Giving Web 3 the Third Degree

Episode Notes

Transcript

Tom Mighell: Before we get started, we’d like to thank our sponsors: Embroker, Clio and Posh Virtual Receptionists.

 

[Music]

 

Intro: Web 2.0 Innovation, Trends, Collaboration, Software, Metadata, Software Service, Podcasts, Virtual Law. 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.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode 319 of the Kennedy-Mighell Report.  I’m Dennis Kennedy in Ann Arbor.

 

Tom Mighell: And I’m Tom Mighell in Dallas.

 

Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode, we took a look at the current state of artificial intelligence and what that might mean for all of us, but especially for those of us in the legal profession.  In this episode, we wanted to look forward into the new world of Web 3 and what our listeners need to know about this hot technology topic.  Tom, what’s on our agenda for this episode?

 

Tom Mighell: Well, Dennis, in this edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, we will indeed be discussing the phenomenon, people are calling Web 3, which some have predicted might be the next version of what was Web 1 and Web 2.0.  In our second segment, we are going to answer an audience question from a fan of our Second Brain Project and as usual, we’ll finish up with our parting shots, that one tip, observation or website that you can start to use the second that this podcast is over.  We also want to mention that the new version of our book, The Lawyers Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies:  Work from Home Edition should be back from the printer any day now and available for purchase, stay tuned.

 

But first up, not Web 1, not Web 2, but we’re here to talk about Web 3.  For those of you who pay attention to the introduction of this show, we say that we are a legal technology podcast with an internet focus and you can’t get much more internet than Web 3.  We spent a lot of time in the early days of this show talking about Web 2.0 and how it was changing, how people and especially lawyers were using the internet.  But there’s a new version of the internet that’s coming or I guess as we discussed, maybe something that certain people are trying to will into existence.  It’s going by the term, “Web 3”.

 

As with most internet phenomena, the concept has been around for a while and is slow to catch on.  Most of the world is just now catching up to it, even though it was first mentioned back eight years ago.  So we’ve thought we’d try to describe it and maybe argue a little bit about whether this is the next great coming of the internet.  Dennis, how about we cut to the chase and I’m going to cut to the chase and ask why are you already a big advocate of Web 3?

 

Dennis Kennedy: Because it’s internet and I love new things happening on the internet.  Also, Web 2.0 is old.  I mean it goes back to at least 2004 and it’s just time for a change.  I think — I’ve been thinking a lot about Web 3 and how to think about it, because I think, Tommy, right?  The people are trying to figure out what it is, whether it’s important, whether it is a next phase, whether it’s the next big thing or whether it’s a lot of hype.  And so, I sort of think of it in maybe three different senses that we could think about it.  So, we could say, it could be a sort of linear evolution.  So that we go from horse and buggy, to the internal combustion engine cars, to the electric vehicles.

 

It could be a paradigm shift where we move from PC networks, house on-premises, to the Cloud so it becomes a completely new platform and a new approach that really does change the whole paradigm.  And I think it could also — the other way to think about it is it could be something that people said, “this is going to be really hot.  This is going to be a game-changer”, but it doesn’t really happen or it takes a long time for it to happen.  So, you could say, the Segway and my favorite, 3DTV which it was — what about six weeks or so time where people thought 3DTV was going to be the biggest thing and change everything and now I don’t even know if you can find one anymore.

 

So let me go quickly to the definition.  So, and I think Web 3 has — it’s about technology, it’s about economics and it’s about culture.  And I think Web 3, the best way to think of it is potentially the platform that the Creator economy is going to live on.  And we’re going to have to dive into all of those things.  And so, there are three core components that people talk about:  So, one is decentralization as opposed to centralization.  Then, there’s also a platform notion where we’re built on the Blockchain technologies as opposed to the traditional internet technologies.  And the economics is token-based.

 

(00:05:01)

 

I think the token-based things, even more of the Blockchain is going to be the hardest thing for lawyers to wrap their heads around.  And for me, I have the advantage I think of spending my time at MasterCard where we were doing things with tokens, tokenization and so the concepts I think are a lot more familiar to me.  So, Web 3, coined in 2014.  It really picked up interest in 2021.  Primarily, from the Cryptocurrency enthusiasts, the very large technology companies, financial technology companies and venture capital companies.  So, that will give the underlying foundation at the same time, I’ll turn it over to you to say either that’s — makes it a little clearer or still a lot of explaining to do?

