Waiting on hold is admittedly no one’s favorite part of interacting with a business. But, with the implementation of a new service called Virtual Hold in our call centers that support many of our legal businesses, our customers will now have the option to bypass waiting on the line.
Virtual Hold is designed to enhance the customers’ experience by offering them an opportunity to wait in line virtually when there are high call volumes and higher than average wait times. Customers are given an estimated wait time that is calculated by a number of factors, including the number of agents staffed and the average length of a call, and are given the option to use the service. When customers choose to use Virtual Hold, their telephone number holds their place in the queue and they are able to hang up. When it is their time to speak with an agent, Virtual Hold will call back the customer’s number.
So far, Virtual Hold has been rolled out in many areas of customer service and tech support and will be going live for reference attorneys in the next few weeks.
“This exciting technology has more benefits to our customers than just the value of being able to do other tasks instead of waiting on the phone,” said Dongi Huss, manager of Technology & Business Systems. “Previously in some of our call center groups, customers had the option to leave a message instead of holding on the line, meaning an agent was assigned administrative duties to sort through the messages we received. Now Virtual Hold eliminates the need for the message system, and that agent can assist our customers in real time and in turn help lower the wait times.”
For more information or to view a demo of the Virtual Hold experience, visit virtualhold.com.
Posted by Anne Lawver in:
Company Current | Products |
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When Greg Groenjes, a manager in Manufacturing, Distribution & Engineering in Eagan, Minn., went out to see a 
movie with his wife one chilly evening in February, he anticipated that the only action scenes playing out would be on the screen. But by the night’s end, Greg was a real-life crime fighting hero.
After viewing a movie at a theatre in Inver Grove Heights, Minn., Greg and his wife came across a hammer-wielding man who was destroying car windshields in the theatre’s parking lot. Greg confronted the man and tried to get him to stop, and was shortly thereafter joined by two other movie theatre patrons.
Greg and the two other men surrounded the culprit until a police officer arrived at the scene. But instead of cooperating with the police officer, the assailant threw his hammer at him and began to charge.
The officer was able to tackle the man to the ground, but the assailant began grabbing at the officer’s equipment belt and face. The officer, now unable to subdue and handcuff the assailant on his own, called out for help. At his call Greg and the two other patrons rushed to the officer’s assistance.
“I knew the cop was in trouble so I just went for it and grabbed the assailant’s legs’” says Greg. “After the three of us had him pinned the officer was able to handcuff him and put him in the squad car.”
Greg and the other men who assisted were awarded a Certificate of Recognition from the city of Inver Grove Heights for their heroism and quick thinking. In the end, Greg admits that trying to stop the man wasn’t a hard decision.
“I didn’t even stop to think whether I should or shouldn’t help, it was instinctive,” says Greg. “Although this could have escalated to a much more dangerous situation, putting myself at risk, stopping the man and helping the officer was the right thing to do.”
Posted by Anne Lawver in:
Community | Company Current | Voices |
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Photo of Paul Rosario courtesy of David Pexton
Truly inspiring stories are everywhere; you just need to look for them. But for Paul Rosario, a project manager in our Governance, Risk & Compliance group, sharing his inspirational life story with strangers on a fairly regular basis is a way for him to give back to the organization that changed his life – the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
His story begins at age 11, when Rosario was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. During a hospital stay, he was visited by a volunteer with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. He asked for a vacation for his family of five to Cancun, Mexico, and the wish was granted several months later after he finished chemotherapy and was healthy enough to travel, but for those months in between, Rosario said the promise of the trip was a light at the end of the tunnel.
“The illness consumes you, and after awhile you forget there is hope and it is hard to focus on anything positive,” said Rosario. “After meeting with Make-A-Wish I was filled with excitement, knowing that I had a trip to look forward to. That wish changed my outlook and gave me the hope I was missing.”
Rosario attributes his survival to the Winthrop University Hospital Cancer Center for Kids. It was there that he beat the cancer, and came back years later as a volunteer speaker at one of the hospital’s fundraising events. There he told his inspiring, yet difficult story.
“When you start describing your experiences, it brings you back,” said Rosario. “Even when I was battling cancer, sharing that struggle was something I repressed and never spoke about. During that speech I was holding back tears, but I received an overwhelming response from the parents in the audience to keep doing what I was doing.”
It was this speech that triggered Rosario’s desire to give back to the foundation that gave him so much when he was young. When he contacted Make-A-Wish, they put him on a fast track to becoming a member of the Alumni Speakers Bureau and assigned him his first speech at the Wine & Wishes fundraiser in 2010 – the foundation’s largest event with an audience of more than 600 people – before ever hearing him speak. Since then Rosario has spoken at many events, but says that the pain that comes with speaking about his story still remains.
“Talking about it will never be easy, but repetition makes it easier. It will always hurt to relive that experience, but the message is so powerful that the impact outweighs any of the feelings. Knowing that sharing my story will create awareness of the power of a wish and ultimately bring in donations to keep granting more wishes makes it worth it.”
Check out the Make-A-Wish Foundation’s website to learn more.
