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The Alternative Legal IT Conference, produced by LexisNexis for mid-sized law firms, was my first experience of a legal IT two-day country hotel conference and it was a highly civilised and well-organised event. When I looked at the programme, I was immediately interested in hearing the keynote speeches from legal services market entrants.
After several years of the same people making similar (albeit polished) presentations at various Legal IT events year after year, a few progressive event organisers have been booking speakers from outside the industry whose appeal lies in the fact that they are potentially thought provoking. Their presentations focus on a single theme: the future of legal IT.
Control Risks’ presentation on ‘The future of eDiscovery technology’ sounded like a bold attempt to predict the predictive. It was actually a practical walk through two key eDiscovery tools – concept clustering and predictive coding. Although it focused on Control Risks’ toolkit, the principles are applicable to other eDiscovery products.
While sophisticated technology impresses client organisations sufficiently to make them invest in it, users often fail to make use of its features. The main challenge is user confidence and understanding how the technology works.
Armed with a computer and a credit card or PayPal account, you can shop for just about anything online – but legal services? Yes, indeed! Using new online technologies, lawyers can attract and service clients, opening up new channels of customers that would never be able to find them otherwise. Now, legal consumers can shop online for lawyers from the comfort of their own home or office.
Virtual Meetings are Preferred by Many Clients
As virtualization continually becomes more commonplace and less scary, it’s more common than ever for people to interact online and forego the in-person element, either at first, or altogether. Giving clients the ability to interface with lawyers online is not taking a short-cut or being avoidant or antisocial – it is actually providing what today’s clients actually want from lawyers: convenience, quality legal advice and efficiency.
Workshare is about to announce new cloud-based offerings. Legal IT Professionals talked with Workshare’s VP of Marketing Matt Brown to know more about the company’s cloud strategy.
Workshare took a new approach when you started to focus on Document Management. Now the new focus is on the Cloud. Was it a big challenge make those strategic changes? What challenges did you encounter, both with respect to company culture and technical challenges?
Christy Burke reports live from ILTA 2012
Christy Burke reports live from the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA). During the conference, Christy interviews visitors and exhibitors and asks them about their companies, new products and impressions of ILTA. Below you will find the interviews of the first two days.
Continuing my daily look at tommorrows ILTA 2012 sessions from the other side of the pond. Here’s my pick of Tuesday’s sessions with a few comments.
Day Two (Tuesday 28th August) sessions
Make the Move: Autonomy’s Cloud for Information Management (Tuesday 11am, Hashtag #AUT1) 4pm UK time
This could be an interesting space in the next few years. Netdocuments had a bit of a head start with a DMS in the cloud, but HP Autonomy seem to be shifting into this space now.
I decided I needed some stimulus to get blogging again, so I’ve set myself a little challenge for the week. I’m not sure I’ll make it, but here’s what I’m going to do. I can’t make ILTA 2012 so I’m going to virtually join you all in Washington, the challenge for myself is a post a day for the duration of the conference. Each evening (UK time) I will pick out what I think will be interesting sessions from the following day and post some of my thoughts on the topic. Simple right?
In my last column I gave you the first five post-purchase secrets for making your investment in practice management software pay off. Here are five more quick recommendations to keep moving ahead with your practice:
1. You need to keep training to the next level
Once your staff reaches proficiency on the basics, it’s time to move on to the next level, because like a gold mine, there may be some chips of gold at the surface of the mine, but you have to dig for the high value stuff. Keep your staff training to keep them interested and motivated. Keep them training to advance the firm to the next level of profitability. Use the extra features.
Do-it-Yourself Legal Services
Since the mid 90s, a burgeoning and innovative online legal services industry has been threatening the status quo of the traditional legal profession. A plethora of legal information and document websites has been taking advantage of the growing financial restraints of businesses and individuals. This began with the first consumer-oriented websites like Nolo, which published its legal self-help books online, and offered legal documents services for a fraction of typical attorney fees.
Back in February 2011 I wrote a post titled “Is iManage WorkSite about to be outflanked?” where I looked at two up and coming DMS (Document Management System) technologies that were looking to take iManage WorkSite’s crown as the legal DMS of choice for mid to large law firms. After 18 months I though it would be worth taking a look to see how one of those “manoeuvres” is progressing.
The SharePoint offensive
Leading the front is Magic Circle giant Clifford Chance, their drive started back in 2010 (at least that’s when I first heard of their plans to replace legacy DM5 systems with SharePoint at ILTA 2010 in Las Vegas). A post on Legal IT Professionals this month nicely brings us up to date on how it’s going and below are some of my comments on the progress.
Greenwood: "Half the firm is live. 3,000 people are working on SharePoint now"
For quite some time now, Magic Circle giant Clifford Chance has been working on a project to replace its existing OpenText DM5 Document Management platform with a SharePoint 2010 based system.
Legal IT Professionals caught up with Clifford Chance CIO Paul Greenwood for an update on the firm’s global SharePoint project. Joanna Goodman reports.
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