Microsoft Partners Adopting the Tablet PC!

The Microsoft Monitor reports that Microsoft partners are adopting the Tablet PC and that's were widespread adoption starts. Long live the Tablet PC!

Microsoft Monitor: Tablet PC, RIP? Nope, that story is all wrong!

Microsoft Monitor: Tablet PC, RIP? Nope, that story is all wrong!

I've been games focused this week but let me take a quick break here to comment. Let me be clear. Tablet PC is not going away. Feel free to argue and debate it but it's not going away. Period. Tablet for the foreseeable future will be a superset of computing. Something that is a Notebook Plus. Overtime, that will probably change but not every notebook will have Tablet functions. Just like today, not every notebook has an optical drive. Now having said that, the Tablet team has not done the best job marketing (this is becoming a familiar theme). Where are the ROI numbers to justify the marginal cost that Tablet increases? Where are the evangelizing efforts to show the world what they are missing? Where's the buzz about Lonestar? Tablet is here to stay but it could be a lot more successful if Microsoft and partners put together a coherent and cogent marketing effort behind it. (oh, and someone builds a device like the X40 that can get me through a full day without a recharge and still weigh less than four pounds).

The Latent Market for Business Legal Services

Dennis Kennedy describes The Latent Market for Business Legal Services. This is precisely the market I have envisioned targeting for years -- the business 'middle class' who don't, won't, don't know about or simply think they can't afford quality legal services. He writes:

6. The Latent Market for Business Legal Services. Richard Granat and others have spoken and written for years about the “latent” market for legal services. To drastically over-simplify, the idea is that there is a large middle class group of people who have definite needs for legal services, but who cannot afford, do not understand the benefit of, or otherwise do not use the services of lawyers. As a result, they “go it alone” or do nothing, often to their detriment.

I believe that the same idea applies in the business context. In the latent market for business legal services, you find a large number of businesses where owners, executives (often CFOs) and others make “seat of the pants” legal decisions on their own for many of the same reasons Granat and others discuss. Another portion of this market routinely “under lawyers” the problem - i.e., uses a general lawyer for issues that should be addressed by lawyers who practice in the specific area. An example would be a company that has its real estate lawyer looking over software licenses.

In either case, mistakes are likely to be made. When I describe my practice as “providing consumer protection for businesses entering into important technology contracts,” I have the picture of this latent market for business legal services in mind. These are the people I can and want to help. At the annual retreat, I want to take some time to think about this concept, its implications and approaches to target this latent market, especially in ways that take advantage of Internet delivery of services, products and collaborative efforts.

More Evidence of the 'Mainstreaming' of the Tablet PC

Evan Feldman helped form the Tablet PC group at Microsoft and later went with the "Mobility Client PC Business Unit" when it was split off from the Tablet PC group. In his recent post "Re-orgs are a way of life" Evan tells us that the two teams (Tablet and Mobility Client) are moving closer together so that they can both focus on Longhorn (the next Windows) in tandem.

Someday, You'll Own a Tablet PC

In his eWeek article "Someday, You'll Own a Tablet PC" David Coursey makes the convincing argument that, with the Tablet PC edition of Windows merging with the mainstream Windows in Longhorn, eventually all business notebook computers will have Tablet PC capabilities and it will be up to the user to choose if, when and how to use those capabilities. Like I said before, Microsoft's "giving up" on the Tablet PC OS as a discreet product doesn't mean it's a failure; it means it is a success.

False Alarm -- Doctors Will Still Treat Attorneys

In its article Doctors Denounce Idea to Allow Denial of Care to Some Lawyers, the New York Times reports that a doctor's proposal asking the American Medical Association to endorse refusing care to lawyers involved in medical malpractice cases drew an angry response from colleagues at the annual meeting of the association. Many doctors stood up to denounce the resolution in passionate speeches - even after its sponsor, Dr. J. Chris Hawk, asked that it be withdrawn.

Lawyer, Heal Thy Self

In LAWYER, HEAL THYSELFThe American Bar Association reports that the AMA is considering a resolution that recognizes that physicians may refuse care to plaintiffs lawyers except in emergency situations.

Tablet PC Lives!

More on the "death" of the Tablet PC.

