The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel Magazine interviewed my boss, Ralph Calistri, about the transformation of Martindale-Hubbell. It's nice that we're starting to see some positive things written about the dramatic changes we've been making.

I had a wonderful conversation recently with an extremely nice and smart blogger who is just as extreme in his criticism

In an article called Hiring Lawyers by the Numbers Ursula Furi-Perry writes about the trend in corporate America for hiring decisions by outside counsel to be scrutinized by procurement officers. While these new policies are making lawyers both in-house and in private practice squirm and shudder, the real question is how to preserve the trusted relationship between corporate counsel and their outside lawyer in these c

About a month ago I wrote about our plans to put all of our Law Digests onto martindale.com so if you register on our site you would be able to search for any digest you need.

I'm happy to report that we now have all 150 of our Law Digests loaded onto martindale.com.  To find a Law Digest in a particular jurisdiction, ju

Mark Lepper of Stanford University and Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University in a fascinating article titled “When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?” explain that buyers can end up worse off, less satisfied, and de-motivated when faced with too much choice.

The article describes three experiments where one group of people was offered many choices (over 20) whil

At a Counsel to Counsel Forum earlier this week I was able to listen to corporate counsel from global corporations describe what they want from outside counsel.  A few days later, here in LA at LMA, I participated on a panel that Leigh Dance, President

After talking with hundreds of buyers of legal services it’s clear to me that a law firm video on their website can be effective.  It’s one of the things a buyer of legal services would like to have when deciding whether or not to include a particular lawyer on a short list to call.  By seeing and hearing a potential lawyer on a video before calling them, someone looking for a lawyer can get a sense of how they come across in real life.      

Someone who attended the Equal Justice Works Awards Dinner video taped Reena Arora, a student at the New York University School of Law, who gave a wonderful thank you speech upon winning the Martindale-Hubbell Exemplary Public Service Award.

She spoke about the due process rights of immigrants who, even in civil cases she saw, were dressed in orange jump suites, barely afforded

Interesting article about the approach ITtoolbox is taking to introduce a social network to allow vendor selection. The idea of combining information from both the vendor and user-generated content to improve an online community makes a lot of sense. I think this type of "Content Rich Professional Networking" will be the

Interesting comment in Legal Blog Watch called “Lawyers Crushed by Information Overload." Blogger Robert Ambrogi posted our workplace productivity survey and comments about how “Information overload is crushing white-collar p

UPDATE (as of March 25, 2008):  We now have all 150 of our Law Digests loaded onto martindale.com.  To find a Law Digest in a particular jurisdiction, just register or login and go to Search Legal Topics.  You can then enter "Law Digest" followed by the name of the jurisdiction you are looking to find such as "Law Digest: Spain".  Finally, click on View the full text of thi

There’s a huge amount of conversation these days about the value of legal directories…whether they’re a phenomenon of the past or still relevant. And I know the debate gets very heated.

I’m in a unique position – in that I don’t really have to get too involved in the law firm debate. Here at Martindale – I’m focused exclusively on corporate counsel. And making sure I understand their needs is my only concern.

I’ve

I am sitting at the Seattle airport writing this and getting slowly frustrated with winter travel and canceled flights. This led me to think about a couple of ideas around social networking and the power of crowds:

1. When I get unexpectedly stuck in a location - wouldn't it be nice if I could reach out to my network to quickly and easily find out who is based in a given location and willing to meet with me? Yes, I could use our CRM system and find out which customers are here and

Now that I’ve been blogging for the first time in my life for a little over a week, it seems like a good time to take stock.  While some people have noticed us positively, others have been critical.  But all feedback, positive and negative, is a gift.

We recognize that we have improvements to make to our blog and we will keep you posted on these improvements as they happen.  We encourage your continuous feedback, as we are listening and know that it will only e

LexisNexis ran a survey of attorneys and other legal professionals at LegalTech NY yesterday around the adoption of Web 2.0 capabilities in the legal markets. Not terribly surprising – the findings show that while 74% of respondents read blogs, only 10% have their own blog…and only 17% of the respondents' firms have a blog.                   

Further reporting on our survey fro

Talk about networking. I feel like all the software and services companies in the legal space are gathered in New York City this week for the annual LegalTech NY shindig. The number of exhibitors, attorneys or representatives from their firms is striking.

Luckily ALM has provided a handy color coding for the badges so you can identify an exhibitor, an event participant, a member of the media, etc. in a glimpse of an eye. Of course, once y

Last year, to commemorate 10 years of martindale.com, we ran a "make a birthday wish" contest for legal professionals to e-mail us their own birthday wish for the legal industry. That’s just one of the many ways we’re making sure we get a conversation going with you, our customers.

Based on random selections and judge review, the winner has just been named...
and it’s Marc Becker,

I was able to spend some time with the many members and some clients of Lex Mundi the last few days. What struck me is how many ways networking helps lawyers. From sharing knowledge to business development, from participating in pro bono work to finding a good resource.

People get together like this in many groups and associations. In addition to Lex Mundi, there are a number of other networks of law firms. The legal profe

My morning starts off like most people; at the office around 8 AM with a cup of coffee and a review of my e-mail. I try to get an early start before the phone starts to ring, which it has been doing a lot of lately.

One reason for this is an issue regarding Martindale-Hubbell that’s out there right now. Specifically, the institution of a $50 annual fee so that an attorney’s Peer Review Rating (PRR) can be displayed in the LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, the on

As my colleagues and I have noted over the past week here on our new blog, change is happening at Martindale-Hubbell.  This change is across the board, including our solutions aimed at helping small businesses and individuals as well as those targeted to large law firms and corporations.  But you might be wondering what more we can say about this change?  What are our plans?  These are reasonable questions.

I’d like to present a high level approach w

It was nice to read a balanced analyst report by David Curle, Director & Lead Analyst of Outsell on what he describes as the overhaul of martindale.com.

The report, titled Enhancements to Martindale.com Reflect the Changing Law Firm Marketing Space, does a nice job of placing into context ou