Part II and Part III will follow later this week with predictions from:

 Jordan Furlong

Thanks very much for the invitation, Dave! Here’s my best shot:

We’ll look back at 2016 as a turning point for legal regulation in Canada. “Non-lawyer” ownership of law firms was stymied in 2015, but this year will bring us something profoundly more important: proactive, principle-based, entity regulation of legal services. Starting with Nova Scotia and the Prairie provinces, law societies will shift the regulatory focus away from rules of conduct and lawyer misbehaviour and towards “ethical infrastructure” and enterprise-level responsibility for maintaining and improving a regulatory culture. This will have an enormous influence on how lawyers practice, how law firms manage, how law schools teach and how law societies regulate. ABS would have affected maybe 1 lawyer in 100; entity-based regulation will affect every single lawyer in private practice.

My predictions for family law are as follows:

The Courts will continue to be viewed as a resource of last-resort for those experiencing family law issues; and, mediation, arbitration and other forms of dispute resolution will continue to increase in demand by the public as they are far less destructive to the family and are more economical.

While families may break up, the family dynamic must be maintained. The courts are not set up to handle these types of things as they are based on confrontation principles such as the Rule in Brown v. Dunn. The Courts will continue to be overburdened by those that cannot afford private alternative dispute resolution services and by those who do not want to do the work necessary to help people work out solutions.

In my view, the Legal Services Society should expand its funding of alternative dispute resolution services by increasing funding to mediation, and adding arbitration and parenting coordination services. This would expand the access to these services that are desperately need to reduce the burden on the Courts, to expand access to justice, and provide a more wholistic process for the resolution of disputes. Training needs to continue to be at the high end for those wishing to practice these areas.

The reality is that families are irreparably harmed by trials. While they are necessary in about 5-10% of cases where there is abuse, in most cases they are not required.  Lawyers need to be increasingly creative, use alternative dispute resolution methods and avoid trials that can needlessly destroy families.

About Terry:

My interest in family law includes representing clients in the provincial and supreme Court, acting as a mediator and arbitrator, writing articles and doing my best to provide information to the public that is of general interest in a manner that is readily accessible.

The Courts processes are often difficult to understand and navigate and thus, I do my best to provide information to assist those who are unrepresented to seek Justice for themselves.  www.hudsonlawyers.ca 

 

Larry Bodine:

Here are my marketing predictions for 2016.

• SEO officially becomes obsolete in 2016, killed off by repeated Google artificial intelligence and algorithm updates.
  More blogs = more business. Law firms that don’t adopt content marketing with a frequently-updated blog will gradually fade away, as other web-savvy law firms nip away 2-3 good files per month — like being nibbled to death by ducks. Smart law firms already know that more frequent blogging equals more leads and clients, according to Hubspot.
• Social media goes legal. Troglodyte law firms will start to get active in social media, because the more engagement their posts get, particularly on Facebook and Google+, the higher the authority that Google will assign to the website.
• Law firms will start to create non-promotional, single-topic informational sites — like Drugwatch.com (sponsored by the Peterson Firm) or BrainandSpinalCord.org (sponsored by Newsome Melton) — to capture clients early in the decision-making process when they are researching their injury.
• Law firm marketing will be shaped by the way consumers search for an attorney. For example, the top directories for personal injury attorneys are:
  • FindLaw.com
  • Avvo.com
  • Yelp.com – surprise!
  • Lawyers.com
  • Thumbtack.com – surprise!
• Review sites. Law firms will assign staff and develop systems to methodically get good reviews on imporant sites like Google, Yelp and Lawyers.com. Approximately 83 percent of people check lawyer reviews as the first step to finding an attorney.

About Larry:

Larry Bodine is a marketer, journalist and attorney who knows how to turn website visitors into clients for trial law firms. His team has drafted law firm blog posts for many websites including The National Trial Lawyers, PersonalInjury.com, Martindale-Hubbell, Lawyers.com and LexisNexis. Results include:

He was inducted into the PILMMA Hall of Fame in July 2015.

4 Million consumers read the latest legal news on Lawyers.com over a 12-month period, producing more than 7 Million page views.

The LawMarketing Blog gets 400 visits per day — more than 1 million visits over the last 10 years.

Larry is followed by 23,000 people on Twitter followers, he is in 2,000 Google+ circles, and participates in dozens of LinkedIn groups.

He writes for websites like the Huffington Post, the LexisNexis Business of Law Blog, state bar association websites, LawFuel, and trial law firms.

He is the Editor in Chief of PersonalInjury.com, the leading news site about verdicts and settlements.

Larry updates The National Trial Lawyers website every day with legal news for lawyers.

To get a content review of your website, call Larry today at 520.577.9759.

For Business Development Training for Your Firm, visit bit.ly/BodineTraining.

 

Buzz Bruggerman:

 

Given the anti-immigrant hysteria here in parts of America, coupled with the madness around gun control, here’s my prediction vis a vis American politics…

I fully expect Hilary Clinton to get the Dem. Nomination, and at the end of the day I expect the Reps to rally around someone like John Kasich. In November 2016, I expect the R’s to win by a hair, and for our country to be plunged into 4 or more years of darkness.

Very depressing prospects, but America is becoming very polarized, and I see nothing that is going to reverse that process in the near term.

About Buzz:

Trying to change the world, and helping to connect great people.

ActiveWords Co-Founder, Tech Evangelist, connector, small town Minnesota boy, Duke grad, and serious Duke basketball fan.

