Highlights from the Association of Corporate Counsel 2019 Annual Meeting

Episode Notes

Transcript

The Kennedy-Mighell Report

Highlights from the Association of Corporate Counsel 2019 Annual Meeting

11/08/2019

 

[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 #248 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 sponsor.

 

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

 

Tom Mighell: And we also want to mention that the second edition of our book, ‘The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies’ is available on Amazon. Everybody agrees that collaboration is essential in today’s world but knowing the right tools and strategies to use them will make all the difference.

 

Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode we discussed my new book, “Successful Innovation Outcomes in Law”, I am gratified already by the response to the book. It’s available on the Amazon in paperback or Kindle.

 

In this episode, Tom and I were both at the recent Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting in Phoenix, we thought we should compare notes and focus a bit on legal technology and the practice of law from the corporate counsel perspective, and how customer insights can benefit everyone who delivers legal services.

 

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 respective experiences at the ACC Annual Meeting and what we learned about the perspectives and priorities of in-house counsel.

 

In our second segment, goodness help us all, I will help Dennis get set up — get up to speed on his new Google Home Mini which actually has a different name and we’ll talk about that. And as usual, we’ll finish up with our parting shots, that one tip, website or observation that you can start using the second that this podcast is over.

 

But first up, the recent Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting which was in Phoenix this year and what we learned there. I’ve been attending the conference for a number of years. My company is both a sponsor and an exhibitor in the Vendor Hall and I am an occasional speaker there, one of the nice things we get as a sponsorship as we also get to speak and so I’ve spoken there the past few years.

 

Dennis, you’ve been a longtime member of ACC but you haven’t been to the conference recently, maybe you could give our listeners a little background about the ACC.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah if you’re an in-house counsel, the Association of Corporate Counsel or as we like call it ACC is really an essential Association to belong to. It is really the gathering place for corporate counsels where you get education, networking, has a great system of local chapters. So I was in the St. Louis Chapter which has won awards, has been one of the best chapters in the country and I’ll be switching over to the Michigan Chapter.

 

So it’s a — it’s just a great resource for the corporate counsel and their needs and their concerns and the interesting and it really helps you as you take into account the role of corporate counsel, which is this interesting place where you are both delivering legal services and a lot of times a consumer of legal services.

 

So first time, actually Tom, it’s the first time I’ve been to the Annual Meeting itself, so that was fun to do, but that’s my glowingly positive review of ACC, which is I’ve totally enjoyed all the time that I’ve been in the ACC.

 

Tom Mighell: Well, and I can’t speak to ACC as a member because as I’ve never been an in-house counsel so I don’t qualify. I mean on my experience with ACC has really been through our involvement. My company, like I said, is a sponsor of the information governance network, we’ll talk a little bit more about the network structure that they have at ACC in just a minute.

 

But I have to say that of all the conferences I attend, I’m so impressed with ACC in terms of the number of people that come out, how energized they are, what I think is actually really pretty good content for the most part, I mean I think with every conference you’re going to have some hits and misses.

 

(00:05:00)

 

But I think that the intentions are good, that they try to present some good content and I think they really are hitting on the issues that corporate counsel really need to talk about.

 

I know Dennis, you kind of want to talk a little bit more about the technology side of it and things but there’s so much more that goes on at ACC that because we’re really — we’re talking about people they have one client and they have to serve that client and what’s interesting about that is, is that you’ve got to serve them in so many different areas. It’s not looks like having a practice in one particular concentration, it’s about having to learn about so many other different types of law and to be able to serve your client especially in the area or industry that they’re in.

 

It’s hard to get that kind of information and I think that both the way you describe it, the network structure of the individual chapter groups, they sponsored parties throughout the whole thing the chapters did, they had a big lunch the second day where all of the different regions got to sit together.

 

So I think it’s a must join organization if you happen to be working in-house. I just think it makes a lot of sense to be a part of it even if you don’t go to the meeting to take advantage of all the tremendous resources that they’ve got.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Well, it reminded me a lot Tom of ABA TECHSHOW and that there was ACC is great about taking care of its members, sometimes my only criticism sometimes is that they protect you so much as a member like from people trying to sell to you and reach out to you, that sometimes that can be a little tiny bit of a hindrance, but most time I even appreciate that.

 

But it reminded me of TECHSHOW because people who come there are as you said they’re really interested in education, they want to be there, the sessions were jam-packed and so there is a real strong focus on CLE.

