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Multinational Reference
Reference Sources for Nations and Regions
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[return to top] LEGAL GUIDES AND MISCELLANEOUS
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| | Library of Congress Contact Us ( June 10, 2005 ) |
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FROM AMERICAN BAR ASS.
Future of the Legal Profession
Final Report: Overview
The Committee on Research About the Future of the Legal Profession, chaired by Robert J. Grey Jr. of Richmond, Va., spent the past two years working on issues related to the future of the legal profession.&nbps; During FY2000-2001, the Committee focused its efforts on developing a report on the current state of the profession to serve as a platform to examine the challenges and opportunities of change and how the legal profession can and should define its own future. The Committee issued an interim report in 2001.
In its second year, the Committee worked with legal futurist Stuart A. Forsyth to envision the preferred future of the legal profession and to determine action steps that would foster that future. That report was presented to the ABA Board of Governors at its August meeting in
Presentation to the
As presented to the Board, the Committee’s report used a multi-media approach that included printed materials, an audio recording, and oral and slide presentations.
As Dr. Alan Kay, inventor of the graphical user interface, has said,
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
American Online and Yahoo are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. This reported by Saul Hansell at the New York Times.
Steve Rubel, a recognized leader in PR & communications on the net and my source, sees this as email marketing goodbye, RSS hello.
The door has officially closed on email marketing. Maybe this will drive more companies to start up opt-in RSS feeds and blogs that facilitate dialogue.
In 2004 Bill Gates said Web sites and email were outdated means of communication and that blogs with RSS were the answer. We're beginning to see it.
Sincerely tours Rodrigo González Fernández, consultajuridica.blogspot.com
10 Commandments for The Era of Participatory Public Relations
So, please tell me a law firm that these do not apply to (these are the handy work of Steve Rubel (Micro Persuasion) noticed referenced today on Tom Peter's Newswire:
1) Thou shall listen – Utilize every avenue available to you to listen actively to what your publics have to say and feed it back to the right parties.
2) Remember that all creatures great and small are holy – It doesn't matter if it's the New York Times calling on you or an individual blogger, both have power. Take them all seriously.
3) Honor thy customer – Create programs that celebrate customers and they will celebrate you.
4) Thou shall not be fake – Keep it real; don't hide behind characters and phony IDs.
5) Covet thy customers – Don’t sue your fans. You will alienate them.
6) Thou shall be open and engaging – Involve your customers in the PR process. Invite them to help you develop winning ideas and become your spokespeople.
7) Thou shall embrace blogging – It’s not a fad, it’s here to stay. Be part of it.
8) Thou shall banish corporate speak – People want to here from you in a human voice. Don’t hind behind corporate speak. It will soon sound like ye olde English.
9) Thou shall tell the truth – If you don’t tell the truth, it will come out anyway.
10) Thou shall thinketh in 360 degrees – Ask not what you can do for your customer, but also what your customer can do for you.
Sincerely yours Rodrigo González Fernández consultajuridica.blogspot.com
Is Diversity on your management agenda? Has it ever been?
This is a serious wake up call to every single member of your law firm's management team.
Diversity is not some do-good-philanthropic-topic for a tea party of the rich and bored. Diversity is serious business: serious to business; serious for business… not to mention that it is the right thing to do.
In her Law.com article today, Wal-Mart Demands Diversity in Law Firms, Meredith Hobbs explores the demands that General Counsel in major corporations are placing at the doorstep of law firms.
The General Counsel referenced in the article are in the following companies:
Wal-Mart
Visa International
Del Monte
Pitney Bowes
Cox Communications
The article goes on to say:
So far, close to 100 general counsel have signed on, including those from some of the nation's biggest companies.
If you think you can get by this issue with tokenism, you need to understand what is being demanded of you. For example, the article includes these quotes:
The nation's biggest retailer wants to see diversity at the top.
The goal… is to "increase the number of women and minorities directly responsible for [our] relationship at our law firms."