 

Colin Rule:

2016 will be the year of ODR and Consumer Protection. Some folks might remember the conference held in Vancouver in 2010 focused on ODR and Consumers. 2016 will be the year many of the ideas hatched there finally come to fruition. The EU ODR regulation will come live early in the year. The UNCITRAL ODR Working Group will wrap up over the Summer, issuing a position paper from all the delegates calling for high quality cross-border consumer ODR. The OECD Council on Consumer Protection in eCommerce will finalize recommendations calling for quality ODR. Amy Schmitz and I will also publish our book on ODR and Consumer Protection through the American Bar Association. The need for fast and fair redress for consumers is finally coming a head, and the consensus is that ODR is the only path forward. 2016 will be the breakthrough year.

About Colin:

Colin Rule is Co-Founder and COO of Modria.com, an ODR provider based in Silicon Valley. From 2003 to 2011 he was Director of Online Dispute Resolution for eBay and PayPal. He has worked in the dispute resolution field for more than a decade as a mediator, trainer, and consultant. He is currently Co-Chair of the Advisory Board of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution at UMass-Amherst and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Gould Center for Conflict Resolution at Stanford Law School.

Colin co-founded Online Resolution, one of the first online dispute resolution (ODR) providers, in 1999 and served as its CEO (2000) and President. In 2002 Colin co-founded the Online Public Disputes Project (now eDeliberation.com) which applies ODR to multiparty, public disputes. Previously, Colin was General Manager of Mediate.com, the largest online resource for the dispute resolution field. Colin also worked for several years with the National Institute for Dispute Resolution (now ACR) in Washington, D.C. and the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, MA.

Colin has presented and trained throughout Europe and North America for organizations including the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the Department of State, the International Chamber of Commerce, and the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution. He has also lectured and taught at UMass-Amherst, Stanford, MIT, Pepperdine University, Creighton University, Southern Methodist University, the University of Ottawa, and Brandeis University.

Colin is the author of Online Dispute Resolution for Business, published by Jossey-Bass in September 2002. He has contributed more than 50 articles to prestigious ADR publications such as Consensus, The Fourth R, ACResolution Magazine, and Peace Review. He serves on the boards of the Consensus Building Institute and the PeaceTech Lab at the United States Institute of Peace. He holds a Master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in conflict resolution and technology, a graduate certificate in dispute resolution from UMass-Boston, a B.A. from Haverford College, and he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Eritrea from 1995-1997.

 

Ellen Freedman:

The perfect storm has arrived. I (and other PMAs – Practice Management Advisors) predicated it’s arrival long before the recession hit. Thanks to the layoffs and freezes on hiring during the recession, the storm was temporarily delayed in arriving. Now that the legal industry sluggishly pulls out of the pit many firms fell into, the storm effects are clearly being felt.

The perfect storm I am referring to is the shortage of available law firm personnel suited to the positions open. Primarily we are hearing the first desperate pleas for help from firms located in rural and suburban areas. Whether the opening involves a legal assistant, legal secretary, bookkeeper, paralegal or courthouse runner, or any other administrative position, firms are struggling harder than ever to find suitable candidates.

The perfect storm has been created by a convergence of many factors:

1. Accelerating rate of retirement of the “old guard” of experienced legal secretaries, estate administrators, and so forth.
2. Lowered quality of available entry level candidates – many of whom lack the most basic skills in reading, writing, spelling, grammar and proofreading.
3. Law firm’s inability and unwillingness to train, accompanied by increasing complexity of even the simplest positions.
4. Increasing move of candidates entering the workforce toward higher positions than before, which in turn tends to increase demand for administrative support even further.
5. Diminished regard for administrative positions by potential employment candidates.
6. Increased competition with other industries which provide advancement opportunities not available in the legal industry
7. A smaller workforce demographically, despite dual-career households as the new normal.

Professionals are included. As firms seek to start regrowing their firm’s associate ranks from the bottom, the average law firm struggles to find the combination of work ethic and abilities necessary to join what is essentially still a mostly sink-or-swim environment. Firms with brand names or profitable boutique practices continue to entice the best and brightest candidates. The rest of the firms scramble over the remaining candidates. General practices in rural areas risk dying due to lack of talent for succession purposes, rather than lack of demand for services.

About Ellen:

Ellen serves as the Law Practice Management Coordinator for the Pennsylvania Bar Association. In that capacity she assists PBA’s members with management issues and decisions on the business side of their practice, including areas like technology, financial management and profitability, human resources, marketing, risk management, setting up a practice and so forth. PBA members are encouraged to contact Ellen through the 800 “Hot Line” at PBA headquarters, (800-932-0311 x2228) or through email (lawpractice@pabar.org).

Ellen is founder and President of Freedman Consulting, which assists PA law firms with a full range of issues and projects on the business side of the practice. More information about Ellen and her law practice management services may be obtained at http:www.FreedmanLPM.com. Ellen also publishes the Law Practice Management blog at www.PA-LawPracticeManagement.com.

Ellen holds the designation of Certified Legal Manager through the Association of Legal Administrators (ALA), the credentialing body for the CLM degree. Of the 11,000+ members of the ALA, approximately 260 are certified legal managers. Ellen was one of the first 20 in the nation to have achieved this designation. She holds a Certification in Computer Programming from Maxwell Institute, and a Certification in Web Site Design and a B.A. from Temple University.

Ellen managed inside law firms for twenty years. Most of that time was spent in a mid-size (35+ attorney) firm environment. She launched her consulting practice in 1998, and joined the Pennsylvania Bar Association in 1999.

Ellen is an associate member of the American Bar Association, and its Law Practice Management and General Practice & Small Firm sections. She was a member of the Association of Legal Administrators for over 20 years, and founded the Independence Chapter. She is a frequent author and speaker on law firm management issues on a national level.

That is it for Part I – stay tuned for Parts II and III – So you gotta hang on ’til tomorrow, come what may…!!!