Blog Glob: Monday morning shorts

Excerpt from "Memphis attorney goes to task-based billing, but don't expect local trend" (Memphis Business Journal - subscription required)

Scott Ostrow, formerly an attorney with Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs LLP, has launched his own business litigation law firm, which is going against the traditional hourly billing method. Ostrow has decided to stop charging his clients by the hour and is basing his practice on value billing, or task-based billing, a rare method in the practice of business litigation.

According to American Bar Association estimates, about 90% of law firms in the U.S. use hourly billing. However, the national debate on attorneys' standard hourly billing method has become heated recently, with value billing emerging as a viable alternative, according to legal publications.

Excerpt from Articles of Interest (Conscious Lawyer)

Allen, John W., “Lawyers as Healers” (lawyers-as-healers.pdf)
     Michigan Bar Journal, October 2001.

Keeva Steven,  “Once More, With Healing” (once-more-with-healing.pdf)
     ABA Journal, May 2004.

Link, David T., “Healing and the Law” (healing-and-the-law.pdf) 
     Previously unpublished and printed with permission of the author.

Excerpt from Interview: What Coaching Is All About (Legal Marketing Blog)

[F]or those who care to listen to the golden vocal cords of yours truly, give it a go. (aw, come on, I know you've just been dying to hear me sound off on my various (mis)guided theories on all things marketing and business development.)

So, if you have 29 minutes to waste .......... errrrr, invest over lunch or your morning coffee, check out my coaching interview with Cole [Silver].

Excerpt from "As mediation spreads, courts see drop in cases" (Pacific Business News - subscription required)

Long-time civil litigator Jeffrey Portnoy of the Cades Schutte firm, immediate past president of the Hawaii State Bar Association, said the decline reflects a nationwide trend that is seeing more people solving their problems outside of the courtroom to avoid lengthy and costly trials.

Excerpt from How to change the world: Sunlight, food, high expectations, and jazz (Presentation Zen)

TED has put up one of the most compelling presentations by one of America's most remarkable men. I found this presentation remarkable on many, many different levels. The presenter, Bill Strickland, is an ordinary man who has accomplished something extraordinary — something that "could not be done." Bill Strickland has a fascinating story that he tells on stage in a straight forward, conversational style. His story is amplified naturally by the use of photos projected on a screen behind him. And he tells his story—and this is the cool part—while the legendary Herbie Hancock provides a beautiful backdrop and natural musical augmentation to this great story throughout. The content is wonderful and inspiring and the delivery serves as a reminder: Presentation is never just giving the facts, it's a performance and it is art, "the art of presentation."

Excerpt from The New Rules of Viral Marketing - free ebook! (web ink now)

Download The New Rules of Viral Marketing now! It's free and there's no annoying registration requirement.

You and I are incredibly lucky.

For decades, the only way to spread our ideas was to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write (or broadcast) about our products and services. But now our organizations have a tremendous opportunity to publish great content online—content that people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, family, and colleagues.

Excerpt from Same difference? (Johnnie Moore's Weblog)

I wonder if I am alone in being a little bored of conversations about the difference between 'innovation' and 'creativity'. The same goes for 'leadership' and 'management'.

Most of the time, I sense these are really a sort of one upmanship where the speaker's propostion boils down to this: innovation is the creativity that I approve of. And leadership is the management that I approve of.

Excerpt from The Name Killer: how the wrong name took down a $2-million business in 2-weeks (jonathanfields•awake@thewheel)

I am a writer. I’ve done a ton of research on book titles. And, every book marketer I know tells me 80% of a book’s success is the title. It’s the same for the headline on an ad. And, beyond offering a service or product with a core-level of remarkability, it applies equally to the name of a new business.

Excerpt from How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with WordPress (Caroline Middlebrook)

WordPress is a free and open source piece of software that is commonly used for developing blogs. This very blog is developed on WordPress. But what many people don’t realise is that you can do so much more with WordPress too and one of the simplest ways in which it can be used is to create old-style static websites.

Excerpt from Great Historical Photos: Free (the [non]billable hour)

The Library of Congress is releasing bunches of their historical photos, free of all usage and copyright restrictions.  Some amazing pics, with more on the way.  Here's the Flickr page.

Excerpt from The Paradox of Productivity (the Daily Saint)

Here are four paradoxes that mark the lives of those who get more done:

Excerpt from Weekend Recovery (Nurse Ratched's Place)

This is what I look like on Monday morning after working two twelve-hour shifts over the weekend. It’s hard looking glamorous when you are exhausted. My shifts always end up being longer than twelve hours—they generally turn into 14 hours shifts—and we are always short of staff. Last night I came rolling into my driveway around 2 a.m., and then the hospital called me just about the time I started drifting off to sleep. The supervisor wanted to know if I wanted to come back into work. I don't remember what I told her, but I'm sure that my response was colorful. AND LOUD!

Excerpt from Lessons in Brevity (The New York Times Shifting Careers blog)

[C]heck out the contest at Well, the blog of my colleague Tara Parker-Pope. Inspired by the concise edict, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” used by Michael Pollan to capture the message of his book, “In Defense of Food,” Ms. Parker-Pope has asked readers to post their own seven-word mantras for good living. Many of the submissions (over 1,200 at my last visit) are both clever and profound.