AI in 2024: Should We Still Be “Moving Fast and Breaking Things”?
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Where are things headed with AI in the coming year? What trends should legal IT professionals be awa(...)
Document and Email Technology Predictions for 2024
Dave Wilson
As trusted advisors to law firms around the globe, we're often asked about the latest trends in lega(...)
As a recruiter who specializes in the Legal Technology profession, I am fortunate to speak with CIOs and IT Directors at many of the top law firms in the country on a regular basis. These industry leaders provide me with insight on what is at the forefront of legal technology, but also with the perspective on the strengths and, more importantly, what is lacking in the talent pool that ultimately helps their respective firms compete with the latest IT trends. One of the more notable and often-repeated observations I hear from top law firm IT executives and managers is the seeming lack of high-quality junior-level talent within the industry.
VQ Knowledge Management and Strategy forum in Stockholm was organised by VQAB’s Ann Björk and Helena Hallgarn, former knowledge managers at Vinge, Sweden's second largest law firm. It was an interesting and useful event with thought-provoking presentations and excellent hospitality and networking at The Grand Hotel. Over 130 delegates attended. It was good to meet leading lights in Swedish law firms and catch up with legal IT providers including Autonomy (now part of HP), Recommind, OpenText and BusinessIntegrity and hear presentations from Rob Ameerun of Legal IT Professionals and Chris Bull of Edge International, among others.
The keynote speaker was Professor Richard Susskind, whose presentation was based on the concepts in his bestselling book ‘The End of Lawyers?’ Susskind repeatedly describes his book as, “The End of Lawyers – Question Mark”, presumably to clarify that the title indicates a question for discussion rather than what would be a rather alarming statement at a law firm conference!
Well it’s been a bad few days for RIM this week (and I dare say a difficult time for a fair few IT depts in law firms as a result). And it looks like it isn’t just contained to EMEA either, reports suggest a spread to the US now.
A few things spring to mind off this:
1) It’s going to be one heck of a case study for IT service failure. From the technology that failed, the (lack of) disaster recovery and what resilience was built into a critical system through to studies into how not to manage an incident (the failure in communicating to customers etc). No matter how much redundancy you put in place we know things like this do happen in IT.
Have you seen the Social Media Revolution 2011 video by Socialnomics09 on YouTube? If not, then go ahead and check it out. This video, although not legal specific, gives you the scope of how social media has changed our world. The underlying message in this quick two minute video is that social media is about many things: revolution, commerce, tragedy, memories, government, business but most of all people. It’s about people and the platforms or channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and the hundreds of others that serve as the medium to reach out, communicate and connect us on a global scale.
Bridging the Gap Between the IT Department and End Users
Last year, I started a discussion in the Legal IT Professionals group on LinkedIn, asking what IT people wish law firm staff understood better about their jobs. My interest in the topic was more than theoretical: For nearly 25 years, I’ve worked as a legal word processor, and I’ve been a software trainer specializing in the legal field for almost as long. In those capacities, I’ve witnessed first-hand numerous interactions between users and IT departments—good, bad, and ugly.
I’ve heard complaints from both sides, but mostly from the users’ perspective. One of my goals in starting the discussion on LinkedIn was to give IT people a chance to express their views—and their needs—as a step toward bridging the gap between two groups that face rather different demands and issues at work.
In this article, I’ve provided highlights of the discussion, with quotes from many of the IT people who responded.
It’s been almost a month since the infamous ILTA 2011 Conference took place at the lovely Nashville Gaylord Hotel. The conference, if you haven’t heard by now, was jammed packed with great sessions, information, speakers, colleagues, food and vendor entertainment! It was definitely THE CONFERENCE to be attending.
This year however, ILTA traveled into the social sphere a bit deeper than last year. The dedicated hashtag for the conference in the Twitterverse was #ILTA11, although #ILTA was very popular too. ILTA set it up so that each live onsite session had its own dedicated hashtag on Twitter.
Whenever I think about new technologies for business development in law firms, I'm reminded of the reaction I got when showing an email broadcast tool to the Head of Marketing for a large firm in San Francisco in early 2002: "Email? Our clients don't want information from us by email!".
Until fairly recently, I would almost certainly have got a similar reaction had I suggested using Twitter for Business Development. But firms of all sizes are realising that Twitter and other social media tools are much more than a passing fad and really can provide some unique benefits for comparatively little resource.
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal published an article that grabbed the attention of many attorneys: “Pricing Tactic Spooks Lawyers”. The article discussed how some large companies, including Toyota Motor Corp. and GlaxoSmithKline, have been using reverse auctions (also known as competitive bidding) to pit law firms against one another for their business. The goal of these reverse auctions is to reduce costs, especially for high-volume workloads.
At the surface, reverse auctions appear to be a good idea for corporations. The competition it creates forces law firms to lower their rates in order to win work. But, as is frequently the case with legal billing, what we see at the surface isn’t the whole story.
Christy Burke reports live from ILTA 2011
Christy Burke reports 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.
This monster transaction is all about a single word: growth. HP is buying Autonomy so that it may capitalize on growth, especially at a time when HP shareholders, partners and customers, and the analysts covering HP, are becoming increasingly critical of the company’s stagnation. (To be fair to HP, the global economy continues to suffer from its own case of the growth blues...but we digress.)
First, we need to put this transaction in perspective: this is a big deal for all concerned, but none more than HP and its leaders. HP is paying almost twelve times trailing revenue for a technology company that is itself an amalgamation of many acquisitions, from Verity back in 2005 to Neurodynamics, Zantaz, Interwoven, CA’s information governance unit and earlier in 2011 Iron Mountain’s Digital division.
Tips on selecting the best application
Today’s lawyers are constantly on the go, working from home and the office and everywhere in between. This flexibility means greater productivity and better levels of client service but it also poses a challenge in capturing all possible billable time. In fact, it’s estimated that three to four billable hours per timekeeper go unrecorded and unbilled every month. This adds up to billions of dollars industry wide every year.
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