They are also one of the five street safety charities participating in GJEL’s Winter Charity Contest (Vote here!). We’ll be interviewing someone from each organization this week, starting yesterday with MADD California Executive Director Gary McDonald.

To learn more about TransForm, we chatted with Nora Cody, who runs the Safe Routes to School program, about her work with Oakland and Alameda county schools, TransForm’s vision of transportation reform and how to get kids walking to school, even in the winter months.

GJEL: Tell us a bit about your Safe Routes to School program, which helps schools and families develop safe ways for kids to bike and walk to school.

TRANSFORM: Well Safe routes now biggest program. We’re in all of Alameda county serving 80 schools. Every school signed up for a Walk to School Day. We’re trying to promote walking school buses (one parent walks many kids to and from school, sort of a walking carpool).

We just got some great news that Alameda county received more than 2 mil from federal Safe Routes to School grants to improve street safety. Every year or two there are opportunities for cities and counties to compete for infrastructure and non-infrastructure funding. We have worked closely with the city and county in applying for those grants and this time they did really well.

GJEL: So what does this mean for the community?

TRANSFORM: There’s a total of 5 projects in alameda county that got funded, including one project specifically for low income schools in East and West Oakland, which will fund student traffic safety patrol to train fourth and fifth graders to help the walking safety program.

GJEL: I imagine it’s a little trickier getting people excited about walking in the winter

TRANSFORM: We try to compensate by promoting winter appropriate actions. We have themes every month so in winter it’s “Be visible, Be seen.” You know, wear your bright colors. So we have an event where the Walk to School Day theme is to wear really light and bright colors, or reflective clothing, so you can be seen on the walk home. We also have a canned food drive in December and January, kids bring a can of food on the walk to school.

GJEL: What are your latest projects for Safe Routes?

TRANSFORM: One thing we’re doing to help with that is our program is trying to get information on where everyone lives then populate these big maps with dots that will show you where the clusters of residences are. Then the maps will be used to illustrate in a very graphic way how you can create walking groups or carpoooling groups or riding groups. It makes a bigger impact when people can look at a map and see how close everyone is.

We piloted it at a school where a principal made the map, and I remember this parent who was leaving and looked at the map and said “look how many people are driving to school who could be walking!” And I just saw a light bulb go off in a way that it doesn’t when you just try to explain it to people.

GJEL: You work in mostly low-income areas, what are some of the specific challenges there?

TRANSFORM: One middle school we’re working with is trying to create some pretty big walking groups because they have a program where kids must stay until 5PM, so parents were concerned about them walking home in the dark and actually were having their kids come home early. So we’re having a big parent meeting to create groups to walk these kids to school.

This was a school in deep East Oakland on 98^th Ave, which is an area with a lot of crime and understandably lots of concern from parents. Last year the school hired a bus to bring kids home that cost $25,000 and they couldn’t really afford it. Also, the bus was taking an hour to get the kids home, so that wasn’t a good solution. So they called us and asked us to help, and we’re really excited to be able to collaborate and they are very motivated to find a solution. It’s a community effort.

GJEL: Sounds like the schools are eager to be involved

TRANSFORM: Our program is very oriented to finding solutions that work for the school. We’re very adaptable. And we’re fortunate enough to have a staff that can work in various communities. We have a bilingual staff member who has had whole meetings with Spanish speaking parents and those parents appreciate that someone is speaking their language. We’ve been in Oakland for five years, so there’s some level of trust and understanding that we mostly work with low income schools so we understand what it takes to work in those communities.

Our program is more and more seen as a model around the country. So we’ve helped advise for safe routes programs around the country. Particularly those that are looking to implement in urban and low-income environments.

GJEL: What are some of your long-term goals?

TRANSFORM: The long-term goal is to keep the program going. We’ve been successful in getting the metropolis trans commission to fund Safe Routes to School. The other big goal is to get people to shift out of cars and into active and shared transportation: biking, walking, carpooling.

The great thing is we can attack this on many different fronts. We have people working on land use, school design issues to make sure schools are designed or not built far away from sidewalks and transit, that they are built for people to walk to. At the same time we’re trying to make public transportation more accessible and widespread. Our goal is to get 10% of the school transportation shifted away from the single-family vehicle.

GJEL: That’s great, best of luck!

TRANSFORM: Thanks! And thanks for the opportunity to get the word out about our program!

Be sure to check back this week for more interviews with some of California’s most important street safety organizations, and don’t forget to vote to help your favorite one win $1,500!

Despite the growing popularity of social media communities, legal precedent continues to lag behind, meaning the law has not yet been written for many employment problems related to social media. To help parse the difficult questions, we talked with California employment lawyer Laura Maechtlen about employers who use social media to help with hiring decisions, employees caught lying about sick days, and whether the courts will regulate social media use among lawyers. Take a look:

GJEL: How common is it for employers to check social media before making hiring decisions?

Laura Maechtlen: We see anecdotal evidence of this, but I haven’t actually seen statistics. It’s clear, though, that many people do it. Fortune 500 companies really do utilize social media as part of their hiring process, sometimes as part of procedure and sometimes not.

GJEL: Is this a change in the last 5 years?

