Throw Back Thursday: The Origins of The Necktie and Return of the Bow Tie

“You always feel better about yourself when you work to look your best, which means you project that image to others. They take notice.”

Photo: Fashion-forward FSO Experience Director  Shawn Curwen 

opts for the Bow Tie

Good Morning Folks,

One of our most popular posts provides guidance on proper business attire. Then in a Throw Back Thursday post we showcased the history of court attire going way back to customs of white powdered wigs and black robes… still used in the Supreme Court and some countries (such as you've seen if you've been watching the judge to the left in news clips of the Pistorius trial).

What she wears that also distinguishes Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who remarked in a Katie Couric Yahoo interview today saying when asked if the 82-year old would retire soon, she responded that she's not ready to hang up her Jabot).

Jabot?

Jabots survive in the present as components of various official costumes. The white bibs of judges of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany are officially described as jabots, as are those worn by judges and counsel throughout Australian courts. Jabots are prescribed attire for barristers appearing before the Supreme Court of South Australia.

French magistrate court dress and French academic dress include a jabot, called Rabat. It is usually of plain cotton, except that of academic high officials, which is made of lace.

In the United States Supreme Court, jabots are worn by some female justices, but are not mandatory. Both United States Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor often wear jabots with their judicial robes;Justice Elena Kagan, in contrast, does not.

The Speaker of the British House of Commons also wears a jabot along with a black and gold robe and lace frills.

Jabots continue to be worn as part of the highest formal Scottish evening attire and a former part of Scottish highland dance costumes from the 1930s to the 1970s. They are usually worn with high-necked jackets or doublets (Sheriffmuir or Montrose), often with matching cuffs for both genders and a fly plaid of the same tartan as the kilt, draped over-the-shoulder for men.

But here in the USA,. the necktie still rules. So...

Today we share Jennifer Busch's LinkedIn article "The Origin of the Necktie" -- Jennifer, over to you.

While the tie as we know it is a fairly modern invention, specific neckwear was worn by Romans in a similar way to accentuate and identify the military or in sports today to identify a team or troop. 

Cravat, which has become universal for tie origins are based in the Croatian mercenary’s terminology.  

The Croatian mercenary’s who fought with the French during the 30 Years War wore cloth around their necks both as decoration and to tie their shirts. “Croat” became “cravat” and the origins of the necktie were born. King Louis IV, who wore lace cravats when he was a boy, liked cravats so much he made them mandatory attire at Royal gatherings. Soon enough, the always chic Parisian nobility started wearing them and the cravat craze spread to other parts of Europe. 

The natural progression from the cravat was the bow tie. While the bow tie has evolved over time the early renditions were difficult to knot and easily loosened, making them impractical for men who worked in physically demanding jobs. By the beginning of the 20th century, instead of being tied into a bow, the fabric was knotted to hang down from the neck. This is how the necktie came into fashion. Made from silk, it often had stripes. 

While it was easier to knot than a bow tie, it was hard to keep the fabric straight. 

In 1924 an American tailor, Jesse Langsdorf, tried cutting the fabric at a 45-degree angle across the silk’s grain to see if it would stop the problem of curling at the bottom and give the tie a neater, sleeker look. He also cut the fabric into three sections, two equally long sides and a shorter piece to go around the neck in such as way so that the seams would match. This design also made it easier for men to loosen the tie without it becoming undone. 

What became known as the Langsdorf tie has been the standard for the last 90 years. While patterns, fabrics, lengths and widths have come and gone, the basic cut has not changed. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it and this accessory has seemed to work well for men, and even women, who want to spice up their look.

Speaking of ties, have you seen the 12-year-old 'kidpreneur' who captured the hearts and minds of ABC's Shark Tank panel and has Daymond of FUBU fame as his personal mentor?

This kid named MO has the FSO skip, fire and twinkle for sure and is bound for greatness. 


Moziah Bridges didn't get an investment when he stood before Shark Tank's panel of five angel investors looking for financial help to grow his bow tie business. He got something much more—a mentor.

Daymond John, the founder of the FUBU clothing line. John said that back in 1989, when his company was nothing more than a few hats, he rejected an offer for $10,000 for 40 percent of that company. Ten years later, that equity would have been worth $40 million.

According to his website Mo's Bows, "Mo's Bows is a company I started in Memphis, TN in 2011 when I was just 9 years old. I couldn't find fun and cool bow ties, so one day I decided to use my Granny's scrap fabric to make and sell my own. I like to wear bow ties because they make me look good and feel good. Designing a colorful bow tie is just part of my vision to make the world a fun and happier place." Love it!

Whether MO achieves his goal of bringing back the bow-tie remains to be seen. But some of our most fashionable leaders like Shawn Curwen have already embraced it. As long as I don't have to wear a powered wig and gown to call on a law firm (lol), I'm good with diversity in dress.

And remember even those who are not expected to wear a suit and tie everyday shouldn't forgo all style and fashion sensibility. 

Here are LinkUPs that will help you dress for success:

What IS Business Casual?

3 Tips For Expressing Your Style And Enhancing Your Personal Brand

What You Wear to the Office Still Matters

Have fun kids and you MUST.. ENJOY THE RIDE... we are a blessed and excited group!

