Welcome back

Ok, so it's 5 months since I last posted anything. I have no real excuse other than the fact that I have been too busy doing other things. It has been the summer break from university and I have been travelling a lot with work, going on holiday, buying a new house, renovating said new house and moving house. Not a lot really. So there it is I have been too busy to write my blog and whilst I realise that a blog should have regular updates it's not always possible, so there it is.

Anyway we have been back at university for 3 weeks now and my initial flush of enthusiasm at being back has worn off in record time this year. I will be studying family law, equity and trusts, criminology and writing my dissertation, (social media and the workplace). I am already feeling the pressure on my time. We moved into the new house at the weekend and the pressure of the move on top of everything else I was trying to do made me succumb to a nasty little bug on Monday and Tuesday. This meant that I missed my Monday night session. I am worried about falling behind already so have resolved to put in extra effort over the next week to make sure I am properly caught up. I need to get good marks this year to ensure achieving a 2:1 grade and giving myself an outside chance of getting that precious training contract.

I know that my biggest challenge this year will be time management. On that note I am appealing to anyone reading this with some good time management tips to leave a comment. Any tips will be gratefully received.

I have also resolved to keep my blog more up to date and I plan to use it as a diary of my final year as a mature law student. Hopefully it will make interesting reading to me, looking back at the end of this process, if not to anyone else.

A tree in the forest and other important points from #lawblogs

Wow, what a week. Work has been particularly hectic and involved a fair bit of travelling, including 24 hours in Israel on Tuesday/Wednesday which was extremely interesting. Anyway it just so happened that I was in London on Thursday night and I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Lawblogs event at Chancery Lane.

This was my first event at The Law Society and I have to admit to a frisson of excitement walking through those doors for the first time. I was trying my best to look like I belonged there. Fortunately, most of the afternoon had been spent at The London International Wine Fair so I had a little bit of dutch courage. Anyway I needn't have worried, the event was attended by a wide range of legal bloggers, students, writers and keen amateurs like me. The thing they all seemed to have in common, (apart from an interest in legal blogging), was that they were friendly and inclusive no matter what level of experience you might bring to the party.

The event/workshop/discussion was compered by the charismatic @lawyercatrin who held the proceedings together  with considerable aplomb and refreshments generously provided by 1 Crown Row Chambers. The panel was made up of the notable legal writers and bloggers @adamwagner1, @joshuarozenberg, @davidallengreen, @carlgardner @siobhainb with @charonqc unfortunately unable to attend.

The theme was"The Future of Legal Blogging" and there was an informal and conversational air to the proceedings.

Siobhain kicked us off with some comments about the blurring of the boundaries of "mainstream media", whatever that might mean these days. Joshua Rozenberg made the very important point that, (with the notable exception of @gdnlaw), mainstream media seems to have forsaken law reporting and it is the bloggers and tweeters that are stepping in to fill the gaps.

David Allen Green then spent some time describing what originally motivated him to start blogging and advocated blogging as a useful way of making complicated legal proceedings more accessible to public at large. He also warned against the dangers of "trial by social media".

Adam Wagner had some interesting points to make about the differences between barristers and solicitors when it comes to being able to comment on cases using social media. There are key differences in the respective codes of conduct which at present impose more restrictions on barristers than on solicitors. Adam seemed to be suggesting that a review of these rules is overdue.

Carl Gardner also made some great contributions to the discussion, including raising the question of whether the boundaries between mainstream and social media have become so blurred as to render the word "blog" almost obsolete. I was also taken with his response to a question from the floor, that one of the powers of social media might lie in its power to disorganise people rather than organise them, an interesting concept that bears closer examination in my opinion.

Once the discussion was opened up to the audience things got really interesting. One of the highlights for me was a question from @rjwhitaker. He posed the question of whether some blogging was the equivalent of the proverbial tree falling in the forest. If no-one is reading then what is the point? This raises the important question of whether legal bloggers are really serving the wider public with understandable legal commentary are whether they are simply creating internet noise of no real interest to anyone except other legal bloggers. I personally feel that the answer is probably a bit of both but, as David Allen Green pointed out, what harm can it do?

Another highlight was the contribution of @copyrightgirl. I know I was not alone in finding her enthusiasm for her chosen area of interest and social media infectious.

Unfortunately I had to leave quite soon after the end of the formal discussion so missed meeting up with some of the tweeters I follow. I did have time for a good chat with @michaelscutt and @brianinkster and quick hello to @ashleyconnick, (who seems to be rapidly developing his own fan club), before I had to dash off.