 

Tom Mighell: Well, I was going to offer anybody who listen to this podcast that can say that they understood what Web 3 is.  From Dennis’s definition of it, I will give a free copy of the book to.  But I will require a lot to get proof of that.  Here’s going to be my main issue is that all of the things that Dennis said are true, but yet I would not understand what Web 3 is by listening to what he said about it.  So, usually when we talk about definitions, I will go to my favorite source, Wikipedia and pull just a generic definition of it.  And what’s amazing about Web 3 in Wikipedia is they have no idea how to define it and they talk about the different specific visions for Web 3 differ.  And they talk about it being the term has been described as “hazy”.

 

Web 3 revolves around the idea of decentralization.  Bloomberg has described Web 3 as “an idea that would build financial assets”.  And I’m like, “how can you read this and actually understand what it is?”  So, here is — let me take what Dennis said and I’m going to translate to what I think Web 3 is and this is where we’ll kind of get into it because I think that this is what it is and I think that Dennis is going to move off into other areas that I don’t know that it’s absolutely belongs in the Web 3 zone.  Anyway, so Web 1:  The first version of the Web, way back when?  The 90s.  It was decentralized.  It was lone islands of the internet.  You could go to this website, but it didn’t connect to this other website.  These other tools didn’t connect with each other, they had nothing to do with each other.  They were all just all autonomous states that were out there.

 

Web 2 centralized everything.  It was a great experience initially.  My favorite example of the Web 2.0 tool was Google Maps, and all the amazing things that Google Maps could pull together in one place.  So, you could get from one place to another and see things like that.  It was great initially, it then got ruined by the major tech players who used the services in Web 2 to provide services in exchange for your personal data.  And doing that made it very difficult for individuals and we’ll say, “Content Creators”, people who are trying to make a living by publishing their content, whether that is audio or video or words or whatever they’re doing for content to make a living from the internet.  All of that money went to these major tech companies.

 

Web 3 hopes to make that more egalitarian and helps to bring more of the power back to the Creator.  Take all the good stuff about Web 2 and decentralize it again.  It’s going to rely — as Dennis said, it’s going to rely on applications that run on the Blockchain which is more trustworthy than other platforms that will allow you to participate without monetizing your personal information.  So, it will allow the Creator Economy a way to get paid, where Web 2 did not really allow that in a more equal way than what the big tech companies are offering.  That’s how I’m currently understanding it today.

 

Dennis Kennedy: I think that’s a great explanation, Tom, and I think it should go from Web 1 to Web 2 to Web 3.  You do have Web 1, I think in terms of fairly static web pages which is content being put out there and the emphasis was on how it’s displayed.  And Web 2, we kind of “applicationified”, if I can invent a term there, the web pages.  So, you saw things like Gmail and Google Docs or — and so, you had websites that work like applications and give you user experience.  But they were controlled by that short list of companies now known as “Big Tech”.  And there was a trade-off with the information that was being pulled from us in exchange for the convenience and other benefits of having those applications.  As we move to Web 3, there is this notion.  I think of it in terms of the internet operating system, but it’s going to be more decentralized using a Blockchain sort of platform, but have certain things that we’ve handled sort of discreetly in Web 2 or as an add-on.

 

(00:10:04)

 

So identity, payments, those sorts of things kind of built into that underlying operating system.  And so, once you have that and it’s decentralized, and people can work together in sort of smoother ways, where you don’t have to keep authenticating yourself.  You have trust.  You have other things.  Even to the point of something called DAOs, (DAOs, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), they were people who can sort of democratically vote and run organizations and run things from anywhere in the world.  That sort of gives you an idea of what that platform will look like.