Have a GREAT day as I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

ThrowBack Thursday: Napster, MySpace and What We Thought Was Progress and Way Cool in 1999

"Once proud industry leaders like Blackberry, Kodak, Tower Records, MySpace, Sears and Napster who should have been innovating their way towards eliminating the need for iPhones, iPhoto, iTunes, Amazon and Apple, were asleep at the switch and let new upstarts with younger more passionate people and an open minded strategy embrace possibility thinking and eat their lunches."

Good Morning Folks,

They say in this digital generation every ten years of progress is faster and better than the total output of the last hundred years before it.

Today some cases in point.

Hard to believe the young workers already advancing in their careers with us were glued to sites like MySpace and Napster while their parents back in the office could barely open an APP let alone think of themselves carrying iPhones with albums of family pictures and racks of CDs at their finger tips 15 years into the future.

Back then, only the top executives were given Blackberry's and everyone thought "WOW"-- but now they are antiques. 

Well, all that's changed for the better. But to give you your Thursday trip down memory lane I call your attention to this Mashable feature "20 Things Other Than Napster Released in 1999"....

Napster was born on June 1, 1999, in Shawn Fanning's Northeastern University dorm room, and music was forever revolutionized. 

The service pioneered peer-to-peer file sharing, meaning it allowed users to transfer files directly between each other. Prior to Napster, downloading music off the Internet was unreliable. 

But two years later, the Record Industry Association of America filed lawsuits against Napster users who illegally downloaded music and the service was shut down. Napster may be gone, but its legacy will live on. 

Music wasn't the only thing set free 15 years ago. Take a trip with us down memory lane and relive the final year of an innovative century.

Browse the gallery to see 20 Things Other Than Napster Released in 1999 

Technology changes fast and the Internet never stops or pauses for stragglers to catch up. Once proud industry leaders like Blackberry, Kodak, Tower Records, MySpace, Sears and Napster who should have been innovating their way towards eliminating the need for iPhones, iPhoto, iTunes, Amazon and iTunes, were asleep at the switch and let new upstarts with younger more passionate people and an open minded strategy team who embraced possibility thinking, eat their lunches.

That won't happen here. I have never taken my eye off what drives a successful company – continued innovations, changing with the times and having the ability to be flexible, and retaining great talent. FSO is driven by passionate people and the value they create. They are passionate about their work. Their passion and enthusiasm are the fuel that ignites our success.

We enjoy what we do, believe in what we do, and deliver to you a passion that just cannot be duplicated by others in our industry.

We excel at attracting and retaining inspired and passionate people with performance-based rewards and opportunities for advancement. We offer employees the opportunity to work with industry leaders, the latest and greatest technology, and some of the most forward–thinking customers in the world. FSO provides an environment that rewards innovation, is rich in resources and respects the incredibly talented team we’ve built over the last three years.

No other organization provides the level of encouragement and motivation that FSO does and we continue to remain at the top of our industry for recognizing and rewarding our dedicated staff. We believe that our motivated and happy staff, with that twinkle in the eye, skip in the step and  fire in the belly will go the extra mile when it comes to providing the Service Extraordinaire that we promise deliver to each and every one of our clients.

The result of this philosophy is happy customers, workers who can see meaning in their contributions and soaring profits for those clients who place their trust in us.

Thanks to Mashable and Pinterest (for the image) and to you for listening.''

If know of someone who would enjoy working for or with FSO please do not keep us a secret.

Have a GREAT day

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

Learn more about what DIFFERENTIATES FSO here

Throw Back Thursday: Remember A Function Called "The Law Library"?

Photo: OfficeMuseum.com

"A spirited debate about the value of law-firm librarians in an age when much information is available online. "I'd hire a law librarian … if I could afford one," said one commenter. "My sixteen-year-old daughter maintains my library," wrote another."

Good Morning Folks,

Of course you remember the law library because you still have one (at least for now). 

Legal business is on a journey to being much more information-led than it has ever been. But the libraries of most law firms aren't much different than the one in the above photo that was snapped in 1898 at Buchanan & Lawyer, Albany, NY, a law firm formed in 1897 by  Charles Jay Buchanan and George Lawyer (a lawyer whose last name is lawyer, yes you read that right).

Now more than a century later law firm libraries are just beginning to change face. Perhaps driven by a century's worth of increase in the cost of AAA prime downtown space firms are leasing to house floors of printed archives that are now retrievable online.

As a result, law firms have (re)imagined changes that truly have transformed the way they operate.

There was an interesting question asked on Twitter recently by Patrick DiDomenico (apparently preparing for an ITLA presentation on the topic.) At first blush, it seemed to be phrased a bit on the negative side, but it really is something that those of us in law firm libraries do need to ask from time to time. "Tell me what's wrong with law firm libraries today." 

Greg Lambert at 3 Geeks and a Law blog addressed the question: "This is more about addressing what is wrong, while also addressing what is right in law firm libraries today. After batting the question around with some of my law library and law firm administrative colleagues, we thought that this question could be asked of any of the law firm administrative departments. The Library and the Knowledge Management (KM) groups are probably the most venerable to this issue, but all departments, including IT, Marketing, Accounting, Human Resources, Records, and others are under constant scrutiny from law firm leadership to prove our worth to the firm. If we aren't challenged, we become complacent. If we come complacent, we fail to see those changes we need to make until it is too late." Lambert continues:

We are still debating formats within the library and keeping outdated formats in support of a minority of attorneys (example: formats now include print, e-books, online, databases, and on-demand… each with its own individual cost and demands from individuals within the firm.)

