The Essential Summer Reading List: Best Beach Reads for Lawyers

Episode Notes

Transcript

The Kennedy-Mighell Report
The Essential Summer Reading List: Best Beach Reads for Lawyers
06/21/2019

[Music]

Intro: Web 2.0, Innovation, Trend, Collaboration, Software, Metadata… Got the world turning as fast as it can, hear how technology can help, legally speaking with two of the top legal technology experts, authors and lawyers, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Welcome to The Kennedy-Mighell Report here on the Legal Talk Network.

 

[Music]

 

Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode #239 of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. I am Dennis Kennedy in Ann Arbor.

 

Tom Mighell: And I am Tom Mighell in Dallas. Before we get started, we would like to thank our sponsors. Thanks to TextExpander for sponsoring our show. Communicate Smarter with TextExpander. Gather, Perfect, and Share Your Knowledge. Recall your best words instantly and repeatedly. Learn more at textexpander.com/podcast.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And we would also like to thank ServeNow, a nationwide network of trusted, prescreened process servers. Work with the most professional process servers who have experience with high-volume serves, embrace technology, and understand the litigation process. Visit serve-now.com to learn more.

 

In our last episode we looked at the implications of how easy it has become to fake photos, videos and other data and the potential implications for lawyers and others. In this episode we break the story that it is now summer and that means it’s prime reading time for many people, including us. We want to share what’s on our reading list for the summer and some of our thoughts about how reading is actually changing these days.

 

Tom, what’s all on our agenda for this episode?

 

Tom Mighell: Well, Dennis, in this edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report we will indeed be discussing our summer reading lists. In our second segment we are going to take the first of what might be several looks in the upcoming months at tools like IFTTT and Zapier and Flow and automating your common tasks. And as usual, we will finish up with our parting shots, that one tip, website, or observation that you can start to use the second that this podcast is over.

 

But first up, in news that we broke earlier in the podcast, it’s now summertime. Well, actually it’s not, but it will be summertime by the time that this thing breaks, because we are close to June the 20 or 21 or whenever summer starts and that’s the time that many people use to start focus on reading, it’s relaxation time, it’s beach time, vacation time, let’s bring a book and relax.

 

Although, most of the beach reads tend to be light, entertaining fare, there are still plenty of opportunities to read something that improves how you work, how you use technology, how you look at life.

 

One thing that has changed over time however is the move from paper books to digital and we wanted to talk a little bit about that.

 

Dennis, does it make sense anymore to say that you have got a stack of books you are going to read this summer?

 

Dennis Kennedy: There is a big part of me that wants to say that it doesn’t make sense to say that you have a stack of books to read, but I actually have bought a couple of books and gotten some books as gifts. So there are some physical books in a stack that I have, but I have made a huge turn in the last few years to eBooks, including the books I borrow from the library, which are almost all eBooks these days and to audio books as well.

 

How about you Tom?

 

Tom Mighell: I mean I am pretty boring with that. I haven’t bought a paper book in forever. I think the only paper books that I get these days are the law practice management books that I get from LPM, but actually they have started sending me eBooks as well.

 

I almost exclusively read everything on my Kindle or on my iPad at Kindle App, but then I probably listen to as many books on audio book as I do read them, so it’s really evenly split, but all of my “reading” is digital these days.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And I sort of feel that when I buy a paperback or a hardback book that I am doing it because I think at some point I am going to have the opportunity to have the author sign it, and that’s really almost the biggest motivation.

 

And we have talked Tom in the past that for me, just as you get older, that sometimes I actually when I go to my library, which is literally about a 10 minute walk away from me, that I scout out books and before I take them out I see how difficult is the font going to be for me to read and things like that, and I almost always end up going electronic.

 

I guess that in a sense what’s interesting to me is how important the library has become to me, but in a different way than I ever expected. And so I think the resources are different.

 

(00:04:57)

 

So I never go to a bookstore anymore. So I will buy books on Amazon, but a lot of times I just use the library resources, so OverDrive, the great eBook lending tool; there is another one called Hoopla, which your library may be part of. And then I also use Scribd, which has been described as sort of a Netflix for books, and it becomes super easy to get eBooks and audio books.

 

Tom, is that sort of your approach as well?

 

Tom Mighell: I don’t use those other tools because I find what I need primarily on Amazon, but I think what’s nice about what you talk about is there is tons of options. I mean what I really find intriguing is that your public library has made what I think is a very nimble move to digital, because otherwise they would be dead, they would be totally dead, but the fact that they are offering books that you can check out digitally with just a library card I think is pretty amazing.