Rob Enderle in an eWeek article reasons that Microsoft is not killing the Tablet PC but rather is merging the Tablet PC edition of Windows with Longhorn in large part due to the reticence of corporate IT departments to support more than one image or version of an operating system across their organization.

He concludes:

In the end, Microsoft's move to merge the Tablet PC platform into Longhorn does not represent the death of the Tablet PC, but its continued (painful) birth.

Employers Lose Right to Jury Trial

Overlawyered reports that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has overruled its own 1997 decision by now holding that even though employees have an absolute right to seek a jury trial rather than have their bias claims decided by the state anti-bias agency, employers do not have the same right. Why? Because letting employers opt for a jury trial was undermining the state agency's authority. The local ACLU (which filed an amicus brief in the case) praised the decision.

Rumors of the Death of Tablet PC Greatly Exaggerated.

I get really steamed at guys like Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, freelance writer and editor of Channel Zone newsletter and eWeek's Linux and Open Source Site. And no, it's not just the hyphenated surname, although that irritates me too. It's the masquerading as a journalist that does it.

In his recent article entitled "Goodbye and Good Riddance to the Tablet PC," Mr. Vaughan-Nichols reports that Microsoft is giving up on the idea of the Tablet PC for the mass market and then he expresses his joy at the impending passing of the Tablet PC. Ignoring for the moment his blatant bias, I submit that he is simply wrong.

Mind you, I'm not talking about a simple disagreement with Mr. Vaughan-Nichols' opinion or really even the conclusion he reached. And I'm certainly not talking about some sort of deep philosophical or religious disagreement like, say, cats vs. dogs, paper vs. platic, lid up vs. lid down or over-the-roll vs. under-the-roll. No, I'm talking about blatant fallacies -- gaping holes -- in the very premise upon which he bases his reasoning.

I'm afraid that in his haste to eulogize the Tablet PC Mr. Vaughan-Nichols (a) confuses Tablet PC the operating system with Tablet PC the hardware platform, and (b) assumes that the demise of a dedicated "mobile" or "tablet" version of Windows equates to the demise of the tablet platform.

The foundation of Mr. Vaughan-Nichols' reasoning is the premise that Tablet PCs are on the decline. In support of this he cites an eWeek article that says no such thing. As I read it, the article simply says that Microsoft may have goofed in thinking that the slate version of Tablet PCs would win out over traditional notebooks when it now appears that notebook-like convertible Tablet PCs are the more popular platform. Does it say that the Tablet PC as a platform is doomed or even "on the decline" as Mr. Vaughan-Nichols implies? Absolutely not. Just that a different variety of Tablet PC is the one winning out.

Then the article says that the need for a dedicated edition of the Windows operating system just for Tablet PCs may no longer be necessary. In the light most favorable to Mr. Vaughan-Nichols I suppose this could be stretched to mean that the Tablet PC operating system is on the way out, but only because it may be subsumed by the truly mainstream Windows XP Professional. That is akin to saying that faxing, PC remote control and ZIP compression are "on the decline" because the Windows operating system now performs those functions natively. Unique software dedicated to those functions may not be necessary any longer, but those functions of the PC are certainly still in use.

To me this doesn't say that Tablet PCs are dying, as Mr. Vaughan-Nichols would like to exuberantly conclude, but rather just the opposite -- that they are on their way to becoming so mainstream that the Tablet PC edition of Windows ought to just be absorbed into the standard Windows operating system. In other words, Microsoft is questioning whether it makes sense to maintain two separate releases of the Windows operating system, and the obvious answer is no.

I have to say that I am not and have never been a Microsoft evangelist, or even a fan. On the other hand I have to admit that Microsoft is building some pretty darned good software these days and is doing a lot of things right. Clearly Mr. Vaughan-Nichols cannot see through whatever drives his anti-Microsoft or anti-Tablet PC bias to admit that Microsoft may be on to something with the Tablet PC. I can't detect from his article why he is so biased, except for perhaps that he has had a bad experience with its recognition of his handwriting. I find that interesting because my handwriting is far from textbook and have been awed by its accuracy. Regardless, if Mr. Vaughan-Nichols doesn't like the Tablet, he doesn't have to use one. But please just give us the facts and let the rest of us make up our own minds without the slant, okay?