LM: Yeah. It has had such an amazing rise in popularity. If you look at the growth numbers, for Twitter and Facebook in their number of employees and users, it is staggering. It literally doubles in a year’s time, which is just amazing. So when you think of things going from the fringe ideas to having them go to a mass consumption idea, then suddenly employers start to use these forums more often in the workplace.

GJEL: Should employers be able to terminate employees based on information they learn from social media?

LM: Absolutely. There was an interesting issue that arose a while back where an employee had been offered a position at Cisco. The employee tweeted that he just got a job and had to weigh the utility of a fat paycheck versus the cost of a commute. Ultimately the job offer was rescinded. I have had some clients that have issues arise and stories being published in the media where employees will call into work or say they need to be absent, and their employers will later see a post on their Facebook page showing that they are not sick and are actually skiing or in Hawaii. In one case where someone was supposed to be sick, he put up a photo of himself at a Halloween party in a tutu drinking beer.

This is where privacy issues come in to play. Where is the barrier? There has been content put up on websites that can be considered harassing or bullying. If it can make people feel uncomfortable, at some point the employer has a responsibility to forward so that employees are not harassed by their co workers.

GJEL: Do you think the courts would ever prevent companies from searching social media?

LM: My view on that is that the cat is already out of the bag so much that it would be hard to un-ring the bell. It is such an element of our current way of interacting with each other. It’s almost like saying you can’t use anything you heard over the telephone. In 20 years this stuff will be so commonplace that there are going to have to be more parameters to define what employers can do. When I first started practicing as an employment lawyer, it was harder for companies to get background information about potential employees. Now it has become a lot more involved in terms of what you can find online about people.

GJEL: How does the increase in Facebook privacy settings impact the question of whether companies should investigate social media?

LM: There have been some arguments in some cases about whether or not people should be able to discover information that is password protected or set to some sort of privacy barrier. It might end up being fact specific in these circumstances. If you are someone who has 5,000 friends, even if your Facebook account is password protected, if you have 5,000 people reading your information, it seems difficult to believe that it should be considered private. In terms of employers accessing things, they have to be very careful not to access social media pages by deception. If you are an employer, for example, and notice that someone is friends with a potential employee and use that access, that can cause some serious issues.

GJEL: In an era of social marketing, can any employee who uses social media be considered a marketing representative?

LM: The law is unclear in that regard. There are some concerns about whether employees are making affirmative statements about their company’s product and services. There can be serious ramifications, for example, with the FCC. There was some discussion about this with a 50 Cent tweet that affected stock prices of a product he had invested in. There are people out in the world that will follow employees to see if they can read between the lines about what might be happening for a company in the near future. It is a much more public way of sending information. Even if you are not legally considered a marketer, if you are representing yourself as an employee and talking about your work place, you could indirectly be deemed a marketer.

GJEL: Where is the line between personal and professional? Put another way, are there uses of social media that companies can’t regulate, even if it happens on company grounds?

LM: There was a recent case recently about email in which an employee had emailed with his attorney using company networking resources. The employer had a very strong policy about the email system being just for business. The employer later tried to use certain emails at trial that the employee said were privileged. The court held recently that the information could be used and that they could not rely on the privilege because the email was written on their system.

Did the employee have any expectation of privacy without it being monitored by the employer? Is what they were doing on the company’s time or on their own time? If what they are doing on social media is not otherwise prohibited, and it is lawful activity, then you might be hard pressed as an employer to argue that the conduct is not private or that you should not be able to do it. If it is unlawful or gets in the way of company business, then an employer could step in.

GJEL: Is everything that is posted online discoverable? What are the limits?

LM: That is being litigated in various courts right now. There are many legal arguments you can make. It is usually ending up being based on the facts of the particular case and what type of case it is. A lot of limits are being placed on relevancy. All of the print outs for a Facebook page would not be relevant for most lawsuits, for example. Courts will often limit the discoverable items to items about the employer or the employee’s emotional state. Other cases about privacy rights have found that the employer did not have a good enough privacy policy to claim that they could look at what was done on work time.

GJEL: What are some of the potential drawbacks for employers who don’t look at social media? Could they kick themselves later for not looking?

LM: One of the benefits of using social media for hiring purposes is that it is fast and cost effective. You can reach people who are passive candidates, who aren’t good at selling themselves. You can go out and find a lot about them, you can see their speaking engagements etc for passive candidates. It also provides a nice platform other than a resume, allowing a candidate to showcase qualifications and interests they have. If they are applying to something about networking and their Twitter account shows that they are up on issues that your company might be facing, that can be very attractive to potential employers. You can avoid bad hiring claims with social media if you can find out something immediately about somebody that you would not have found out otherwise.

Photo credit: webtreats

One student, Rob Robinson, says he will use the skills learned through Mock Trial as he contests a state traffic ticket in court soon. “Without the experience of Mock Trial, I would have no idea how I could fight a ticket,” he said. “A lot of people don’t understand how technical the law is…you have to be a credible witness.”