• Law Firms have not decided how to bring the law library into the modern day structure of a 21st Century firm
• The primary demands on librarians are to keep costs low, client costs low, and to watch out for the firm’s best interest
• Librarians are not given the final word on what to buy and what to keep (that causes problems with the previous point)
• Librarians tend to be the first to feel the cuts when times are bad, and last to feel the benefits when times are good

Lambert opines on the bright side of the law library:

• Librarians are constantly looking out for the best interest of the firm
• Librarians have kept very good control on overall costs (most libraries are less than 2% of revenue, some are less than 1%)
• Librarians keep costs down to the client (usually by assisting attorneys that forget about those costs until they see it on the bill and have to write it off.)
• Librarians are constantly looking for less expensive, or better resources that fit the needs of the firm’s practices.
• Librarians are extremely good at risk analysis for the firm and help save the firm from itself (costs, copyright, access, correct resources, etc.)
• Librarians share their experiences with each other. Most librarians do not have to trail blaze into a new product or mission or strategy, as we can stand on the shoulders of others that have tested the waters before and are willing to share those experiences (without exposing anything confidential, of course.)

Law librarians are "information and research professionals in an era when finding essential information is more important than ever," according to a recent ABAJournal.com article written by Patrick Lamb, '82, founder of the Valorem Law Group in Chicago. "Associates, who do most of the research in law firms, are not research or information professionals. … When you live in a value-fee world, someone who finds the right information efficiently is really valuable."

The article prompted a spirited debate about the value of law-firm librarians in an age when much information is available online. "I'd hire a law librarian … if I could afford one," said one commenter. "My sixteen-year-old daughter maintains my library," wrote another.

Joyce Manna Janto, president of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and deputy director of the University of Richmond School of Law Library, points out that the value of lawfirm librarians shouldn't be in doubt.

As a young associate at Harness, Dickey & Pierce, Jennifer Selby leveraged her understanding of the value of the firm's librarian to get ahead in her job.

"At HDP, which was a medium-sized patent firm then, there was one librarian and no support staff," recalls Selby, now a senior associate librarian at Michigan Law. "What some of the summer associates quickly learned (and I also took advantage of as a young associate) was that the librarian was a treasure trove of helpful information. Many times, she helped me craft effective searches for expensive online databases—like Lexis or Westlaw—saving me from looking bad by racking up too much in online searching costs."

The firm's librarian also helped Selby navigate the paper collection and "pointed me in the direction of a more obscure treatise, journal series, or looseleaf service that helped me find the answer to an obscure legal question."

Selby knows, though, that not all associates, or even partners, at firms are willing to go to the firm librarian for assistance. "I knew that others in my same position were not availing themselves of her expertise, either out of ignorance or really arrogance."

The new norm in law is creating new conditions and trends in law libraries. One is the importance of people – or more specifically, people with the right skills and attitude to add value to the firm. For those employees, law firms are giving new importance to their talent acquisition and retention strategies.

New conditions and trends in library services:

• Reduced budgets and lower cost recovery.
• Significant increase in resources expense.
• Subscription cancellations that once seemed implausible.
• Rebalancing of collection with greater focus on reducing content duplication.
• More centralization of services.
• Continued movement toward virtual libraries.
• Increase in outsourcing.
• New conditions and trends for law librarians—more than legal research:
• Knowledge Management (KM) is becoming increasingly important as firms look to leverage skills and capture learnings that can be applied to other situations.
• Competitive Intelligence (CI) is a hot area as demand for legal services remains relatively flat, increasing competitive pressure on law firms.
• Along with CI, librarians are being asked to conduct market research and provide other support to the firm’s marketing and business development staff.

The trends and traits mentioned above align with the priorities of most law firms today:

• Greater emphasis on marketing, with more effective use of data and insights gleaned from market research and Competitive Intelligence research and analysis.
• Research training and coaching for lawyers to enable them to do their own research as needed, when needed.
• Eliminating more print and moving more information online, in the cloud, to enable virtual access and availability.
• Expanding Knowledge Management throughout the firm, rather than isolated within offices or practice areas.

So, what's wrong with today's law firm libraries? It's a question you have to answer and supplement with what's right. If you don't, someone else will come in and answer it for you, and they will not be nearly as aggressive on defending what the law firm libraries are doing well.

Thanks to Patrick for asking the question; to Greg Lambert for answering it, as well as to Lac-Group, Patrick Lamb (ABA Journal), and to the University of Michigan Law School for their help in preparing this post— and most importantly to you, for listening.

These are sure to be a hot topics next week at the Association of Legal Administrator's (ALA) annual Conference and Expo, (May 19th - 22nd Toronto). To learn more about how FSO (re)imagines the ways Legal Services are delivered, visit booths 631 & 633 on the ALA Expo Floor.

Have a GREAT Day and Love Life!