 

But I also say, Tom, and I think this is a really important concept is just like Web 2 ran alongside Web 1 for a long time and probably still does, it’s clear that Web 2 is going to be the majority of what we see on the internet for a good long time and Web 3 will be a significant part over time, but they’re going to run in parallel, not one will stop and the other will suddenly begin.  So to me, it’s sort of is like the notion of we went from horse and buggy, and then the horses and buggies didn’t totally disappear and the internal combustion engine cars won’t completely disappear as we go to electric vehicles.  There’s going to be overlap and work they’ll work together for a long time.

 

Tom Mighell: Well, the problem I have with that analogy is that at some point in time, the horse and buggy did go away.  They eventually went away and I don’t see Web 3 taking over every single thing in the future.  The way that you’ve described Web 3, if we’re purely looking at it as a platform for the Content Creator Community or an economic platform for them to benefit, then I don’t see that as being the only purpose of the internet.  There are other purposes I think that Web 3 can be used for.  But right now, I mean I do agree with you that Web 3 has got a long time to catch on.  The thing that to me is I would say “disheartening” and what I maybe, maybe I was blind to it, maybe I didn’t pay attention with Web 2.0, but it feels like — you just described, at the beginning, you described all the groups that are interested in Web 3 and they all have one thing in common, money.  They want to make money.

 

And so, the only people who are really interested in it are venture capitalists, marketers, people who want to obscure, own obscure NFTs.  We talked about NFTs on an episode put a while back.  You mentioned the DAOs, the Distributed Autonomous Organizations.  Those of you who read the news may have seen the story a couple of months ago about a DAO that raised enough money to try to buy a copy of the Constitution, original version of the Constitution.  And it was very controversial at the time and then they didn’t win.  They raised hundreds of millions of dollars, I’m not sure the total amount that they raised, but they lost out to a private investor.  And the problem was, there was no way immediately to refund the money to the people because it was decentralized.  It was something that they had trouble.  I think they ultimately found a way to do it, but it wasn’t something that was easy to do.

 

I see some artists and musicians, some content creators taking advantage of this so far.  Go and buy one of your favorite musician song for a thousand-dollar NFT.  And I think that, that is a heck of a lot better than making the micropayments you get on Spotify.  I see a lot of commercial brands taking advantage of this and selling NFTs of things.  But I think that for now anyway, the content creators who we want to benefit, the ones who are bilked out of making a living with Web 2.0, they either don’t know a lot about it yet, it’s just not widely available and/or easy to understand, they don’t know how to take advantage of it or they don’t really care at this point.  So, I agree with you.  I think we’re a way’s off.  I’m not sure that it ever replaces Web 2.0, but I agree with you that we still have a way’s before I think it gains a level of traction among people who aren’t just in it for the money.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Although I take that in Web 3, what people would say is that Web 3 is a potential solution to the problem of the over-centralization of the web into the hands of a few big tech companies that are making all kinds of money from other people’s content, data, other things like that.  It is a move toward kind of —

 

Tom Mighell:  Towards venture capitalists and others making all kinds of money.  Okay, it’s like “we want some money too” is basically what it is.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Except that individual creators are making a living off of this as well.  So, I would say is that as a Creator, I can use the Web 3 tools to make money and to distribute my works in some ways that are better.  And to distribute benefits to people.

 

(00:15:00)

 

And maybe to participate in the ongoing value of what I’ve created that become very interesting.  Whereas in Web 2.0 World, I might be able to buy Facebook stock.  I might be able to buy other kinds of stock and it might do well or it might have gone down, but I’m not able to capture the value of what I’ve created.  That sort of the — I think the Web 3 big argument is “can we have a more democratic internet?  Free ourselves up from perceived exploitation and put the economics in a better place for the people actually create the content of the internet?”  That said, I think there is a Web 3 law of physics.  That for every proposed advantage, there’s an equal and opposite proposed disadvantage in Web 3.  So, we’ve already seen things that look a lot like Ponzi schemes or it’s definitely scams.  There’s inequities.  A lot of things that you focused on.  Some of them are there in earlier stages of the web as well.  But I take it that that platform and the concern that people have about the over-centralization by both big tech and by governments that are powering people toward Web 3.  And there is a lot, a lot going on in Web 3 and a lot of it is outside the U.S.  So, the energy is there in a way that you don’t often see on the internet. It does remind me of the early days of Web 2.

