William Patry is the chief copyright lawyer for Google and recently authored the book Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars.  In this interview concerning copyright wars on Traverse Legal Radio interview, Mr. Patry discusses the controversy concerning the premise of the book that rhetoric is dominating the discussions between copyright owners and those who seek to reuse, build upon and innovate prior works. 

Attorneys can stop being perceived as heartless ambulance chasers who are out to scam people of their money if only they:

• Stop soliciting personal injury cases: It is against the law to actively solicit cases, but attorneys find loopholes to beat this rule. They’re there at the scene of an accident, pressurizing the victims to file suit even before they’ve barely regained their bearings. They don’t value human life and suffering; all they care about is money. If attorneys wait for people to come to them rather than running behind them and hounding them for cases, they would be seen in a better light.
• Stop filing absurd cases: If our judiciary is to be valued more, people have got to stop filing and fighting absurd cases, like the one where the woman sued a fast food giant for spilling hot coffee on herself, successfully. When lawyers discourage people from filing frivolous lawsuits, they do lose out on legal fees. But what they gain is a whole lot more – respect for their entire community.
• Are honest with their clients: Almost every personal injury lawyer you meet will tell you that you have a solid case and that you’re going to win a large settlement and that they are not going to charge you a dime unless you win the case, in which case they get paid a percentage of your monetary settlement. But that is not the whole truth, and every attorney knows this. If they are honest with their clients and tell them that they will incur incidental costs and that they are going to be spending a lot of time and effort on the case, people will soon begin look at them with different eyes.

Personal injury cases are traumatic experiences for the victims, and when attorneys keep this in mind while taking on the case, they become more human and less of a preying monster.

This guest post was contributed by Donna Mitchell , who regularly writes on the topic of online paralegal schools. She welcomes your comments and questions at her email address:  donna.mitchell@rediffmail.com

The new regulations also require advertisements that convey a consumer's experience with a product or service as typical when, in reality, it is not, to disclose what the typical results would be.  Advertisers can no longer portray a result and disclaim it with fine print that says, "Results not typical."  The rules for celebrity endorsements under Part 255 have also changed.  Celebrities must disclose their connections with an advertiser and both parties can now be held liable for untruthful or misleading advertising.  Celebrities also must disclose their relationships with advertisers when they promote products outside of traditional commercials or print advertising, such as on talk shows or in interviews.Finally, if an advertisement refers to a scientific study for support, the advertiser must disclose his or her relationship to the researcher or research agency.

There are several other changes in the law that must also be complied with, as well as several new examples to illustrate the application of the pre-existing rules that have been in effect since 1980.  It is important that bloggers understand these rules and examples because they can be held liable for up to $11,000 per post for a violation.  It is a changing blogging world out there, and it seems as if the law is starting to catch up.

Do they wait for a client with that special need to find them before digging deep into that practice area and developing/expanding their expertise? Or do they expand that expertise on their own dime and then go out and try and get the business?

Many lawyers let market forces drive their business.  They wait for a client with a particular problem to come in, they go out and research that particular issue for the client on the client’s dime and then hope the next case on that same niche issue comes through the door.  Many general practice firms operate around the “client pays to educate me” approach. 

While there is no doubt that lawyers are often the beneficiaries of their clients’ problems in terms in terms of developing expertise, many forward thinking lawyers are swapping the chicken for the egg.  These lawyers are using the information on the internet, access sophisticated legal databases such as Westlaw and LexisNexis , and the power of the blogosphere to get involved in new and excited areas of law which are growing on their own time using their own dime.

Although it sounds obvious that learning a niche issue or area would be the best way to enable you to market your services in that area, it is amazing to me how seldom that occurs. 

My own experience has helped me realize how easy and important it is that the area of internet law did not exist before 1995.  Applying contract, jurisdiction, trademark infringement, copyright infringement, and other established legal principles in the internet space was as much function of creating the law as it was applying it.  Internet lawyers had to take pains to go out and learn these principles well before any client showed up at the door but that’s just with a problem. 

I would make several observations from my own experience.  First, the internet makes expertise available.  With a little hard work in your spare time, there’s almost no area of law you can’t gain base experience in.  Further, your chance of getting a case within a practice you’re interested in is no more than random luck, unless you go out and develop an expertise and start talking up that expertise on the web and on the street. Finally, you need to show off your expertise by blogging it on the web so that clients who have specific problems can find your website with a simple Google search.  Of course, the added benefit is that you’ll extend your geographic reach outside whatever town you happen to live in. 

If you have expanded your expertise in practice areas or issues before any client hit your front door, let me know about your experience and thoughts. 