With the help of Luke’s Mock Trial expertise, GJEL has developed a Mock Trial Resource complete with rules, suggestions for the prosecution and defense, and a Q&A with Luke. The article goes on to discuss the concrete benefits of being part of a high school Mock Trial program, and Luke’s growth as the team’s coach. Here’s an excerpt:

Ellis, who moved to Orinda 24 years ago, believes in the benefits of Mock Trial so much that he sent all three of his children through the program. The experienced trial lawyer, who helped to won a $10.6 million wrongful death suit connected to the 2004 Walnut Creek pipeline explosion, has always been drawn to teaching, having received his bachelor’s degree in education before attending law school at UC Berkeley.

“After the first year, I was just sold on it,” he said. “I really enjoyed working with that range of kids, ages 14 to 18, who have no experience with the law other than maybe what they would see in the media.”

Although Mock Trial appeals to performing arts students as well as future law students, Ellis said, “The dramatic things we see in TV or read about law, they tend to just hit the highlights or low points. It takes a lot of work, and it’s telling a different kind of story.”

Read the story and the GJEL Mock Trial Resource for more on Luke Ellis, his team, and Mock Trial as a source of critical and verbal development for high school students. Here’s how the story looked on paper:

That’s why we asked Diane Barry, director of discovery strategy and management for International Litigation Services, to explain some of the most common obstacles to efficient eDiscovery and some of the roles a lawyer is expected to fulfill for his or her client when it comes to eDiscovery. Take a look:

GJEL: What are the biggest obstacles to ethics in eDiscovery?

Diane Barry: It usually starts with a “whisper-down-the-lane” problem – where there are too many persons between the source of the information about the ESI, and the counsel who has to describe it to opposing counsel and the court.  You need to have a good conversation with your client at the outset of the matter regarding what they have and what you want to offer up in discovery.  You need to make a responsible plan.  For example, no matter what the client has, eDiscovery will be different in a multimillion dollar lawsuit than it will be in a small divorce action.  However, it always needs to begin in a good relationship with your client.  You need to have a good understanding of what there is and any problems or issues. If this conversation is good, all downstream activities begin with a good foundation.  When that fails, everything downstream is immeasurably more difficult and sometimes dangerous.

California says that I have a responsibility to assist my client with discovery and to be involved ion helping them make decisions about discovery. This duty can play out in different ways with different clients: sometimes the client prefers that I take control of gathering  the items; sometimes they take the lead while I monitor their progress; some fall in between these two points .   However, California law says that I have to take steps to be informed so that I can do my job with regards to opposing counsel and the court.  Unless I have good information, I can’t accurately inform opposing counsel and reasonably negotiate discovery obligations. Without good information, I cannot make accurate representations to the court.  Most of the sanctions cases we see are founded this kind of communication problem.  Counsel didn’t know or didn’t understand what the client had and misrepresentations were made to opposing counsel and the court about what was available.

GJEL: Are clients generally reluctant to participate in eDiscovery.

DB: It is possible to engage in cost efficient eDiscovery. Clients don’t generally see that that is what’s going on. Clients often view eDiscovery as an expensive optional addition to the discovery process, not as an integral part of the case itself.  This is a misconception.  Given how individuals communicate, and how businesses operate, eDiscovery is where the case begins.  Because of computer tools, smaller businesses are doing more business and are generating many more records than was true 20 years ago.  Even a fairly small client is now generating much more in the way of business records than a similar business 20 years ago.  For example, the average office worker receives somewhere between 50 and 200 emails a day.  The average worker never received that much mail in paper correspondence.  The amount of information and the sheer number of records has grown by leaps and bounds.  eDiscovery is where you see what actually happened.

Dealing with this information as data can actually save the client money over the costs of dealing with it as paper or a paper equivalent.  Bulk information is much easier to sort and use when it is in a data format rather than a paper format.  Data can be searched, sorted, organized, etc. much more cheaply than paper or paper equivalents.  Dealing this information as data is much less expensive.

GJEL: What can lawyers do to warm their clients up to the idea?

DB: One of the conversations I’ve had with clients is about how using data can ease costs, particularly those associated with attorney privilege and relevance review. The most expensive portion of any discovery matter is the attorney review.  A KPMG study showed that 70 cents on the litigation dollar is spent from collections to pushing the information out the door to opposing counsel. Of that, 80 percent is the attorney review. Digitized information is much easier and less expensive to use.  It enables the attorneys to avoid pushing everything through a hands on, page by page attorney review.  There are going to be items that you can search for and identify without full on review if you use the computer tools. You can’t separate privileged and non privileged information as easily when you’re working with paper documents. Computers make this much easier, faster, less expensive.  In fact, properly planned, all downstream tasks are made less expensive through the use of digitized data rather than paper documents.  This is true whether the case is large or small.

GJEL: In your presentation, I was struck by your isolation of two reasons attorneys don’t typically engage in eDiscovery: lack of tech prowess and lack of time. Can you elaborate on that a little?

DB: Learning new technologies can be difficult. The institutional culture at the law firm militates against it. At most law firms, training time is not billable time. Therefore whatever we learn as our first way of doing something, we hate learning a new way to do it because the billable hour is God at most law firms. There is a systemic problem with trying to take on new technologies and learning new ways of them. Most of us were not computer science majors in college and most did not work with computers in law school. We are comfortable with email and using our computer as a typewriter, but beyond that we are not comfortable. A great number of people really resent the fact that the practice requires them to be more technologically oriented. Many legal practitioners were not interested in technology and aren’t now. But you must either have minimal competency or associate with someone who does.

