Via Antonin Pribetic, who stays on the cutting edge of hip-dom and lets curmudgeons like me know what we’re missing, comes the latest cool place for lawyers to hang, the Legal Playground. Here’s the new cool:
It’s even written in cool type-face, comic sans something or other. Now how cool is that?Who says lawyers aren’t hip? Attorneys have historically been known as stiff and old-fashioned, but today’s generation is an entirely new breed. They are innovative, open-minded and in sync with the latest technology. Instead of running to a law library to search for a court case decision, today’s lawyer just picks up their iPad or iPhone and has an array of case law at the touch of their fingertips…literally. Although some may try to resist change, the truth is that textbooks and journals are soon going to be obsolete. Nobody is going to thumb through a book to find a lawyer. Instead they will utilize a browser on their phone. LegalPlayground.com is the next wave of technology for lawyers. I may be biased but the facts are the facts. Members can create a personal profile that displays their professional information for clients and the public. Similarly, anyone can simply search the website to locate a lawyer by state or practice area. Whereas a Bar Journal prints a lawyer’s name, address and contact information, LegalPlayground.com provides lawyer with the opportunity to post photos, publications, videos, webouts and blog. The site also gives each member their own USL that can be included on business cards and websites. For many solo practitioners and young lawyers working for outdated firms, this is a sigh of relief. And what’s more…you can download the app on your iPhone to follow your favorite (or most dreaded) lawyer by setting your app to follow that attorney’s blogs. The stereotype of lawyers as old, stuffy men is about to change. Meet the lawyers of the 21st Century. See the lawyers of the next generation. Catch them all…in the Playground.
It’s the brainchild of CEO Alana Capello, a cute young lady who offers this background in support of her “bias”.
Whether this notion arose from her inability to find a job or her epiphany that she really doesn’t want to be a lawyer, who knows. What’s abundantly clear is that she has taken the initiative to do something more than sit in her mom’s basement and stare at the boob tube, for which I give her credit. Any young person showing the gumption to do something other than complain about the lousy job market or the unfairness of the world gets points from me.Alana Cappello was confirmed as an attorney in good standing with the bar in the following state(s): Florida on April 23, 2011, New York on April 23, 2011
But the idea itself seems nothing more than a rehash of the hundred other lawyer listings that have been floating around for years. She has nothing new to say, though she doesn’t say it very well, and yet manages to spell it out in overly simplistic form. I assume that she has an internet connection given that her business is online, which would seem to make it fairly easy to take note of the more than 17 million hits in Google for lawyer listings. One more doesn’t seem very novel.
Instead, it appears that the thrust of this new new lawyer’s effort is to brand herself as the place for hip lawyers, the ones with iPhones who are sick and tired of working for their “outdated” law firms and want to, well, be hip.
Nothing in her pitch reflects any comprehension of “marketing” lawyers’ competency, but rather their hip-ism, photos, publications, videos, webouts and blog. Blog? Wow, talk about cutting edge. When she said hip, I never dreamed she meant that hip. Heck, I don’t even know what a “USL” is. How unhip am I?
As should already be obvious, I am not sufficiently hip to participate in this cutting edge venture. If I joined up, I would likely cut the hip quotient by half. At least. And ruin it for the rest of the lawyers, who are all far more hip and would recognize me as an unhip poseur immediately. demanding that I be digitally tarred, feathered and ridden off the internet on a virtual rail.
On the bright side, Capello has come up with a particularly appropriate name for a website she hopes will appeal to all the hip lawyers around. No doubt that can find a similarly hip lawyer with whom to have a play date at the legal sandbox of the legal playground.
As long as they stay off the legal jungle gym so they don’t hurt their hip selves. That would make their parents very sad, after spending all that money on college and law school, and watching their beloved baby end up relegated to puffing nonsense on the internet rather than putting their expensive and hard-grained legal education to good use.
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Lawyering. Been doing it a real long time. 30 years in June. I’ve traveled/travel Everywhere. I’ve met/meet Everyone. But I’ve met 4 Hip and/or Cool Lawyers total. Okay, just 3. And 2 in last year. (One had just got out of a “home”.) Would be nice if more us of were Hip and/or Cool–but it’s Awkward City, Jack. Dork Country. Life in the Dweeb Lane. Poindexter Pass. Squirrel Acres. Weenie World. Lawyers are like people who talk incessantly about ‘partying’ all week long and on Friday drink two (2) beers leave 2/3 of a third beer left on table. Maybe drop a couple of Motrin. Drool on their shirts a little. “Get wild” and sing in their cars. We’d all KNOW THIS UNHIPNESS IS A PROBLEM–and have a shot at being Hip and/or Cool–if we got out more. But we don’t. Me? I’ve looked Everywhere for years for Hipness and/or Coolness. Like Every Day. Not There. Except for those 3. So I got an epiphany about lawyers for her right here. Have that spunky little heifer give me a collect call any time today after 6 PM PT. I can help.
I think you may be wrong about Alana Cappello. I noticed Toby Cappello is the Chief Ninja and Ron Cappello is the CFO of Legalplayground.
I think that does put her in mom’s basement. Although I’m not sure if a “ninja” outranks an “attorney-CEO.” I suppose if I were hip I would know the answer.
You are probably right, as I find it very hard to keep abreast of the relative rankings of prominence amongst hipsters. It’s the fate of the terminally unhip.
Wow, Scott, headachesville. No more Comic Sans-colorways.
