For the past couple weeks, Stem client Themis Solutions, which offers the legal case management software Clio, has been running a series of blog posts aimed at demystifying Software as a Solution, or in its more common abbreviated form ‘SaaS‘.

Here’s a quick run-down of Clio’s 10 key aspects for legal SaaS:

1. What is Software as a Service?
2. Why (or why not) choose a SaaS solution?
3. Why web-based practice management?
4. Security
5. Privacy
6. Data availability
7. Total cost of ownership
8. Terms of service
9. Data Migration
10. Offline Access

For more details, link on over and read the entire posts within the series. See: “10 Things Every Lawyer Should Know About Legal SaaS“.

Here’s what Stem clients have been up to throughout the month of June:

• Mike Myers, Bob Espey and Randy McClanahan of McClanahan Myers Espey were each honoured by H-Texas magazine. Myers and Espey were named two of Houston’s top lawyers for civil litigation; McClanahan was named a top lawyer for business litigation.
• BC law firm Clark Wilson LLP was busy guest blogging at Slaw.ca, where established Megawatt and Canadian Trademark Blog writers join forces with new bloggers to produce 10 outstanding posts throughout the week.
• New Jersey criminal defense firm The Law Offices of John Marshall rolled out a new website for its NJ shoplifting defense practice.
• Product injury firm Hissey Kientz introduced a new practice page on herbal fen phen, which contains the chemical ephedra and has been linked to serious side effects.
• At his Nursing Home Abuse Blog, injury attorney Jonathan Rosenfeld took a look at a frequent underlying cause of nursing home falls: hypostatic blood pressure.
• New York injury lawyer John Hochfelder summarized a number of recent injury cases on his blog, including brain injury pain & suffering, stroke victim’s past pain & suffering, and construction site catastrophic injuries. He also looked at finger amputation cases.
• Florida criminal attorney Ron Chapman explored the question of whether Florida’s new DNA law is constitutional or not. The law allows police to take a  DNA sample from anyone arrested for a felony offense.
• Addiction treatment center The Meadows, who graciously support Stem’s Lawyer Addiction blog, published the Spring/Summer 2009 issue of  their alumni magazine, MeadowLark.
• Web-based case management software Clio just wrapped up a 10-part series on what lawyers should know about SaaS, starting with the basics: What is Software as a Service?
• At the Arizona DUI Defense Blog, Phoenix criminal lawyer Lawrence Koplow wondered: what do field sobriety tests prove? Koplow explores the history and development of this type of blood alcohol testing.
• Legal document sharing service JD Supra rounded up its latest contributors, who range from mid-size firms to law students to sole practitioners.

Here’s to a productive second half of 2009!

I’ve been waiting all week to see the final breakdown of posts from Slaw’s second law firm guest blogger: Clark Wilson LLP.

For those that might not know, Clark Wilson is both my former firm and one of our first clients here at Stem.  But beyond that, the lawyers who participated (many who are long time friends) simply did an outstanding job.  Thanks to some fine internal quarterbacking by Jeffrey Vicq, the firm had an ample number of Partners involved, including a few practice group leaders, and a nice representation of practice areas.

Here’s a quick roundup of what CW lawyers posted over the course of the week:

From Bernard Pinsky, who is chairs the firm’s Corporate Finance/Securities and United States Law groups:

• How About Uniformity in Securities Rules?
• Canada Best Market for Business Access to Capital in 2008

From Nicole Byres, who practices with the firm’s Labour & Employment and Energy & Natural Resources groups.

• Focus on Employees: The Hidden Costs of Restructuring a Business

From Larry Munn, who chairs the firm’s Privacy Law Group and blogs at Canadian Trademark Blog:

• Canada’s Lawful Access Legislation: Civil Rights and Privacy Concerns

From John Fiddick, who’s a member of Clark Wilson’s Business Litigation and Insolvency & Restructuring Law groups:

• Stuck at the Border: New Challenges to the Registration of Judgments

From Warren Brazier, who chairs the firm’s Energy & Natural Resources Group (and also blogs at Megawatt: BC Renewable Energy Law Blog):

• British Columbia – Becoming a Renewable Energy Powerhouse

From Sarah Jones who’s a member of the firm’s Commercial Real Estate, Municipal Law, and Environmental Law groups:

• Suddenly …Nothing Happened! Despite Media Hysteria, Outs for Pre-Sale Condo Purchasers Remain the Same

From Neil Melliship,who chairs Clark Wilson’s Technology & Intellectual Property practice group and contributes to the Canadian Trademark Blog:

• Maybe the Jury Didn’t Like the Songs

From Brent Clark, who practices with the firm’s Commercial Lending and Insolvency & Restructuring groups:

• A Risky Business for BC Lenders

From Michael Jaworski, who’s a member of the firm Construction, P3 law, and Corporate groups, and edits the firm’s construction industry newsletter, Legal Framework:

• The Emerging Climate Consciousness – Public Company Disclosure and Beyond

Congratulations, everyone, on a very successful weeks’ blogging!

It’s been a couple months since our last lawblogs.ca update. Here’s a list of the latest additions:

• Magali Lepage, LL.B
• James Hatton on Licensing
• Nimonik – Environmental Regulations Simplified
• Res Ipsa Loquitur (Pamela Pengelley)
• Environmental, Energy, and Resources Law (Davis LLP)
• Family Law (Davis LLP)
• Democracy Law Blog (Clayton Whitman)
• The Litigator Live (Affleck Greene McMurtry)
• Legal Nurses of Canada
• Canadian HR Reporter (Jeffrey R. Smith)
• Canada Law Blog
• Trade Lawyers Blog
• Donna Neff’s Law Blog (Neff Law Office Professional Corporation)
• Toronto Trial Lawyer’s Blog (Allan Rouben)

A total of 14 new Canadian law blogs since our April update. Congratulations to all, and as always, let us know of any that are missing, and we’ll get them added ASAP.

In an ongoing effort here at Stem, we’ve been tracking the growth of the “Law Practice Industry” category on LinkedIn. For a bit more than a year now, we’ve run periodic searches on Google to see how many profile pages are indexed which include the industry class ‘law practice industry’.

Predictably, but still impressively, that number continues to grow. June’s number now shows 840,000 people within the law practice industry. In reviewing these profiles, we see a very high percentage of those people are lawyers; although it is an industry class and not professional.

With all factors consistent on each dated sample, here’s how things have stacked up:

• April 2008: 118,000
• June 2008: 216,000
• December 2008: 406,000
• March 2009: 563,000
• June 2009: 840,000

So what’s new in the world of lawyers on LinkedIn? A couple of observations:

• Groups: From legal marketing and technology to practice-specific groups for almost any area of law you can think of, lawyers on LinkedIn are getting more value out of their network by engaging in discussion. Groups are being used for Job postings, vendor recommendations, general questions, and sharing articles and links.
• Applications: Applications are basically widgets; tools that allow you to add external data into your LinkedIn profile. Two popular amongst lawyers are the Slideshare Presentations app, which lets you share presentations; and the RSS feed display, where you can post the feed from your blog, JD Supra documents, or any other content you like.
• Company pages: Just as important as individual profiles are company pages within LinkedIn. For instance, Clark Wilson’s profile includes a description of the firm’s services, a snapshot of current and former employees, location and contact details, and interesting auto-generated statistics such as median age, gender split, and top schools. Savvy law firms and other companies in the industry recognize this as a valuable opportunity to sculpt their online image.

Want a quasi brave prediction? That 840K number is going to be well over a million profiles by September 1st.

And thank-you to Larry Bodine for his email request to update the numbers!