 

Now, I would say I don’t know that our move to digital mirrors everybody in public. In the Law Practice Division, we have started to try to understand who is reading paper, who is not, and I think maybe on past podcasts we have talked about how younger generations are turning back to paper books and are not using digital anymore. So I don’t know, we may be an exception and younger generations are starting to use more paper.

 

But I am really encouraged by the fact that there are a lot of different tools out there that if you do want to have something digital, then you have a bunch of ways to get something that would be, maybe not — maybe less mainstream, less traditional things than other places where you might not think to look for publications.

 

Dennis Kennedy: So my daughter, who is 26, has a couple of bookshelves that are full of paper books, and in a way it’s sort of like that generation’s move back to vinyl in a sense. But I also think it has something to do with the fact that their eyes are still good.

 

But the one thing that’s changed for me over the last year Tom, and you touched on it is I have found myself moving toward audio books more than I ever expected. And I remember a few months ago you and I had a conversation and I don’t think it was on the podcast about what happens when you are on a plane and you are listening to an audio book or you want to listen to an audio book, you read them back and then you fall sleep and you have no idea of the point where you dozed off and so it’s hard to go back and find your place, or you discover that you slept through an hour’s worth of the book.

 

But fortunately I have learned that there are timers, so you can set 15 minutes or 30 minutes, so the actual amount that you have lost may not be that bad. So I am finding myself on certain types of books moving in that direction.

 

Also, I noticed that the way books are distributed, the audio book of a brand-new book that’s in demand is a lot easier to get than say the eBook version that I take off from OverDrive or other things like that.

 

But that sort of raises the question that I have on audio books Tom and that you will be the expert on this, is that, it’s analogous to the people who say, like if I travel and I happen to just go to the airport, no matter how much time I say that I can’t count that state or country on something I visit to, but do you count books that you have listened to in the same way and on the same lists as books you have actually read?

 

Tom Mighell: I am going to say that’s not a proper analogy, because when you are listening to an audio book, you are experiencing the whole thing. You are not just in a small part of the airport that that state happens to be. So to me, that doesn’t really hold up.

 

But I think certain — so if we are talking literally, no, you are not reading a book. But are you experiencing the book? Heck yeah. And in some ways you are doing better, because depending on the author that you listen to, depending on if you are listening to fiction, I will tell you, I have listened to some books that I don’t think I would have enjoyed as much in print as I did listening to it because of the life that the reader brought to the book.

 

There was a book I read called ‘Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’ and I have got tell you, it was a very kind of sad, but sweet book that the reader that read it made it so much better. I don’t think I would have enjoyed the book any better, so I vote yes, it counts.

 

(00:09:56)

 

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I noticed the thing when I listened to a book on a recent trip and I have got to say that the audio book magnifies bad writing. So I was like kind of astonished at how — and I think this is a book that sold well, but it just sounded really amateurish and I am not sure I would have had the same sense if I would have read the book.

 

Tom Mighell: Well, I will say that there are audio books that if there is — if the writing is very flowery, if it’s very complicated and complex, I think it’s harder to listen to as an audio book. I think you really need to have that in print, because you need to have time to read it and go over each word individually, where I think the better written books for audio books are the ones that have that narrative that flows more freely. I can’t listen to complicated books on audio books.

 

Dennis Kennedy: I think the thrillers and the spy novels, where there is like a momentum going. I think some of the business books too actually work pretty well when they are spoken, because in some cases they are adapted from presentations anyway. So yeah, there is that.

 

The other thing I have noticed, the development for me over the last year is that my habits in reading are changing and I think it’s because so many books are now available to me and that because they are electronic, I feel that it’s much easier for me to abandon books I don’t like or to jump to the last chapter and see like if there is — what’s the main point of this and whether I want to spend time on it, especially like a book that say is like 800 pages.

 

So I think that — that I think is a real change in my practice and I think that the — just the fact that it’s ephemeral in its way as opposed to physical may have something to do with that.

 

I want to go to the point of your usual — your annual nag on me to use like one of the tools that you use to keep track of the books you have read and made them available, and I have always done like a blog post that says — has the goal of 52 Books in 52 Weeks and I record things there, but I know that you think that is wholly inadequate.