BL
She was admitted last week? When is she joining the faculty at Solo Practice University?
What’s next? Wing-dings?
You don’t appreciate how quickly young lawyers can become experts, now that we have the interwebz. She has much to teach the eager students at SPU who want nothing more than to be hip like her.
It’s actually only a “beta” version right now. I’m sure the final will have you feeling as hip as your first leisure suit. You know, the one that made you think you’d never wear an ordinary suit ever again.
On an unrelated note, can I be the chief ninja for SJ? Imagine unleashing the volumes of untapped SJ power.
Don’t make fun of leisure suits. They never wrinkledf and no living organism died to make them.
As for chief ninja, if you have to ask . . .
wow… I didn’t know it was still cool to use the word “hip”… er… but is it cool to say “cool?” I’m so confused…
Always remember the immortal words of the boys from Tower of Power, who answered that burning musical question “What Is Hip?” in 1973 – “…what’s hip today, might become passe…”
I’m a subscriber to Huey Lewis’ philosophy that it’s hip to be square.
Very hip post.
Yes, I am the very model of a hip curmudgeon.
Not that it really matters but I think the April 23, 2011, date is merely the date that someone checked and confirmed she was admitted somewhere. If you go to the NY Courts attorney search website it says she has been admitted in NY since 2006.
And although I have a hip phone (Samsung Epic running Frozen ROM!!) and love technology I still like to read decisions and opinions on paper. Couldn’t imagine doing it on a phone, even a hip phone.
And $5 says USL is a typo and should be URL. Or maybe I am just not that hip to know what I am talking about.
Not that it really matters either, but who would put in their bio the date that somebody confirmed that they were admitted? That seems really unhip, bordering on downright weird.
And if USL is a typo, she might went to spend less time being hip and more proofing her business copy. Unless proofreading is unhip, which may well be the case given text lingo and such. But what do I know?
Update: I just checked her LinkedIn profile and it appears she graduated law school in 2000, did nothing until 2006 when she went to work for a firm in Florida, and left in February to create the ultimate in lawyer hip listings. Now I’m even more confused than before as to her “confirmed” admission.
However, I did learn another critical detail about the Legal Playground:
Lawyers can pay extra for the privilege of giving free advice to people who have no interest in hiring a lawyer. Killer hip.
When looking for an attorney, yesterday’s stodgy, unhip clients used to judge by criteria such as, “How many years experience does this lawyer have?” “How many cases have they tried?” and “In what areas is this attorney board certified?”.
All that takes a back seat for today’s hip, tech-savvy clients. When looking for an attorney, they want to know “how many followers does this attorney have on twitter?” “Do they use an iPhone or an Android?” “Are they avant-garde enough to file a motion printed in Comic Sans?”
I’m envisioning the face of the judge who gets a motion in Comic sans, thinking to himself, how many different typefaces can I use to write “denied”.
The cool, hip, tech-savvy judge would have a rubber stamp that says, “GTFO, n00b!”
By way of more update for four of those years she lived in Hull’s basement but was able to tunnel out.
“no living organism died”? What the hell kind of suits do you wear? I admit I’m no expert at modern business fashion, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have to kill the sheep to get the wool…
Silly boy. There was no wool in double knit polyester, the miracle fabric from whence leisure suits sprang.
Yes, I know leisure suits are made of plastic. But I’m just wondering what you think regular suits are made out of, since you seem to imply that something has to be killed to make them. I mean, dude, are you wearing motorcycle leathers in court?
Have you ever wondered whether your peculiarly hypertechnical literal approach may have been the cause of your inability to get laid as a young man?
Whether it’s the hair of the sheep, or the boll of cotton plant, both were part of living organisms. Are you getting the point here at all, or is the joke totally lost on you?
I agree that nothing is killed through stylish uses of polyester during the 1970s.
However, let’s not forget that the 70s were also the high water mark of naugahyde manufactuing. When I think of all the naugas who gave their life for you to stylishly appoint your office, it makes me want to cry.
Poor naugas.
I felt bad for the naugas as well. Not so bad that I wouldn’t use their nasty hide, but bad.
You know, I’d like to be able to go a solid 3-4 weeks without a lawyer of my generation doing something ridiculous or morally reprehensible.
Is that too much to ask? Could we shoot for a month? That’d be great, thanks.
Also, Comic Sans needs to die.
And leave me to write only about law?
Yeah, really, hope for something else, and not that marketers give better advice. I need something to write about too you know.
All you geezers need is a hip replacement.
Ouch. I feel like I was just sucker-punched.
Let’s not forget the poor dinosaurs and ferns who died to make the oil that goes into the polyester that makes your leisure suit.
Sheesh, you’re gone for tens of millions of years and it’s as if you don’t matter any more.
While some of you have the luxury of depending on “experience” and “referrals” and “competence” and other stuff that never gets hashtagged, us new school lawyers have to be hip to make it. My business plan is a free association mind-map of things like “Facebook,” “Hemp Suits,” “Ninjas,” “140 Character Appellate Briefs,” “iPhone,” and other stuff you just wouldn’t understand. I just added a bubble for “Legal Playground.” Winning!
140 Character Appellate Briefs?
A lot of judges would really, really like that idea. I mean really.
I’ve read a few (okay, more than a few) appellate opinions that should have been printed in comic sans.
This might explain it:
Education: JD, University of Florida, Levin College of Law, BS, University of Florida