Famed Hollywood Producer Jerry Weintraub on Reinvention

October 20th, 2011 → 8:25 pm @ Ari Kaplan

Around this time last year, on a scenic drive from Richmond, Virginia to Williamsburg, I started listening to When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead by famed Hollywood producer, Jerry Weintraub.  It is a great book that one can most powerfully experience by listening to the author himself tell his remarkable life story.  In each chapter, there are thought-provoking quotes that consistently support the theme of reinvention, including the following:

“Every ten years a big hand comes down and sweeps the dishes off the table.”

“Be willing to be lucky.”

“When the game changes, you have to change with it.”

ari kaplan &Blog &reinventing professional services &Reinvention

Reinventing Your Resume

October 14th, 2011 → 1:35 pm @ Ari Kaplan

I am a subscriber to Attorney at Work, which provides great daily guidance via e-mail on a wide variety of topics.  Recently, Merrilyn Astin Tarlton shared this post – Resume Magic: Vizualize.me! – in which she describes a resume visualization tool that is completely free.  The tool is part of the powerful infographics trend that is transforming the way we process facts and figures.  It seamlessly accesses information from LinkedIn.com (with your permission) and creates a visual presentation of your resume, which you can customize.  It has a lot of possibility and I am including screen shots from the one it created for me below.  Let me know what you think of yours.

ari kaplan &Blog &incremental innovation &legal practice &Networking &reinventing professional services &Reinvention &Students

Interoperability and the Reinvention of Legal Technology Software

October 11th, 2011 → 5:50 am @ Ari Kaplan

I spoke recently with Jay Leib, who leads the advice@kCura team at kCura, which makes Relativity.  Leib’s team performs custom solution development and provides workflow guidance.  We discussed the new Relativity Ecosystem, interoperability trends focusing on tools that solve business problems, and the buzz about creating apps for legal technology software at kCura’s annual user conference, Relativity Fest.

Listen to our interview below:

ari kaplan &Blog &document review &incremental innovation &legal practice &Legal Technology &leveraging technology &reinventing professional services &Reinvention

MyLegal.com Reinvents Daily Deals for the Legal Profession

October 7th, 2011 → 2:05 pm @ Ari Kaplan

I had the chance today to speak with Lisa DiMonte, CEO of MyLegal.com, a website that helps lawyers select vendors, about the site’s new Legal Vendor Deals program, in which a MyLegal member provides a discount on its services to those in the legal profession.

In an effort to reinvent the typical daily deals model, MyLegal has combined these offers with vendor reviews.  As such, the site offers information about an organization or individual, as well as access to any available ratings and commentary associated with that organization or individual.

For the remainder of 2011, membership is free, but as of January 1, 2012, MyLegal expects to charge $600 per month for its promotions.  Unlike traditional deal-oriented sites, such as Groupon or LivingSocial, MyLegal only focuses on the legal profession and does not accept any referral fee.

Although this is the first week of the initiative, the company already has 30 deals pending from vendors that offer a variety of services, including e-discovery support, e-briefs, and continuing legal education.

Listen to our interview below.

ari kaplan &Blog &daily deals &incremental innovation &legal practice &Legal Technology &leveraging technology &reinventing professional services &Reinvention

Inspiring Interview With Former Law Student and ‘Aleph’ Author Paolo Coelho

October 5th, 2011 → 6:15 am @ Ari Kaplan

In a rare interview with Paolo Coelho, the bestselling author of The Alchemist, among many other books, discusses his newly released, Aleph, with Brendon Burchard.  He shares his experience reinventing his career from law school dropout to world-famous novelist.  Listen here.

ari kaplan &Blog &incremental innovation &legal practice &Profile &reinventing professional services &Reinvention &Students

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School study shows that networking matters

October 3rd, 2011 → 11:58 am @ Ari Kaplan

I read this article in the National Law Journal – Study of Refugees From Failed Law Firms Concludes that Networking Works – and was so intrigued by the research that I contacted Chris Rider, an organizational sociologist, who serves as an Assistant Professor of Organization & Management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School to discuss his working paper – Networks, Hiring, and Inter-organizational Mobility: Evidence from Law Firm Dissolutions.

According to the article, Heller Ehrman; Thelen; Thacher Proffitt Wood; WolfBlock; Dreier; and Morgan & Finnegan ceased operations in 2008 and 2009.  Professor Rider tracked the employment of the 1,426 attorneys left jobless by the dissolutions of their firms by reviewing LinkedIn, Martindale-Hubbell and other online directories.  He confirmed that 88% found jobs and noted that many of those positions were the result of proactive networking (he highlighted that more of them may have found jobs, but he could not locate them them).  Among other trends, he concluded that firms are more likely to hire a lawyer’s former colleagues and those from a particular alumni network.

Listen to our interview below, in which he remarks that “the people you work with are in a better position to speak to your talent, your expected productivity and your ability to complement others.”

ari kaplan &Blog &incremental innovation &legal practice &leveraging technology &Networking &reinventing professional services &Reinvention