GJEL: Do you think the lack of tech prowess will naturally decrease as more people who grew up with technology become lawyers?

DB: Yes and no. There are going to be more people who are more comfortable with their computer but the technologies associated with eDiscovery are always going to be particular. People are going to have an easier time understanding computers as business tools. But if you go to the website www.edrm.net, and look at the eDiscovery reference model, these skills will only help with the identification step.  The tools to collect, process and review eDiscovery items change every three to six months. The two areas that move the fastest are the number of software programs that create and store information (the systems being used by the clients), and the tools that exist in the eDiscovery industry to collect and analyze this information.  I think that we will get more practitioners who will be more comfortable with the ubiquity of technology tools, and therefore easier with the first step of talking to their clients about ESI systems and eDiscovery.  They themselves are computer users and will be more comfortable about talking systems etc. with the clients.  However, past that, change will not come naturally.  These tools are also not the usual ones at use by ordinary users.  Unless they seek them out, they won’t come across them.  The evolution of eDiscovery software is particular and quick.  It’s very difficult to keep up with the tools available unless you put a fair amount of regular time and effort into it.

I became interested in eDiscovery after talking my way out of calculus by agreeing to take computer science and logic classes in college. And it came in handy. But most people do not have this experience and don’t know the details of computer software. Anything past that first conversation with the client is going to require commitment or an interest in the subject matter.  And, you can still choose to be interested or not.  It’s still counsel’s choice of how involved they wish to be in all of this.  The state of California stipulates three ways in which a lawyer can be competent: to already be, to bring yourself up to speed, or to associate with competency. We do that in the legal field all the time. I would not be a competent bankruptcy lawyer, for example, but I work with them. You have to decide which of those three groups you are, and whether you wish to progress towards another group or not.  I started out in group three but over time and with study, I became competent enough to be in group one much of the time.  I still seek assistance to be competent regarding esoteric items such as customized databases.

GJEL: I saw a National Law Journal article yesterday which asked whether information on social media platforms is discoverable under current laws. Do you have some perspective on this?

DB: It absolutely is. This is coming more into play. You have to learn to work with the Historic Communication Act. If I send Facebook a subpoena they are not permitted by law to respond. The person whose account it is has to sign a waiver that I then send to Facebook and they will give me the information. There are ways of doing it legally. So you need to bring yourself up to speed and work with it.

From an attorney ethical point of view, consider the hypothetical where a party opponent has a Facebook page.  Can you friend them to get a closer look at their information? The answer is that you can look at someone’s public profile, but you cannot friend them to get a closer look. Sending a “friending” request is contacting a party opponent.  If I know they have counsel I cannot friend them or ask someone to friend them to get a closer connection to their page.  It’s contacting a party represented by counsel.  It’s the difference between driving by someone’s house and walking up and knocking on their door.  You are allowed to do a Facebook drive by but you may not knock on their door and ask for a closer look.

Photo credit: Rutger de Moddertukker

GJEL: Besides the use of social media, are there any aspects of legal ethics that have already been impacted by the internet?

Diane Karpman: Everything’s been impacted by the internet. About six years ago, I began to decline representation of any lawyer not able to do research on the internet or basic email because I determined that they were an accident about to happen. The internet provides lawyers with documentary evidence or proof of their compliance with client demands and duty to communicate with clients. Before, veteran lawyers would say that they had someone who did that for them. But lawyers have gone from having a secretary to not needing one. Before email came along, many attorneys were being disciplined for not being able to interact with clients.

Lawyers essentially have five basic duties for their clients: confidentiality, loyalty, safekeeping of files and money, independent judgment, and communication. That’s why the internet has created such an easy way of communicating with clients. If lawyers aren’t using it, it’s legal malpractice about to happen. We also shouldn’t underestimate the impact the internet has had on legal research. There used to be a pay wall separating some from the ability to obtain cases. Google Scholar is the best thing to happen to lawyers in the last decade.

GJEL: Will the expanding use of social media by the general population have a permanent effect on attorney ethics guidelines?

DK: I’m not sure. There is a historic reaction against technological changes that the bar always takes. They always try to take the old rule and stretch it and see how it will encompass the new technological developments. The biggest problem with social media and lawyer guidelines is that at least in California, anytime a lawyer puts their name on anything, it’s deemed to fall under regulations governing advertising. Every state has very Byzantine regulations regarding lawyer advertising. The overarching theme is that everything lawyers say in advertisements must be true, accurate and not confusing. But these rules fail to take into consideration things like Twitter. If you only have 140 characters you just can’t comply with all the requirements.

People think that what’s online is friendly, but that’s not true when you are a professional. The main problem is that what’s posted on the internet is there forever. It has a permanent effect on attorney ethics guidelines.

Five states are obsessed with enacting stricter attorney advertising laws. Some of the most restrictive are Florida, Texas and Louisiana. Some states even have a requirement that before a lawyer does anything, it must be approved by the state bar.

