News

Lawyers are coming to an iPod screen near you.

Seizing the latest pop-technology craze, the venerable Bay Street law firm Torys LLP has begun video "podcasting," offering downloadable clips of pinstriped partners holding forth on such topics as merger break fees and proxy contests.

The clips, available for free from Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music store as well as the Torys.com website, are designed to play on the new flat-screen model of Apple's iconic iPod portable music player.

The first two trailers in the planned five-part series feature Phil Brown and Sharon Geraghty, co-heads of Torys' mergers-and-acquisitions team. "The idea is you could take Phil in your car with you," said Susan Mitchell, Torys LLP's marketing manager, referring to Mr. Brown's debut, a three-minute talk on hostile income trust plays. The second instalment, posted last Thursday, stars Ms. Geraghty in "Recent Trends in Break Fees."

While a smattering of North American law firms, including Toronto-based Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, are experimenting with audio-only transmissions to cater to the "audio-book" executive demographic, several industry watchers say Torys' videocasts appear to be the first foray by a law firm onto the handheld screen.

"That's a new one to me," said David Maister, a Massachusetts-based author, former Harvard Business School professor and well-known management consultant who has taken to audio podcasting on management issues. He is skeptical about the potential for pocket law video because it "requires 100-per-cent of your attention," whereas audio clips, like talking books, can be heard while performing other tasks, such as driving. But he commends Torys for testing the waters, since there's little to lose.

Stuart Wood, Torys director of strategy and business development, says clients have been clamouring for prognostications from the firm's lawyers, especially on hot M&A-related topics, and podcasting offers an up-close-and-personal alternative to the static prose of its well-received text bulletins. It's also a way for the 330-lawyer firm to showcase its deal-brokering stars.

Early response has been encouraging, he adds. During eight days after Mr. Brown's video was posted, 900 visitors outside the firm either watched the clip or downloaded it to their computers. About 150 were from the United States, 10 from England and the rest from such countries as China, India, Bulgaria, France, Israel, Germany and Spain.

Rather than signalling a decline in literacy on Bay Street, experimentation with video bulletins is seen as a natural evolutionary step at a time when mobile executives regularly tune in to another, more pervasive small screen, the BlackBerry e-mail pager.

Video on iPod, introduced last October with a high-end model of Apple's pocket music player, enables users to log on to the iTunes site via a desktop computer and buy a wide array of music, talking books and video entertainment as well as download more than 35,000 free, special-interest podcasts. The programs can later be installed on the headphone-equipped iPods or played directly on a desktop computer screen.

Another podcast champion is Robert Ambrogi, a lawyer and consultant based in Rockport, Mass., near Boston. He recently launched a weekly half-hour audio "talk show" on iTunes called Coast To Coast, complete with advertisements. Co-hosted by California colleague J. Craig Williams, it features expert guests speaking on current legal events. Mr. Ambrogi, a former editor of the National Law Journal, says his motivation is purely journalistic, but that podcasting can also make sense as a marketing tool. He concedes there is a danger, particularly among lawyers, in coming across as wooden. He said he has no plans to venture into video.

Ms. Geraghty of Torys said that when asked to sit for the series she wanted to run away screaming. Most corporate lawyers, she said, consider themselves too serious for video's aesthetic vagaries. But now she finds the medium quite comfortable. "To be a successful M&A lawyer, you must be willing to be out there. You can't be a shrinking flower to negotiate an M&A deal."