We are at this time interested in legal articles, especially those dealing with the future of the legal profession. You’re invited to submit articles at any level, but they need to be well written in order for us to choose them. We are particularly keen on posts with a geographical association – how is the legal profession doing in your area? However we’ll look over any contribution you submit.

Digital games are becoming ubiquitous whether we simply entertain ourselves with online solitaire or join a group to overthrow a foreign government on a Massive Multi-play Online Game (MMOG).

So, can lawyers game-up? This talk focuses on the changes that can result from the use of MMOGs to help expand access to legal services and solve broader social problems.

Your parents got legal services from a lawyer that grew up around the corner and had an office on the other side of town. That lawyer was educated in the US, admitted to practice in the same state and a member of the local Rotary Club.

Your kids will buy legal services – or even get them for free – from a lawyer, a non-lawyer, or even an automated online service on a server that could easily be on the other side of the world.

ThIS presentation will ask ten challenging questions the legal profession must answer as we move to the provision of legal services in a global village.

My 98-year-old grandfather doesn’t have a Twitter account. He’s no worse for it – instead, he rather hone his legendary Canasta skills over confining his connection to others with 140 or fewer characters.

Like others in his retirement community, he routinely seeks legal services and advice. After meeting with a number of lawyers recently, he shared his true feelings about lawyers – things I cannot publicly repeat in good conscience. To him, yours is a profession where client questions are bothersome, where task completion trumps connection, and where client usability is of little, if any, concern. Many others share his opinion.

Despite enormous potential to deliver meaningful value to older clients, the legal technology community remains astonishingly unconcerned with the elderly. With the Baby Boomers primed to retire en masse and breadth of legal services they will require, it’s time to do better. We must first determine where communication gaps occur with elderly clients and how technology can help bridge the gap between attorney and elderly client. Let’s start now.

Several Nobel Prizes have recently been awarded for discoveries relating to what works and doesn’t work in various bargaining contexts. These studies suggest that much of what lawyers do and charge clients for consists of “cheap talk” (with the word “cheap” referring to its lack of value and credibility, rather than to the costs that it inflicts upon clients and society).

This work has led to the development of several legal-tech systems that allow conflicts and negotiations to be resolved at little or no cost and with startling efficiency. This session provides an overview of the work being done in this field and the opportunities and challenges that it presents for clients, for lawyers at all levels of the profession, and for the legal system as a whole.

The venture capital industry is targeting the legal industry as ripe for disruption. The VC’s think they know it all and really understand the future of legal services.

Lets see where they are investing and hear my opinion about whether the horses they are backing will win or die. What can we learn from these new ventures?

Is real innovation happening or are we seeing old wine in new bottles?

I will demonstrate how that can be done quite economically by leveraging relevant social media and through establishing interesting messaging, all in a very professional and ethical, yet enticing, manner.

We will see how the Web 2.0 lawyer might effectively spread his or her expertise to serve business objectives.