find, organize and disseminate external RSS feeds. You need people using internal RSS producing tools. Fortunately, the enterprise RSS platforms are relatively inexpensive. It is the allocation of firm resources that is a bigger investment.

Personally, I think enterprise RSS is a great investment.

The Enterprise RSS Day of Action is drawing to a close here in Boston.

I watched/listened to a webinar by Patti Anklam as part of the Community 2.0 Conference. Patti is the author of Net Work: A Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Networks at Work and in the World.

Patti started by thinking about whether there are sets of network properties. If so can we apply a taxonomy to them. All networks share certain properties. You can draw them and you can count the connections and map the connections. Patti pointed out that networks are not Facebook or LinkedIn. We have always had networks. Facebook and LinkedIn start exposing the network in a very visible way.

Every network has a purpose. Patti proposed five major group of purposes:

• mission – aid and support
• business – create economic gain
• idea – generate and collaborate in the developing ideas
• learning – communities of practice
• personal – nurture emotional relationships

Patti demonstrated a few different network structures. The visual representation of a social network can often show how the communication and therefore the decision-making in the enterprise do not follow the hierarchical organizational chart. It can also show that the departure or retirement of person who may not be a key person in the organizational chart, but is a central person in the network.

For leaders, your management can be re-thought if you think about the network you are leading. For the most, part law firms are networks.

• Network intentionally – create more connections, fill in gaps in the network, make it more collaborative and cooperative
• Practice network stewardship – you need to pay attention to change triggers, watch the network evolve
• Embrace and leverage technology – get the technology aligned with the network, enterprise 2.0 is aligned with a mesh network structure
• Create a capacity for net work – encourage outreach, encourage on-boarding and incorporation into the existing network within the firm
• Learn to use the network lens – map the idea network and see if there are artificial boundaries

Going from networking to net work, its not how many networks you participate in, its how many people you “connect” with. Think about quality and contribution. Don’t think about quantity.

In the spirit of the social network analysis I created a visualization of my Facebook friends and their relationships to each other. On the right side in green are my Facebook friends from The Firm. At the bottom in the blue and purple are my friends in the legal knowledge management and legal technology area. (Most of the Canadians got the purple label. I am not sure how it figured that out). At the left in the pink are my Facebook friends in the knowledge management area, but not in the legal industry.
The chart was generated by the TouchGraph Photos application in Facebook.

With the summer associates coming soon, The Firm has been wondering what to do with Facebook. Last summer, the summer associates created their own Facebook group. The Firm’s recruiting department was wondering whether to create the Facebook Group for the 2008 group ahead of time.

Of course, I was a big advocate of setting up the Facebook group. That way the summer associates could start connecting with each other before they arrived at The Firm. Also, it would send them the message, that their online personas and activities need to get cleaned-up (if necessary).

They also spent some time researching Facebook to see what other large law firm groups are in Facebook. Here are the results. It starts with the firm name, then lists the groups found with the firm name. Under each group is the target audience of the group, whether it is opened or closed and who created the group.

Arnold & Porter
Arnold & Porter – Summer Klass of Summer 2k7
07 SA Open Student

Baker Botts
Baker Botts (Washington)
STAFF Open STAFF
Baker Botts DC Summer Associates 2008
08 SA (DC) Closed Student

Bingham McCutchen
Bingham McCutchen
STAFF Open STAFF

Cravath
Cravath Summer Associate Class of 2007
07 SA Closed Students

Davis Polk
Davis Polk 2008 Summer Associates
08 SA (NY) Closed Student
Davis Polk & Wardwell
STAFF Open STAFF

Debevoise
Debevoise & Plimpton Summer 2008
08 SA (NY) Open Student
Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
STAFF Open STAFF
Debevoise Summer ’07
07 SA (NY) Open Student

Dechert
Dechert Philadelphia Summer Associates ’07
07 SA (PA) Closed Students
Dechert LLP London Future Trainees
London Closed UNK
Dechert Trainees
08 London Closed UNK

Gibson Dunn
Gibson Dunn Summer 2008
08 SA (LA) Open UNK
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher (NYC) Summer Associates 2008
08 SA (NY) Open Student
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP
STAFF Open STAFF