 

I guess what I also noticed Tom, and maybe you can verify this, but people were telling me that this is really — it’s been a really recent development that they’ve had law firms on the exhibit floor, because usually in the past, you didn’t see very much of that because like I said it was so geared to the in-house counsel.

 

So that was interesting because I think that in many cases or in most cases the in-house counselors are the major buyers of services from the larger law firms, and so that we will touch on this I think in this podcast.

 

We talked about in the past Tom, how the in-house counsel on the buyer side may be able to drive technology and innovation in ways that the law firms need to get ready for.

 

Tom Mighell: Well and I think that is a big differentiator. Well I’m going to say it’s a differentiator for TECHSHOW versus ACC, but one of the things that I notice, I mean to be honest, I spend a lot of time with my company in the in the Vendor Hall so I see how the lawyers interact in the Vendor Hall and they have budget. They have decision-making power, they have responsibilities and there are so many that come by our booth that are walking through and it’s very clear that they have an agenda in the Vendor hall.

 

They need to get certain things done for their company for which vendors have to help them and so they come in with a list of I need to go and look at, we’ll talk about some of these later.

 

I need to look at contract management, I might need to hire a firm who can handle my employment law stuff because I’m looking for somebody different or I’m looking for information governance services and they come in with specific needs, which is similar to TECHSHOW. I’ve seen lots of lawyers who come in with very specific needs but I really feel like it’s more pronounced at ACC because they kind of have an idea what their priorities are, they — I sort of feel like they’re a little more up on it than the average lawyer is who comes in to TECHSHOW, not exactly sure what to see especially the new folks to TECHSHOW kind of come in and are all overwhelmed with what they’re seeing.

 

At ACC, I think most of the attendees are pretty savvy and they know what to look for and they ask a lot of really good questions as far as I’m concerned.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah I met a lot of great people, so it was really fun that way I think the other thing that’s interesting even if you don’t go and you’re a lawyer in private practice or even if you’re in-house as well, it’s a great way to see what issues that corporate counsel are prioritizing these days.

 

So just looking down that the sessions will give you a sense of the things that are either hot issues or that people are really focused on these days.

 

(00:10:03)

 

And so Tom, from your perspective, I did want to ask one question that I saw is, is this California Data Privacy Law big or what?

 

Tom Mighell: You know it’s interesting, it is, but it isn’t. So if you go and look at the agenda there really were only two programs that mentioned it. One of them was put on by my company but there was only one other session that talked about it. But, we had so many people who came by the booth that said I need to think about it. I need to get a handle on it and the session that we had and like you said, you saw packed rooms. We did too. We had over 400 people come to see the session on California privacy.

 

So it’s a huge topic but what I really like about ACC is and they’ve kind of changed it a little bit. They have sort of a little bit moved away from the track notion and they’ve kind of divided up their sessions based on — they’ve organized their agenda either based on the network, the different, the ACC is broken down into different types of networks, which I sort of feel like they are a lot like the practice groups you might find in your average big firm.

 

So there’s one for corporate insecurities. There’s one for employment and labor, there’s an energy network, there’s an environmental sustainability network, there’s a financial services network, the networks that I identify the most with our information governance, IT privacy, and e-commerce. And then law department management has its own network.

 

So you can when you were — if you were there at the Conference, you could say I want to see the sessions that apply to my network and you’d be able to look at those and sign up for them. But you could also go by topics and the topics were a little more varied than that.

 

You had business and leadership and career development and again, contract drafting huge thing going on at ACC and that’s really an every year thing. Corporate governance, data privacy and security, which there was not a ton on California, but there was a ton on data privacy as a general broad topic, government regulation, legal operations, one session on social media and then a lot of stuff on technology.

 

So there’s a lot for everyone depending on what your focus is, what your interest is, what your priorities for your law department happen to be. I think it’s well-rounded. I thought the program, whether the sessions themselves turned out to be satisfactory for the people who attended them, I thought that the program itself was very well-rounded.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, so I was on a press pass for this one, so I learned by wandering around and what you said about the tracks is really interesting because you could – it seemed there were let’s say seven or more sessions going on at any given time. So it’s really kind of you do have to make choices and navigate, but I think you’re right it is geared toward those networks in ACC.

 

And so there is – it’s a thoughtful way to organize things, but it for me it was like it made a little bit harder to sample things. And I asked you the question about the California Data Privacy Law Tom and in part because I just kept running to people who ask me what I thought about it and I gave them my usual radical opinion about that, but I was surprised by the number of people came up, but I think I saw a bit more of it maybe on the exhibit floor and the conversations I had, than even, even you saw. So that was interesting.

