{"id":3973,"date":"2017-03-24T08:32:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T13:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/?p=3973"},"modified":"2017-03-24T08:32:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-24T13:32:15","slug":"25-for-25-zen-and-the-art-of-pioneer-maintenance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/2017\/03\/24\/25-for-25-zen-and-the-art-of-pioneer-maintenance\/","title":{"rendered":"25 for 25: Zen and the Art of Pioneer Maintenance"},"content":{"rendered":"

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by G. Burgess Allison<\/p>\n

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The pioneer is a curious thing. \u00a0In the Old Days, pioneers were pretty easy to understand: There\u2019s a mountain way over there that nobody\u2019s crossed before\u2014why don\u2019t we cross it and see what\u2019s on the other side? \u00a0But as we tamed our various geographical wilderni, pioneers had to tell much more difficult stories: No seriously, we\u2019re gonna use electricity to talk to each other. \u00a0But of course we\u2019ll have to hook up <\/span>Really Long Wires<\/span><\/i> between every building in the country. \u00a0(Well, until we switch to fiber.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Cornell\u2019s Legal Information Institute stands as one of those pioneers\u2014one that was faced with telling a difficult story to a generally skeptical and plainly technophobic audience: \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

No seriously, there\u2019s this thing called the Internet. \u00a0(And\u2014we\u2019re off to a rocky start already.) \u00a0It\u2019ll give us the opportunity to radically transform access to information of significance to the entire legal profession. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Really? \u00a0Like Lexis and Westlaw? \u00a0Because we have that already. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

No, no, think broader than that. \u00a0And access will be free. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Free? \u00a0Who\u2019s gonna do headnotes and Key Numbers for \u201call information\u201d \u2026 for free? \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh man, you just don\u2019t get it. \u00a0The whole world is gonna change.<\/span><\/p>\n

No I don\u2019t. \u00a0Call me when the world has changed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing about pioneers. \u00a0First and most importantly, after exploring the wilderness, after falling into traps and digging themselves out again, after making mistakes and learning lessons the hard way, they come back to the rest of us and tell everything! \u00a0Pioneers suffer all the personal pains of trailblazing, then return with the stories and findings, and with just a little bit of nurturing tell you exactly how to avoid all the difficulties. \u00a0With a tiny amount of encouragement, they\u2019ll even offer to go out again and guide you along the way.<\/span><\/p>\n

25 years ago, that\u2019s exactly what we needed. \u00a0Tom Bruce and Peter Martin had the vision to see transformative change over the horizon, then set up shop to provide a home for experiments and new opportunities. \u00a0The LII was built to explore and try things out. \u00a0Some of those things would succeed, some would fail\u2014but as we watched and followed the LII we learned that each effort was rolled out with a genuine enthusiasm and an open mind for the possibilities. \u00a0Don\u2019t get me wrong, the Internet is not a judgment-free zone where every player wins a trophy. \u00a0This is an ENTJ wilderness with an embarrassingly-high score in Judging. \u00a0Technologies that don\u2019t make it get pushed aside in a heartbeat. \u00a0Of course this is difficult for a laboratory like the LII. \u00a0Intellectually, you want to give each new technology time\u2014time to show what it can do, time to make mistakes and attempt corrections, time to mature. \u00a0But realistically, tempus fugits faster on the Internet than anywhere else\u2014the Internet does not embrace patience. \u00a0Any more than the legal profession embraces change.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of which \u2026 while the profession has well earned its reputation for resisting change (<\/span>cf.<\/span><\/i> IBM mag card typewriters), that does not mean the entire profession stuck its head in the technological sand. \u00a0Indeed, as an occasional speaker at the American Bar Association\u2019s annual TECHSHOW conference, I was stunned at the audiences we drew on Internet-related topics: we filled the <\/span>hallways<\/span><\/i> when they put us in a smaller room; and we still went SRO when they put us in a bigger room. \u00a0So high was the enthusiasm (and so compelling was the pioneer spirit to share what people had discovered) that some already-robust panel discussions turned quickly into even-more-robust audience discussions as discoveries and new web sites were shouted from the audience. \u00a0The topic became lightning in a bottle. \u00a0One of the most popular programs at TECHSHOW became <\/span>Sixty Sites in Sixty Minutes<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0The excitement was palpable.<\/span><\/p>\n

