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(...)
Featuring experts George Socha and Tom Gelbmann
When I asked George Socha and Tom Gelbmann about how EDRM has changed the industry, it became clear to me that EDRM more than demystified eDiscovery - it defined eDiscovery and finally opened a line of communication between vendors and consumers that had never really been established before. At various legal technology conferences people were talking to vendors to place where their products and services fit into the model. Dispelling any confusion about eDiscovery was the primary goal of EDRM, and it seems to have gone above and beyond that.
Featuring experts George Socha and Tom Gelbmann
When I first became exposed to the legal technology industry, it seemed like every new thing I heard about on a daily basis couldn’t be easily looked up or even explained. In an industry where an acronym is defined by another acronym and that acronym has its own cryptic (at least to the lay-man) definition, I was relieved to be introduced to the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM). EDRM spoke my language. It put what I didn’t know into perspective and it became the gateway to my understanding of eDiscovery. By the way, eDiscovery is basically discovery files in digital, not paper, form.
Implementation & Training and Quick Poll results
LTO posts from Wednesday and yesterday have made the case that CMS and PrMS programs have the potential to make your practice much more efficient. However, you’ll need to invest time and energy to get the system installed and your colleagues trained. Additionally, once the system is operational, there will be some additional work at the outset such as data entry and migration. You need to convince yourself and others that the up-front increase in work and the learning curve will pay off once everything is stored and organized electronically. So how do you make this happen?
How do you know what type of system you need?
Based on yesterday’s post, you know what a Case Management System and a Practice Management System are, so you can start to do some research. Andy Adkins, CIO of Steptoe and Johnson, an expert on case management, offers three tips to those firms conducting their initial research on the subject.
Featuring Andy Adkins, CIO of Steptoe & Johnson PLLC and founder of the Legal Technology Institute
CMS, PrMS, what are these acronyms and why do you need to know? As a legal technology newcomer, I have now learned that these refer to Case Management System and Practice Management System. But what is the difference between these? Who better to ask than Andy Adkins, CIO of Steptoe & Johnson PLLC and widely recognized expert on case management, having written “The Lawyer’s Guide to Practice Management Systems,” published by the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Management Section.
Welcome to Legal Technology Observer (LTO), a 6-week concentrated blog on Legal IT Professionals providing practical knowledge about legal technology, eDiscovery, and social media for legal professionals who are not legal IT experts – yet!
LTO is designed to be useful for all legal and legal IT professionals, but especially for people who are relative newcomers to legal tech, eDiscovery or social media who are looking to learn the ropes. For those outside the legal technology “bubble”, the industry can seem like a sea of acronyms and buzzwords, so we will ask experts to define terms clearly, without jargon.
For more than a decade, I have been hearing that dictation is going away, yet it is still here and going stronger than ever! Young attorneys, doctors, executives, and many other business professionals grew up typing and prefer to type, so why should they dictate? With speech recognition, who needs a transcriptionist or secretary?
The reality is that this is the same argument that was being made 20 years ago when young executives said we prefer to just write things out with a pen! Even the Egyptian pharaohs knew it was a better use of their time to stay focused on those priority tasks that only they could do, and instruct (dictate) things to those who are better suited to complete certain tasks than they were.
Courtroom showdowns make for great movie scenes, but To Kill a Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch would be shocked to hear that the courts are only resolving a fraction of today’s legal disputes. A growing number of cases are being resolved by online tools, and sometimes lawyers and judges are not even involved. Impartial web-based systems apply computation, algorithms and cryptographic technology to bring about resolution quickly and inexpensively.
A growing stable of private sector companies are beginning to compete with the judicial system for “customers” and are also changing the face of traditional Alternate Dispute Resolution or ADR, which has typically included mediation, arbitration and other alternatives to the courts.
This month has seen the release of Blackberry 10, at least to the developer community. If that’s what RIM intend to release later in 2012 then I’m afraid we may be all bidding adieu to the familiar sight of Blackberry in Legal and beyond.There is no way that a touch screen OS from Blackberry will break the Android and iOS dominance, nor keep Windows Phone from being the #1 challenger to the top 2! These other three are slowly chipping away at the “risks” that ActiveSync technology supposedly brings compared to the BES infrastructure and a copycat OS isn’t going to save RIM.
Law firm IT leaders about the success of their PMO
The definition of a Project Management Office is a group or department within a business, agency or enterprise that defines and maintains standards for project management within the organization. Formulating and implementing PMOs are a necessity to provide a standardized project management discipline within IT departments. Specifically, a PMO within a law firm environment is different than one at a corporation. With Partners being the shareholders and a PMO that would interface with various practices and user groups, managing and implementing projects within the firm could be a tough task.
This past week, I was honored to be able to conduct an exclusive interview with James Alexander, CEO of Vizibility, regarding online identity for the legal industry. Vizibility is a relatively new company that specializes in Online Identity Management by allowing professionals and companies to curate and rank their Google search results. James spent an hour with me answering questions and demoing the Vizibility system and mobile optimized business cards. I don’t get impressed easily, but this product can really be helpful in differentiating the competition for law firms. And the kicker, the basic Vizibility service is FREE. Yes, FREE.
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