Posted by Anne Lawver in:
Company Current | Uncategorized | Voices |
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Many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals all over the world are in need of free legal assistance and many lawyers are willing to work at no cost to provide it. Yet in many situations, none of the parties are fully aware of how to make that initial connection.
TrustLaw, an organization run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was created as a resource to link lawyers with those in need.
A free webcast of a program centered on TrustLaw and on moving pro bono work worldwide is available on West LegalEdcenter. (more…)
Posted by Anne Lawver in:
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From collecting food items to raising funds to benefit local food banks, offices in New York; Washington, D.C.; Alexandria, Va.; Los Angeles; Dallas; Philadelphia; Rochester, N.Y.; Chicago; San Francisco; Albuquerque, N.M.; Pyrmont, Australia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Toronto; and London mobilized with a common mission to support local hunger relief organizations.
Check out what several of our global colleagues did to recognize the day:
-By paying for every cup of coffee or tea that was otherwise free, employees from Bangalore, India, raised money for Akshaya Patra, an organization that provides lunches to 1.2 billion school children in India. Their donation will ensure that over 70 children will eat a midday meal for an entire year.
-Employees from Manila (in the photo above) prepared a dinner of spaghetti and ham sandwiches to feed 100 children who receive care from the Education Research and Development Assistance (ERDA) Foundation, a nonprofit that provides assistance to children of poor families in the Philippines.
-At our Legal headquarters in Eagan, Minn., more than 480 employees helped pack meals through the nonprofit Feed My Starving Children. Over the course of one work day, 17,820 dehydrated meal pouches – MannaPacks, in the parlance of Feed My Starving Children – were prepared and packaged to be shipped to Haiti for earthquake survivors who are currently battling with a cholera outbreak. The pouches will provide 106,920 meals for children afflicted by hunger, equivalent to feeding 292 children one meal a day for a year.
You can watch a video of our Feed My Starving Children event here.
By embracing the mission of World Food Day, Thomson Reuters employees have made an impact in the lives of hungry people all over the world.
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Community | Company Current |
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Tammie Follett, on the left in the center of the photo above, recently returned from spending two and half weeks in Africa leading a group of 10 people for Books For Africa and Africa Classroom Connection, highlighting the important work these organizations do in building and stocking classrooms with books. Follett is a senior account manager and business development specialist at Thomson Reuters, Legal.
Her trip also provided the opportunity to deliver a shipment of legal textbooks donated by Thomson Reuters to the University of Malawi-Chancellor College.
“The visit to the University of Malawi-Chancellor College was very rewarding,” said Follett. “I presented a personal-embossed copy of Black’s Law Dictionary to the dean, and he expressed to me that he and the law students greatly value the donation of books, especially because they needed them on topical issues such as torts and contracts.”
The law books Follett presented are not the only shipment Thomson Reuters has donated. On Oct. 13, employees packed more than 10,000 leisure reading books and textbooks collected from previous Books For Africa drives at Thomson Reuters to be shipped to Zambia.
Thomson Reuters’ commitment to Books For Africa does not end once the books have reached Africa. The company has funded Books for Africa programs and events since 2007, and this month will host the first Jack Mason Law & Democracy Initiative advisory board meeting.
The Jack Mason Law & Democracy Initiative advisory board is part of Books For Africa, and gives the organization recommendations on obtaining law books.
“Being in the presence of law students trying to make a future for themselves, their families and their country was an inspiring experience,” said Follett. “They are on a journey to change and economically stabilize their country, and I am proud that our efforts here at Thomson Reuters will be a part of that.”
In this video, shot by one of the members of Tammie’s group, you can see and learn how students and professors at Chancellor College School of Law make use of the books and why donations to Books for Africa can make such a difference.
Posted by Anne Lawver in:
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Good relationships are key to succeeding in the business world. Law firm marketers realize that it’s not just whom you know, but also how well you know them and manage your relationship with them that matters.
Many law firms are using enterprise relationship management (ERM) to track and manage those important relationships, and ultimately determine how they can be used to foster business growth. A post on the Hubbard One blog, The Hubbard Perspective, discusses a recent Hubbard One article that addresses the implications of ERM 2.0 that was featured in Marketing the Law Firm.
In “ERM 2.0 – What’s Next for Legal Marketers,” Wilbur Swan explains the evolution of ERM from version1.0, where importance was put on “who knows whom,” to ERM 2.0:
ERM 2.0 is about changing how the firm can use its relationship information as intelligence for a competitive advantage. Additionally, it encapsulates deep market and relationship data analytics, allowing firms to better understand their strategic business risks and opportunities. In other words, it really comes down to taking all relationship information and making it actionable.
Swan also believes that ERM 2.0 should be a part of a client development strategy as a broader best practice:
A client development strategy is a deliberate plan to leverage intelligence – relationship/business/competitive – to effectively deploy and measure marketing efforts as they relate to improving client development. At the core of this best practice is the understanding that relationships and experience are the keys assets that a firm brings to the table and that by leveraging them effectively a firm can outperform its peers in achieving a growth strategy.
Wilbur Swan is a senior director of Product Management at Hubbard One, and leads marketing and clients solutions for ContactNet.