 

Tom Mighell: I don’t think it’s wholly inadequate at all. And frankly, I am going to reserve judgment on that for now, because you are getting to walk all over my parting shot. So I think I would like for you to say here is how you keep track of books and then we will talk about mine at the end of the podcast.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Okay. So I do a blog post and I just — many years ago I found somebody posted on a blog that there is the 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge. So can you read a book a week? And so I just do a blog post at the beginning of the year and from time to time I update it with that list, with that goal in mind. And so the only trouble is — so it’s really for me, but people could go back and find that blog post and they can find them over the years.

 

But there are other tools, as Tom will mention, and I have also been thinking of — that I have this new idea and I know this like really reveals my age and stuff, but that I need to start using Instagram more so. And I actually thought that taking pictures of book covers and posting them on Instagram as I finished them might be a good way to both record them, what I have read and to share it a little bit.

 

So I don’t know, what do you think of that Tom?

 

Tom Mighell: So anybody who has seen me on Instagram knows that whenever I take a trip to New York, I like to take a picture of a playbill, of every show that I go to, but I think — and I think that it’s something to be able to say here is a book that I finished, but at the same time, if you wanted to figure out what books you read, how would you do that, how would you go back to Instagram and discover what you have read.

 

That’s why I think having — even your blog post I think is better than — and I think Instagram is useful for showing people hey, books I read and that’s great, but if you are keeping track for yourself, then your blog post is better, and my parting shot is even better than that.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Okay. So I don’t know Tom, we decided this year instead of saying like what we have read over the past year and really liked, we would kind of look forward. And so I guess that — and it’s really more of a hope sort of thing. So here is what we hope to read, and I will start first Tom, because I actually do — I looked at the stack of things that I have queued up.

 

(00:14:46)

 

So the first one is a brand-new book called ‘Secrets of Sand Hill Road’ by Scott Kupor and he is like a big venture capitalist and he writes sort of like the how-to, plain language book about venture capital and how it works in a way that it says is targeted for the business owner, the entrepreneur rather than a venture capitalist. So I am very excited about that Tom because I feel like I need to learn more about that.

 

We were talking before the show about the just incredible amounts of venture capital flowing into the legal tech world these days in ways that I must confess don’t totally make sense to me, but I figure if I read this book Tom that maybe we can figure out a way to get venture capital investment in The Kennedy-Mighell Report empire once we get it going.

 

So that’s one of my hopes with that book.

 

There is also a book that I really want to read on design thinking as it applies to your whole life by Ayse Birsel, who is the designer, it’s called ‘Design the Life You Love‘.

 

I also want to learn about quick drawing in connection, again, with design thinking, and so I have a book called, ‘Rapid Viz’ by Kurt Hanks and Larry Belliston.

 

And I have this interest in genetics, as I have mentioned before, so I have a book ready to read, ‘Who We Are and How We Got Here‘ by David Reich.

 

And then I am looking at kind of relearning the investment world, so I have ‘The Complete Investor‘ by Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett fame also on my list.

 

So that’s my stack, Tom. I don’t know what you have.

 

Tom Mighell: So there are four — I am going to talk about fiction in a little bit, but there are four nonfiction books that I am interested in looking at, and the first one actually I have to confess is a book that Dennis, you made me start to read a couple of months ago and I never finished it. So I need to finish ‘Measure What Matters‘ by John Doerr. It’s a book about OKRs, Objectives and Key Results, sort of an alternative or a different way of measuring things and a different way of looking at metrics. I need to finish that. I think it’s a very interesting way of looking at things and something that I can definitely apply to the work that we do in information governance.

 

To the point of our last podcast on digital mindfulness there are two books out. It seems like that seems to be the topic all the way around. And so one of them is called ‘Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World‘ by Cal Newport. So if you are familiar with Cal Newport, he wrote the book on ‘Deep Work‘, which is an awesome book on how to get work done and focus on things, and he has a new book now on Digital Minimalism so I want to maybe take a look at that.

 

Or alternatively, a book called ‘Lifescale: How to Live a More Creative, Productive and Happy Life‘. They are both on the same lines. I think the second one makes it sound a little bit more like get away from technology and you will be much happier; the other one looks like it’s more focused life.

 

And then the other book is kind of an interesting one, it’s called ‘Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries‘. I was talking with a friend the other day about how he was more based in reality and was not looking at things that were impossible or close to impossible, and I think that this book looks at that and takes a look and says, if you are not looking at what might be impossible, things that are crazy, then you may very well be missing out on a lot of things that can be important or can change the world.

 

Hope I am not saying things too much by — blowing things too much out of proportion by saying it that way, but ‘Loonshots’ is by Safi Bahcall and looks like a really interesting book.