Now, to Mr. Vaughan-Nichols credit, if it is in fact true that Tablet PC (both slate and 'convertible' models) sales are actually declining then I might agree with him. If Microsoft concedes that the Tablet PC platform appeals only to niche vertical markets, then they might as well give up on it altogether because it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If it remains a niche product for narrow vertical markets (e.g. medical), then the hardware can never achieve mass-market pricing and thus will never achieve mass-market acceptance.

Follow-up:
See this recent posting by Evan Feldman, one of the founders of Microsoft's Tablet PC group, in his new blog, Evan's Weblog of Tech and Life.

Can Lawyers Innovate?

Matthew Homann raises some thought-provoking issues in his recent post the [non]billable hour: Can Lawyers Innovate?

Offshoring Legal Services?

In Limiting Litigation Costs: Techniques to Consider Hildebrandt International outlines some obvious, and some not-so-obvious, strategies for reducing litigation costs. Among them:

Unbundling discovery activities

Offshoring commodity legal work

Competitively bidding groups of cases

Giving law firms a chance to rethink their bids

Budgeting several months into the future with phased budgets

I'll buy everything but sending "routine" legal work offshore. The article states:

BusinessWeek recently cited a Forrester Research study that predicted that by 2005, close to 15,000 legal jobs will disappear in the United States because of offshore competition.

I just don't see it. Maybe I don't have a good vision of what kind of "commodity" legal work we're talking about here, but I'm having trouble believing that consumers of legal services in the U.S. are comfortable with farming any significant portion of their legal work out to low-wage foreign lawyers. Am I being naive?

FindLaw's Writ - Hilden: Why You Can't Sue Google

FindLaw's Writ - Hilden: Why You Can't Sue Google

Why You Can't Sue Google

The Reason Defamation Law Applies to News Sites, But Not News Search Sites, And What This May Mean For the Future
By JULIE HILDEN
julhil@aol.com
----
Tuesday, May. 25, 2004

As Google prepares for its Initial Public Offering, it's worth reflecting on a special advantage the law gives to it, and to other, similar search sites: Such sites are, in effect, immune from much of the liability risk a traditional publisher of news and other factual information faces.


For publishers of books, magazines, newspapers and the like, publishing, or even re-publishing, a false statement can trigger defamation liability. But, for reasons I will explain, the same is not true for search sites like Google.


Search sites can provide access to information that may be false, without worrying about the risk of a defamation suit. (No wonder, then, that Google's stock may turn out to be valuable; some of the value it will have doubtless comes from this special legal bonus.)



In this column, I will discuss what implications this may have for the future of news publications, on the Internet and off.


Why Google and Similar Sites Are Immune From Defamation Liability


Why is Google immune from liability?


The most direct reason is that a federal law -- which I have discussed in a prior column -- ensures that those who host, rather than author, speech on the Internet cannot be treated, for legal purposes, as having published it. As a result, they cannot be sued for defamation - or for any other tort that has publication as one of its essential elements.


The law protects message board owners, chat room hosts, bloggers who give others access to their blogs, and indeed, virtually anyone who allows material on their site, or provides access to material, that they do not themselves author. That includes Google and other search sites.


By contrast, as noted in an earlier column, the defamation liability risk of selection sites such as The Drudge Report -- that is, sites that offer collections of specially culled links to other sites -- remains uncertain. Someone who chooses a link may count as having published the material to which the link leads - and may be held to have the state of mind to be held liable for the choice. This argument has been used in the context of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as I noted in another column, and could be used in the defamation context, as well.


Why Immunizing Google and Similar Sites Makes Sense


Readers may then ask: Shouldn't we get rid of the law that granted Google immunity? The problem, however, is that the alternative may be worse.


It's important to realize that even without this law, Google probably would win any defamation suit brought against it anyway. A defamation claim requires not only proof of publication, but also proof of state of mind. And Google would virtually never have the state of mind required - or, indeed, any particular state of mind at all, with respect to a particular item that comes up in a given search. Since its searches work automatically, no one at the site would likely be aware that Google's search engine had displayed a particular false statement of fact.


