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This week a couple of things cropped up to remind me of my predictions for the top 5 technologies for Legal in 2010. In particular that I had search at #4 and my thoughts on why I think next year this will be moving up the charts.
First off is my first recent experience on Autonomy iManage WorkSite 8.5 working with IDOL and using search to retrieve email out of a 30m+ document library. As I tweeted at the time it made me want to take my email out of Outlook and put it in WorkSite! The search was so much better than Outlook 2003 Advanced Search (although recently I’ve used Outlook 2010 and the search in that is itself so much better than 2003!).
This column is part 2 of "Bridging the Gap Between Legal and IT"
In the first part of this article, we talked about the obstacles organizations face for both IT and the associated processes around ediscovery governance. Now, we’ll discuss what requirements are bubbling to the surface and how the right IT platform can address these issues.
A common vision for control and governance of email and documents that will satisfy legal requirements and address cost and feasibility concerns from the IT department is slowly emerging. The publication of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) has helped a great deal by codifying the common components that the legal department needs and that IT must provide.
In this second post on Outlook 2010 I’ll be taking a look at the calendar functionality. There are some really nice features that I’m sure will please a lot of lawyers (and if not the lawyers then certainly their secretaries!). There are plenty of screen shots which you can zoom into by simply clicking on the image. So first up is a look at calendar views and there are a few nice touches to point out here.
One of the most intriguing new features in Word 2010 is its automatic retention of temporary copies of files that users close without saving, either accidentally or deliberately.
Word 2010 creates these temporary backups, as do the new versions of Excel and PowerPoint, if you have had a document (whether saved or unsaved) open on your screen long enough for the AutoRecover utility to kick in, typically ten minutes. When you close an autosaved document, you’ll be prompted to save the document, to cancel the “close” operation and resume editing, or to close without saving. If you choose the “Don’t Save” option, Word will save a temporary copy of the document anyway—just in case you change your mind later on.
Legal discovery, or ediscovery, has become a normal business process in most organizations. Perhaps not as frequently used as a sales force automation tool, but at times perhaps more important. With increasingly demanding rules for legal discovery and production, there is a critical need for what is becoming a near constant proactive review of the information held within the enterprise. Given the exploding amount of information and the growing number of sources where business information can reside, the legal discovery business process is now much more than a “sideline” activity that can be run from some small scale appliance under the desk of a legal professional.
I’ve been running Microsoft’s Office 2010 on my home PC for about a month now and have to say I’m impressed. Well as impressed as you can be with an email client, a word processor and a spreadsheet application!
I thought I’d share in a few blog posts some of the really nice features of Outlook 2010 that I think will be useful for lawyers. For the first post I want to take a look at a couple of nice ways in which Outlook 2010 helps you organise and find email.
Make it Great. Yes, that’s the vanilla marketing tagline Microsoft came up with for promoting Office 2010. This begs the question that’s on legal IT’s collective mind these days: is 2010 actually great, or is it chaos and misery stuffed into a shrink-wrapped box?
On May 12, 2010, Microsoft announced worldwide availability of Office 2010, so the product is officially out of the gate…and running? The issue is: will it run well, will it be in the running for your firm, or will it run you over? Microsoft dominates the legal market and is part of the woodwork of most law firms by now, so many sites are likely to be impacted by this new release, for better or for worse.
Social Networking continues to grow and although there is a lot of trivia being discussed, there are also some serious business discussions and related business information being passed around. We should not ignore this information as it may be useful to our business and I don’t believe the phenomenon (if that is what it is) of Social Networking will go away. If anything, we will see more people joining in the discussions and more products and innovative ways of communicating coming out of it, so if you don’t engage early then you may be in danger of missing out on any opportunities that evolve.
I want to give credit where credit is due, so I apologize for the length of my initial setup. I’ve been talking recently with some of my peers in preparation for a panel discussion at the annual International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) education conference in August. The session is entitled “The CIO in 2020: The Business-Savvy Strategist” and will be ably handled by Marsha Stein, Peter Westerveld, Todd Corham and David Rigali (and myself if my situation permits). Then Matthew Stern asked the question in the LinkedIn group CIOs.com: Chief Information Officer Network “How do you describe what a CIO does?” As part of that discussion, Sudhir Wadhwa, posted his blog chart of what makes a “complete” CIO.
I don’t agree with the all Sudhir’s items (or where he placed them) but I thought it was an interesting way to lay it out. I’ve written him that I think there are also a few key missing sections to his “complete” CIO. After thinking about it some a bit, in addition to the five he outlined, I think there should be three others: Business, Clients and Organization.
On Thursday myself and a couple of colleagues attended a breakfast briefing from BigHand at Gordons law firm in Leeds, accompanied by plenty of bacon butties from the Roast! It was one of a number of briefings that they are doing throughout the UK on the back of their recent acquisition of nFlow.
As well realising that it’s not just Herbies that have hot meeting rooms, there was information on the nFlow acquisition. But for the most part we were shown demos of some of the new features being planned for future versions of the BigHand software (I think most were for v3.4). Below are some of the key functions that stood out for me (I was making notes on my touch screen Windows Phone whilst trying to keep up with the demos, so if you’re interested in a specific feature I’d double check my understanding with BigHand!)
The rapid evolution of legal technology over the last 10 years has forced partners and executives at law firms of all sizes to address organizational efficiency challenges. Tough decisions to insure stability, reputation, and sustainability both internally and in the industry abroad need to be taken. The Help Desk within Legal IT departments has long been the target of scrutiny during difficult financial periods, and in a recent informal survey, 25% of the AmLaw 200 Firms stated they have outsourced Help Desk functions. Some firms have outsourced their overnight and weekend shifts, while others have outsourced their whole support group. Besides considering the present and future financial impact of utilizing external resources for these functions, law firms also have to weigh any potential long-term effects it may have on the IT department.
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