 

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

ABOUT FSO:

• The fastest growing and most successful national onsite outsourcing in the U.S. focused on 1) improving services, 2) reducing costs, and 3) giving employees  an opportunity to grow.
• We outsource functions like: Mail, Copy, Reception, Switchboard, Office Services, Records, Messenger, IT, Concierge, Front & Back Office and much more.
• 1600+ employees, operating in 60+ cities, 225+ operational sites, 98% employee retention & 100% client retention.
• Ranked #24 in Crain’s magazine’s fast 50 and listed to the Inc 5000 list two years in a row.
• We (re)imagine the ways businesses are run.

VIDEO:

Brief "corporate portrait" video shows who we are and what we can do for you HERE

Throw Back Thursday: Once Upon A Time You Couldn't Do Business Without "White-Out" Correction Fluid

White-out reminds me of that esurance commercial— Beatrice: Instead of mailing everyone my vacation photos, I'm saving a ton of time by posting them to my wall. Friend replies... That's not how this works. That’s not how any of this works!

Good Morning Folks,

A blogger advises newly hired law firm associates...

On your first day at a law firm, you will…
…train with an 18-year-old Harvard freshman who somehow manages to be more put together looking than you are.
…embarass yourself trying to use the unnecessarily complicated “coffee system.“
… go to a two-hour, three-course lunch, at the end of which the associate you ate with will say, with genuine pleased surprise, “hey! only $90 for lunch! not bad!”
…spend two solid hours being trained on the use of Outlook. (Who knew email was so complicated?)
…learn that all summer associates are going to be attending next week’s Beyonce concert in a luxury box, courtesy of the firm.  and...
…walk into your newly-issued office and discover that it is stocked chock full of office supplies, including a glue stick, an “envelope moistening wand”, White Out (now available in legal pad yellow! who knew!), and brand-new, still in their packaging tape dispenser, stapler, and scissors. (The teacher in me nearly swooned.) 

Yes, even in a computer age where word processing programs with spell check have made error correction automatic, White-Out, as it is known, is still used widely.

Directs one law firm to its clients:

When you deliver documents to our office, it helps if you can do the following: 

We rarely need originals.  Please deliver clear copies unless we specifically request the original. 

We want to protect you from identity fraud. Many bank and credit card statements, tax returns, and other documents have your social security number or account number on every page.  Please redact (use White Out) all but the last 4 numbers of any account numbers."

Then again, this is one area of the law where enthusiastic use of White-Out and CIA-grade black highlighters is encouraged.

According to Wikipedia: "White-Out "correction fluid" as it is known generically, is an opaque, white fluid applied to paper to mask errors in text. Once dried, it can be written over. It is typically packaged in small bottles, and the lid has an attached brush (or a triangular piece of foam) which dips into the bottle. The brush is used to apply the fluid onto the paper.

Before the invention of word processors, correction fluid greatly facilitated the production of typewritten documents.

One of the first forms of correction fluid was invented in 1951 by the secretary Bette Nesmith Graham, founder of Liquid Paper.

The best known brand of correction fluid,Wite-Out dates to 1966, when George Kloosterhouse, an insurance-company clerk, sought to address a problem he observed in correction fluid available at the time: a tendency to smudge ink on photostatic copies when it was applied. Kloosterhouse enlisted the help of his associate Edwin Johanknecht, a basement waterproofer who experimented with chemicals, and together they developed their own correction fluid, introduced as "Wite-Out WO-1 Erasing Liquid".

In 1971, they incorporated as Wite-Out Products, Inc. The trademark "Wite-Out" was registered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on February 5, 1974. (The application listed the date of "first use in commerce" as January 27, 1966.)

Early forms of Wite-Out sold through 1981 were water-based and hence water-soluble. While this allowed simple cleaning, it also had the problem of long drying times. The formula also did not work well on non-photostatic media such as typewritten copy.

The company was bought in 1981 by Archibald Douglas. Douglas, as chairman, led the company toward solvent-based formulas with faster drying times. Three different formulas were created, each optimized for different media. New problems arose: a separate bottle of thinner was required, and the solvent used was known to contribute to ozone depletion. The company addressed these problems in July 1990 with the introduction of a reformulated "For Everything" correction fluid.

In June 1992, Wite-Out Products was bought by the BIC Corporation. BIC released a number of new products under its newly acquired brand, including a Wite-Out ballpoint pen (November 1996) and dry correction tape (1998)."

Today, corporate clients have shifted priorities for law firms. Tired of high hourly rates and a no-bid mentality, corporations are demanding changes in the way law firms bill their clients. And the law firms are responding. There's no room for errors let alone non-billable time spent correcting errors. 

Law firms also are facing the same forces that have driven other industries to become leaner and meaner, namely globalization and technology. Law firms today must compete across borders for business while technologies, such as Internet search engines and online law libraries, call into question the need for legal associates and researchers poring over hard-cover law books and documents.

Once upon a time White-Out was a major innovation and a staple of the legal profession. But today it's going to take more than White-Out to "Wipe Out" competition.

Back office business practices have to change. And though law firms have been slow to change, I think we’re going to see even more innovations in the future. Like outsourcing.