"We are terminating a firm right now strictly because of their inability to grasp our diversity expectations,"
In her Separate but Equal article in Marketing the Law Firm, a Law Jounal Newsletters publication, Elizabeth Anne 'Betiayn' Tursi offers this advice:
The idea that law firm leaders need not be at the helm of these initiatives can only mean that it will be doomed to fail. The chair or managing partner of a firm must be a proponent of the causes and must be involved in every aspect of promoting the initiatives. In the case of creating this particular blueprint, management serves as the "project leader" or lead architect. Leadership can set the tone for the institution of these initiatives and is in the enviable position of selecting others in the firm who can also promote and develop the actual initiatives. And yes, there should be a chair for each initiative — diversity, pro bono, recruiting and marketing — who meet once a month, with the directors of these initiatives to ensure that they are working together to develop the blueprint, and also to make certain that these individuals are in a positions that enable them to have a voice in implementing the programs to achieve the intended result.
Guy Kawasaki is quite extraordinary "evangelist, entrepreneur, investment banker, and venture capitalist" kind of sums it up but not quite.
In his post today, he discusses The Art of Schmoozing... his list is not only consistent with some of the best academic work I have seen on the subject but he describes his steps in such a compelling way, for example, his third step is:
Ask good questions, then shut up. The mark of a good conversationalist is not that you can talk a lot. The mark is that you can get others to talk a lot. Thus, good schmoozers are good listeners, not good talkers. Ask softball questions like, “What do you do?” “Where are you from?” “What brings you to this event?” Then listen. Ironically, you'll be remembered as an interesting person.
PUNCHLINE: Whether you are a Managing Partner or a CMO, share Guy Kawasaki's 9 step list with your law firm. You may have to translate it a bit (removing words that twist the stomach of most lawyers - like "tradeshows" - gosh, what would a lawyer do at a trade show, or MySpace - heaven forbid.) However the wisdom in this list is far too valuable to overlook.
Sincerely yours Rodrigo González Fernández, consultajuridica.blogspot.com
We don't usually cover European Court of Human Rights stuff unless it impacts directly on EU law. You just can't cover everything.
But here is a report worth looking at by Lord Woolf about the working methods of the Court and how to cope with the massive case load.
Two suggestions made in the report may well be transposed to the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance one day. Not tomorrow, for sure, but perhaps in 15 to 20 years time.
The first suggestion is the creation of "satellite offices of the registry". They would be set up in different countries and screen applications before they are lodged with the court.
The second suggestion is to encourage greater use of ombudsmen and alternative dispute resolution.
Sincerely yours, Rodrigo González Fernández
Tom Peters Times! February 2006
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| Ethics
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The production, transformation and distribution of food and agricultural products are generally accepted as routine aspects of daily life around the world. Therefore, such activities have rarely been addressed within the realm of ethics. But food and agriculture, and the economic benefits that derive from participation in the food and agriculture system, are means to ends that are inherently ethical in nature. Only on a few occasions has FAO considered ethical values, although they are embedded in the preamble to the Organization's Constitution (see Box). Without these ethical values, the most important of which are considered below, FAO would have little reason to exist.
The value of food. Food is essential for the survival of human beings; hunger results from neglect of the universal right to food. Both formal ethical systems and ethical practices in every society presume the necessity of providing those who are able-bodied with the means to obtain food and enabling those who are unable to feed themselves to receive food directly. Failure to do so is deemed an injustice, an unethical act, whereas the elimination of hunger and malnutrition is deemed beneficent. Several international documents proclaim the validity of this well-established principle, among them the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Rome Declaration on World Food Security (1996).
The value of enhanced well-being. Today, nearly every nation state recognizes the need to enhance the well-being of its citizens. Such improvements in well-being also advance human dignity and self-respect. While charity is sometimes necessary to respond to desperate and pressing situations, it cannot provide for long-term improvements in well-being, which can only be accomplished by providing people with access to skills, capital, employment, education and opportunities. In addition, for sustainable agriculture and rural development to flourish, a viable rural infrastructure must be in place, together with an enabling policy environment.
The value of human health. Human health is improved by the elimination of hunger and malnutrition. Healthy people are more able to participate in human affairs and more able to live productive and meaningful lives. Furthermore, the protection of human health also involves ensuring adequate nutrition and safeguards against unsafe food. On both of these points, nations are agreed - as members of the World Health Organization (WHO Constitution, 1946) and the Codex Alimentarius Commission (1963).
| Excerpt from the Preamble to FAO's Constitution The Nations accepting this Constitution, being determined to promote the common welfare by furthering separate and collective action on their part for the purpose of: · raising levels of nutrition and standards of living of the peoples under their respective jurisdictions; · securing improvements in the efficiency of the production and distribution of all food and agricultural products; · bettering the condition of rural populations; · and thus contributing towards an expanding world economy and ensuring humanity's freedom from hunger; hereby establish the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations ... |
The value of natural resources. All human societies recognize the importance of atural world that are used to produce food and other valued goods and which are necessary for our survival and prosperity. Clearly, no particular use of such resources should undermine the other le-gitimate uses to which they might be put, now or in the future. In particular, no current use should condemn our progeny to endless toil or deprivation.