 

So I went there Tom, my main thing was I was trying to figure out what was going on in the world of innovation either in law firms or in the corporate legal department. So I got some sense of that but that was mainly from digging around and talking to people because it wasn’t really — there wasn’t a track devoted to that although as you said Tom, there’s definitely some stuff on technology and sessions on AI and stuff.

 

But it gave me a sense of what people are looking for and especially what law firms felt that they needed to provide, so that was one of my things, so I learned a little bit there. That was good but it took some work to do that, but if you would ask me, what the one topic that was totally front and center in so many ways on the exhibit floor is Contract Management.

 

And I’m guessing Tom, since there were a number of contract management companies right near your booth, that you might have observed the same thing?

 

(00:14:53)

 

Tom Mighell: Always big at ACC. There are always — in fact — in fact, if I had to I didn’t count this year, but if I had to guess I would say that if you look in the Vendor Hall, there’s not a ton of actual — Dennis you walked around you can tell me, I didn’t spend as much time walking around, but I would guess that there’s not a ton of technology vendors out there unless they’re selling like a research service or some type of online service for you to buy.

 

I’ll talk a little bit about document management in a little bit which I fairly strongly against in a law department and we’ll talk about my radical opinions there in a minute, but the booth right next to us was I think a pretty brand new contract management thing that they brought 14 people with them dressed in superhero costumes for two straight days. And I think contract management is a huge thing.

 

I will say with every client we work with, the law department wants to know about better ways to manage their contracts and I think that’s a huge thing and it was definitely reflected in the Vendor Hall this year.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And definitely cloud services as well. So I think that the lawyers are reluctant to move toward the cloud might be surprised at how prevalent cloud-based tools and I know I’m guessing the document management company that you’re going to talk about but there’s definitely cloud-based tools as well.

 

Tom Mighell: Well I think that in-house counsel are more readily, they’re more readily accepting of the cloud than regular law firms are, mostly because the company’s IT department leads them in that direction and they don’t really have a choice but to follow on that and so many departments in a corporation are starting to use cloud-based tools, the HR Department in most companies, most of the tools they use are now outsourced and they’re either cloud-based or third-party tools.

 

So it’s almost impossible to run a company these days without using them. So I think that, that in terms of use of cloud tools and in acceptance of them and I think there were a couple of sessions this year on risk management around cloud tools, not really talking about should we use them or not but it’s you are using them, now let’s manage them the right way which frankly is the way I think we should have been dealing with it for a long time now.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Maybe like 20 years. Yeah and I think yeah a lot of the corporate environments are using tools like Salesforce as a primary example. So it’s just part of the bread and butter. So Tom what’s your radical thoughts on document management that you wanted to mention?

 

Tom Mighell: Well so I mean think you put a line in our kind of rundown for the show to talk about and I may be jumping the gun a little bit here but a focus on small law department tech. In my opinion, looking at the sessions that focused on technology I would say that if there were any themes, it was about one, contracting, and two, a lot, a lot, a lot of artificial intelligence, a lot of things on AI.

 

But I have two things to say about it. One, this is not a technology conference so there’s not going to be a ton of technology content although I was kind of pleasantly surprised at the volume that there was. But two, my opinion is it focusing on small law department tech is like saying that a law department is like a law firm inside of a company with its own technology.

 

And I think that there are some pieces of technology that only law departments use like contract software, like eDiscovery and litigation case management tools, those types of things. I think law departments are smarter that think more corporate in their technology purchases which is why I also think you don’t see a ton of technology vendors at the conference and I’ve always been of the opinion that although law departments in corporations have always been more forward-thinking in moving to document management for their own law department, I ultimately think that it is a mistake for them to be separate from the rest of the company in their document management solution and say well, the rest of the company is on Office 365 but we’re using our own little thing that we have internally. I think that’s a mistake from a corporate perspective because I think that having consistency, being able to collaborate, not having silos is really a more important thing when you’re in the corporate environment than when you’re in a law firm.

 

So I think that document management solutions for law departments, I know that there’s some out there, I like the tools a lot for lawyers in general. I just think that they’re the wrong fit for most corporate law departments because I think that, that those law departments, whether you’re small or large, don’t matter how big the corporation is, you should be thinking about overall corporate consistency.

 

Dennis Kennedy: This may surprise you Tom but I really agree with you on that, that having these little silos is not a great idea.