As a result, many law firms are adopting new business models and doing what once seemed almost unthinkable in the industry: cutting hourly rates, bidding for corporate work against rival firms, capping prices, and keeping a sharp focus on the corporate client’s bottom line. In turn, the firms are cutting their own costs in a drive to become more efficient, using fewer attorneys on cases, and moving back-office operations to lower cost,more efficient processes like outsourcing.

I launched FSO with a vision, a dream of changing the outsourcing business in a way that was never done before. At FSO we are driving change and ushering law firms into the 21st Century and beyond. In a sense we are "Whiting Out" the past and delivering the future.

If you’d like to explore how FSO can bring your firm into the digital age, contact me personally at 212-204-1193.

With gratitude to Wikipedia and the Boston Globe for their insights that contributed to this post, and most of all to you for listening.

Have a fabulous, sunny, productive day filled with love and inspiration.  

Hugs all around.

 

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

ABOUT FSO:

• The fastest growing and most successful national onsite outsourcing in the U.S. focused on 1) improving services, 2) reducing costs, and 3) giving employees  an opportunity to grow.
• We outsource functions like: Mail, Copy, Reception, Switchboard, Office Services, Records, Messenger, IT, Concierge, Front & Back Office and much more.
• 1600+ employees, operating in 60+ cities, 225+ operational sites, 98% employee retention & 100% client retention.
• Ranked #24 in Crain’s magazine’s fast 50 and listed to the Inc 5000 list two years in a row.
• We (re)imagine the ways businesses are run.

VIDEO:

Brief "corporate portrait" video shows who we are and what we can do for you HERE

ThrowBack Thursday: "Switching It Up" For Four Generations Working Alongside One Another

“In the legal profession, we are always trying to find ways to be more efficient and as competitive as possible in the market,” said LaFramboise. “Keeping up with developing technology and infusing it in your firm is absolutely essential to accomplishing that.”

Good Morning Folks,,

Telecommunications was always and still is the backbone of any service business.

Smartphones, iPads, BlackBerries, Facebook, LinkedIn—they’re revolutionizing the practice of law. But not everyone has cottoned to this technology. There is a technology generation gap, and bridging it requires recognizing and respecting how attorneys young and old use technology to do their jobs.

Ted Schwartz just got an iPhone, he tells Matthew Malamud for the American Association for Justice.

“It’s terrific!” the 66-year-old attorney from Philadelphia exclaimed, ticking off all the ways he uses it: “as a phone, obviously, but also to send and receive e-mails, and for driving directions.” His voice conveys the astonishment of someone who remembers when making a mobile phone call meant stepping into a booth to use a pay phone."

Communications technology has changed since the days when Schwartz clerked in a law office during law school in 1966. Back then, law offices still had rooms with telephone switchboards where operators manually connected calls by switching out and plugging in numerous wires.

According to WikiPedia, "A telephone switchboard is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network or in enterprises to interconnect circuits of telephones to establish telephone calls between the subscribers or users, or between other exchanges. The switchboard was an essential component of a manual telephone exchange, and was operated by one or more persons, called operators who either used electrical cords or switches to establish the connections.

The electromechanical automatic telephone exchange, invented by Almon Strowger in 1888, gradually replaced manual switchboards in central telephone exchanges starting in 1919 when the Bell System adopted automatic switching, but many manual branch exchanges remained operational during the last half of the 20th century in offices, hotels, or other enterprises. Later electronic devices and computer technology gave the operator access to an abundance of features. In modern businesses, a private branch exchange (PBX) often has an attendant console for the operator, or an auto-attendant, which bypasses the operator entirely.

The first telephones in the 1870s were rented in pairs which were limited to conversation between those two instruments. The use of a central exchange was soon found to be even more advantageous than in telegraphy. In January 1878 the Boston Telephone Dispatch company had started hiring boys as telephone operators. Boys had been very successful as telegraphy operators, but their attitude (lack of patience) and behaviour (pranks and cursing) was unacceptable for live phone contact,[1] so the company began hiring women operators instead. Thus, on September 1, 1878, Boston Telephone Dispatch hired Emma Nutt as the first woman operator. Small towns typically had the switchboard installed in the operator's home so that he or she could answer calls on a 24 hour basis. In 1894, New England Telephone and Telegraph Company installed the first battery-operated switchboard on January 9 in Lexington, Massachusetts."

“I remember clerking one day,” Schwartz said, “and there was no one to operate the switchboard so they asked me to be the telephone operator. I, of course, had all of three minutes of training on this thing. The lawyers were on the phone—some were talking with clients in Hong Kong and California. You can imagine what happened. I pulled the plugs and I had the client in Hong Kong talking to the client in California while the lawyers in one office were talking to the lawyers down the hall. They came out of their offices screaming.”

Today’s attorneys don’t have to rely on a switchboard, and they aren’t tethered to an office. They have cell phones, smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptops, and tablet computers. They e-mail, instant message, text message, blog, tweet, and update their Facebook pages.

In law firms’ attempts to go paperless, they’re relying more on devices like the iPad, which can be used in the office and the courtroom. They’re also moving into cloud computing, which requires less information technology infrastructure and frees up office space by moving data storage to Internet-based servers. These technologies also enable lawyers to work from anywhere, not just the office, because they can access files via the Internet.

But not everyone feels the same way about the technology at his or her disposal. A generational conflict is at play, and technology is at the center of the fray.

