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(...)
You can’t have failed to hear the big news today, Microsoft’s $8.5bn purchase of Skype. I’ve read a fair few tweets this afternoon about how it’s a bad deal. That they’re playing catch-up with Google and Apple, they paid over the odds etc. But I think it’s a great deal for Microsoft and also for lawyers.
We all know Skype is huge in the consumer market, in Europe I’d say Google nor Apple have anything like the consumer share that Skype has. Microsoft today suddenly became the market leader in the consumer market place.
But that’s not why I think it’s great deal.
Keynote speeches by Charles Christian, Daniel Pollick and David Bennett
Spring is the busy season for legal IT events and along with the usual UK events – the Legal IT Show, LEX 2011 and ILTA INSIGHT – I recently had the privilege to travel to The Netherlands to attend Nobel’s Cloud Xperience. This review covers the legal technology stream where most of the keynote speeches were delivered by speakers from the UK. I also refer to one Dutch presentation on the use of social media in law firms. Jeroen Zweers, Manager ICT and Facilities at Dutch law firm Dirkzwager took the time to give me an interview about his firm’s unique award-winning knowledge management system, which could well be of interest to LITP readers.
In part 2 of the video interview with Lindsay, we discuss the benefits to jumping on board with social media for smaller firms vs. larger firms. We have found that regardless of firm size however, that many of the issues firms face with generations and communications are the same. It really boils down to having an overall strategy. Here are some of my thoughts on creating a social media strategy for firms as a whole and as an individual attorney:
About a year and a half ago, Matt Homann of LexThink and BlawgThink fame (an ‘un-conference’ InsideLegal produced for Matt and Dennis Kennedy in 2005) called me up starting the conversation with "JoAnna, I have an idea". Anyone who knows Matt, knows that he is full of them (ideas that is), especially ones that buck the trend and go against the grain when it comes to 'typical' lawyer events and conferences. Matt is the originator of the 'unconference' and that is exactly the concept behind Ignite Law, a 2+ hour event featuring highly accomplished legal industry speakers and their ability (or inability) to deliver 'the future of law practice' within 6 minute (with slides auto-advancing every 18 second) presentations.
Social media is not new; it is however, new to the legal world. Attorneys and law firms are starting to gain interest on the topic of social media. However, from recent discussions, they are at a loss with what to do, how to get started or even if they should get started. Social media, in my opinion is not about the technology, but about building, strengthening and developing new relationships.
Leading legal teams and litigation support providers are increasingly using investigative review techniques to perform genuine and effective early case assessments (ECA) for their clients. These teams provide their clients with more thoughtful options and greater insights into cases earlier in the litigation process, before significant costs have been incurred.
This trend towards enabling a more thorough evaluation of data early on is enabling litigation support vendors, law firms and in-house counsel to quickly identify critical evidence that the case may turn on, rather than merely figuring out how much data there is.
Burke reports from ABA TechShow
Christy Burke visited the ABA TECHSHOW, the annual legal technology conference of the American Bar Association. During the show, Christy interviewed a couple of legal IT leaders and asked them about their companies, new products and impressions of the conference.
This week marks the 25th Birthday/Silver Anniversary of the ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago which runs from April 11- April 13 at the Chicago Hilton. TECHSHOW is sponsored by the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Management (LPM) section. Having gone to the show for about the past 10 years, I have to say this particular event is always one of the highlights of my year.
The educational sessions at TECHSHOW are always good, the Taste of TECHSHOW dinners have introduced me to interesting people and the best Chicago hotspots, and the Expo Hall overflows with buzz and cool new products. And on St. Patrick’s Day, they do actually dye the river green!
I’ve realised over the last few weeks that we (software engineers in IT) seem to have made security for Documents and Folders (whether in a Document Management System – DMS or just on a file share) overly complicated. Add to this the fact that we’ve now added powerful search engines over the top and guess what? We’re finding things are not secured the way we expected!
So here’s my suggestion for a simple security model from a real world perspective. Let me have your thoughts in the comments. Who knows maybe a DMS vendor will take note and implement it?
We all use Google to search, let’s face it. The phrase “Google it” has become part of our everyday lingo. But recently, Google took search to a whole new level by introducing its +1 functionality. Currently this is a Google experiment and you must sign up with Google to participate. You can join the experiment here, read more about here and learn about your privacy with the experiment here.
An organization’s data can be among its chief assets, providing the intelligence to improve performance across the organization. Legal departments are at the beginning stages of thinking about data as a business asset – but there is a huge, untapped opportunity for them to harness their data to strengthen their businesses in ways they could have never imagined
Putting data to work in an organization is an evolution which progresses as it achieves greater success and increased learning. Data usage may range from introducing data mining in new departments or practice areas to leveraging new BI tools to better understand the data that drives better results.
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