Legal IT Professionals

Two points struck me from findings in ILTA’s 2009 Technology Survey, at 42 of law firms: one about the shared challenges of providing technology to lawyers – inside or outside – and the other about overhead support for IT that legal departments often enjoy free of charge.

The law firms that responded to the ILTA survey chose from a list of the “top 3 biggest technology issues or annoyances within your firm.”

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“Average reported savings from using matter management systems were 36.8% of outside legal spending.” Incredible, and not to be believed.

The claim comes from the 2008 ACC/Serengeti Managing Outside Counsel Survey, which obtained survey responses from hundreds of ACC-member law departments. I have twice before challenged similar claims drawn from this survey, and won’t repeat my criticisms here (See my post of Aug. 5, 2005: average savings on matter management systems from survey of more than 250 law departments in 2002 was 16%; and April 13, 2007: from same survey in 2006, “average reported savings from using matter management systems was 11% of outside legal spending.”). Little of this do I believe can be substantiated.

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From guest author Steven Levy, slightly abridged, here are seven key “go-do’s” for successful Legal-IT projects. They’re based on but somewhat different from CIO Magazine’s tips, and they take into account a few ways in which “Legal is different.”

1. Require an honest business case. ROI, ROI, ROI. I can't repeat this enough. Return on Investment. Understand -- and require proof of -- the value of the project. Then follow through (see item 7). 

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The e-discovery niche, according to the ABA J., Vol. 95, Aug. 2009 at 29, is crowded with about 600 vendors. They are jostling for pieces of a large pie. George Socha, a consultant deeply involved in research about e-discovery vendors, projects that “Commercial spending in this young niche is expected to increase this year by 20 percent to $4.05 billion.”

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In mid-May, ten providers of e-billing software received invitations from me to provide metrics for three questions. Two declined but eight sent me data: Allegiant, Bottomline, Bridgeway, CTTyMetrix, DataCert, DOELegal, LawTrac, and Serengeti.

One question asked for the “Number of active law department users during the past six months, meaning only those who have logged into your system during that period.” Three companies reported multiple thousands, one reported around 2,000, and two were in the hundreds of law department users. Read more...

A surprising emphasis on technology training appeared in a recent white paper. A chart summarizes the survey responses from 150 lawyers among the largest in the United States and Canada, reported in Future Law Office: Delivering Value-Added Legal Services in Challenging Times (Robert Half Legal 2009) at 6. The question asked of them was “Which of the following techniques, if any, are being implemented by your law firm to enhance your team’s focus on client services?”

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Most of the metaposts on Law Department Management Blog look at specific categories of software, including the following seven:

1. Contract management (See my post of Nov. 22, 2008: contract management software with 11 references.).

2. Decision trees (See my post of June 17, 2009: decision tree software with 6 references.)

3. Document assembly (See my post of Feb. 26, 2008: document assembly with 16 references.).

4. Document management (See my post of Dec. 6, 2007: document management with 15 references.).

5. Idea visualization (See my post of May 15, 2009: idea relationship software with 6 references.).

6. Matter management (See my post of Aug. 5, 2008: matter management systems with 35 references.).

7. Portals (See my post of June 27, 2006: portals with 4 references; and Aug. 16, 2006: portals.)

Several metaposts focus on broader aspects of software usage in legal departments, including the entire genre (See my post of Feb. 9, 2008: law department software with 59 references.).

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The larger the legal department, the more likely it has its own employees supporting at least some of its software and hardware. No data exists (that I know of) that tells us the tipping point, where departments typically hire their own technology talent. Most legal departments, and all smaller departments, rely on personnel from the corporate IT function for their support, training, and development needs (See my post of June 16, 2009: Information Technology staff group with 23 references and 1 metapost.).

There are advantages and disadvantages to each solution. Read more...

Like other corporate staff groups, IT supports the legal group and is supported by them, such as with contracts issues. They team on some responsibilities, such as e-discovery.

Mostly, however, general counsel often bemoan the lack of support they get from corporate IT. Even with the griping, most software customization projects involve corporate IT. No one can definitively resolve the debate about which support approach is better: support from the company’s IS group or support from members of the legal department. Read more...

A survey conducted a year ago on behalf of LexisNexis, hosts of Connected, gathered responses from more than 449 in-house attorneys (See my post of Oct. 12, 2008: background details on the poll; and June 9, 2009: some questions about data on social networks used by corporate counsel.). One question asked “What are the top advantages of participating in an online legal professional network?” Here are the choices on the survey and the percentages of those who selected them. Read more...

Law departments ought to consider Microsoft’s SharePoint for some of their automation needs, according to an article by a consulting firm in ACC Docket, Vol. 27, May 2009 at 18. The article describes it as having the potential to serve as a matter management system, a document management system, an integrator of information from other applications, a corporate governance suite, plus much else. More a platform or toolbox than a finished application, SharePoint has many fans. Read more...

If law departments lack software to track external expenses, they may rely on accounts payable to generate whatever figures they need. This point struck me after I read astute blogger Ron Friedmann and his lament about the lack of technology in many law departments. On that point, he heard from Rob Thomas, the sage of Serengeti.

“In our most recent annual survey of ACC members (about 80% of which [law departments] have fewer than 10 lawyers), only 29% have a matter management and/or e-billing system. Another 36% manage by manually keying information into spreadsheets. So one-third have no system at all, not even spreadsheets. … Law departments can’t manage what they can’t see.“

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