HUMAN LAW MEDIATION

Delia's newsletter is on its way to subscribers

Delia Venables, bi-monthly newsletter is coming out later this week and it will cover the following areas:

1. Who needs an IT department? This is the  question asked by Steven Bradley as he discusses the many IT functions which can now be outsourced, including data storage, practice management, web site hosting, telecoms, typing and dictation.

2. Many lawyers have been watching the  development of the "free access to law" movement with great interest; it started with AustLII, continued with BAILII (and several others) and now includes many of the important jurisdictions  of the world. Graham Greenleaf, Andrew Mowbray and Philip Chung were the founders of this movement and they have honoured the newsletter by  providing a "milestone" article on how it all fits together.

3. Many firms have fee-earner profiles on their  web sites but, quite honestly, most of these would fail to make a potential client feel that this is the "right" lawyer for them. Alison Hunt tells us how to get the necessary information  from the fee-earner. It's easy really, if you know how.

4. Matthew Broadbent describes how the internet has changed the way that law firms recruit their trainees.

5. Eduardo Ustaran explores the data protection  challenges faced by businesses operating user generated websites - those commonly known as Web  2.0. What rights do the contributors have? He covers the interpretation of personal data and how the fair processing rules apply. He thinks that the evolving legal framework will be tested by some of those pioneers currently trying out new business models.

6. The topic of wikis is explored by Paul  Robertson, of New Zealand firm Heaney & Co., who describes how they use an internal wiki to gather together the firm's collective wisdom on their specialist area - the liability of local authorities. Then Nick Holmes returns to the theme of "the law wiki dream" as raised by Richard Susskind last year and looks at some of the assets that the UK legal community has, to make it work.

To subscribe, please contact Delia.

How to start your mediation practice

Talk about the spirit and the generosity of the blogosphere.

As Diane Levin points out, Tammy Lenski has created a meme for mediators, riffing on a post by Vickie Pynchon, on "How to Start a Mediation Practice". Tammy recounts her own proven formula for success in launching a practice as a mediator and has "tagged" Mediation Mensch Dina Beach Lynch and Diane inviting us to continue the conversation on this theme.

Some great material here and elsewhere.

Go to Geoff Sharp as well and get some great tips and a copy of a business plan to boot. My accountant once told me that the most successful business people had their business plans on an envelope. There you go.

My lunch and podcast with Charon QC

I have just returned from West London where I met the well known law blogger, Charon QC.

Not only was I taken to lunch and had a glass of Rioja with him, I had the honour of doing a podcast with him .

It can be downloaded below and I discuss with Charon QC some things about myself and issues related to mediation and blogging.

What struck me about the podcast was how professional Charon and his team were in creating the actual material. It took 30 minutes to do a 7 minute podcast using iLife Software for a Mac.

Charon is very skilful, patient and determined in the preparation of his material. A clear natural in the broadcasting field.

Download charons_podcast_2.mp3

P.S Charon's podcast is up on his blog here.

We live in interesting times

Consider this post by Leon Benjamin :

"Most Western economies face a wide range of issues related to ageing populations and the retirement costs of baby boombers.   Many blue chip companies cannot replace the talent that will exit their companies in the next 5-10 years, and have not considered the possibility of retaining them on demand, deploying them in a  fractional way that allows the 'ex-employee' to choose their unique work/retirement balance.  How much more pain does everyone have to be in before these new organisational approaches are adopted by organisations of every kind?  Why aren't they doing it now?  One of the perceived 'challenges' is the transparency and openness required to make this mode of work feasible.  Inside the corporation, it would be possible for everyone to see and know what everyone else is working on (or not, as the case may be).  This is difficult to achieve operationally because of rigid command structures and culturally, because the nature of the employer-employee contract does not reward or incentivise in anyway, behaviours that allow people to openly share. 

Perhaps an employment law expert can re-work the ethos of the Open Source General Public Licence and Creative Commons into a new type of employment contract?  In any case, with India, China, Russia and Eastern Europe's low wage economies and highly educated populations providing services of every kind and on every scale (India's Infosys received 1.4 million job applications for employment last year alone), the only way to compete will be to adopt alternative organisational models.  Interestingly, Small & Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) and micro-businesses which are collectively the biggest employers in Western economies are increasingly turning to these models of work to take cost out of their businesses, but also to work more productively.  When the very clear cut case histories start to roll in, companies will find it hard to ignore these new ways of working.