Certainly I was excited about what was happening as well. \u00a0In my own case, I was fortunate enough to have an outlet in the column I wrote for the ABA\u2019s Section of Law Practice, <\/span>Technology Update<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0I tried, ever so hard, to explain to my readership just how big a change was coming. \u00a0The responses I got showed an intense level of interest, but a continued lack of information. \u00a0That in turn led to writing <\/span>The Lawyers Guide to the Internet<\/span><\/i>\u2014which included Erik Heel\u2019s groundbreaking list of online legal resources, <\/span>The Legal List<\/span><\/i>, and Lyonette Louis-Jacques\u2019 list of law-related discussion groups, <\/span>Lawlists<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0While <\/span>Lawyers Guide<\/span><\/i> barely scratched the surface of Internet basics, it became the best-selling title in the ABA\u2019s book publishing program. \u00a0Interest was high. <\/span><\/p>\n

Two quick notes about <\/span>Lawyers Guide<\/span><\/i>: \u00a0First, it speaks volumes about how far we\u2019ve come that Erik\u2019s <\/span>Legal List<\/span><\/i> could actually contain <\/span>every<\/span><\/i> law-related web site and online resource. \u00a0Second, the first drafts of <\/span>Lawyers Guide<\/span><\/i> didn\u2019t include this \u201cnew\u201d technology called web sites\u2014they hadn\u2019t been invented yet. \u00a0They were added during the review of proof pages\u2014not normally the time you would make such a significant change (with sincere gratitude to the ABA book program). \u00a0The only screen shot of a web page in the book came from the first and most prominent hypertext-enabled law-related web site. \u00a0At <\/span>www.law.cornell.edu<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The LII was site #1 in what I called Burge\u2019s Bookmarks. \u00a0And it was featured so many times in the <\/span>Sixty Sites<\/span><\/i> programs that we eventually retired it to Hall of Fame status\u2014to make room for sites and capabilities that were newer and less well-known.<\/span><\/p>\n

The LII was, and remains, the best of the wilderness. \u00a0A place where pioneers are welcomed, to experiment and try things out. \u00a0A place where the Rest Of Us can come and see what the pioneers are up to. \u00a0And a place where the pioneers are so excited about what they\u2019re doing that they just can\u2019t help but share what they\u2019ve learned.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you LII, thank you Tom and Peter \u2026 now back to work, there\u2019s so much more to be done!<\/span><\/p>\n

I love technology. \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n

G. Burgess Allison\u00a0is a Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management and is an active member of the American Bar Association\u2019s Law Practice Management Section (LPMS). He wrote the \u201cTechnology Update\u201d column in Law Practice Management magazine for 18 years, and authored \u201cThe Lawyer\u2019s Guide to the Internet.\u201d, the best-selling publication in the history of the ABA’s book-publishing program. He has served on the Council for LPMS, and as Publisher and Technical Editor for LPM magazine. Burgess has a J.D. from the University of Michigan and a B.A. from the University of Delaware. \u00a0Prior to his retirement, \u00a0he was the IT Director for MITRE\u2019s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  by G. Burgess Allison     The pioneer is a curious thing. \u00a0In the Old Days, pioneers were pretty easy to understand: There\u2019s a mountain way over there that nobody\u2019s crossed before\u2014why don\u2019t we cross it and see what\u2019s on the other side? \u00a0But as we tamed our various geographical wilderni, pioneers had to […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5012],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3973"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3975,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973\/revisions\/3975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}