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(...)
Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living” – very wise words indeed - so in the past 6 weeks on Legal Technology Observer (LTO), we have set out to examine the trends, topics and perspectives that are driving today’s legal technology world. We have had more than 18,000 readers visit the blog! With the insightful help of many of the industry’s most respected experts (see list below), we have been able to provide practical, useful and relevant information to reach exponentially more lawyers, IT and administrative staff and bring them into the legal technology conversation.
Like it or not, legal technology is here to stay, and “gentlemen’s agreements” to ignore it will mark you as doomed faster than a hunky dude morphs into a werewolf in teen movies. Lawyers who refuse to recognize that technology must be integrated within the practice of law will fail. Today’s lawyers and firms need technology to help them deliver “better, faster, cheaper” legal services to their internal and external clients. Darwin is always right: Adapt, or die.
Examining how small the legal tech world is within the legal IT community as a whole, we can readily acknowledge that the massive need for education is a formidable challenge. The gaps between what an everyday lawyer knows about technology, and what IT knows about the practice of law, are now being properly recognized as a huge divide. For the past 15 years or so, this technology law chasm has been bridged by a precious few organizations, lawyers, IT professionals, experts and vendor consultants who have thrown their bodies on the proverbial railroad tracks to try to keep their less informed colleagues from crashing headlong into the abyss.
“The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.” (Paul Valéry, French poet and essayist)
Monsieur Valéry’s observation is not only clever, it’s pretty darned accurate. The unprecedented pressures on today’s legal community at large –– global economic instability, consumerization of technology, demands for new pricing models, increasing complexity and ubiquity of threats to information security, etc. –– provide both challenges and opportunities. That’s where technology and the folks who champion and support that technology in the legal profession take center stage.
Canadians just celebrated Canada Day on July 1, and many of us took Monday July 2 off work, making a long holiday weekend of it. Many Canadian lawyers wish they didn't have to come back to the inefficiencies of the legal system, but that's what they're doing. (I'm not a lawyer, but I speak to enough of them that I feel comfortable writing this.)
Of course, Canadian lawyers aren't alone in the world in bearing such frustrations.
Joanna Goodman reviews Law Tech Camp London
Law Tech Camp London which took place on Friday 29th June at the CBI Conference Centre in London was genuinely different from other legal technology events. It was different from the ones that pop up every year. It was different from the biggest and most profitable ones. It was different from the ones that claim to predict the future. It was the UK’s first legal ‘Unconference’ and everyone is talking about it.
As there has been unprecedented coverage of this event across legal publications and the blogosphere, this review will focus on what differentiated Law Tech Camp London from other legal technology events plus a selection of personal highlights.
Featuring Barry Murphy, Analyst with The eDJ Group and Contributor To eDiscoveryJournal.com
In honor of tomorrow being July 4th - Independence Day here in the US – LTO spoke with eDiscovery analyst and expert Barry Murphy of The eDJ Group, Inc. and eDiscoveryJournal.com about eDiscovery in America – looking at its past, present and future in the land of the red, white and blue.
As we celebrate Independence Day and our country's freedom, we must ask ourselves, how do we continue to sustain and support these liberties that our forefathers afforded us? Our justice system is of great and immediate concern to most of us in this regard. As legal professionals, whether we are lawyers, para-lawyers, judges, court administrators, law clerks, law students, legal administrators, members of legal support staff or legal vendors, we rely on the mechanisms of the justice system to serve our constituents. The hope is that somehow, someway, justice can be served each day at our courthouses in a fair and equitable fashion.
A new survey conducted by business technology services provider Avanade and The Lawyer magazine revealed a worrying disconnect between business and technology strategies in many UK law firms. The survey, which included half the UK’s top 50 firms, asked 74 law firm decision makers about their strategic IT investment priorities. While nearly two thirds of respondents cite client and resource management as their firm’s main business focus, and half mention finance and billing and business growth, a clear majority – 65% in total and 76% from top 25 firms – state that their next technology investment would involve outsourcing.
Lately it seems as though everyone has gone cloud crazy. For today’s Legal Technology Observer post, I had the opportunity to speak with Jeff Brandt, editor of the PinHawk Law Technology Daily Digest and renowned IT consultant and asked him why everyone’s head is suddenly in the cloud. According to Jeff, the cloud is not really anything new, but the craze is. For years companies have been using cloud systems for many peripheral services like spam filtering and individuals have been using Gmail and Hotmail, which are cloud-based services.
We can only imagine how hectic an average work day for a practicing lawyer can be. How can a lawyer effectively become an expert in legal technology with so little time to spare? To find out, we spoke to Bob Ambrogi, a practicing lawyer, writer and media consultant, who has written two books, a column and a newsletter about legal technology and the Internet. “I’ve always been a geek at heart,” explains Bob, “so tinkering with technology is fun to me. But what also drove me to learn about legal technology was simple practicality."
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