 

So those are the ones that are kind of on my radar right now in terms of nonfiction.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, ‘Loonshots’ is on my radar, although off in the distance a little bit.

 

So I have plans and this will get me into the fiction world. So as you know Tom, and other listeners may know, I sort of have gotten into this thing over maybe the last five years or so where I find usually detective novels and I read all the books by a given author, and that’s been really fun for me.

 

So I am actually getting toward the end of the great series of Sharon McCone detective novels by Marcia Muller. They are set in San Francisco. Obviously a woman lead character, really great, kind of ensemble approach, good stories, fairly short reads, surprisingly it hasn’t been made into a TV show, because I think it could work the same way like a Longmire or one of those shows based on a book has done. So that’s definitely in the hopper for me.

 

(00:20:02)

 

Clearly more innovation and design books as I try to really dive deeply into that world, and then I am all about the 50th anniversary of the moon landing and I am expecting to totally binge whatever books I can get my hands on about the Apollo Program.

 

Tom Mighell: Yeah. So for me there is two fiction books that I am looking forward to. Anybody who knows me knows that I like books that tend to be more fantasy than anything else when I read fiction, and there is a relatively new book out called ‘How to Stop Time’ by Matt Haig, which is kind of a love story. It’s a guy who is hundreds of years old because he has found out that he doesn’t age. He looks 40 years old, but he is hundreds of years old and he suddenly meets somebody who is aging who he falls in love with. What do you do when you can’t do that? How does that whole thing work out? I am kind of intrigued with the notion of stopping time.

 

And then the other book that I am reading, won the National Book Award this year, it’s called ‘The Overstory’, I am sorry, the other book I want to read, it’s called ‘The Overstory‘, it’s by Richard Powers. I think it’s sort of historical fiction, but it’s about the natural world and what’s happening to it. So getting lots of great reviews, I am looking forward to reading that as well.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And before we kind of wrap up Tom, I just want to mention this book I have read that I think is a total must read and I keep mentioning it to everybody I know, it’s called ‘Invisible Women‘ by Caroline Criado Perez. She is in the UK. She actually — they did like a crowdfunding thing today, as we record, where they raised enough money to buy copies of this book for everybody in the UK Parliament. And it’s about looking at ways that — it’s a database approach, looking at how we look at women, how we get data about women, how the whole world is designed for the average man and all these issues that develop because we kind of just take everything from the male point of view, like it’s data and evidence-based. She is just a really powerful writer and I think it’s a book that really will change your perspective on many things.

 

Tom Mighell: You know it’s funny, when I saw your note in our script and in what we use for this and I saw must reads for listeners, my mind immediately thought, must reads for audio book listeners. I didn’t think we were talking about podcast listeners, so the example that I have actually is an audio book that I listened to a couple of months ago, that I highly recommend, it’s called ‘Circe’. It’s by Madeline Miller and it’s about the — not a goddess, she was sort of a demigoddess, but she was from mythology. She is the witch who enchanted Odysseus and she created Scylla and Charybdis.

 

It’s an imagining of what if they told her story sort of in modern tone, and a great, great telling of it on the audio book. I don’t think I would have enjoyed the book as much. Again, it was an example of one where the person reading it brought it to life so much better than you could have seen it on the page.

 

Dennis Kennedy: So Tom, I guess as we wrap up, I always know that my capacity to read is probably a lot higher than many other people, but what’s sort of realistic, because I do think, especially over the summer, one book per week is a realistic approach and that you can get a decent number of books read over the summer, especially if you are not buying those like 900 page historical romances.

 

So I don’t know Tom, what do you think is reasonable that our listeners should shoot for over the summer?

 

Tom Mighell: Well, for those of us who have day jobs, then I will still say that one book per week is not realistic. If you are taking off several weeks or you are on vacation or you have an otherwise life of leisure, then that may be realistic. I am not getting to one book per week in the summer or otherwise ever, but on the other hand, I am getting ready to go on vacation and I probably between airplane rides and train rides and other leisure times, I will probably in two weeks’ time get through two or three books. So not unusual.

 

So I don’t push it. I say read as fast or as slow as you can because summer is about enjoying yourself, and whether it’s a book or something else that lets you do it, then take the time and make sure you enjoy the book rather than try and keep to some kind of a timetable.

 

(00:24:45)

 

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. And I don’t know, I guess Tom to wrap it up, my thought is the practical thing for people is to — I think it’s a really great time to say, let me try all these kind of alternative reading media forms that are out there. If I am only reading the traditional book, like well, maybe I try some eBooks and maybe I try an OverDrive or I try Kindle, the experiences are slightly different, or if I have never done an audio book, maybe this is a great time to do it.

