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Charles Christian
Fifteen years after: they didn't get it then, they still don't get it now
| 23 January 2012
I’m currently writing a new edition of my 1998 book Legal Practice in the Digital Age and, as part of my research, I’m looking at some of the issues I considered then (the best part of 15 years ago when I was writing the original book) to see whether they are still relevant today. Obviously there are some technology developments – such as social media – that weren’t even on the radar then that are mainstream now, and other technologies that today are so embedded in law office culture that we forget what a big deal they once were. For example in my conclusion to the 1998 book, two of the key technologies I recommend readers should invest in are email (or electronic mail as we still called it in those days) and websites.
All killer and no filler?
| 12 October 2008
Although we’ve been living with the credit crunch in the UK and a faltering economy in the US for getting on for over a year now, the sentiment within the legal market has remained consistently positive. OK, perhaps not deliriously happy but (with the notable exception of residential conveyancing departments) a long way short of wrist-slashingly miserable. This has even been evident on my own particular turf – the legal tech scene. For example, as recently as June this year, when ILTA (the US-based International Legal Technology Association) was conducting its annual IT purchasing survey, the sentiments being expressed were still along the lines of ‘IT belts were being tightened’ but ‘a budget freeze was not apparent.’
Time for lawyers to realise when they should stay in bed
| 27 September 2008
It’s the autumn fashion season, so let’s have a story about the supermodel Linda Evangelista . Back in 1990 she famously commented that she “didn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.”
Why is this relevant to a legal IT column? Because it is a message many lawyers have yet to understand. And why don’t they understand the message? Because their firms do not have the financial management information systems, reporting tools, business intelligence and key performance indicators to provide them with analytics on such things as the true cost of handling a matter, the amount of WIP being written off or that they will never recover and their profitability.