 

Tom Mighell: We got a lot more to say about Web 3.  But first, we need to take a break for a message from our sponsors.

 

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Dennis Kennedy: Assuming that our listeners want to learn more and maybe do a little bit of exploration of Web 3, how would they do that?  I’m really interested.  I’m enthusiastic about Web 3.  In fact, I actually found it really difficult to find a good entry point, both to learn more and to participate.  So, what advice might we give our listeners?

 

Tom Mighell: I think of the problem with finding good resources out there is sort of been illustrated by our attempts to define things, because I think that anyone and everyone before we did this podcast, I went into my podcast app and I just typed in Web 3 to see what podcast would come up as part of it.  And I probably saw, I don’t know, two dozen podcast about it.  Which means that just anybody and everybody has decided, “Let’s jump on and start talking about Web 3”.  Who knows the quality of that? That said, I’m probably going to still say, “go to your favorite podcast app and type it in and see if there’s anything that interests you there”.

 

One of the ones that I find somewhat interesting and what I like is that they’re covering the basics.  Although, I’ve been sitting here complaining about how the venture capitalists all are taking advantage of Web 3, this is from Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capitalist firm, but they have a Web 3 with a16z, a16z is the Andreessen Horowitz brand.  What’s the other one, Dennis, from them that they do?  Unchained is that what it’s called?

 

Dennis Kennedy: Unchained is a really good one on Blockchain and crypto and Web 3.

 

Tom Mighell: But they have good podcast, they have pretty decent things.  Although, I will say as we’re getting ready to record today, they have a new episode out there called top tech topics explained and in it, they list topics that I’ve never heard of.  They talk about VDFs a ZK roll-ups and Snarks.  No.  No idea what any of those things are.  They could just be making those things up, as far as I’m concerned.  But I guess that shows how much there is left to know about Web 3.  Dennis, what have you been finding are good resources on Web 3, learning more about it?

 

(00:19:54)

 

Dennis Kennedy: Well, like I said, in some ways, it reminds me of earlier times in the Web, where you’re looking for good curated content, people, you think you can trust, people who write well and can explain things.  We’ll put in the show notes this great article I found recently called, “What problem does Web 3 solve any way” by Joshua Ledbetter.  And it just really goes through.  And for me, I mean, it’s technical, but for me, it’s plain enough language with a lot of examples showing like here’s what the problems are that Web 3 is trying to deal with.  Here’s some of the things that we might be able to do with this especially for creators and then fans of creators in a very understandable way.

 

So you don’t have to say, “how deep do I need to go into the technology” and then but it’s also really good about the scams, the other things, the concerns out there.  How crypto has kind of given Web 3 a bad name.  I saw that the U.S. Government has just prevented, denied people from using one crypto currency exchange because of concerns about money laundering.  You know, which is another factor about Web 3 is like how much our government’s going to be able to stop us from doing certain things?  So that is an aspect of Web 3.

 

So, this is a great article.  Tom, I’ll flip it back to you about getting into it, but I think that the entry points do involve learning about the technology, finding some people, getting some crypto, getting identities, other things like that?  And so, the actual entry point is still early stage and kind of difficult, but it’s getting better.

 

Tom Mighell: I agree to disagree on that because I still think, when I went to go and I just did a simple Google search.  How to get started with Web 3 and the top 15 links all started with, “well, you need to go buy some crypto” and that’s the way to get started.  And that may be true, but that doesn’t feel very satisfying to me.  Is it feels like the first thing you have to do is spend money and I did it, I went and I set up a crypto wallet a while back.  I wanted to see what it was.  I spent $100 on it, it was not very intuitive.  It was not very straightforward.  You have like 15 different kinds of currencies to do.  I felt like I was playing some crazy g board game with all kinds of different currencies with it.  It didn’t feel like it was easy or that it made sense to me.