Of course, if the site were specifically put on notice that it was displaying false, defamatory, or harmful information, that might be different - and Headline News stories that stay on Google News for a while might be different, too. But I am referring here to the typical, automatic Google search, of which no one at the site would be specifically aware--in the sense that, say, an editor or reporter is aware, when crafting, or choosing to publish, a story.


Given the excellent chance that sites like Google probably would be immune from defamation law anyway, the legal immunity that deems the site not a "publisher" begins to make a lot of sense -- for several reasons.


First, the immunity provides a bright line rule that prevents lots of frivolous suits from being brought. If Google is always going to win defamation suits in practice, then it might as well have a formal immunity from them, in order to conserve court resources.


Second, the immunity allows Google and other sites to edit their content at least a bit, without fearing liability. Prior to the federal law granting the immunity, sites were often afraid to edit what was posted there at all -- for fear of being deemed "editors" or "publishers" of the information, and therefore incurring liability.


The result was that they couldn't scan their postings even for nefarious, illegal material such as child pornography or child sex solicitation. Fortunately, the federal law's immunity freed these sites to get rid of objectionable materials in their chat rooms and on their message boards.


For all these reasons, changing the federal law granting Google and similar sites immunity is probably not a good idea.


The Status Quo on the Internet Already Favors Non-Traditional News Media


Assuming Google will retain its immunity for the foreseeable future, it's interesting to reflect on what the implications of this may be. As I have noted above, the immunity provides an advantage for sites like Google over traditional news media. But what could having this advantage mean in the future?


Before answering that question, it's important to note what the status quo already is - and how dramatically the Internet changed it.


Until the advent of the Internet, real-world journalists acted as the primary sorters of free speech in our society. Before being distributed widely -- through television or print -- every news story had to be vetted and approved by a reporter and, usually, an editor. It also had to be judged against a more or less consistent code of journalistic ethics, and against a legal backdrop derived from media, libel, and privacy law.


If publication of the information was risky, from a legal perspective, a company's attorneys would get involved -- seeking changes, or possibly cautioning against publication. And if the publication was later determined in court to be libelous, or a privacy violation, then usually some large media company incurred huge liability -- sometimes into the millions.


Understandably, a conservative view of what could be published, often derived from ethical considerations, prevailed. Frequently, these standards stemmed not only from ethics, but also from simple financial prudence: the fear of financial repercussions in the future.


Today, many news web sites are just as careful as their traditional newspaper counterparts. Some only publish material already vetted for print publication. Some employ lawyers for pre-posting review. And many worry about the verifiability of big stories, especially those that may be damaging to famous persons who could sue the corporation that owns the site for millions.


But other information and news web sites -- particularly those that are not corporation-backed -- are far less careful. And there's a good reason for that: The reality is that virtually anyone can post virtually anything on the Internet, without much real fear of liability.


Foreign-run websites may be effectively out of reach. Multiple postings may make it futile to proceed against any given site. And many webmasters, bloggers, and the like are either anonymous and/or judgment-proof -- that is, too poor to make a lawsuit worthwhile.


Thus, even as suits against illegal downloaders make news -- and result in settlements that are sometimes quite substantial from the point of the view of those who must pay them -- suits against illegal posters of information are notably few.


But an Internet posting isn't of much use if no one knows it's there. That, of course, is where search engines come in. Google relies not on its own editors, but on user popularity to determine which search results come up first. It operates on the reasonable assumption that a given searcher probably will want to see the same sites that prior searchers wanted to see.


As noted above, this automatic system means that Google does not incur the legal risk that a more traditional publisher does. Yet, at the same time, Google offers a selection function that gives searchers what it knows they are likely to be most interested in -- thereby serving the very same function that newspapers and other traditional media publishers seek to achieve.


Indeed, Google may tend to serve this function even better than traditional media. While newspapers and television programs have to predict what users will want to read or view; Google simply provides the most popular material directly, adjusting its popularity estimates in real time.


Increasingly, traditional, liability-fearing news publishing will have to compete with essentially liability-free search sites like Google. Google's addition of Google News to its array of offerings is probably only one step in a long journey, to exploit a clear legal and financial advantage that favors search engines and individual postings, over websites run by media corporations.