The value of nature. Finally, there is growing agreement that nature itself must be valued. As our power to modify nature grows, there is also an increasing recognition of the beauty, complexity and integrity of nature, and of the limits to humans' restructuring of the natural world. The Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) not only recognizes the value that may be placed on particular organisms; it also acknowledges, as do countless cultures, that nature itself is to be valued for what it is.
* * *
To sum up, these values define in part who we are and what we should do and, while different cultures may vary in their interpretation of them, all agree as to their importance. The values in question are by no means new, and they are also central to FAO's mission. So why is it that they are again the subject of dialogue and debate? Why is it that FAO feels obliged to raise the issue of ethics in food and agriculture?
For more information: http://www.fao.org/documents/show_cdr.asp?url_file=/DOCREP/003/X9601S/x9601s01.htm
Sincerely yours Rodrigo González Fernández
La imagen de conjunto de
Entre los usuarios la satisfacción de conjunto con los servicios del abogado es calificada con una llamativa puntuación media de 6,9. Esta valoración sube incluso hasta un excepcional 7,9 (en cuanto a la atención y el trato recibido) y registra incluso un sorprendente 6,5 respecto de los honorarios devengados. El interés y dedicación al asunto obtiene un 7,1 y la satisfacción con el resultado conseguido un 6,9.
La relación abogado/cliente es entendida en nuestra sociedad como una relación de total confianza y entrega. De ahí que la elección de abogado se sustente de forma casi exclusiva en factores de confianza interpersonal (se confía en aquél abogado en quien confían las personas que merecen confianza). Al mismo tiempo, la idea masivamente dominante es que la tarea del abogado no es tanto defender lo justo como aquello que beneficia a su cliente.
Esta expectativa de entrega total a la causa del defendido constituye sin embargo, a la vez, una pieza fundamental de la buena imagen del propio abogado y de soporte a las valoraciones más críticas (expresadas por lo general en forma de tópicos y estereotipos consagrados y generalizados) referidas a “los” abogados en general. La imagen de estos últimos resulta así en alguna medida contradictoria y ambivalente, -siempre dentro de una sustancial valoración positiva de conjunto, como ya se ha indicado.
Fuente: “La imagen de la Abogacía en la sociedad española” (pdf). Segundo Barómetro Externo de Opinión del C.G.A.E. Noviembre de 2005.
Pueden ver más en :
http://www.jprenafeta.com/blog/index.php/archives/2006/02/02/la-imagen-de-la-abogacia/
Imagen del Abogado desde JPrenafeta, saludos Rodrigo González Fernández, consultajuridica.blogspot.com
Do these scenarios sound familiar at your firm when it comes to marketing?
According to Suzanne Lowe, it may mean that your professionals lack marketing DNA. "Over the past year, I've been struck by the amount of marketing-oriented dysfunction that I continue to see in professional service firms, regardless of professional sector: poor internal marketing communication; diplomatic and political ineptitude regarding garnering leaders' endorsement of marketing strategies; counterproductive and sometimes truly baffling marketing reporting relationships; not implementing client-endorsed differentiation strategies; under-resourced marketing teams; inexperienced marketing partner leadership; and more "ready-fire-aim" marketplace programs than you'd believe," she says.
"Some of my past research findings, and the painful marketing struggles that I've witnessed recently, suggest that for most professional service firms a true Marketing DNA is not a given, and that too little is being done to improve effectiveness in achieving substantive marketplace gains," she says.
I agree with Lowe: "It's clear that many professional firms simply don't have a market-driven DNA; they are undoubtedly driving their CMOs and senior marketing leaders crazy as a result."
What to do? Here's what:
From Larry Bodine´s blog, sincerely yours , Rodrigo González Fernández , consultajuridica.blogspot.com