 

That said, there are resources and I put a link to one that this one person posted — what I think she called “100 days to Web 3” and it was things to do for 100 days to get more involved in what Web 3 can do.  It involves getting some crypto but it involves a lot of other things as well and learning about a lot of stuff.  So, I’ve posted a link there.  I think it has got a lot of good options on how to get started, how to think about things.  I just — I guess I’m the grumpy old man on this podcast.  It just feels weird to me that to get into the next version of the internet, you have to pay money.  There’s an admission price for being part of the next part of the internet where Web 2.0 felt like it was a lot more democratic.  It was a lot more freedom for everybody else.  Ultimately, it wound up screwing everybody.  But this one feels like it’s a setup from the beginning because it’s requiring a price Being a price for admission.

 

Dennis Kennedy: It is funny, Tom, that when you started in Web 1, you learned how to do HTML from scratch.  You’ve done all these things.  And so, it’s sort of like there is a price to learning new things and my resource is Whitney Lauritsen has series of TikTok videos about her efforts to try to learn Web 3 on her own and get into the world of NFTs.  So, there are some really good things out there.  And then I think you can you can kind of simplify this.  So, most of the stuff is going to run on the Etherium Blockchains and Etherium is the crypto to buy.  The thing for me is that, we had the crypto value freefall over this year, so it’s cheaper now to get Etherium than it was several months ago.  But it’s still this sort of unknown.  But I think it’s like anything else in technology or law or whatever.  If you’re committed to it, it’s going to take some effort to learn and if it solves some problems for you and it’s something you can see, you can run with it.  It’s going to be easier for you to learn and there are people who are actually quite helpful in in working with you and putting resources out there.

 

That said, Tom, I still come back to this thing.  It is that even if you have the list of things that you’ve read about the tech terms that you don’t understand, and probably very few understand.  The fact is that if you’re a lawyer and you have a client comes in who’s doing Web 3 stuff, it is not really — I mean you could do this I guess, but you basically have to learn that.

 

(00:25:04)

 

It’s the same way that everything else you do as a lawyer, you got to start from scratch and learn when there’s something new.  So, it’s a matter of saying like “I need to do continuous learning.  I need to figure out how to stay up-to-date.  I need to learn to speak the language”.  And I think and we talked about this before the podcast, Tom, I think one of the most important things for lawyers is to understand when you’re in over your head and get those experts lined up in advance so you can get the help on that.  There are classes.  There are all kinds of things out there in this early stage.  So, you’re taking advantage of everything that’s happening in Web 2 that’s positive in terms of education and stuff and using it to move forward into Web 3.

 

So, I think it’s actually a really good time to learn this stuff, but it is super technical.  It is a new language and we are hoping — I would say maybe another year or so that the interfaces and the entry points will be a lot easier than they are now.  Because they are a lot easier now than they were a year ago or two years ago.

 

Tom Mighell: Well, we certainly agree that at some point in time, your clients are probably going to come to you with a question or they’re going to be doing something around Web 3 and being able to talk knowledgeably about it is going to be, I think a prerequisite and like everything we talked about in this podcast around, the requirement of technical competence; it’s something you just need to know about.  I will say that it’s not since the dawn of electronic discovery that I found a topic that is screaming out for outside expertise, more than this topic.  There’s just too many things to learn here that are complicated.  So, I am interested to see where the future heads with this.  I’m not looking for this to be taking over anytime soon, but it is certainly an interesting phenomenon and we’ll just have to pick it up in a little about a while and see where Web 3 has taken us.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, Tom, I just — I wanted to circle back to where I started.  I think that of the notions of decentralization, Blockchains and tokenization.  Tokenization is going to be by far the hardest one for lawyers to wrap their heads around.  And so, if you as a lawyer can get a good sense of that, I think you have some opportunities with clients over the next few years that other lawyers just won’t have.

 

Tom Mighell: And with that, let’s take a break for a quick message from our sponsor.

 

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

 

Dennis Kennedy: And I’m Dennis Kennedy.  This episode, we have a question from a listener via Twitter which will make Tom happy.  Richard Smith says, “I’ve been an avid follower of Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell’s Second Brain project and would be interested to know if they would ever consider Pinterest as a suitable public-facing platform”.  Tom, I know how you get excited as you get about these audience questions, do you want to start us off?

