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I won’t bore you with the iPhone’s various virtues, which you can read about all over the place. But I’ll say this, the iPhone is an exceptional, quality tech product, probably the best one I have ever bought.

Now quality, in the modern sense, is not simply the absence of defects. Instead, it reflects the user’s total experience with the product or service, including the costs, the ongoing service, and more. Renting a car from Hertz is a high-quality experience because they usually get your name on the board and you can get your vehicle quickly–it’s the same Ford that’s offered by other car rental companies. The services of your cable company usually are not a quality experience, considering you’re put on hold for twenty minutes in order to schedule an appointment that keeps you waiting for the cable guy for four hours.

So, is it possible to create the iPhone of law? You may respond, “our firm already is the iPhone of law.” Maybe a few of you are. But we recently surveyed in-house counsel. Twice as many said their company delivered higher quality to their customers than their law firms delivered to them. Again, maybe there are a few of you out there, a small segment.

Law traditionally has defined quality as most professional services define it–as a description of the provider. Ask most lawyers what quality is, and the answer will be a combination of a Potter Stewart-esque “we know it when we see it,” plus a detailing of their credentials, level of effort, absence of defects, and their anticipation of low probability events. Lawyers will sometimes talk about quality in terms of outcomes, but usually only when the outcome is good. When the case is lost, the deal goes south, or the derivatives go bust, lawyers distance themselves from responsibility even though that broader success is almost certainly what the client has in mind by quality. Continue reading ‘Is Quality Possible for Law?’

Once upon a time a information Junkie decided to detox! This article reminded me that there has to be a purpose for us to know things we cram into our heads. Most of the time is it because of some perceived utility, which is for not!

Why Are You Reading All That News? | 43 Folders
When I wrote about my method for controlling RSS overload a couple weeks ago, 43 Folders user terceiro left a comment that put me in my place:
You’re feeling stress about your RSS feeds? Talk about self-created problems. The real solution to managing RSS feeds is to stop reading RSS feeds. It’s simple … when a purely optional “convenience” technology is causing stress, it’s time to re-evaluate at a pretty fundamental level.
I read this and thrashed and spluttered like Yosemite Sam for a while before I admitted it: he’s right. It is a self-created problem, and I need to understand what makes me feel the need to consume the equivalent of a Carnegie library every day, instead of just finding a more efficient way to choke it down.
When I read discussions about managing RSS and information overload, I tend to see three justifications for why people “need” to subscribe to 842 news feeds:
I want to stay informed about the world - Meaning, I never want to be one of those idiots on Jay Leno who can’t name the Vice President. I identify with this impulse the most strongly.
I need to for my job - Particularly for IT folk, usually along the lines of, “I need to stay on top of developments in programming/web design/cat herding so I can advance my career.”
I need to for my blog - As in, “I need to follow all these different feeds to find interesting stuff to pass along to my readers.” Everybody wants to be Jason Kottke or John Gruber.
After thinking about my own motivations and admitting that I’ve uttered all three of those at some point as well, my answer to every one would be, “Really?” Are you really going to miss that promotion if you didn’t hear about the JDK update the second it was released? Are you really going to lose readers if you don’t link to that third Boing Boing post? And are you really going to turn into a sheltered, mouth-breathing Epsilon if you happen to skip the news cycle one day?
For me, it’s always been a matter of identity. I like to view myself as an informed, plugged in, man of the digital world, and to be this person, I think I need to see all the latest news, comment on the hot blogs, post things on del.icio.us. That’s all fine and dandy if that’s the person I want to be, but within reason. I should know by now from experiences with other jobs, other vocations, and other vices, that if they start to cause me this kind of concern, something needs to change.
“The world won’t end without you knowing it. Trust me, your mom will call.”
This isn’t to say that we should all chuck our newsreaders and smash our TVs, but that we should, like terceiro said in that comment, keep a little perspective. In terms of those first two reasons above, we don’t give ourselves enough credit for being the smart, inquisitive people that we are. Even if you shut down the RSS reader for a few days, you’ll still know everything you need to know to do your job right. The fact that you possess such a powerful thirst for knowledge will cause you to absorb it passively wherever you go, from snatches of overheard conversations, TV, and radio. It will be enough until you have more time and energy to read it yourself. And the world won’t end without you knowing it. Trust me, your mom will call.