News menu
Christy Burke covered ILTA 2010: the interviews
|
30 August 2010
Christy Burke reports live from ILTA 2010 - All the interviews
Christy Burke reported live from the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA). During the conference, Christy interviewed visitors and exhibitors and asked them about their companies, new products and impressions of ILTA. Below you will find all Christy's interviews.
Will Office 2010 "Make it Great" or Crash and Burn at Your Firm?
|
26 July 2010
Make it Great. Yes, that’s the vanilla marketing tagline Microsoft came up with for promoting Office 2010. This begs the question that’s on legal IT’s collective mind these days: is 2010 actually great, or is it chaos and misery stuffed into a shrink-wrapped box?
On May 12, 2010, Microsoft announced worldwide availability of Office 2010, so the product is officially out of the gate…and running? The issue is: will it run well, will it be in the running for your firm, or will it run you over? Microsoft dominates the legal market and is part of the woodwork of most law firms by now, so many sites are likely to be impacted by this new release, for better or for worse.
Could the BP Oil Spill Lead to an e-Discovery Disaster?
|
21 May 2010
As oil from the BP spill continues to spread into the Gulf waters, the eDiscovery scenario for the company continues to expand and worsen as well. BP has already agreed to take full responsibility for the fallout of this catastrophe, which is one of the most epic environmental debacles…ever.
On May 19, the Associated Press reported in an article that “an attorney is asking a federal judicial panel to quickly consolidate more than 100 lawsuits filed against BP and other companies responsible for the massive Gulf oil spill. Louisiana lawyer Daniel Becnel says legal chaos could break out in five Gulf Coast states if the lawsuits aren't combined. Becnel has asked the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in Washington to quickly reconsider whether to order the cases consolidated. The panel has indicated it will not decide until July.”
Burke covers ABA TechShow
|
28 March 2010
Burke reports from ABA TechShow
Christy Burke visited last week’s ABA TechShow, the annual legal technology conference of the American Bar Association. During the show, Christy interviewed a couple of legal IT leaders and asked them about their companies, new products and impressions of the conference.
Show Them the Money!
|
22 March 2010
Make Your IT Department a Revenue Generator
If you saw a hundred-dollar bill lying on the sidewalk with no one around, would you pick it up? Maybe/maybe not, depending on how much of a Boy or Girl Scout you are. Now what if you knew that money was actually yours and you had dropped it yourself without realizing it – would you pick it up then? Of course you would!
Think of this - you didn’t have to work any extra hours for that hundred dollars – it is quite literally found money, rightfully yours, which you weren’t ever going to see again unless you went back and picked it up. What if you were given the same opportunity to find money for your law firm by leveraging certain kinds of technology - wouldn’t you seek those tools out? Of course you would.
Burke covered LegalTech: the interviews
04 February 2010
All interviews now available in one location
While at LegalTech, our columnist Christy Burke interviewed Legal IT heavyweights and asked them about their impression of this year’s show and their newest products. Listen to the short one-on-one interviews now.
Big Data, Tiny Screens – Mobile Applications Debuting at LegalTech New York 2010
25 January 2010
Great things often come in small packages, like the ignition key to a Ferrari, an engagement ring, a winning lottery ticket, or…an iPhone! The business of practicing law is being transacted more and more on handheld devices, cell phones and pocket computers. E-mails now deliver massive amounts of information onto Lilliputian-sized gadgets and this has become critically important to meeting client demands of 24/7 availability.
“I didn’t get the memo” has gone the way of “The dog ate my homework” as a valid excuse for not being informed. There are so many ways to be connected back to the office, even if you’re on a beach somewhere. While this phenomenon can be viewed as depressing for some, it can also be seen as a major plus and convenience. Perhaps it means that a beach could be in your future after all this winter!
Legal Technology 2010 – Batten Down the Hatches
|
17 December 2009
Three Legal IT gurus look at what can be expected next year
2010 – it’s a nice round number and the start of a new decade as well. Remember 10 years ago, the entire world was furiously updating code, fearing the end of the world when the millennium ended? Like most public hysteria, that panic turned out to be fairly ridiculous and we did indeed live to see January 2nd, 2000.
In the past 10 years, law offices have certainly made enormous strides in terms of process automation, workflow efficiency, and productivity enhancement by leveraging technology to the hilt. Now that the New Year is fast approaching, it is time to examine what 2010 will look like for legal technology. What major decisions and budget concerns will legal IT professionals face this coming year? How will legal technology providers be affected, from behemoths to underdogs? What will be the “hot items” on the MIS to-do lists of firms all around the world?
The “Must Haves” of Data Security to Prevent Identity Theft and Security Breaches
|
30 November 2009
In days of yore when the documents were all paper, you could simply lock your client folders in a file cabinet drawer, turn the key, and feel reasonably confident that no one could infiltrate that crack security regimen. Well, now that electronic and wireless communication dominates, and paper is usually mainly an output of files that originated digitally, data flies all over the place, flowing through cables and wires, and invisibly cruising through the air. If you can’t see it, how can you protect it? That’s a good question!
Law firms of every size, and all the employees that work for them including lawyers, legal assistants and administrative staff, are all vulnerable to data security breaches and identity theft. Certainly, such incidents harm the individual, often in a major way, but also they can have a direct, negative impact on the firm.
"A common vision for control and governance of email and documents that will satisfy legal requirements and address cost and feasibility concerns from the IT department is slowly emerging. The publication of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) has helped a great deal by codifying the common components that the legal department needs and that IT must provide." 
"The persistence of temporary backup files for four days presents obvious security and privacy issues. If such files contain sensitive, confidential, or otherwise privileged information, their existence can expose a law firm to malpractice risk, court sanctions, or other serious problems / penalties
"The UK Legal market is certainly not a leader in Social Networking but one or two firms are using some of the tools such as Linkedin, Blogs, Twitter and a couple are experimenting with Facebook as a consumer facing marketing tool. " 