 

Tom Mighell: Well, I do get excited about audience questions and I think this one is interesting because I haven’t worked with Pinterest in a while, so it was actually good to look at it in the lens of a Second Brain tool.  To catch everybody else up who may not have seen Pinterest in a while, Pinterest is an image sharing website and social media service.  So, let’s say that you have an interest in meditation, you visit lots of meditation websites, you catch some videos, you maybe find an Instagram reel or a TikTok story or something like that.  You find books and articles.  You can pin, “pin”, and I put “pin” in quotes, “pin” them to your Pinterest board.  And then your board becomes a list of cards that people can click on and learn more about meditation.

 

And so, I think the idea Richard is talking about here, is to say, “here is my Second Brain and I’m publishing parts of my Second Brain to Pinterest so people can learn more about what you’ve been collecting”.  I think of Pinterest is similar to me anyway as raindrop.io which is the social bookmark manager that we’ve talked about, I think, on previous podcasts.  It’s what I use to publish collections of websites to people.  So, it’s a not exactly the same as Pinterest.  They serve the same purpose, but Pinterest is a lot more visually engaging and more interesting.  I think, actually, it would be a great place for a public-facing platform.

 

(00:30:02)

 

But here’s the only issue and well, there’s multiple issues and I think Dennis is going to cover the other one.  But, the one issue that I wonder about is what are you connecting it to?  Because, while I do use raindrop.io, I don’t really use it as part of my Second Brain.  I actually use it just to make resources available to people.  If I wanted to publish pieces of my Second Brain to people.  If I wanted to say, “here are some of the things I’ve been collecting”, I would want to use the Second Brain platform itself.  So both Dennis and I use Notion, we talked about that.  It’s very straightforward, I think, to put together a website in Notion that connects to your Second Brain on the backend and is visible to the public on the frontend.

 

So to me, I would think that I would rather have it all connect in the same tool.  Now, I can connect my Notion to Pinterest.  I can use one of the tools like Zapier to do that.  I can create a workflow that every time I post something to my Second Brain or I tag it, it automatically gets pinned to a separate board.  So, if the tool that you’re using to how is your Second Brain can connect like that.  Then I think go for it.  I think it’s a great idea.  If you can’t get it to connect, then I would say, “well that feels like extra effort on your part and so try and find a way around it, but I think if you can get it to work and that’s a good demonstration tool, I think Pinterest is very interesting” and like I said visually engaging side for people to look at.  So, I think it’s a great place to publish your Second Brain.  Dennis?

 

Dennis Kennedy: I agree, Tom, and I come at it from a little bit different perspective.  So Pinterest, classic Web 2.0 tool.  And I would say, this is an area you would not want to consider anything Web 3.  This is what Web 2.0 does really well.  So, when I look at Pinterest, I say, when I think about Pinterest is it’s very visual.  So, historically, people use it for photos, they use it for things like inspiration boards, things that they want to buy, pictures of places they wanted to travel.  Those sorts of things.  So very visual.  So you have to say, “is what I’m sharing out of my Second Brain Project publicly going to be that visual?”  I agree with Tom that if you’re using Notion and this is something I’m working on almost as we speak of creating a website to surface some public-facing things as a Notion website.  So, that seems super easy as opposed to connecting something to Pinterest and trying to figure that out.

 

I would That is always there comes out that jobs to be done.  So, what are you trying to accomplish?  So why are you putting this stuff out there?  And then given what it is that you hope to accomplish with it, is Pinterest the right channel to put it in?  Sort of the right platform to put it in?  And then, last but not least is if you’re putting onto Pinterest, is your target audience there or will they go there?  Because you want to put things out these days in places that people are already going to.  Because if you say, you need to go to Pinterest, which might not be a tool that you’re normally use to see something that I putting up there, you’re making extra work for people and they’re probably not going to do it because there’s just too many choices.

 

So, kind of where is the audience?  Can you reach them and what do you hope to accomplish?  But, Pinterest, very interesting tool.  If what you’re putting out there is visual and photographic in a collection of things is an interesting platform and as I said, it does illustrate Web 2.0.  Now it’s time for our parting shots, that one-tip website or observation you can use the second this podcast ends, Tom, take it away.