Think about it.  Before the internet, many people were at a severe disadvantage as they began the process of considering which law firms to employ.  Markets were perceived as decidedly local for most legal matters.  In small towns, this left potential clients with little information and few choices where decisions were mostly based on perceived reputations.  In medium sized towns, the choices increase slightly, but, all too often, the law firm with the fanciest lobby and biggest building was believed to be the best by default.  In large cities, law firms, both big and small, were everywhere.  Choosing a law firm for many clients was little more than a dart throw and hope that the choice was the right one. 

If a lawyer doesn’t deliver the value promised, the client most certainly won’t return.

The phenomena of social networking, however, can dramatically increase the number of people you are "connected" with.  Old high school friends, relatives located across the country or in other parts of the world.  New friends of friends - facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and the other social networking platforms make friendships that would never be possible in the real world possible.  In this way, we are now seeing the Internet contribute to our interrelationships with other people, rather than web pages. 

Let's face it.  Social networking isn't going to change the fact that a single person can sit in a crowded room and shop on eBay oblivious to what's happening around them, or choose to stay in to stay in to surf the net as opposed to going out for drinks with friends.  And social networking still puts you square in front of the computer, but it's nice to see technology contributing to human relations rather than insulating us from it. 

It occurred to me the other day that technology makes perseverance much easier.  Instead of a large number of large things that need to be accomplished in order to make things happen, technology makes success much more accessible.  Technology now ties achievement to the accomplishments of a large number of little things made easier.

Except for the contingency fee lawyer who may choose to represent a person without any financial means, America’s civil courtrooms are dominated by wealthy Americans and wealthy companies.  If that were not bad enough, many lawyers simply get paid to play games in court.  Their goal is to keep cases from reaching the merits of the action, even when they’re the plaintiff.  In many instances, the courtroom is simply another business tool to exert economic leverage over a competitor.  Private arbitration has not proved to be much competition to the near-monopoly that federal and state courts have over dispute resolution.  Until true alternatives to the courtroom become available, civil justice will remain a constitutional right primarily for the rich.

Too many law firms think they have to make a choice between "looking good" - i.e., brochure website - and being an online resource - i.e., blogging.  The reality is that law firm websites can easily do both.  The easiest way to generate content online is through blogging.  This requires lawyers to share their expertise and put effort into showing off on the Web.  Search engines pick up this content.  If the content is truly valuable, other people link to the content.  Google sees a link back each link back as a "for your site", and it is important.  Over time, these single web posts, which have their own URLs called permalinks, become the landing pages for website visitors looking for specific information.  These visitors see you as a resource.  Visitors who are simply looking for information about their problem realize that you are the one who can solve their problem.

Once you have become a resource, you must do what lawyers are sometimes hesitant to do.  You must ask that web visitor to contact you in a way that is conspicuous and inviting.  We have added pictures of our lawyers to our most highly trafficked web pages.  We have a chat application, which invites visitors on our website for greater than 30 seconds to chat with one of our legal professionals online.  We include our phone number on every web page on our site.

If you want to start obtaining web traffic and converting that web traffic into clients, you need to focus on content and make it easy for website visitors to contact you.  Take a look at your website.  See if it accomplishes both of those goals.

But it is a damn good question.  Both men and women would be happier if they could figure out the answer to this seemingly simple question.

I can only answer the question on behalf of myself.  A well journeyed, perhaps brilliant in certain ways, 45 year old, once retired attorney, changing the way law is practiced from a small Northern Michigan town named Traverse City.  I hesitate to say that I am married because I tend to think of my relationship as something more than that.  I have three boys: 11, 9, and 7, Echo Storm, Fielding Mars and Apollo North respectively.  I tend to think that I was put here on earth to make people think.  With my father’s sense of irreverence and defiance confirmed inside me, I set about my day with the effect of causing the world to think.  I used to think that I was a lightning bolt.  I was almost a tree for decade.  But I am back being the lightning bolt, although this time I feel pretty good about things. 

I’m quite ashamed to say that, for all of my talk about being a high-tech law firm, I am only now setting up two monitors for my laptop computer at work.  There is no doubt, no controversy and no contrary argument to the simple fact that two monitors are better than one.

Two monitors allow you to eliminate the amount of scrolling and window switching and allows you to mix and match your browsers as well as help organize your desktop and increase productivity.  Here are some great articles on the benefits of using two monitors:

Tips & Tweaks: Two Monitors Are Way Better Than One, Steve Bass - PCWorld.com

Forget the new PC, get a second monitor, Jonathan Blum, FSB contributor - CNN.Money.com

3 Efficiency Tips for Using Dual Monitors, Samual Dean - Web Worker Daily

Two monitors are better than one (for efficiency that is), Alec Satin - blog.alecsatin.com

Given the productivity gains, isn’t time you joined me by setting up two monitors for your work computer? The return on investment is obvious…