As a law student I found the whole evening fascinating and the hour and a half allotted could easily have been doubled as far as I was concerned. I was amazed that there weren't more students attending. What a fantastic opportunity for aspiring lawyers to start building their networks whilst learning about the direction legal writing is travelling in. In my opinion it is the current crop of law students who are the future of legal blogging, it would be nice to see a few more of them stepping up to the plate.

It's Wednesday, must write my blog!

I haven't blogged in a little while, not because I have been too busy or because I couldn't be bothered, (although both of those excuses have applied in the past), but because I have been having a bit of a quandary over the direction I should take with this blog.

I have, over recent weeks become aware of the sheer number of legal blogs there are being published already. Having spent some time trawling through a wide number of these blogs I have realised something.

Mainly, I know nothing about the law. I may be in the third year of a law degree and an enthusiastic student but my knowledge is so basic in comparison to that of many people already out there writing regularly that I feel, in many cases, poorly qualified to comment on the legal issues that are the current hot topics. Having spent some time reading the work of well known and notable bloggers such as Charon QC, Adam Wagner, Michael Scutt, Thelegalbrat, Legaleaglemhm et al. I feel somewhat humbled and think that perhaps rather than adding my own naive two pennyworth to the mix, I might be better off just sitting back and listening to what other, more learned contributors have to say.

I also have no real desire to just add to the general noise on the internet. If I don't feel that what I contributing is worth anything to anyone then I'm not about to simply post a blog considering the colour of the fluff from my navel. I don't want anybody to take the time to read something I have written, only to think "well that was pretty obvious/pointless". Part of my original motivation for starting a blog and becoming more active in the digital world was unashamedly to try and improve my on-line footprint in anticipation of sending out applications for training contracts. Writing a load of trite drivel simply for the sake of saying "I have a blog don't you know" doesn't strike me as a particularly good advert for my skills as a potential lawyer. I know that blogging is considered by many to be an essential part of personal marketing. I just have no real desire to market my own personal brand as a noisy upstart. Perhaps I am being a little over-critical on myself, but I feel it is important to feel comfortable with any image of yourself you decide to broadcast over the public media.

I know that for some people the desire to write and be heard is irresistible and I am not criticising anyone who is prolific with their blogging but I am coming to realise that for me, less is more. I would rather post half a dozen reasonable quality entries over the year than post a load of utter crap every week.

Anyway I intend to keep posting but I will make no apology for that fact that my posts may be sporadic and may not necessarily follow a particular theme or topic. I will post when I feel like saying something, not just because it is a Wednesday.

Turn off the computer?

Apologies for the gap in posting. I am afraid that is one of the symptoms of trying to juggle full-time work, part-time law degree, two year old daughter and life in general. The clocks going forward also meant that we lost a valuable hour this week! I know everyone says that if you have a blog it is vital that you update every week at the minimum but I am of the opinion that if you haven't got anything you really feel like sharing then why bother? Posting for the sake of posting is a bit like tweeting for the sake of making noise.


The last couple of weeks have been mainly taken up with putting together a research proposal for my dissertation next year. I am going to do it on the legal issues which arise from the increased use of social media in the workplace and having found a subject I am actually able to get excited about, (finally), I am really looking forward to starting on it.


Having got that out of the way it is time to knuckle down and really get revising for exams. Last year I was guilty of being decidedly casual about my exam preparation and my grades suffered slightly as a result. This years grades weigh heavily towards my overall degree classification so I want to aim for firsts across the board. I am acutely aware that competition for training contracts is so intense that, if I want to have a decent chance of breaking into the profession, nothing less than a 2:1 and preferably a first will do. I don't want to have spent years of my life and thousands of pounds to get a degree that will be of no practical use in getting me the job that I want.


If I going to achieve my goals I will need to be disciplined about distractions. I wrote a couple of months ago about the dangers of permanent partial attention syndrome. Between that and procrastination lies a recipe for disaster. I have always had an issue with putting things off till the last minute and that urge only seems to be amplified during revision time, so I have made a decision to turn off the computer when revising! I know it sounds drastic but I feel that in the interest of my future success I really have no choice. The temptation is just too great to check e-mails, have a quick tweet, follow a distracting thread on someone's blog or any of the myriad distractions that lie behind the screen of my laptop. So there it is, I am going to go cold-turkey from the pc during revision sessions. I'll tweet from my Blackberry to let you know how it's going.


If anyone has any other great tips for avoiding distractions during times when intense concentration is required I would be very grateful if you could pass them in my direction.

Social Media - Give it a job to do and you might just get the point.