You can read the full article that appeared in Marketing the Law Firm here.
Posted by Anne Lawver in:
Client development | In Business |
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The New York Law Journal recently found WestlawNext, FindLaw, Westlaw Litigator and WestCiteLink among the top vendors and products to work with, according to more than 2,000 members of the New York legal community.
The First Annual New York Law Journal Rankings asked readers to vote for the products and services that helped them manage their daily work lives. The results were based on not only the great quality of the product, but also superior customer service.
In the “Best Online Research Vendor” category, WestlawNext was voted as the best vendor and FindLaw the third.
Westlaw Litigator was named the Best Small Firm/Solo Research Vendor, while WestCiteLink was voted as the Best Table of Authority Software – though for new users, its table of authority building functionality is available through CiteAdvisor.
“We’re delighted to be honored by the New York legal community as one of the best vendors to work with,” said Mike Dahn, Chief Marketing & Product Development Officer, Westlaw US. “We design our products with our customers’ needs in mind, and recognitions such as the New York Law Journal Rankings are a reaffirmation to that.”
The New York Law Journal is part of the ALM media company, which provides other legal publications, such as The American Lawyer, Law Technology News and Law.com. To ensure the results were an accurate representation of the legal community in New York, any votes from non-attorneys or non-legal professionals were discounted.
You can read all of the results of the rankings here.
Posted by Anne Lawver in:
Company Current | In the News |
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Many people may not fully understand the complicated relationship that exists between federal, state and tribal jurisdictions in the United States, but the recent signing of the Tribal Law and Order Act has brought the issue to a national focus.
The legislation addresses the public safety challenges that tribal communities face and is a means to combat crime rates that are twice the national average, and on some reservations up to 20 times the average.
Native American tribes are sovereign governments with their own court systems, yet the complex legal system has increasingly motivated tribes to look outside their own nations for guidance and precedence on legal matters from other tribes.
The highly oral culture has made procuring legal information more difficult, but the alliance between Westlaw and the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) has greatly increased the accessibility of tribal law content through the creation of Tribal Law databases.
“The Tribal Law databases on Westlaw really make a difference for tribes who cannot find the information anywhere else,” said Dave Selden, a law librarian for NARF who works with tribes to collect legal content. “The information not only helps inform their decisions, but is also important to the development of Indian law and the broader legal world. The growing importance of Indian law is evident in the fact that many states are now including Indian law questions on their bar exams.”
The Tribal Law and Order Act may have brought tribal law to the nation’s forefront, but there are multiple pre-existing laws that will be affected by the new legislation.
In an interview edition of the Legal Current podcast, we talked with Matthew Fletcher, associate professor from the Michigan State University College of Law and chief justice of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians Supreme Court, about the Tribal Law and Order Act and how it affects laws already in place.
You can listen to the podcast in the player below, and offer your comments to this post:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
You also can access the Legal Current podcast on iTunes or grab the RSS feed.
If you have suggestions for podcast topics for us to focus on, or people to interview within the practice and business of law, send us an email to contact@legalcurrent.com.
Posted by Anne Lawver in:
In Practice | Practice trends |
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For global law firms, affecting the legal system by offering free legal assistance and empowering individuals and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the globe is made possible by unique positioning.
But, the global pro bono experience is not limited to firms who are already at a global scale – all that is necessary is the connection to those who need legal assistance.
Tune in Wednesday, Sept. 22, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. EST for a complimentary CLE-accredited webcast hosted by Peter Warwick, Legal’s President and CEO, on the topic of moving pro bono work worldwide.
Warwick will introduce TrustLaw, an organization run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, as well as an in-depth case study of the Campaign for Female Education (Camfed), a charity that educates girls and empowers young women in sub-Saharan Africa.
TrustLaw connects individuals and NGOs that need legal assistance with lawyers willing to work at no cost. The organization aims to promote and facilitate pro bono work worldwide, and is the leading provider of news and information on anti-corruption issues.
The webcast also includes a panel discussion from experienced legal professionals led by NYU School of Law professor, legal scholar and West Key Author, Arthur Miller.
For more information or to register for the free session, visit West LegalEdcenter.
Posted by Anne Lawver in:
Company Current | Events |
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What’s in a word? The Black’s Law Dictionary, 9th edition from Thomson Reuters can provide both definition and pronunciation through a new Android App. When the word of the day isn’t a word you know, Black’s mobile applications is ready to find that content on your Android.
Black’s is available as an Android App and also [...]
Pangea3 CEO David Perla was a member on the panel for Legal Process Outsourcing 2.0 at the ACC Annual Conference in Denver recently.
With the rapid growth surrounding LPOs in the legal industry, the panel addressed numerous topics and issues ranging from: how each company addresses the relationship with the LPO differently to the best way [...]
We’ve got a great podcast this month to kick-off the New Year featuring an interview segment with attorney Yar Chaikovsky about monetizing patents and the forthcoming impacts of patent reform.
Then in our “On the Blawgs” segment we learn about one blogger’s top five social media tips for businesses.
In our “Chaos in the Courts” segment, we [...]