Rather than making things easier, technology sometimes frustrates communication between legal professionals young and old. Instead of being a communication conduit, tools like e-mail and text messages can be an impediment, which is why the different generations need to constantly work to resolve their differences.

For the first time, four generations are working alongside one another. The WWII Generation (or Silent Generation), born before 1945, comprises five percent of today’s workforce. Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, make up the largest share of the workforce at 38 percent. Generation Xers, born between 1965 and 1980, are 32 percent, and Generation Yers (or Millennials), born between 1980 and 2000, are 25 percent.

Members of each generation tend to share common perspectives on workplace issues, including communication,1 and each generation has divergent attitudes toward technology in the workplace. A member of the WWII Generation, for example, may prefer to correspond by memo, letter, or personal note, while a Baby Boomer is more apt to reach out by telephone or personal interaction. Generation Xers and Yers are most likely to send coworkers voicemails, e-mails, instant messages, or text messages.2 These two groups rely heavily on social networking tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, though mostly in their personal lives.

Take Schwartz, for example. His iPhone is the first mobile device he’s owned that is capable of sending and receiving work e-mail. His colleagues, including his Generation X colleague Pamela Lee, had been prodding him to get one for some time. “I can’t live without my iPhone!” Lee said, perplexed by how she ever managed without a smartphone. “Technology has made things easier.”

Schwartz, on the other hand, is a little less enthusiastic. “It is a convenience, I will tell you that, and it keeps me in touch. But it is a curse because it keeps me in touch. Being connected 24/7 has its drawbacks.”

He is a typical Baby Boomer. They weren’t born into a digital world and aren’t as comfortable with today’s gadgetry.3 Boomers tend not to consider ubiquitous technology-related products and services like Facebook.

However, Generation Y member Drew LaFramboise, who is only as old as the Apple Macintosh computer, thinks of today’s technology as an extension of himself. “I just don’t function as well without it,” said the new attorney from Columbus, Ohio.

Natasha Patel, a career adviser with Columbia University Law School, sees a gap between older partners and younger associates when it comes to knowing when to use electronic communication.

“You’ve got a generation that communicates everything online and a generation that doesn’t rely on electronic communication as its sole method to communicate,” said Patel. If associates want to advance, they’ll need to “meet the partners at their level,” she advises young lawyers. This means forging relationships the old-fashioned way, by regularly meeting with partners and speaking to them in person when issues arise, not just shooting off an e-mail, according to Patel.

Patel also sees a problem with young associates feeling isolated in the work environment, which may be attributable in part to electronic communication. This isolation in turn affects retention. “They are behind a computer in their offices most of the day. And though e-mail is the easiest mode of communication, they should feel comfortable enough to go knock on the partner’s door and strike up a conversation,” she said.

Generation X member Sonia Chaisson of Los Angeles said she is more likely to pick up the phone to speak with an older colleague than to send an e-mail or a text. She also said she sometimes forgets that older people aren’t as hip to the various language shortcuts that younger people use in e-mail and text messages, such as TTYL (talk to you later) or BTW (by the way). “I have to remind myself to write everything out in full sentences when I’m communicating to older adults,” she said.

Betty Barrett, an associate professor of sociotechnical systems with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, agrees with Patel. “I advise my students to be aware of the fact that they are working in a world where the authority figures have different expectations and different sets of behavior patterns,” she said.

But that is not to say Baby Boomers are off the hook. Barrett thinks that each generation needs to recognize and respect that there are differences among them. Baby Boomers need to understand that younger generations think of mobile communications technology as an extension of who they are and what they do; multitasking is second nature to them, Barrett contended.

“I’m of an older generation that was brought up to pay attention to whoever was speaking to you and that a sign of respect was putting your work down when being spoken to,” she said. “Young people increasingly don’t have those values, and that is where we’re seeing conflict.”

Barrett spoke of a manager who hired several young workers. “They were on their cell phones all the time, this manager told me,” she recounted. “He wanted to know how bad it would be to take away the use of their cell phones during the workday.” She warned against it. “It’s something they’ve grown up with. They’re going to panic—they’re going to have a physical reaction to not having that cell phone. Students are coming out of college today with their phones in their hands all the time—it’s part of them.”

Baby Boomers also should recognize that younger generations expect feedback instantaneously. “I will get frustrated if I e-mail someone and they don’t get back to me right away,” Lee admitted.

Just because older generations are less likely to depend on technology the way younger generations do doesn’t mean they eschew technology altogether. Let’s dispense with a stereotype: Most veteran legal professionals today know how to use a computer. Yes, they may still remember the days of typewriters and mimeographs, but they’ve kept up with the changing technology. Still, there is a clear generation gap when it comes to adopting and using new technology and applications.4

For example, although just two-fifths of all legal professionals say they use mobile devices in the courtroom, almost three-quarters of Generation Yers do.5 About half of Generation Xers and just 23 percent of Baby Boomers use mobile devices in the courtroom.

The generations also diverge in their attitudes toward using technology. Compare Schwartz and LaFramboise: Schwartz sees technology as helpful, while LaFramboise sees it as something that’s necessary.