I'll be the first to admit that it took me a while to "get" Twitter. I'm afraid I was in the camp that couldn't see any value in short, 140 character status updates and I still speak to a lot of otherwise internet minded people who don't get it either. As far as I am concerned Twitter and other forms of social media only really come into there own when you link them into a definite purpose. It's true no one is really interested in what you are having for dinner or what supermarket you happen to be shopping in, so updating for the sake of updating is pretty pointless, (although I have been guilty of it myself). 


The true value of Twitter comes once you understand that it is simply another form of extremely rapid communication. Give yourself a purpose whilst using it and you will begin to understand the power you have at your fingertips. Let me give you an example. I am planning to write my dissertation next year on the employment law issues raised by the rapidly increasing use of social media in the workplace. To this end I recently tweeted a request for Twegals (legals who tweet), to point me in the direction of useful articles on the subject. The volume of material that I was able to find in an extremely short space of time was startling. As was the willingness of people to help. Within a day I had over 20 useful articles written by law firms and HR professionals from the UK, Europe and the US. I also repeated my request through LinkedIn and received a similar response. In fact I posted my request over 2 weeks ago and the articles are still flowing into my inbox. This instant connection with professionals in your chosen field is both unprecedented and incredibly empowering. So the next time someone says to you that they don't understand the point of social media ask them to try carrying out a specific task using it, they might just "get it" if they do.

Keeping mum - The equality act, equal pay and gagging clauses

During my employment law lecture last night a piece of the 2010 equality act was discussed which I was surprised I had heard so little about. Since October 2010 clauses in an employment contract which seek to prevent employees from discussing how much they are paid with one another are no longer enforceable. This makes absolute sense if you think about it. If one of the aims of the equality act is to prevent inequality in pay based upon sex, then how can that possibly be enforced if employees are prevented from discussing their pay with colleagues? It is quite easy for a firm to get away with inequality in remuneration if no-one is allowed to discuss what they are getting paid.

What really surprised me was how many people piped up that they had such a clause in their contract, or that they had been told "off the record" that it was forbidden to discuss salaries within the workplace. Many of these people are currently working within law firms. The vast majority of these people had no idea that this change in the law had occurred as it has gone largely unreported. 

To mark International Women's Day why not make a point of passing this little nugget of information around? If we are ever likely to achieve equal pay for women in the workplace surely we must first achieve transparency on pay.

Can you hear yourself think?

I had an interesting piece of work kindly passed on to me recently, following a shout out I posted on LinkedIn. I was asking for people to provide me with any links to articles on the potential dangers/disadvantages of social media use in the workplace for my dissertation topic. I had some excellent responses but one of the most thought provoking was sent to me by Adrian (Mac) Mackay, managing partner of Duncan Alexander & Wilmshurst. 

He was discussing the potential problems of "permanent partial attention" within organisations. This is the phenomena whereby information is passed backwards and forwards between individuals at such a rate that nothing ever gets dealt with in a single-minded and focused manner. We all know the scenario where one employee e-mails another and copies in two or three other members of staff. They then respond, also copying in two or three members of staff who may or may not be relevant to the issue being discussed. This basically sets off a cascade of e-mail traffic which serves to accomplish little other that clogging up everyone's inbox.

The increase in the use of social media, if not managed correctly can also contribute to this "information overload" effect. Communications and networking utilities such as e-mail and Twitter have the power to transform our lives for the better if used correctly and with a certain level of discipline. I feel, however, that used incorrectly they threaten to overwhelm us in a sea of spam, jokes, motivational sound-bites and social media updates. Just think, when you get in to the office in the morning how long does it take you, once you have switched your computer on, to actually start work on anything productive? By the time you have opened all your e-mails, checked Twitter, LinkedIn and any blogs you follow is it time for your mid-morning coffee? As the influence of these media in our lives grows we need to learn new disciplines to control the rate at which we process all this new information. Next time you send that e-mail just think again before you copy in your boss, your secretary, your solicitor, your social media consultant,etc. Do they really need to see this piece of information or am I just adding to the digital cacophony?

For more information and assistance with using social media in a productive manner you could do worse than contact ‘Mac’ at Duncan Alexander and Wilmshurst, Management and Marketing Consultants – www.daw.co.uk

Help the homeless, just do it somewhere else please

On a topic completely unrelated to either law or IT, (not bad, only 3 posts in and already off-topic),  I couldn't help but make a small comment on yesterday's news that The Conservative Westminster Council have decided that "soup runs" actually contribute to the plight of the homeless and have decided to ban them. 