 

(00:20:02)

 

On the other hand, I did notice in conversations that this is also a world where people want to use software tools, cloud tools that are sort of branded as corporate law department tools.

 

So I was at another event at the same time and talking to a number of people about technology and it was — it’s striking to me that in the corporate counsel world people will, when I ask them what they want they basically are describing the standard small firm practice management software, which I think give them 90% plus of what they need on your day-to-day work.

 

I’ve said this for many years that you don’t want that to become its own silo for the reasons that Tom said, but for a lot of these things of just tracking what you’re doing and just helping you in your day-to-day work there. I think they would do the job very well, but I think people get hung up on the fact that because I’ve had this conversation many times where people would say no, that’s just for solos and smalls. I’m like a corporate counsel. So in a way you kind of — it is interesting to me to see how on some of these things you just have to step back a little bit.

 

I did want to say Tom that — I talked to a number of the law firms who were there because I was asking about innovation and so it’s always been a kind of running joke that there’s however many number of big law firms there are in the world, they’re all like full service general practice firms and they will fight to the death to tell you that they do everything, sort of the same thing in innovation when I ask people about that. Yes, they’re doing innovation and I asked them, is this all centralized and in one place, they go no, we do it everywhere, and we do everything and so that was interesting to kind of dig down. It remind me the early days of e-discovery when people would tell you that you have to dig down and say okay, tell me what it is, what you do, this is best.

 

So some interesting observations for me is, innovation is located in different places. Sometimes it comes out of the knowledge management group, sometimes it comes out of an IT group, sometimes out of business development or a certain practice area and there is definitely focus on what I call apps which mean I don’t think it especially means mobile apps, but definitely sort of focus tools to provide to clients so, so that was an interesting thing, and then I know Tom, as we wrap up, I guess that I do want to get your thought about AI and how it seems like every technology we hear about or what people doing, there say we also throw in a little bit of AI and I’m just not sure where AI is these days. I mean there’s definitely stuff happening. I just don’t know that it still feels like there’s a bit of over promise there, right. So I don’t know what your — if you developed in the opinions from things you saw there.

 

Tom Mighell: Well, I didn’t really get a chance to see that much to form a good opinion about your specific question. I think I will say in general that in-house counsel not necessarily unlike other lawyers, but I think in-house counsel who — they have a mandate, as we know in the law department you are a cost center, you are not a profit or revenue generator in a corporate environment and so saving on costs being as efficient as you can is the goal, is a goal or the goal that most law departments will have, and if the promise of artificial intelligence is to simplify or to get you to decisions faster or to save you money because you’re using AI to use a computer learning on your documents for e-discovery then that’s something that’s going to be powerfully attractive to in-house counsel.

 

And so I think that’s one reason why we saw so much of it at the conferences, it’s the promise of simplifying, saving money, making them more efficient, bringing them in under budget that sort of thing whether they can — these tools can deliver on that promise, I think is a discussion for another day as far as I’m concerned.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Well, I think it’s also about keeping up with the pace of change or the accelerating pace of changes as companies move. You start to think of themselves more as technology companies, as platform companies. I think as a lawyer you really have to start to move quickly and so any help you can get is good.

 

(00:25:00)

 

I will wrap up with my — I just thought it was a really good conference, my experience was great, I met great people, had great conversations, learned some new stuff, we even met a few podcast listeners, so all in all big thumbs up for me and getting to hang out with you in person Tom, always a big plus.

 

Tom Mighell: Likewise for me. Before we move on to our next segment, let’s take a break for a quick message from our sponsor.

 

[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. As a premium Spotify subscriber, I recently was given a Google Home Mini or at least that’s what I thought I was given until I learned at the beginning the podcast, maybe I’m calling it by the wrong name. But since Tom is the ultimate Google fanboy, I decided it actually made no sense for me to try to learn how to use the device on my own when I could talk to Tom as the expert.

 

So in this segment we’ll get Tom’s best tips and answers to my dumb questions about the Google Home World and I’m sure Tom will tell me how lucky I am to finally get into the Google Home platform and what I should do on it given that I’m still planning to stay in the Amazon Echo world. So I guess my question Tom is, should Google Home device be for me or should it be for my wife?

 

Tom Mighell: Well, like you said, let’s get the terminology straight. You may have actually received a Mini from Spotify, but at their announcement this past month they’ve rebranded and so for those of you who are looking to go out and buy something now you’re going to want to buy the Google Nest Mini. They have moved, they bought the company Nest within the past year or so and they’re rebranding all their home products as nest products.