One Possible Future: A Decentralized News Service Without Risk of Liability


How might this legal advantage be exploited in the future? One possibility is that networks of independent writers may use Google to reach the public as efficiently as traditional media do - and without the liability risk traditional media undertake.


For instance, suppose, for a moment, that someone set up a loose linking of freelance writers across the country. Turf would be divided among the writers by agreement, according to geography or topic. Writers would be automatically paid a modest income by users who accessed their sites, but would individually remain more or less judgment proof.


No corporate entity would exist, with deep pockets for plaintiffs to go after. There would no central server that could be shut down. The network's articles could be automatically promoted through search sites such as Google, and reader interest alone would ensure their dissemination, because Google's formula would promote popular articles to the top of Google search results.


Couldn't that loose linkage of freelancers provide riskier - and often, more exciting -- coverage than a traditional media company? And couldn't the writers, as a group, collectively make greater profits because of the lack of need for lawyers, and the lack of liability risk?


It seems somewhat surprising -- given the prevalence of underground comic books and newspapers in the pre-Internet era -- that such an "underground" news service does not exist already. Perhaps bloggers' disinclination to limit themselves by geography or topic, to report "straight" news, or to ensure their content is accessible to strangers, is the reason.


At least for now, this kind of freelance network may be far off, or impracticable to organize. But the legal advantage of avoiding corporate-funded sites, and working through a combination of individual sites and corporate-funded search engines, will doubtless be exploited one way or another.


If Google's IPO is highly profitable, it should thank not only the ingenious designers of its search algorithms, but also the Congress that passed the law protecting it from being sued as a publisher of information.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Julie Hilden, a FindLaw columnist, practiced First Amendment law at the D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly from 1996-99. Hilden's first novel, 3, was published recently. In reviewing 3, Kirkus Reviews praised Hilden's "rather uncanny abilities," and Counterpunch called it "a must read.... a work of art." Hilden's website, www.juliehilden.com, includes MP3 and text downloads of the novel's first chapter.

The Lowered Expectation Game -- Lawyers as Tin Men (prof. yabut's journal: home)

It's easy to be cynical about lawyers, when the ABA eJournal publishes articles like When Less Is More: Lowering Client Expectations Can Increase Satisfaction, Referrals (by Jill Schachner Chanen, 05-14-04). The article begins:

"David Ward has a novel approach to rainmaking: If clients expect less from their lawyers, they will be even happier if the result turns out better than they had anticipated. These happy clients will then in turn be more willing to refer others, resulting in more business for the low-expectation lawyer.

"That’s because client satisfaction is directly tied to expectations, says Ward, a lawyer turned law-firm marketing professional in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif."

So, Ward and similar legal marketing "gurus" suggest ploys like quoting a far higher fee than you expect to charge, and estimating longer project completion (or even phone call return) times than you anticipate. Very shrewd. It's probably sold a lot of aluminum siding and used cars.

We've fretted over lawyer marketing and branding before at this URL. [E.g, Brand Lex (03-04-04); Spoofable? (03-03-04)] And, we had hoped to do a lot less of it. But, this latest tripe makes us wonder when Tin Men -- either Danny DeVito in the Levinson film, or Jack Haley in the first half of The Wizard of Oz -- became role models for lawyers. This expectation manipulation is what the FTC had in mind in its Guides Against Deceptive Pricing ("where an artificial, inflated price was established for the purpose of enabling the subsequent offer of a large reduction . . . the purchaser is not receiving the unusual value he expects").

Even our mascot, Donkey O.T., is braying in disbelief that otherwise ethical lawyers would attempt to explain why there's not really any deception involved. It's scary that people who can pass a bar exam would think such advice amounts to marketing wisdom, and are willing to pay for it, or sponsor and attend seiminars espousing these strategies.

P.S. A simple test: If you'd be embarrassed to tell your client your marketing strategy, it's probably unethical (even if not a technical or obvious violation of any particular rule of professional conduct).

# Posted by David Giacalone on 5/20/04; 10:30:51 PM

WHEN LESS IS MORE

WHEN LESS IS MORE: "WHEN LESS IS MORE
Lowering Client Expectations Can Increase Satisfaction, Referrals"