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January – a new year and a new start. When people and businesses traditionally think, ‘Out with the old and in with the new’. Conversely, TikitTFB’s practice, case and document management system Partner for Windows has just celebrated its 13th year. TikitTFB’s Business Development Director Mark Garnish shared his plans for the next five years with Joanna Goodman.
B2B technology news sites – and LITP is no exception – focus on swap-outs: where firms have replaced their practice management and other systems with the latest products to hit the market.
The simple fact that you are considering a practice management program means that your firm has reached a pain point that makes work difficult on a regular basis – matter-related contacts, emails, notes, documents, etc. are scattered among various software programs and computers; attorneys must “re-create the wheel” when they can’t find a particular document so productivity suffers; billable hours are lost when they aren’t captured real-time. Inefficiencies like these cost you a bundle in client service and profitability every day. There are many excellent practice management programs out there. Here’s what you need to consider before investing in one of them:
I did my review yesterday so let’s crack on and look at what I think will be emerging technology for Legal in 2012 or that will be technology that will feature heavily in Legal in 2012.
Speech Recognition: Yes I know I predicted this in 2010 but I really think we will start to see more uptake of this technology in Legal. It’ll creep more into consumer and as such we’ll become more acustomed to speaking to machines. Read more of my thoughts on speech recognition in this post from November last year.
Before I take my annual look of emerging technology for Legal in 2012 or technology that will feature heavily in Legal in 2012, let’s review what I thought would be key things over the last couple of years.
My 2010 list was as follows:
Mobile Applications - Search - Office 2010/Windows 7 - Instant Messaging - Speech Recognition
And then in 2011 was:
Glue Tech - Microsoft Lync - YouTube - Mobile Applications - Office 2010 and Windows 7
Now given the similarity between the lists it’s clear that things don’t move at a fast pace across the whole of Legal. But I didn’t do a bad job (alright some were bleeding obvious, but they still caught some Legal IT vendors on the back foot. Office 2010 anyone?)
David McNamara, managing director of Solicitors Own Software offers his reflections on 2011 and his predictions for 2012
REFLECTIONS
Software supplier consolidation has proved more beneficial than expected for independent providers
During the past year, many of the new software contracts awarded by law firms can clearly be attributed to the impact the consolidation of software suppliers is continuing to have on the profession. For a good many firms, this has meant their incumbent software, under new ownership, is no longer being developed and therefore they have been falling further and further behind in terms of the software functionality needed to drive their businesses forward.
Last week I attended the BigHand user conference at the excellent Renaissance Hotel in St Pancras. Rather than write up a review of the whole day I thought I’d comment on an item that was high on the days agenda, speech recognition.
Now before I get accused of following certain people or the current trend generated by SIRI let me first point out item #1 on this blog post of mine from the 1st January 2010!
But the feeling I got from the conference is that finally the technology, that has been around in Legal ever since I’ve been in this vertical, is finally reaching a point that it is useable.
I had very high hopes for WorkSite 9. Admittedly, a lot of these hopes I developed in the period of version 8.2 (i.e. before the Autonomy merger) so a lot has happened since. But because of this I feel just a little underwhelmed by what’s in v9.0.
Now don’t get me wrong, there is some good stuff in 9.0 that is going to be really useful for a lot of firms, but there were a couple of things that I’d hoped for that haven’t materialised. First off though let’s take a look at the things that are there:
Unicode: Now if you are a one country, one language firm that has no international offices nor international clients then this probably isn’t a big deal.
While there’s no doubt that technology dashboards provide valuable insight into a law department’s business processes, it is ultimately the metrics gleaned from analyzing the data that directs a company’s general counsel toward the current desires of his CEO and his CFO. As corporate law departments continue to emerge as a business center that contributes to corporate growth, their mantra is to improve services while controlling costs and minimizing risks. And, there’s more to the equation than just controlling legal spend.
Quite a few Autonomy customers have implemented 8.5SP1x WorkSite Communication Server (WCS) to take advantage of the enhanced server-side filing features brought in by the new Email Management (EMM) client. Although the legacy “send & file” functionality existed before 8.5, it was a bit clunky & basic. Using the filing toolbar and other neat features bought the fee-earner even closer to matter collaboration and email volumes in WorkSite have increased.
Recently, I went to a Microsoft Word users’ group meeting where a legal software application was being demonstrated. The software being shown was going to allow attorneys and legal staff to accomplish a time-consuming legal task in a fraction of the time it would have taken manually. The attendees, mostly legal software trainers, were amazed and very enthusiastic about the software.
Out of curiosity, I asked the trainers, “When you train lawyers and legal staff, do some of them resist learning productivity software tools because they actually don’t want the task to take them less time, because it reduces their billed hours?”
Law firm technology in 2065
Welcome to the global law firm of DLA, Watson, Siri & Wal-Mart. The year is 2065. I am Stevie, a Mark 3 Siri assistant. It is my task to acquaint you with the history and functioning of the firm.
Many things have changed in the legal industry since the end of the first decade of 2000. As a law firm this has forced us to review all aspects of our personnel, our processes and our technology. We practice in all areas of law around the world.
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