GJEL: Are there free speech issues associated with social media regulation?

DK: Putting regulations on social media is a violation of freedom of speech. If you have to get pre-approval from the bar, how can you be blogging or tweeting? The social media platforms are stretching the ethical ideas way beyond what has been thought about before.

GJEL: What is your personal view of social media use for lawyers?

DK: I think it’s just terrific. Any way that makes it easier to communicate with clients and potential clients is just terrific. The idea of lawyers being separate from the population is a disservice for the profession. The more that people recognize that lawyers are real human beings is better for everybody.

GJEL: Are certain forms of social media, or certain social platforms, more ethically risky for attorneys than others?

DK: I’m very concerned about lawyers using Facebook. You’ve got cases occurring where lawyers talk about their trials on Facebook and influence jurors. The whole idea of friends on Facebook is difficult to reconcile with… a friend is not someone you have in a professional capacity. A client might want a lawyer to respond to them and find out on Facebook that they are on vacation. This is a bigger problem for younger members of the profession who don’t realize that everything they do is being watched. Lawyers are fiduciaries to their clients, meaning they put the interest of the client above their own, which is in conflict with being friends. A friend means you are equal and you both take care of each other. Lawyers may forget that they’re professionals and that the same rules don’t apply to them. The barrier between a person’s professional career and their social career is being eroded.

Another issue is Twitter, where you can tag certain words, like accident. It’s been suggested that some lawyers will tag the word accident and inappropriately contact victims. There’s been some other ethics opinions about lawyers in chat rooms. There is a difference between solicitations in advertisements.

GJEL: I understand that a number of states have enacted additional guidelines for social media use. Do you think each state should enact specific regulations around use of social media?

DK: Ethics rules are about 50 years behind the reality. When emails started the question was on whether to encrypt messages or not. They realized that email is just like a phone call and it cannot be tapped without the same ethics guidelines. As soon as a rule is enacted it’s almost obsolete. You have to take into consideration the overarching principles that guide the profession. Special rules just look silly. The type of regulation in Florida is just overkill. I almost think it’s unconstitutional just because it’s a prior restraint to freedom of speech.

GJEL: Are there any specific rules of thumb that you think would be beneficial for California lawyers to keep in mind when interacting on social media platforms and devices?

DK: California has very intense advertising rules. But if you boil them down the essence is that they must be true, accurate, and not confusing. The question gets really interesting when a lawyer must look for clients across state boundaries. A class action attorney, for example, could run in to trouble while talking to clients nationwide.

GJEL: Will regulations become more or less restrictive?

DK:The trend is toward less restrictive. The seminal case restricting lawyer advertising is Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 1977. In that case the court said lawyers have a constitutional right to freedom of expression. But people didn’t know how to find lawyers. Permitting lawyer advertising is an access to justice issue. Without advertising, some people can’t find representation when they need it the most. Indigent or poor people aren’t likely to know where to look for representation, so there’s a pressing need of people with limited needs to find access to justice, and advertising makes this possible. Without it, the white-shoed partners in the multi-storied buildings are going to prevail. At some point you have to say that people need access to attorneys, even if that means releasing restrictions on attorney advertising.

Editor’s Note: Diane’s interview is entirely in her own words. Below are some helpful links about the resources and cases she discussed.

Google Scholar

Bates v. State Bar of Arizona

State-by-State Ethics Rules for Lawyer Advertising

Karpman & Associates

Photo credit: webtreats

“By engaging with Avvo users and answering questions in our Q&A forum, Andy Gillin has become a great resource for people seeking legal information online,” said Avvo’s Public Relations and Social Media Manager Megan Olendorf. “We were pleased when Andy agreed to host an Avvo 101 webinar on the first steps drivers should take after a car accident, and look forward to working with him again in the future. His experience and willingness to provide guidance are exactly what people are looking for when they come to our site.”

As more attorneys begin to use Avvo and consumers visit the site to ask attorneys questions for free or search for lawyers in specific fields in their geographical area, the site has become more dynamic. It is currently teaming up with Amtrak to generate a list of top lawyers for the train line’s Best of the Northeast issue.

This unique dynamic between traditional magazines and websites is part of why Andy is supportive of Avvo. “The internet has opened up new opportunities for lawyers to connect with prospective clients, but also to interact with people in need of informal legal advice,” said Gillin. “The consumer education programs run by Avvo help everyone become familiar with navigating the confusing and complex world of law.”

We look forward to engaging with Avvo and interacting with consumers through the site and elsewhere online. In addition to providing free accident resources on our news page, GJEL is on Facebook, where we post news, resources, and Andy’s answers to Avvo questions.

For now, take a look at Andy’s Car Accident 101 webinar:

Accident 101 with Mr. Andy Gillin from Avvo on Vimeo.

Something that sticks out to me, is Andy’s strong support for the contingency fee model where, he says, “someone with $50 in the bank can take on General Motors” because GJEL attorneys don’t get paid unless their clients win. And speaking about some of his biggest cases, Andy is always more concerned about the practical result than the firm’s financial benefit. GJEL was a large part of a lawsuit, for example, that recovered $395 million from a healthcare corporation that routinely approved unnecessary heart procedures at Redding Medical Center. “It’s not the amount of money that I’m proud of,” says Andy. “It’s that Tenet Healthcare made a huge change in its corporate governance.”