 

So I think there is a lot happening out there and I think it’s a good time to do a little experimenting even in the sort of traditional realm of reading.

 

Tom Mighell: All right, before we go into our next segment, let’s take a break for a message from our sponsors.

 

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[Music]

 

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[Music]

 

Tom Mighell: And now, let’s get back to The Kennedy-Mighell Report. I am Tom Mighell.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy. Tom and I have been talking about automation of standard task and getting more bang for our computing efforts. So we have talked a lot about If This, Then That or IFTTT, which I used recently to save all my Twitter likes in one place, in Zapier, and there are some others as well. It feels like we are not using these tools as well and as often as we should be.

 

So we want to start talking about them and how we all might use them and do that from time to time in the podcast, and this would be the first segment on this notion of automation and using those standard tools. And I think for this one Tom, it would probably just make sense to introduce the tools and how we have used them so far.

 

Tom, you want to be the lead introducer?

 

Tom Mighell: Sure. So these tools at their heart are designed to make different applications work with each other. So tools on the Internet that might not otherwise be connected can be connected using IFTTT or Zapier or Microsoft Flow. And I think what’s interesting about these tools is that as technology keeps improving, some of the functionality that some of these services use get taken over by an app that actually can do all of it now or a service that you have that originally — you are using IFTTT to save all your Twitter likes in one place, suddenly Twitter is doing that for you; they are not, but I am just giving that as an example.

 

But technology is starting to catch up with these tools, which I think changes the way that we are using them. And to be real honest, I haven’t used either IFTTT or Zapier that much in the past couple of years; I just haven’t really needed it, but let me give an example of what I have used it for in the past and then I am going to talk about what I use Microsoft Flow for right now.

 

For example, I would save articles in Pocket. I would read them and if I marked it as a Favorite in Pocket, then IFTTT would automatically convert it to a PDF and save it to my Dropbox account. So I would have a PDF of an article on the Internet that I had read that I enjoyed.

 

One of the ones that was most useful, doesn’t really work anymore for some reason, but if someone adds a picture of me in Facebook, it automatically saved a copy of that picture to Dropbox, so nice way to keep copies of things. Quality of the pictures, not so great, but at least I was aware that there are pictures that were showing up of me.

 

And then at one point in time when I was still using my Amazon Echo, I would send to-dos to to-do list through IFTTT. Now both Alexa and Google Assistant have that functionality built-in, you don’t need a connector, and that’s kind of the example that I was thinking of when I said earlier these tools are evolving to eliminate the need for some of these tools.

 

Now, really quickly, what I am using Microsoft Flow for is really much more applicable to what I do at work. So we created a PTO Calendar using Microsoft Flow, so that someone can go onto a website, click a button, request PTO, I get an email, a request that I can then approve or decline.

 

(00:30:00)

 

If I approve it, the person gets an email back saying it’s been approved and it then goes on to a general work calendar, so that everybody can see when everybody else is out on vacation or otherwise out. If it gets declined, it doesn’t go on the calendar and the person gets an email. I think it’s a really nice workflow product that Microsoft Flow has.

 

The other one is I have a set of repeating reminders that I want to send out to my team each week and the tool that we are using, Microsoft Planner, doesn’t allow that. However, I can create repeating reminders using Planner so that every Monday at 10 o’clock, boom, a new set of reminders goes out and I don’t have to go create them myself.

 

So that’s kind of how I am currently using. I kind of spent a long time talking about it. Dennis, what are you using these tools for?

 

Dennis Kennedy: So what I like about these tools is they actually use one of my favorite technologies, APIs or Application Programming Interfaces, but they use it in a consumer way or us regular users in a way that’s sort of hidden. So they are allowing like different services really to communicate with each other and so you could send your data — put your data in one place, send it to another place and have it used and get the result that you want.

 

I actually find that Tom, where I have started to use it more is when I wish that an app was doing something that it doesn’t seem to be able to do, either because it just doesn’t do that or I am not able to find it. And so that was my thing recently where I said, I would like a bunch of tweets, and my notion was always I could go back and look through those and that would be like another research of database for me, if you will. And I couldn’t figure out how to do it in the Twitter related apps.

 

And so I went on to If This, Then That and there were, what do you call them, recipes or whatever the word they use for it, where you can just like, I want to use this, and there was one that said, take a Twitter like and if I liked someone on Twitter, send it to Microsoft OneNote and there is another one to send it to Evernote.