 

Tom Mighell: This is something that I noticed recently when I was using Word.  I have become a big fan of Microsoft Editor which is the new version of spell check within Microsoft Word, and it’s gotten such become so powerful.  It’s become its own app and extension.  You can install it in your browser and check web pages or web articles.  You can do it in Google Docs.  You can we actually use Microsoft Editor and Google Docs which I think is kind of amazing.  But I was working in Word the other day and I noticed when you click on the Editor, it will give you a score and show how what percentage has been checked and sa everything matches up.

 

I noticed right underneath it, it now had — you could filter out your Editor based on your particular writing style and it offered three different writing styles:  Formal, professional or casual.  And when you select one of those, it will highlight different criteria or different errors, I guess.  Is that for example, for formal or professional writing, certain types of vocabulary are much more important than when casual writing is your style.

 

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And so, it will only highlight the things that need to be checked based on the style that you wanted to choose and I thought that was a really great way because we may not be writing our Word document for formal reasons all the time or for casual reasons all the time and being able to check it based on those different criteria.  I think is really an interesting and very nice use that they’re making a Microsoft Editor, so give it a shot sometime.

 

Dennis Kennedy: I think it’s a great little tool in there and in other places where you have something that just gets incrementally better over time.  So, it’s always worth paying attention to what’s happening there.  So, I have a really simple one.  So, affirmations are these little things that you try to say to yourself every day, then they could be a goal or something to encourage yourself and a lot of people.  And so an example would be, “I am a millionaire by the time I reached the age of 40”.  And so you have people who will do these things and they’ll put them on a Post-It note and I put them in their mirror or on their monitor, places they see things every day.  And they might say them out loud but they certainly see them every day.

 

So, I have one now that says “set the bar low, clear it and do it again”.  And that’s something I’ve been trying to think, to try to move things forward because I have this theme for this year of good enough.  It’s good enough.  So, what I’ve done is kind of technologized and I use voice assistant through my Amazon Echo for that.  And so, every morning it says that affirmation for me twice and I hear it every day and I can’t say necessarily, I’ve been getting better at it because I’ve just been doing it a few weeks.  But it’s — if you use affirmations, it’s an interesting experiment just to make it a little bit easier and to kind of incorporate a little technology in the reminders in these tools to help you out.

 

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 on The Legal Talk Network’s page for the show.  If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes on The Legal Talk Network site or in your favorite podcast app.  Don’t forget that if you would like to get in touch with us, we’re available on LinkedIn, we’re available on Twitter or remember, we love to get voicemails for our B-segment.  You can leave us a voicemail at (720) 441-6820.  So, until the next podcast, I’m Tom Mighell.

 

[Music]

 

Dennis Kennedy: And I’m Dennis Kennedy and you’ve been listening to The Kennedy-Mighell Report, a podcast on legal technology within internet focus.  If you liked what you heard today, please rate us an Apple Podcasts and we’ll see you next time for another episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report on the Legal Talk Network.

 

Male: Thanks for listening to The Kennedy-Mighell Report.  Check out the Dennis and Tom’s book, “The Lawyers’ 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.

 

[Music]

 

Conrad: Hey, Gyi, what’s up?

 

Gyi: Just having some lunch, Conrad.

 

Conrad: Hey, Gyi, do you see that billboard out there?

 

Gyi: Oh, you mean that guy out there in the gray suit?

 

Conrad: Yeah, the gray suit guy.

 

Male: Order up.

 

Gyi: There’s all those beautiful rich leather-bound books in the background?

 

Conrad: That is exactly the one.  That’s JD McGuffin at Law, he’ll fight for you!

 

Gyi: I bet you, he has got so many years of experience.

 

Conrad: Like decades and decades.  And I bet, Gyi, I bet he even went to a law school.

 

[Music]

 

Male: Are you a lawyer?  Do you suffer from dull marketing and a lack of positioning in a crowded legal market place?  Seat down with Gyi and Conrad for Lunch Hour Legal Marketing on The Legal Talk Network, available wherever podcasts are found.

 

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