There must now surely be a case for corporations and  government institutions to completely re-think the way they source, manage and contract with their 'human resources'.  Everyone needs to realise that fractional work is not only economically viable for all parties, and that traditional models of employment are not only unproductive, but inhumane and in some cases, barbaric."

Employment Law At Work emerges

Employment Law At Work has emerged as a new law blog. It has been created by the employment team at PJHLaw - It looks pretty good.

Recommended article on User Generated Computer Games

Click hereto read this on the WIPO Magazine. "This article, first published on November 14, 2006 in GameDaily BIZ, a division of AOL Entertainment was written by Gabriel M. Ramsey and Michael W. Trinh at the Silicon Valley office of the international law firm, Orrick. Mr. Ramsey specializes in intellectual property (IP) litigation involving high technology and entertainment industries. Mr. Trinh, who is also focused on IP litigation, has a background in information technology and Internet policy issues.

User-created content is a significant force in the online economy. People create and share video sensations on YouTube, publish their thoughts on blogs and collaborate to create online resources such as Wikipedia or open source software. With Microsoft's beta release of its XNA Game Studio Express, this trend will reach the console gaming industry. The XNA Game Studio Express is a suite of programming tools which enables users with relatively basic skills to develop "home-brew" games and run them on an Xbox 360 or Windows-based PC. "

Why employers need to mediate

As the Times reports,  a successful sales executive who was harassed and discriminated against because he was gay was awarded a record payout of nearly £120,000 yesterday by an employment tribunal.

Jonah Ditton, 32, from Paisley, Renfrewshire, was called a “wee poof” by his boss at a publishing company and dismissed after just eight days for being “psychologically imbalanced”.

At an employment tribunal in Glasgow earlier this week, Mr Ditton was awarded £118,309, believed to be the highest award by a tribunal for bias on the ground of sexual preference, after what it described as “humiliating and degrading abuse” by his employer, CP Publishing, of Glasgow, which publishes entertainment guides.

This type of case has done huge damage to the company, CP Publishing and from the company's perspective the litigation must be reaping huge damage on the company.

There has been probably significant legal costs(though they did not attend the hearing), the stress of dealing with the hearing, the damage done to the brand and most significantly, the damage done to the employee.   

It is an if but maybe if this case had been mediated there could have been a settlement which would have been confidential and could have at the very least alleviated some of these problems.

Mediation works in at least 80% of cases.

Charon QC is podcasting

Congratulations to Charon QC who is now podcasting which is nicely edited.

To listen please go to this link. 

"We are at the very beginning"

Currently I am blogging from the Institute of Directors where I have just finished a meeting with Simon MacDermott of Attentio.

He is in London attending a conference connected with his expertise.

Attentio was founded by Simon and Per Siljubergsasen in 2004 and has been at the forefront of the emerging online intelligence market in Europe. The firm is based in Brussels, Belgium.

Simon's firm offers the Attentio Brand Dashboard which is an online subscription-based service that uses charts and graphs to visualise buzz trends and provides detection of emerging events by source, topic or region.

Simon is an affable person who believes strongly that we are at the very beginning of the emergence of social media.

For those interested in online monitoring, his firm is worth a look.       

Osney Media organise compelling conference on employee engagement

I have just attended a 2 day event last week in connection with internal branding and employee engagement which was organised by Osney Media.

An impressive event which was well run and held at the Reuters Building in Canary Wharf and had an excellent chair in Richard Mosley of People in Business.

It included presentations from people from Sky, Microsoft and Badenoch and Clark.

With respect to my involvement, I spoke on the 2nd day on a panel which included Di MacDonald(formely of 3), Colette Hill of Workplace Communications Consultancy and Ian Critchley Head of Production Talent at the BBC.

Unsurprisingly I gave my 6 pence on blogs and other social media which did not have an unreceptive audience.

My views - There is a willingness to learn about social media  such as blogs at this high level. The tide is turning but the focus will be at an internal level not on external/branding level.