As part of the profile, Ellison spoke to some of Andy’s colleagues, who each gave glowing reviews. “He’s about absolutely honesty, and he’s a man of his word…and it makes for a very efficient process, regardless of which side you’re on,” said Oakland defense attorney David Samuelsen.

“He’s always concerned that these good people have suffered a devastating event, and he wants to get them someone who can help, whether it’s with his firm or some other firm,” said Cynthia McGuinn of Rouda, Feder, Tietjen & McGuinn. “I would even go so far as to say he gives his clients the same interest and support he would give his own family.”

We’d like to send a big thank you to David Samuelson and Cynthia McGuinn for their comments. Read the profile and Andy’s firm bio for more on his background, mentors, and continuing professional philosophy.

GJEL: You have a strong record on environmental issues, but that’s no longer what you are known for. Why did you decide to focus on reducing distracted driving?

Joe Simitian: When I introduced a hands free bill in my first year, I was probably naïve about my prospects. Verizon Wireless supported the bill from the very start. But every other cell phone company in the country opposed it. What was frustrating about the opposition was that every one of the companies already told consumers that they had to pull over to the side of the road to make calls or text. So the bill I introduced was seen as telling people to do the same thing they were supposed to do anyway. Finally in 2006 I was able to get both sides of the legislature to pass the bill and Governor Schwarzenegger signed it in to law. It took affect July 1, 2008.

This was really not what I thought I would be working on when I got the legislature, but the more I worked on the issue the more I realized it was a life saver and we weren’t going to miss the opportunity due to industry opposition.

GJEL: The laws already in place have been pretty successful. Why increase the fines?

JS: There’s a base fine and then there are a series of fees and penalties that get added to it. The base fine has been $20 for a first offense, which is very modest. The bill I’ve introduced would increase this to $50 for first and $100 for a subsequent offense. The motivation is that we’ve had some time since the law took effect in July 2008 and the results we’ve seen are very encouraging. Fatalities are down 20%, which is 700 fewer fatalities each year in California alone. The results are encouraging.

We continue to hear from the folks at CHP that while the compliance is good, it could still be better. That’s not surprising to me. Enacting seat belt legislation, for example, took a long time. Now it’s routine that when you climb into the car, you buckle the belt. Over time, we’ve gotten 90% compliance on seat belts. It will take time, education, and enforcement. But we’ve raised the notion that if we had a higher fine, it would be a more significant deterrent and we could save even more lives. The bill also calls for a point on the driving record, because that gets everybody’s attention, and cuts across income levels. For folks that are more prosperous, they can shove a ticket off, but for people who are less prosperous, it can be a severe hit. A point on one’s license has the same impact across the board.

GJEL: Due to opposition from cell phone companies, it took nearly five years to pass the existing law. Will the increased fines face similar opposition?

JS: The cell phone companies’ position has evolved over time. For whatever reason, they have been largely neutral on heightened fees and I suspect that they will stay that way. The tougher challenge is the fact that the economy is bad, which gives all of us pause when it comes to increasing fines. But the $50 fine is relatively modest: half what you get if you litter while in your car, or use the carpool lane when you’re not supposed to. I hope the bill will pass this year, but due to term limits and retirements, there is a whole new crop of folks in the state senate to educate and persuade on an issue that won’t be all that familiar to some of my colleagues.

GJEL: How does adding the bike fines change the politics of the bill?

JS: That a bike fine wasn’t already included in the bill is the result of a drafting oversight in 2006. The vehicle code applies to both motorists and cyclists. The 2006 hands free law made reference to motor vehicles, which meant that the law did not apply to cyclists, and changed the way the motor code operated. The new bike fine is just a clean up, but it sparked more interest than I had expected. The cycling community is of mixed minds on this. Some don’t want cyclists to be fined, but a more serious faction says “look we want to share the road, and we should be seen equally under the law.”

GJEL: The new bike fines show that cell phone fines are spreading. Could it eventually expand to cover texting while walking down the street?

JS: I don’t think so. For me, it’s gratifying to see the broader public awareness and acknowledgement of safety risks with distracted driving and cell phones in particular. Last fall, the Obama administration and Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood called a national distracted driving summit. And a year later, everyone from the Lahood to Oprah is focused on the risks of distracted driving. The Public Policy Institute of California took a look at driving laws in three other states and the District of Columbia just before our law went into affect. Their analysis was that hands free had reduced fatalities in every jurisdiction and time period studied. The folks at PPIC predicted that we would have 300 to 900 fewer fatalities each year as a result, and 700 is where we ended up.

GJEL: What do you think about a potential federal law against distracted driving? Is this a states’ rights issue?

JS: They’re looking mostly at texting. Things move slowly in congress, it is a much bigger battleship to turn in a new direction. I’m hopeful, but I will take the wait and see approach. It’s a tough call. On the one hand, as a state legislator, I’m mindful of our desire to craft legislation that fits California, and on the other hand, if the federal legislation is less rigorous than what we have in California and takes precedent, that would be a real concern.