 

And then I just login to the appropriate accounts and then anytime I like something on Twitter, it goes into OneNote and it goes into Evernote. So it becomes really useful in both of those cases.

 

I also did a thing in the past where say if I tweeted something, it would automatically post as a Facebook update; I don’t do that anymore, but that’s another example.

 

And then there was another one that I sometimes use where I can do a tweet and if I use a hashtag LI, it will automatically post it as a LinkedIn update.

 

So you are looking at something that will do these things that you like to do that are fairly simple and they are sort of moving something you did in one place to repurpose it in another place. And I think it’s just a great little tool and you can start, as you look through If This, Then That, there is a whole bunch of these that are already created and you can search through them by the services involved and things like that. And you can find some stuff that will take care of some things that either you would really like or have been kind of annoyance to you.

 

And I think Tom, your examples with saving pictures that you are in and stuff like that are actually really great examples of how those tools would work. So that will get you started on our discussion of these types of tools and then we will revisit those from time to time and maybe dig a little deeper into them.

 

But now it’s time for our parting shots, that one tip, website, or observation that you can use the second this podcast ends. Tom, take it away.

 

Tom Mighell: Well, now I can talk about the tool that I use to track the books that I read. I wanted to talk about it here, because I really think more people should be using Goodreads. If you are not using it, I think it’s a great way to one, feel how people are rating books; but two, keep track of what you have got.

 

And what’s interesting to me, and whether you like this or not, Amazon purchased Goodreads a number of years ago and so whenever I buy an Amazon book now, it automatically adds it to my currently reading list in Goodreads and then when I finish it, it automatically posts that I finished the book, which I am not sure how I feel about, but I sort of like the fact that it’s connected to each other. So I am not totally bothered by it.

 

But what I like most about it is, one, I can have a reading challenge there. So Dennis, you have 52 books in 52 weeks, but you have got to keep track of that yourself. I can at any moment go to my home page on my Goodreads account and I can see where I am and how I stand and how I am comparing against my friends on Goodreads, because it’s social.

 

(00:35:03)

 

That’s the other part that I like about it is, is that I have different people that I follow and they will review books and occasionally they will review a book that I would like to read, so it’s nice as a recommendation tool to find out other books that my friends are reading. But it’s also a way to find out new things and I really think that it’s a great tool for understanding ratings on books and helping — there are lots and lots and lots of book reviews on there, but it’s an overall great book site that I recommend to anybody, so goodreads.com.

 

Dennis Kennedy: I like the concept and I like the social element there, although I think Tom, you may recall that we had friends who had posted some of the things they read on Facebook and they were not really things that we actually wanted to know about them, so there were some things there.

 

So I want to recommend this site called fivebooks.com and this is kind of an interesting variation on the social thing, because you could say — one thing you could say, I like to know what my friends would read, but this takes a point of view of saying like, I would like to know like what somebody who is an expert in a topic would say are the five best books to get you to — to help you learn about this particular field or topic and that’s what Five Books does.

 

And so it could be something like genetics, it could be something on — any number of things, like best detective novels, that sort of thing, but somebody who is a real expert in it will list their top five. And what I like is it’s done as an interview, and these interviews about the Five Books describing them almost work as a standalone. So this gives you, not only these list of five potential books to read on a topic that you are interested, but just reading that interview about the books is just a great entry point into the topic. So I highly recommend that, fivebooks.com.

 

Tom Mighell: And so that wraps it up for this edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. You can find show notes for this episode at tkmreport.com.

 

If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or on the Legal Talk Network site, where you can find archives of all of our previous podcasts. Or suggest a topic; we have got a page set up at Bitly, bit.ly/2QNwhZu.

 

If you would like to get in touch with us, reach out to us on LinkedIn or leave us a voicemail. Our number is (720) 441-6820. Remember, we really like getting questions for our B Segment, so don’t be shy, leave us a number at (720) 441-6820.

 

So until the next podcast, I am Tom Mighell.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy, and you have been listening to The Kennedy-Mighell Report, a podcast on legal technology with an Internet focus.

 

If you liked what you heard today, please rate us in Apple Podcasts, and we will see you next time for another episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report on the Legal Talk Network.

 

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Outro: Thanks for listening to The Kennedy-Mighell Report. Check out Dennis and Tom’s book, ‘The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together’ from ABA Books or Amazon, and join us every other week for another edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, only on the Legal Talk Network.

 

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