 

So the Google Nest Mini is what if you’re really interested in getting it, is what you want to look at, but second, let’s approach this from our jobs to be done. Your typical jobs to be done question mark, it question point. If you plan to stay in the Amazon Echo world, I don’t get why you’re even setting up the Mini unless you want to play around with it, experiment with it and then say thank you very much and pack it up in its box and go back to the Echo.

 

I think, I think whichever tool you like the most, I would settle on one or the other, go all-in. I mean they both have a lot of the same features and capabilities and I think that if you’re going to stick with one you should stick with one and not have both of them.

 

I had that for a while, I had Echos and Google devices in and I ultimately went to Google because I happen to think that the Google devices are smarter, they can answer more questions. I think they’re more helpful, but it’s definitely a matter of opinion and experience. I don’t think you go wrong with either device. And so you say that I’m going to answer your dumb questions, I mean I can give tons of tips but I don’t know if you want to start out with questions first or if you want me to kind of give you my best practices or what do you want to do?

 

Dennis Kennedy: Well, as I listen to you, I almost think I should give the Google device to someone else, but I think our idea was that it would just go into a separate room and then probably would be used primarily to play music on which I guess is probably what Spotify intended. So there was that notion to say, well it’s just going to be a separate device, separate room. Does that make sense or do you still gravitate?

 

Tom Mighell: No, it makes sense but I don’t have a lot of advice to offer. I mean if I’m setting up a Google Home for the first time, the first thing you need to do is download the Google Home app and which no irony at all here that it’s still called Google Home. I don’t know if the app will be changed to Google Nest. But it’s the Home App and that’s what you use to configure your settings and the settings that you would configure for example could include, you can set up voice phone number so you can make phone calls from it, setting up a shopping list, so you can add things to your shopping list, configuring the services you use to listen to music so Spotify you could do that, you could set up one of any of about four or five.

 

I have my daily briefing set up so I basically tell it to play my daily briefing and it plays in a row about five different recordings of different news services that I want to listen to.

 

(00:30:10)

 

One of the new features that I really like is you can create a reminder for other people in the house so you can say, hey, have so-and-so remember to pick up the dry cleaning after work or something like that.

 

And then the other thing I like about the Home is the ability to set what they call Routines, so you can actually start a routine by just saying one thing to it. For example, you can say good morning to your device in the morning and it will turn on your lights, it take your phone off do not disturb. It will tell you about the weather, it will tell you what your commute looks like if you have one. It will give you any reminders that you have and then it will play your news that you set up, or you can configure it to play the latest podcast, a latest episode of any podcast you want.

 

I set mine up the other day to see if it worked to play the latest episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report and sure enough it will play the latest episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report.

 

But those are some of the things that I would do if I was setting it up. I would go in and configure it to get to the right places, but if you’re testing it out, I would go in and look at those settings and see if there’s anything that appeals to you and just play around with it.

 

Dennis Kennedy: So there is the Google Home app, but there’s also the Google Assistant app and it seems like you have used both with the device, is that right?

 

Tom Mighell: No that well, yes and no. The Google Home app includes the Google Assistant settings, so the settings you want to configure with Google Home are with are part of the Assistant settings that are built into the Google, the Google Home app.

 

The Google Assistant app that you would download I’m assuming for your iPhone are really to ask it questions like, it’s like Siri or it’s like Alexa, but it’s just an app for that. If you want to configure it for the device you want to access, there are specific assistant settings within the Google Home app that contain all those configurations that I just mentioned, that’s what I’m — that’s where you get to them from.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Okay, and so the one thing I’m struggling with right now is that I would like to just have the Google device show up on my Bluetooth list, just like my Amazon Echo and then throw my music to it and it’s just not showing up and then with the Echo I can just say like, hey connect to my iPhone and it does that, when I try that with the Google device, it didn’t seem to do that. It seemed really flummoxed.

 

So I assume I’m doing something wrong but do you have any tips for that?

 

Tom Mighell: My only tip is, is that you actually set that up ahead of time, so it’s always connected. So my phone is always connected to all of my Google devices, but I can’t just tell it on a whim to oh by the way connect to it. I mean these devices are designed to work on their own without your phone, but they can work with your phone too, but I would set that up ahead of time.

 

So when you say makes it sound like you’re kind of doing it just kind of ad-hoc, I don’t really think about it that way and so I preferred to have it all set up ahead of time.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Because that’s interesting because for me, it’s with my iPhone, I might want to put the music through the Echo, I definitely want to put through AirPods, I might put it through another headphone. I have like a like a sleep mask with the Bluetooth speakers and so to me it’s just like – it would be like another outlet, but it sounds like maybe that’s not exactly the way it works.