“In the legal profession, we are always trying to find ways to be more efficient and as competitive as possible in the market,” said LaFramboise. “Keeping up with developing technology and infusing it in your firm is absolutely essential to accomplishing that.”

While two-thirds of Baby Boomers think it’s impolite or distracting to use a laptop or PDA during a meeting, just 57 percent of Generation Yers think it’s impolite and even fewer (49 percent) think it’s distracting.

Not surprisingly, the percentage of adults who use electronic tools, such as laptop computers and iPads, trails off with age. For example, 70 percent of Generation Yers own a laptop, while just 46 percent of Baby Boomers do.

Whereas present-day law firms are confronting technology and social media, the law firms of the future will have to confront this new dynamic.

“Young people in many ways, especially the very young,” Barrett said, “are developing earlier and earlier this capability to multitask and interact in an electronic environment, and that’s changing how they are. But that evolutionary change is going to be much slower than the change in technology, so that imbalance is going to always cause some serious dynamics in how the generations perceive each other and their interaction with technology.”

As telephone exchanges converted to automatic (dial) service, switchboards continued to serve specialized purposes. Before the advent of direct-dialed long distance calls, a subscriber would need to contact the long-distance operator in order to place a toll call. In large cities, there was often a special number, such as 112, which would ring the long-distance operator directly. Elsewhere, the subscriber would ask the local operator to ring the long-distance operator.

The long distance operator would record the name and city of the person to be called, and the operator would advise the calling party to hang up and wait for the call to be completed. Each toll center had only a limited number of trunks to distant cities, and if those circuits were busy, the operator would try alternate routings through intermediate cities. The operator would plug into a trunk for the destination city, and the inward operator would answer. The inward operator would obtain the number from the local information operator, and ring the call. Once the called party answered, the originating operator would advise him or her to stand by for the calling party, whom she'd then ring back, and record the starting time, once the conversation began.

While many have written-off the old-fashioned service and personal attention you'd once expect from the phone company and other service providers in favor of voice -automation and voice mail loops ,at FSO we opt for the way it use to be. That's why we answer your calls personallywith active involvement of the most tenured outsourcing leadership team in the business: Myself (Founder, Chief Happiness Officer, & Owner) and Jim Caton (President, Chief Chaos, & Owner) are “hands on” leaders who are intimate with every operation and who remain so for the life of the contract.

Thanks to WikiPedia, The American Association for Justice for helping us prepare this story, and to you for supporting FSO. Matthew Malamud is an associate editor of Trial. He can be reached at matthew.malamud@justice.org.

If know of someone who would enjoy working for or with FSO please do not keep us a secret.

Have a GREAT day

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

Learn more about what DIFFERENTIATES FSO here

Notes:
AARP, Leading a Multigenerational Workforce (2007), assets.aarp.org/www.aarp.org_/cs/misc/leading_a_multigenerational_workforce.pdf.
Id.
Sara J. Czaja et al., Factors Predicting the Use of Technology: Findings from the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement, 21 Psychol. and Aging, 333 (2006).
LexisNexis, LexisNexis Technology Gap Survey (2008), www.lexisnexis.com/media/pdfs/LexisNexis-Technology-Gap-Survey-4-09.pdf.
Id.
Pew Research Center, Generations and Their Gadgets (Feb. 3, 2011), www.pewinternet.org/reports/2011/generations-and-gadgets.aspx. The authors separated younger Baby Boomers, age 47–56, from older Baby Boomers, age 57–65; the 46 percent of Baby Boomers who own a laptop is an average of the two segments’ proportions.
Pew Research Center, 65% of Online Adults Use Social Networking Sites (Aug. 26, 2011), http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/2011/generations-and-gadgets.aspx.
Id.

Throw Back Thursday: In 1961 This Invention Revolutionized Business Documents For Lawyers and Enterprises Everywhere

"By 1986, more than 13 million Selectric typewriters had been sold. For more than 25 years, the Selectric was the typewriter found on most office desks. Leaving today 25 years of paper records ripe for retention innovations."

Good Morning Folks,


It was known as The 'Selectric" typewriter. Members of the ALA remember it. It was revolutionary in its day having memory so you didn't have to retype or use carbon paper (covered here before). 

For me as a young salesperson, it meant not having to wait in line for weeks with 20 other sales folks for getting the basically same proposal template output one at a time. Believe it or not sometimes it took a month to get a proposal. You can only compare the frustration to that of getting a trial or hearing date and all the postponements due to emergencies that come up, absences, few backup employees trained on the technology.

We've come so far from then, yet with the pace of invention, the possibilities of technology and employment and economic models changing all around us, looking back ten years from now on today, one can not phantom what business will become. 

That's why FSO is always looking out to your future. So as I bring you this snippet of history from IBM's 100 Centennial and historical record, our (re)IMAGINE teams are hard at work conceiving of business plans will make a positive and powerful impact on our clients' bottom lines, as well as their employees' careers and lives.

By making the golf ball interchangeable, the Selectric enabled different fonts,
including italics, scientific notation and other languages, to be swapped in

==> Black and white of the Selectric typewriter

.

The Selectric typewriter, launched in 1961, was an overnight hit. “Sales of [the Selectric] in the first 30 days exceeded the forecast for six months. We figured in our branch office that we’d sell 50 or 60 and sold 500 to 600,” IBM salesman John Vinlove told USA Today in 1986 for a story about the typewriter’s 25th anniversary. 