Goodwin Procter
Goodwin Procter
Staff Closed Staff
2007 Goodwin Procter Summer Associates
07 SA (all) Closed Student

Hogan & Hartson
Hogan & Hartson Summer Associates 2008
08 SA (DC) Open Student
Hogan & Hartson NY Summer 2008
08 SA (NY) Closed Student
Hogan & Hartson Summer Associates 2007 – DC
07 SA (DC) Open Student

Heller Ehrman
2007 Heller Ehrman Summer Associates
07 SA (NY) Closed Student
Heller Ehrman LLP
STAFF Open STAFF

Kirkland & Ellis
Kirkland & Ellis LA – Summer ’08
08 SA (LA) Closed Students
Kirkland & Ellis Intake 2009
STAFF Open STAFF

Latham & Watkins
Latham & Watkins New York Summer Associates 2007
07 SA (NY) Closed Student
Latham & Watkins Trainees-to-be
London Closed Student
Latham & Watkins LLP
STAFF Open STAFF
Latham & Watkins 2007
London Closed UNK

Paul Hastings
Paul Hastings Summer ’08
08 SA Open Student
Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP
STAFF Open STAFF

Paul Weiss
Paul Weiss 2007 NY Summer Associates
07 SA NY Open Student
Paul Weiss 2008 NY Summer Associates
08 SA (NY) Open UNK
Paul, Weiss Summer Associates 2008*
08 SA (NY) Open Student

Proskauer
Proskauer Rose Summer 2008
08 SA Open UNK
Proskauer Produces Results: Summer ’06
06 SA Open Student

Ropes & Gray
Ropes & Gray, Summer Associates 2008
08 SA (Boston) Open Student
Ropes & Gray NYC 2008
08 SA (NY) Open Student
Ropes & Gray NYC Summers
07 SA (NY) Open Student

Sidley
Sidley Chicago 07
07 SA (Chicago) Closed Student
The Sidley Squad
Interns Closed Student

Simpson Thatcher
Simpson Thacher 2007 Summer Associates
07 SA (ALL) Open UNK
Simpson Thacher 2008 Summer Associates
08 SA (NY) Open Student

Skadden
Skadden NY Summer ’07
07 SA (NY) Closed Student
Skadden Alumni STAFF
ALUMS Open STAFF
Skadden, LA – Summer Associates 2007
07 SA (LA) Closed Student
Skadden DC – Summer 2007
07 SA (DC) Open Student
Skadden Summer Students 07
07 SA (ALL) Open Student
Skadden HK Summer ’07
07 SA (HK) Open Student
Skadden LA Summer 08
08 SA (LA) Open Student
Skadden Trainees 2008
STAFF Closed STAFF
Incoming Skadden LA Attorneys
STAFF Closed Student

Sullivan and Cromwell
Sullivan & Cromwell’s 2008 Summer Associates
08 SA Open UNK
Sullivan & Cromwell
STAFF Open STAFF

Weil Gotshal
Weil Gotshal Summer 08
08 SA (NY) Closed Student
2007 Weil Gotshal Summer Associates
07 SA (NY) Open Student
2006 Weil Gotshal Summer Associates
06 SA (NY) Open Student
Weil, Gotshal & Manges
STAFF Closed STAFF

Wilmerhale
WilmerHale Boston Summers, 2007
07 SA (Boston) Closed Students

Thanks the Recruiting Department at The Firm for doing this research.

Yesterday, I posted that commercial property prices are still increasing. Of course that does not mean there are many properties selling at these prices. As the Boston Business Journal reported, commercial real estate sales have ground to a halt in downtown Boston:

The city saw $57.3 million in office-building sales during the three-month period, compared to $4.3 billion a year ago. Total commercial sales — which included offices, retail, apartments, industrial and hotel properties — fell 97 percent to $152.6 million during the quarter, compared to $5.2 billion in the same period in 2007, according to figures from Real Capital Analytics, a real estate research firm in New York.

Sellers are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the debt markets to get back to some normalcy. Buyers are still thirsting for deals, but can’t line up the debt to get the deals done. If the debt markets do not come back soon and sellers get tired of waiting, then prices will start dropping .