 

Tom Mighell: Well I mean I — so I don’t want to go to belabor at this point, but I mean if I’m going up to my Google device I’m going to say hey and I’m going to say play this song or play BBC World Service, and the Google device is going to play it automatically. I don’t have to run it through my phone or run it through anything else, it’s just automatically going to play. So maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re asking.

 

Dennis Kennedy: No, no, so it only does that but I’m using it like what you would think of as a Bluetooth speaker. So I’m sitting at the iPhone and I say oh here’s I have Spotify open on the iPhone and that’s where I’m playing it, so I don’t say anything to the Google Home device or to my Amazon Echo. I just throw the output from my phone over there and that’s what I’d like to do.

 

Tom Mighell: Well, that’s more of a connection between the app that you’re using on your phone and the device and I will do that occasionally. I’ll go onto my phone and I’ll say, I now want you to play it on this device and I put more blame on that on, for example, the Spotify app, but it really depends on how it’s all connected up.

 

(00:34:58)

 

Dennis Kennedy: Okay. So I take that for the price of free. I mean it’s — even if I turn out not using it very much, it seems like a good thing for me to have picked up right.

 

Tom Mighell: I think any device, Google is a great device, Echos are great devices. I think they’re all great to have to test out. You do want to go into your privacy settings and make sure that you know how to delete stuff or how to tell it what to record and what not to record and what to keep or at least educate yourself on what it’s recording so that you’re not shocked and amazed that suddenly it’s recording everything and saying it all back to the Google or Amazon Mothership.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, well we’re all sort of making our own compromises on that one. So anyway, it’s time for our parting shots, Tom, that one tip, website or observation you can use the second this podcast ends. Tom, take it away.

 

Tom Mighell: So this week was the Microsoft Ignite Conference and there were a ton of really exciting announcements from the Microsoft world, believe it or not, there were a bunch of announcements around teams that I was really excited about. But the one that really captured a lot of people’s minds was the announcement that the OneNote for the desktop application is back.

 

Last year, Microsoft announced that the desktop version of OneNote they were only going into maintenance mode, they work on a development for it anymore and really people should move over to the Windows 10 kind of the app version of OneNote and there was a huge cry of misery and anguish from this. And so at the conference this year, they’ve come back and they have announced you know what, we’re going to bring it back, it’s so much more full-featured than the Windows 10 app. I’m excited to go back and use it again.

 

What is unclear at this time is what they’re going to do with the Windows 10 app, are they going to get rid of that now that that people have demanded that the other one come back, but if you were — if you have used the desktop app in the past and you’ve given it up or looking for a new note-taking app, that new OneNote desktop or not the new one, but they’re going to be adding new features to it and supporting it again, so I would definitely give it a look. It’s free to use.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And is that, it going to be on the Mac as well, how do you know?

 

Tom Mighell: Everywhere, it’s an everywhere device.

 

Dennis Kennedy: So I have two quick ones. So one is, I have been getting a great response to the 57 Tips for Successful Innovations in Law free PDF download that I’ve made available. So that’s also been gratifying to me, but just go to my website, you’ll see a place on the right end of the top menu and you can go get yourself a free PDF with those 57 tips.

 

And then I was experimenting — so I was looking at these little services, I call them micro services that allow artists and other people to get paid small amounts and so the one that people might be most familiar with is one called Patreon. So I looked into that and it was not exactly what I wanted, but I had seen a couple of people I know use a service called Buy Me A Coffee, so that’s buymeacoffee.com.

 

And this is essentially a tip jar application. So you get a link, you put it up on your website, you get yourself an account — it sort of works through Stripe or PayPal and then somebody who likes something you’re doing say they like your blog post or something that you make available for download, they click on it and they can buy you a coffee or two which is like $3 to $5 and then every now and then, you get an email saying somebody bought you a cup of coffee and you get 3 bucks.

 

So in the days when you think nobody’s reading your stuff or appreciating it just to get like a little email with $3 to buy your coffee is kind of a cool thing.

 

Tom Mighell: And so that wraps it up for this edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. We are still working on our show notes issue, we should have that back up and running hopefully in the near future.

 

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, with transcripts.

 

If you would like to get in touch with us, you can always reach out to us on LinkedIn or remember we love getting voicemails. The number there is (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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(00:40:00)

 

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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