Photo credit: Senator Simitian

Today I’m switching gears and bringing you an interview with someone who is not lawyer, but who nonetheless can give us legal types some great insight into what it takes to be successful online. Matt McGee is a hyperlocal blogger who has been really successful in using blogging to promote his wife’s real estate business, and by doing so, has made himself a bit of an expert on hyperlocal blogging.

While some attorneys blog solely about legal issues, and while blogging about legal issues is one effective way to market a law practice, building a relationship with the community through hyperlocal blogging can also be effective. Matt was kind of enough to offer us some insight into the world of hyperlocal blogging, and how it can be used to successfully promote a business. If you’re hungering for more of Matt McGee after reading this interview, be sure to check out his site, Hyperlocal Blogger, where you can also find links to the real estate blogs he and his wife use to promote her real estate business.

GJEL: What inspired you to start hyperlocal blogs for your real estate market, and what were your initial goals for them?

Matt: The idea at the beginning was mostly to promote my wife’s real estate business, but it was also somewhat of an experiment in local blogging and a learning experience of sorts. The goal for each was to have a site for each of the main cities in our area that anyone thinking about moving here could follow along and learn about the community, while also setting up my wife as the local expert for each area. I’d love to say we started the blogs with purely altruistic, serve-the-community ideas in mind, but it was as much a business idea as anything.

GJEL: Have those changed at all as you’ve gotten into it more?

Matt: Well, the goals are still the same, but we haven’t really executed as well as I’d like. My wife is too busy to blog about real estate as much as she should, so I’ve done most of the writing about community news and events. So, I’d say the goals are still the same, but the focus has changed due to the reality of the situation. Instead of being about the town and about real estate in the town, each of the blogs is mostly about the towns … with just a little real estate in the mix. I don’t know if that’s good or bad; it’s just not what I was expecting. We’re probably about 90%-10% in terms of general content vs. real estate content. I’d prefer it to be about 70%-30%.

GJEL: How do you walk the line between blogging about your business and blogging about your community?

Matt: Well, I guess I answered this one to some degree already, but let me reply in general on the idea of self-promotion and local/community blogs. When we launched all four blogs, a reader would have had to do some digging to find out that they were, to some degree, business blogs. Sure, each has “real estate” in its name … but the content was all community-based. There was no advertising of my wife’s real estate business. Aside from a mention on the “About” pages, we downplayed the real estate connection completely.

We did that because we wanted to attract readers from across the community – not just readers who were looking to buy or sell a home. We also did it because real estate has a big spam element when it comes to online marketing, SEO, etc. So we decided to hold off on any real estate promotion for a while, to allow the blogs to build up some readership and some trust with the search engines.

I think any small biz person that’s thinking about starting a local/community blog should keep in mind that, generally speaking, if people are looking for information about your business, they’ll visit your business web site or blog. They come to a community blog looking for community information. An occasional business-related post is probably fine — say, for example, if the business is supporting some local event or charity — but general business blog posts should probably stay off the community blog.

GJEL: Tri-Cities isn’t quite as big a market as the Bay Area, obviously, but are there common types of content you look for, or places you look, when you’re trying to figure out what to write?  Do you think the size of the area where a business draws its customers from should affect any of that thinking?

Matt: Well, there are different types of local blogs. Some are very much into hard news and crime, and so in a bigger city you’ll get more opportunity to report that. We live in a fairly low-crime area, and since our blogs are mostly designed to promote the area and indirectly promote a real estate business, we generally stay away from reporting crime. That said, there was a burglar in our local mall a year or so ago, and we posted about that — and that post got a LOT of traffic.

I think in most cases, a successful hyperlocal blog will share a lot of community news and information that traditional media skips. Posts about upcoming events always seem to do well on our blogs. The newspaper might only give an event 2-3 sentences, but if the event is important to people, they’ll be looking online for more information.

GJEL: Are there any ideas for content themes, or categories, that you would recommend as a “default setting” if you were just starting a blog?

Matt: All of our blogs have a similar set of categories that seem to work well for us: Business, Events, Life, News, Real Estate, Schools, and Sights. Most of those should be self-explanatory, but maybe not Life and Sights. With the Life category, that’s where we post stuff like a trip to the local museum, or “wouldn’t it be great if we had one of these in town?” posts. And the Sights category is where we post photos from around town, like a nice sunset or a shot of people trying to cool off in 100+ degree heat. So far, everything we’ve written has fit into one of those categories.

GJEL: It seems like hyperlocal blogging would work really well for a real estate business, because getting people interested in real estate means getting them interested in the community. Do you have any advice for people who are trying to incorporate hyperlocal blogging with another type of business (i.e. law )?

Matt: It definitely is a natural fit for real estate professionals, but I think it can work in the legal industry and others, too. Again, I’d say the key to making it work is to focus on making a community/neighborhood blog, not an industry blog. It’s all about focus. If you blog about what’s happening in town — school news, new businesses opening up, local events, etc., it doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer, plumber, shoe store owner … whatever! People are online and looking for local information, so it doesn’t matter who you are.

