Legal Tech: Establishing, Collecting, and Analyzing Metrics for Success
Liza Pestillos‑Ocat
As legal tech vendors, we’re often asked, “What’s the ROI on your software?” Our response is familia(...)
Generative AI in litigation: Turning talk into transformation
Opus 2
In recent years, generative AI (GenAI) has captured the legal industry's attention, moving from buzz(...)
ILTA's first Nordic event in Copenhagen was hosted by Stefan Winquist , CIO at Bech-Bruun and attended by delegates from Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish firms. There were familiar faces from the UK too. The meeting was chaired by Gareth Ash, CIO at Allen & Overy, who is ILTA's regional vice president for Europe. The keynote by well-known legal IT consultant Neil Cameron raised some serious points.
With a flat revenue projection and expenses as a percentage of revenue on the rise, many firms will have no choice but to further reduce their expenses. Are there alternatives to cutting headcount and avoid the unfortunate layoffs that are occurring? Yes. Here are 12 tested and true concrete strategies your firm can implement and start saving now.
Electronic evidence, computer forensics and more
Given the number of conferences which I attend in a year, it is unsurprising that many of them merge together in my recollection. There is a finite range of subject headings; similarities between jurisdictions outweigh the differences; many of the speakers turn up at several events; the conference centres may vary in detail, but the rooms are much the same whatever the country. I wake up some mornings and have to think where I am.
If that sounds like a criticism (and you come across people who like to sneer at this sameness), I rarely hear a presentation which does not bring something new to the debate. The pool of speakers and the range of subjects may be small, but the spotlight shifts, priorities change, and different permutations of speakers cast new light on their subjects.
When eDiscovery involves data from more than one country, it adds layers of complexity to an already complicated process. Hiring experts on the ground in each country, collecting documents from countries with privacy laws that differ from those of the United States, and dealing with documents written in unfamiliar languages are some of the many challenges counsel must overcome.
Given the variations in law and cultural preferences, there is no one-size-fits-all model to handling cross-border eDiscovery. However, the following best practices can help bridge the legal, cultural, and linguistic divides.
Joanna Goodman reflects on ILTA 2013: keynotes, trade floor and more
ILTA the Catalyst focused on the future -the role of IT as the catalyst for change in the legal sector. The first two keynotes concentrated on the disruptive effect of technology and offered valuable guidance as well as interesting and occasionally far-fetched predictions. The third was more like an MBA interactive session as it focused on leadership as a catalyst for change - as an enabler rather than a disruptor - and the roles and personalities that will successfully lead law firms into the future.
Say what you want - there's no denying that recent business technologies have changed the face of the legal professional community. From attorneys to consultants to support staff, law practices everywhere are using software to simplify and enhance their daily workflow. Yet not all legal professionals know how to capitalize on these recent advances - and the history of legal technology shows why.
Thanks to advanced capabilities in content management systems, personalizing content has become more feasible on the web, and companies are taking advantage of the opportunity to more effectively target their audiences and deliver a more valuable website experience. Law firms utilize websites now more than ever as part of their marketing and business development initiatives. Many are investigating how they can best leverage the latest technology to enhance their marketing efforts and develop an effective content strategy that will assist in maintaining and developing the long-term relationships they work to establish with current and prospective clients.
Part 1 of this three-part article discussed the terminology of TAR: Key word search, both simple and advanced, conceptual search and predictive coding. Part 2 discussed two specific statistical methodologies commonly used in TAR: Support vector and conceptual search, along with how they work, what they do and how they can be used. Our third and final part will focus on the practical: What do the cases say? How can parties use TAR in a defensible way? How can TAR help to achieve proportionality?
As it’s been a while since the last post (my thoughts have been elsewhere during May and June) I’m going to stick to some familiar ground until I’m back in the swing of writing; so a post on documents. In particular the “dropbox” conundrum. Although I will mention a few of Legal IT contenders in this space and the challenges they will have, I’m not going to go into detail of how their products work. No, the question for me is where does the DMS (document management system) fit into all this and is it (corporate dropbox) a direction we want to go in?
The phrase “hope is not a strategy” is written on the walls of locker rooms and sales offices all over the world. Putting what you deem as your best effort forward and hoping that the results come out in your favor is not a tactic that often works out.
Rather, success is gained by taking complete control of the situation and managing events to the desirable outcome. Hoping the puck finds the back of the net doesn't work. Neither does hoping that the prospect you've been speaking with for the last three months really, really likes your stuff and is going to send you a purchase order just because it's the right thing to do.
The Confession, or Well... It Could have Happened
I have written a fair amount of late about law firm information security. I know what many law firms' security is like and it's not pretty. I want to see law firm security improve. Not just a few selective biglaw firms, but all firms, down into the AmLaw 200 and below. I want to see initiatives like ILTA's LegalSEC continue forward, because "championing an initiative to deliver a set of best practices and a framework that firms can adapt to their needs to build or enhance their information assurance/security programs" is something the industry desperately needs. Right now law firms are the weakest link the chain with their clients.
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