As I get set to fly to Chicago for this year’s ABA Techshow, I am happy to write that I’ll also be participating in Canada’s Legal IT 3 conference just a couple weeks later, April 20th & 21st in Montreal.

I will be speaking with my friends Connie Crosby and Kevin O’Keefe in a session on building a better legal web presence; and on a second panel with Lexis frontman John Lipsey about online networking.

Expect a big Slaw presence, including conference founder & chair Dominic Jaar!

There will be 32 sessions (big jump from last year…) to choose from, so be sure to check out the entire program.

Date : April 20 and 21 2009
Time : 8:00 am to 5:30 pm, followed by cocktails
Location : Montreal (Centre Mont-Royal, Metro Peel)
Fees : from $400 to $667
Free sessions are also offered
Details and registration: www.legalit.ca

Between several website launches, new service pages, and interviews, March saw many completed projects and achievements for Stem’s clients. Here’s our monthly sampling:

• Chicago lawyer Jonathan Rosenfeld, who specializes in nursing home abuse cases, was quoted in a Lawyers USA article on the increase in number of nursing home residents with mental disabilities, and the resulting rise of patient-on-patient assaults. Jonathan has written previously about how the growing number of middle-aged and young people with violent tendencies in nursing homes has grave implications for the vulnerable and elderly.
• The Law Offices of John Marshall recently launched service pages for Union County and Middlesex County. Marshall’s team is experienced in drug crimes defense, particularly marijuana possession charges, and frequently discuss these issues at the New Jersey Criminal Defense & DWI Blog.
• John Hochfelder, our New York injury attorney client, notes that several recent appellate court decisions have left lawyers and plaintiffs in the dark. In one case, the appeals court affirmed a large judgment, but gave no description of the actual injury that warranted the award. In another two cases,  damages for pain and suffering awards were reduced by at least $1,000,000 — with zero explanation or reason.
• Product injury law firm Hissey Kientz introduced a new website section dealing with Fentanyl, the drug released from the pain-relieving Duragesic patch. The new section includes information on the side effects of Fentanyl and answers some frequently-asked questions.
• Mike Myers of business litigation firm McClanahan Myers Espey was quoted in Texas Lawyer magazine, describing a bank-owned life insurance case the firm is handling. In Irma Johnson v. Amegy Bank, a widow was inadvertently mailed a $1,579,399 cheque from an insurance company made out to her late husband’s employer. McClanahan Myers Espey represents clients with corporate-owned and bank-owned life insurance claims.
• West Palm Beach criminal attorney Ron Chapman launched a new website that answers FAQs about Florida criminal records, particularly questions regarding sealing and expungement.
• It was another busy month for lawyers at BC law firm Clark Wilson: over the last few weeks, they’ve been interviewed or quoted in the World Trademark Review, Construction Business, and Lawyers Weekly on the Netbook dispute, construction contracts, and social networking, respectively.
• Themis Solutions is headed to the ABA Techshow in Chicago, where they’ll give away a year of free Clio service as part of their prize draw. There have been some positive reviews of the web-based legal practice management tool lately, so if you’re at at Techshow, be sure to swing by the Clio booth (#305).
• At PRC law firm King & Wood‘s China Law Insight blog, FDI lawyer Mark Schaub has written a lengthy post on China’s new Food Safety Law, which comes into force on June 1, 2009. The piece describes the new regime, which includes improved regulation, enforcement, and monitoring, as well as concrete food recall procedures.
• The Meadows Addiction Treatment Center unveiled an online collection of information about drug rehab. DrugRehabFAQ.com uses the frequently asked questions format to address common concerns about residential addiction treatment.
• A pair of posts on the JD Scoop Blog explain how JD Supra extends the reach of its members’ shared legal documents. The first post lists all the places that JD Supra distributes content on behalf of members — including Newstex, NuWire Investor, LinkedIn, and Twitter, among others. The second post outlines the tools available to JD Supra members to share their own work, such as widgets, RSS feeds, the Facebook application, etc.

We’ll be back again next month to share more interesting projects and news!

The second edition of Law Practice Magazine‘s LegalWeb2.0 column is now online. This month, Doug Cornelius has authored a great roundup of the issues faced by law firms who block internal access to social media websites. His article, titled Online Social Networking: Is It a Productivity Bust or Boon for Law Firms? covers a broad range of issues, from productivity and virus exposure to bandwidth and brand monitoring.

A couple of additional notes I’d like to mention:

• First, there’s a nice web-only appendix on the magazine website that includes the comments received from the survey. I’m not sure how long this page will be available, so best to drop by this month.
• Second, a feature only blogging & the social web could provide, Doug has just posted his response to the survey process & the results. He also has a sample social networking/blogging policy for a law firm.  Both these items are worth checking out.
• Third, a big thanks goes out to David Lat and Above the Law for helping us get the word out about the survey.  ATL didn’t get a mention in the article, and that was an oversight. Chalk it up to the rookie column editor (me).
• Fourth, we can’t pin this on Big Law. The numbers were consistent across firms of all sizes. We segmented the results to isolate each of the firm size demographics, and the numbers were almost identical.
• Fifth, 45% of law firms blocking social networks surprises me, and also doesn’t surprise me. The sample size was admittedly pretty small, but the fact the percentages were so consistent across firm size gives me a bit more faith in the results. Even if that number drops to 33%, one-third of an industry blocking is still a big number.

Many thanks to Doug for putting this together. I’d like to encourage everyone to check out Doug’s article and review the materials noted above.

This past Sunday I published my latest Web Law Connected column over at Slaw, titled “The Formal-to-Informal Rule of Lawyer Web Publishing“.

The title of month’s article is a bit of a misnomer, and my suggestion of a rule is a mental guideline more than anything. The basic premise is to be careful about taking raw unfiltered conversational exchanges online, and automating (RSS imports, Widgets) their re-publication to your business network. As stated in the article:

My formal-to-informal rule is simply that it’s always ok to route formal commentary to informal and conversational web tools; but that unfiltered, informal, or conversational tools should be considered a place of final destination.

For those who consistently stay on message, don’t mix their personal & business networks, or see little use for flippant or sarcastic comments, having a content routing strategy may make little difference. Unfortunately, I seem to fail those tests on a number of fronts. :)  But that’s ok. The important message here is self-reflection in an honest way, and recognizing when fail-safe measures are required.

As I said at the end of the article, I don’t know if everyone else needs a rule… but it makes sense to me. And if it raises awareness of potential problems with content routing, especially for those lawyers with more conservative clientele, then mission accomplished.

As an aside, I’ve altered my personal publishing routine, and will now try to coordinate new article releases to Stem’s JD Supra account. The rationale, for those interested, is two-fold. First, Canadian published content isn’t treated as nicely in the US search results (a.k.a. geo targeting), so I’m attempting to improve cross-border search exposure; and second, I want those JD Supra syndication partnerships to help increase content distribution.