The manufacturing facility expected to make 20,000 Selectric typewriters in its first year. By the end of 1961, they had orders for 80,000. And by 1986, more than 13 million Selectric typewriters had been sold. For more than 25 years, the Selectric was the typewriter found on most office desks.

With 2800 parts, many designed from scratch, the Selectric was a radical departure even for IBM, which had been in the typewriter business since the 1930s and was already a market leader. It took seven years to work out the manufacturing and design challenges before the first Selectric was ready for sale.

At the physical heart of the Selectric typewriter’s innovation was a golf-ball-shaped type head that replaced the conventional typewriter’s basket of type bars. The design eliminated the bane of rapid typing: jammed type bars. And with no bars to jam, typists’ speed and productivity soared.

The golf ball typing element was designed by an engineering team led by Horace “Bud” Beattie. The team members, according to a 1961 advertisement for the Selectric, “began their search by forgetting the past fifty years of typewriter design.” The first type head design had been shaped more like a mushroom, but under Beattie’s direction, IBM engineer John Hickerson revised the type head toward its ultimate spherical configuration.

One other innovation in the design—a changeable typeface—was borrowed from a turn-of-the-century model, the Blickensderfer typewriter. Although it is not documented, it is believed that the Selectric name was inspired by adding this changeable typeface selection to an electric typewriter. By making the golf ball interchangeable, the Selectric enabled different fonts, including italics, scientific notation and other languages, to be swapped in. With the addition in 1964 of a magnetic tape system for storing characters, the Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter (MT/ST) model became the first, albeit analog, word-processor device.

The aesthetic design of the Selectric was the responsibility of Eliot Noyes, an architect and industrial designer who served as consulting design director to IBM for 21 years. The elegant, curvaceous form he created followed the Selectric typewriter’s distinctive function: the golf ball, which moved across the page, eliminated the traditional carriage return. That enabled the Selectric to operate in a smaller footprint and opened up possibilities for a new profile. For the Selectric, Noyes drew on some of the sculptural qualities of Olivetti typewriters in Italy. The result was a patented, timeless shape, and a high-water mark for IBM’s industrial design and product innovation. “A writer’s machine if ever there was one,” noted Jane Smiley in Writers on Writing, Vol. II.

Less well-known is the Selectric typewriter’s role as one of the first computer terminals. While personal computers, notebook computers and word processing software may have relegated the paper-based typewriter to twentieth-century artifact, the Selectric was the basis for the keyboard input on the revolutionary IBM System/360. A modified version of the Selectric, dubbed the IBM 2741 Terminal, was adapted to plug into the System/360, and enabled a wider range of engineers and researchers to begin talking to and interacting with their computers.

Yet to IBM computer scientist Bob Bemer, the Selectric represented “one of the biggest professional failures of my life.” Bemer had pioneered the creation of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, or ASCII, which still defines the alphabet for computers. When prototypes of the Selectric were already being manufactured at IBM’s typewriter plant in Lexington, Kentucky, Bemer reviewed the Selectric typewriter’s specifications. To him, the Selectric would make a natural computer keyboard. He argued that the type ball should be designed to carry 64 characters required for ASCII, rather than the typewriter standard 44. That would make it relatively easy to convert the Selectric for computer input. The response, as Bemer remembers it, was dismissive. As a result, the Selectric never spoke ASCII, instead employing a unique code based on the tilt and rotate commands to the golf ball. While Bemer viewed this as his failure, engineers continued to rig Selectric typewriters to function as the first generation of computer keyboards and input devices.

In 1971, the Selectric II was released, with sharper corners and squarer lines, as well as new features such as the ability to change “pitch” from 10 to 12 characters per inch and, starting in 1973, a ribbon to correct mistakes. The final model, the Selectric III, was sold in the 1980s with more advanced word processing capabilities and a 96-character printing element. But as personal computers and daisy-wheel printers began to dominate, the Selectric brand was retired in 1986.

For those who remember IBM Selectric typing and retyping and previously making "carbon copies" in law firms (and other enterprises too) , it's not a pleasant memory. So while we like to throw back on Thursday, think of it as one of the main reasons everyone is whistling while they work today.

The end of the Selectric ushered in decades of productivity and progress in law firms that their retirees could never have imagined.

On the other hand, with pressure on law firms to cut costs, an obvious starting point is in that expensive real estate you are using to store what may include "carbon copies" that you haven’t looked at in 50 years, nor ever will.

Over time — decades in many cases — the volume of retained records grows, as does the cost of storing them. But by (re)IMAGINING the records retention process, and with a thoughtful policy to change it, law firms (and other enterprises too) who have been pressured to cut costs can find help from professionals like FSO who will help you solve it. 

Have a GREAT Day. Love Life.

I'll be a seeing you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

==> Going Paperless 
We recently completed the largest and most successful document conversion in the New York area, migrating over 35 million pages to electronic format. Savings come not just from eliminating each $900 lateral file, but also from not buying or leasing Class A office space to store paper, and reducing the costs of utilities, equipment maintenance and consumables associated with paper copies.

Can your incumbent do this?