At first glance the argument that free hand-outs of hot food somehow exacerbate the already desperate plight of the homeless, might seem to some people to contain a form of anti-intuitive logic. The argument goes that the soup runs somehow prevent those in need from seeking help through official channels that might more effectively lead to them getting off the streets.


Call me cynical but I feel that the truth of the matter can be seen a bit more clearly when one examines closely exactly what has been said. Daniel Astaire, cabinet member for society, families and adult services, said: "soup runs on the streets in Westminster actually encourage people to sleep rough in central London, with all the dangers that entails." 


So let's get this straight, what you are saying is soup runs cause increased levels of homelessness. To me that's a bit like saying "more people turn to smack because they know they can get free needles from the needle-exchange". Perhaps if we were to read Mr Astaire's statement a bit more like this? "soup runs in Westminster actually encourage people to sleep rough in Central London (ie Westminster). Does that make things a bit clearer? 


More than 250,000 people find themselves homeless every year and the reasons behind this number are varied, complicated and tragic. The way Mr Astaire refers to the soup runs as "encouraging" people to sleep rough makes homelessness sound like some sort of undesirable lifestyle choice like smoking or binge drinking. The fact is that more than 3,600 people slept on the streets of London during 2008 and the vast majority of these people did so because they, through fear or desperation, had no choice. To try and ban the lifeline of a hot meal to these people because it might attract more of them strikes me as the most cold-hearted form of nimbyism I have heard in a long time.

I can't see it taking off! Cloud Computing for law firms.

Recently there has been a buzz word going around legal circles, everyone is talking about "The Cloud". What exactly is the "The Cloud" and is it something that legal professionals should be concerning themselves with at the moment? Is it something that has tangible benefits for practicing solicitors in the present or just another promising technology?

Well let's get something straight to begin with - "cloud" computing isn't a new technology, it's just been re-branded. Anyone who routinely accesses information via an on-line platform is already using it. If you have a hotmail account, use social media sites to share information or regularly tweet you are already familiar with the principle. Basically it means that the information you are accessing is held somewhere out there in the digital universe rather than on your own storage facility or hard-drive. All it really means is that some people more familiar with the internet and software have worked out how this principle might be used to save companies time and money and (more importantly), charge them for the pleasure.

What this means in practice is that rather than hosting large amounts of data on your firm's server you can now rent storage space within a cloud facility, which can also include access to practice/case management software. For the mobile lawyer this means no more logging into your internal network in order to access files. You can work in exactly the same way whether you are in the office, at home or anywhere else that has an internet connection. It also means reduced outlay in terms of hardware and expensive servers as well as having an environmental advantage. You only pay for the storage you are using rather than paying for banks of expensive, hot servers and an IT professional to look after them.

With a new technology such as this there are of course worries. The main concern for law firms regarding "The Cloud" is information security. At least when you hold information on your own servers you can have a firewall and encryption in place to help keep the sensitive client information you hold secure. When you beam a file off into the ether how can you be sure where it will end up? The DPA requires that certain information needs to be kept within the borders and this intrinsically goes against the very nature of cloud computing. In fact it may be that data protection legislation needs to be revised before the full potential of "The Cloud" can be realised. These are genuine areas of concern and it is clear that these issues will need to be properly addressed by those offering cloud computing to law firms. Most lawyers will probably hold back a bit from adopting this "new" technology until they have seen it tried and tested and these potential security issues have been dealt with by others. I feel, however, that, (once the risks have been properly assessed), the potential cost advantages of cloud computing are too great for any firm to ignore. Imagine the advantages for those who wish to start new, solicitor's "chambers" style firms, where lawyers have a space where they can hot-desk and hold meetings but will spend most of their time at home or on the move. In our highly competitive legal environment, where every potential area of saving is scrutinised in the name of profit and loss, can I really see cloud computing taking off?

Welcome

This is the first post of my new law and information technology blog. My intention is that this will grow and become something that people want to drop into from time to time, if I happen to be commenting on something of interest.

I'm not going to be able to post every day due to the constraints  imposed upon my time by the daily pressures of full-time work, a young family and a part-time degree course. I hope, however that I will be able to update on a fairly regular basis, particularly when current events take a turn that I feel warrants my attention and opinion.

Please bear in mind that at this stage I am purely a student of the law and my opinion and commentary may not be worth a damn. I may be naive in my legal opinion and infuriating to read for those of greater learning and experience. My hope is that, as I grow as lawyer and a commentator, the quality of my entries will improve and my progress will be obvious to any regular readers I might pick up.