The problem is in turning blog visitors into customers, and that’s still a gray area for us. In the interest of building readership and trust, we held off on any promotion of my wife’s business for about the first year the blogs were online. At that point, we added a template to the bottom of each post that shows her photo and says something about “if you’re here looking for real estate help, please contact” her and gives her phone number. I’m still hesitant to push much further on self-promotion because I think it’ll turn people off.

All of which is to say that, if you asked me what the direct and certain benefit has been of our local blogs on my wife’s real estate business, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you. But I can say this: When she asks people how they found her, many clients say “You’re all over the Internet!” They may not remember which blog, web site, or PPC ad it was, but we know the visibility is good. And the blogs tend to rank well for her primary business keywords, so if nothing else they’re taking up space in the search results that a competitor might have had.

GJEL: How have you incorporated Twitter, if at all, in meeting other bloggers in your community?  Do you ever do any offline meetups in Tri-Cities?

Matt: My wife has been to about 4-5 local tweetups, but I’ve only been able to get to one, I think. They’re good, I think, for meeting people — especially that tend to be online influencers to some degree. They’re active on Twitter, Facebook, and with their own blogs, so it’s nice to be part of a local network like that. And word-of-mouth marketing is important for all small businesses, so hopefully as these people get to know you better, they might be more likely to tell a friend — “Hey, I know a real estate agent you should call.”

GJEL: HyperLocalBlogger.com is obviously THE place to go for local blog techniques and ideas. Are there any other websites or eBooks you might recommend to people who are just starting local blogs?

Matt: If you’re just starting, I think the focus should probably be on blogging in general as opposed to local blogging — I mean, in terms of reading and learning. As you learn to create a great blog, it’s pretty easy to make your focus on local content. Problogger.net and Copyblogger.com are two great ones for blog advice. Remarkablogger.com is another great one. And there’s a ton of great articles going back three years in the Blogging category of the SEMMY Awards - that would be a treasure-trove of material for a starting blogger.

This week brings with it more interviews of the people who are at the very top of the game when it comes to online presence. Today I bring you an interview with John Day, a prominent attorney who has been blogging since 2004. I met John at a Beer for Bloggers event hosted by Kevin O’Keefe of Lexblog following the Avvocating Conference, and was quickly impressed with his early adoption of blogging, and acceptance of the idea that an attorney needs to have a strong online presence. We got to talking, discovered that we grew up only a few miles from each other and knew some of the same people, and somehow I managed to convince an already busy John that he should do an interview for this blog. So here it is, one of the legal industry’s early bloggers, sharing his thoughts on the topic.

GJEL: John, you were one of the early adopters of blogging in the legal field. Can you explain how you found out that blogging was something that could be beneficial to you and your practice, and how you decided to start blogging?

John: I discovered blogging in late 2004 and thought it would be a great way to share important, timely information with my fellow lawyers on an informal basis.  I started the blog in Feb. 2005 and 1712 posts later I still use it for that purpose.

GJEL: You use Lexblog as the platform for your blog. How did you decide to go that route?

John: Kevin O’Keefe was, and is, the leader in the field of lawyer blogging.  I went to him for the same reason I buy suits at Brooks Brothers.

GJEL: What were some of your goals for social media for your practice? Did you expect to network, find clients, improve your Google rankings, or something else? Do you feel that you’re achieving those goals?

John: My goal was to share information with the hope that referring lawyers would see that I was a competent lawyer who kept up-to-date in the field.  I hope that goal has been reached, but it is difficult to measure the effect of blogging alone when I also write books, articles, newsletters and do a significant amount of speaking in the torts area.

GJEL: The list of speaking engagements on your firm profile is quite lengthy, you’ve written a book, and you’re a practicing attorney. How on earth do you find time to blog?

John: I usually blog between 4:15 and 5:00  in the morning, although sometimes on weekends I will do several posts at once and schedule them for  publication later that week.  The  software used by LexBlog permits me to write a post one day and actually make it available for viewing later.  I confess that blogging takes time and when I am in the book updating mode (which is right now – the third edition of Day on Torts comes out in April) things get a little hectic.

GJEL: In addition to blogging, you and one of your colleagues edit the Trial Law Report newsletter, which covers many aspects of civil litigation in Tennessee. How did you decide to put out a newsletter, and what are some of your goals in doing so? Is the intended audience for the newsletter different from the intended audience of the blog?

John: I publish and write the newsletter with the goal of educating judges and lawyers (including myself) on changes in the Tennessee law of torts, civil procedure, evidence and trial.  I also do it to make money – I charge for the newsletter and basically get paid to stay current on the law while at the same time demonstrating to my peers that I do so.

GJEL: You and I met at the Avvocating Conference last week. Did you come up with any new ideas to expand your personal or firm presence on the internet? How do you feel about Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms and their uses for attorneys?

John: I did not meet you at the conference – I met you in a bar.  You say you were at the conference and I will assume that you were.  On social media – lawyers, especially us old guys, need to understand that the cheese has moved.  Social media, a phrase that did not exist when I started practicing law, will continue to be a growing force as lawyers try to figure out how to market their practice efficiently.