Strategic Legal Technology

Legal process outsourcing (LPO) continues to be in the news. Law Practice Management magazine (a publication of the Law Practice Management section of the American Bar Association) has a feature article on it. Separately, next week in NYC at the ABA Annual meeting is a “Presidential CLE Centre Showcase Program” on outsourcing (I am a panelist). 

Outsourcing Legal Services Abroad is an excellent overview of the LPO market and issues by Bill Gibson in LPM magazine. I found particularly interesting the experience of Richard Granat, a lawyer who has long been an innovator in delivering legal services to consumers (his web sites include MyLawyer.com and Maryland Family Lawyer.) The article quotes Granat:

“Through my virtual law firm operation, I have used an Indian firm to do legal analysis for clients that I’m working with, and the results have been excellent - and it costs about 50 percent less than the cost of a U.S. paralegal. Since the person doing the work is an attorney trained in English common law, the quality of the work is often better. We’ve also assigned basic legal research, as in compiling statutory materials on a particular subject for every jurisdiction. This work has been excellent and our cost is about $12 an hour, and that cost includes the cost of online legal research services. This cost is less than it would cost [to have the work done by] a U.S. law student, and the work is more reliable.”

Gibson notes, however, that Granat “feels more hesitant about sending more specialized legal services overseas at present, he does foresee an expansion in how smaller U.S. firms will use the Indian outsourcing firms to serve their needs and increase their efficiency going forward.” More detail about Granat’s experience with outsourcing is available in LPM at Richard Granat’s Outsourcing Experiences. See also the article about 36-lawyer firm Zeichner Ellman & Krauses positive experience with outsourcing in Battling the Big Boys: Outsourcing Helps New York Boutique Compete in Megafirm Arena

For anyone attending the ABA 2008 Annual Meeting in NYC next week, Bill Gibson will moderate a legal outsourcing panel at 10:30am on Friday, August 2nd, in the Trianon Ballroom at the NY Hilton. The panelists are Sally King of Clifford Chance; Jim Lantonio, the retired executive director of Milbank Tweed and now a consultant; and me. (ABA Annual Meeting program - BIG PDF file.)

Updated 4 Aug 2008: Another LPO article: Sea change - Ever-rising costs are forcing a growing number of law firms to offshore legal work by Mary K. Pratt in the Boston Business Journal, 1 August 2008.

The three InnovAction Awards for 2008 have been announced. 

InnovAction is a program of the College of Law Practice of Management. I am a trustee of COLPM and a Friend of InnovAction but had no role in or access to the judging process.

COLPM and InnovAction focus on law practice management writ large; the awards are not targeted at any one dimension such as technology or marketing. (e.g., one past award was for a new type of office design.) I was intrigued to see that all the awards relate to my favorite topics: 2 rest on technology and 1 on another and 1 on best practices.

From the InnovAction website the three winners are:

• Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP for its ValueChain Outsourcing Methodology for Visual Contracting:
  

  “Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP was selected for its ValueChain outsourcing methodology. ValueChain is a unique system that visually displays client objectives, capabilities, opportunities and risks to Pillsbury lawyers. This helps the lawyers better understand the impact on clients’ business of outsourcing business functions such as HR, customer service, and IT accounting, as well as how the outsourcing of such operations can best be designed and structured. Pillsbury was recently granted a business method patent for ValueChain by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO).”

• Mallesons Stephen Jaques for its PeopleFinder:
  

  “Mallesons Stephen Jaques of Sydney, Australia was honored for PeopleFinder, the technological spearhead of ClientFirst, a program of continuous improvements to the firm’s standards of client service. PeopleFinder gives individuals who contact Mallesons using a BlackBerry the ability to determine whether the person they’re calling is available, and if not, when and where they can be found. PeopleFinder has rerouted more than 10,000 phone calls per month from voice mail to a person who can provide assistance. Mallesons also won an InnovAction Award in 2007 for its TalnetNet initiative.”
  [See my blog post about PeopleFinder for more detail on it.]

• Novus Law, LLC for its Document the E-Discovery Process from Collection to Production:
  

  “For the first time in InnovAction’s history, an award was given to a non-law firm — in this case, a company that provides services to law firms. Novus Law, LLC, was selected for its documentation of the e-discovery process. Novus developed a program that documents and captures the e-discovery process (a significant cost in litigation) to give clients, attorneys and courts a reliable and predictable method for efficiently completing an important part of the litigation process.”

On July 24, Interwoven, best known in the legal market as a leading developer of document management software for large law firms, announced it will acquire e-discovery player Discovery Mining, Inc. 

According the Interwoven press release, “The acquisition of Discovery Mining extends Interwoven’s offering – the legal industry’s de-facto standard for organizing, finding, and governing matter content – by adding a service for managing eDiscovery. Most organizations do not have the infrastructure to handle large volumes of information, and are turning to companies like Discovery Mining to manage the eDiscovery process for them.”

I’ve previously written about EDD convergence, the idea that enterprise content management, storage, and “big iron” companies will end up “owning” a good part of the discovery market. This continues the trend. The twist here is that Interwoven, unlike most other enterprise content management companies, already has deep legal market domain expertise.

[For reference, here is a list of e-discovery acquisitions that I have tracked.]

I am not a gadget guy but I do depend on my wireless PDA (smart phone) for phone calls, e-mail, web access, and web connectivity (phone as modem). With some trepidation, I decided to switch from my Palm Treo 700p to a Sprint Blackberry 8830. My trepidation was justifed. For the first time outside a conference, I am doing a real-time blog post. 

While I am so far impressed with many features of the Blackberry device, the jury is still out, largely because of huge problems dealing with Sprint and possibly Blackbery - it’s hard to tell where the problem lies. Talk about a drain on personal productivity! I’ve spent hours this week on this.

[Updated 8/1/08: Below is a detailed log of my tech woes with Sprint Nextel last week. All the hours I spent were for naught. Sprint called back earlier this week (albeit not at the scheduled time) and could not advise me on (1) how to install AIM IM on my Blackberry or (2) how to synchronize so that all my calendar entries appear on the BB. Worse yet, since last week, after each sync, the Blackberry Device Manager software crashes. I’ve given hope, however, on getting tech support from Sprint Nextel on these issues. There are only so many hours one can invest. I should have thought harder about getting an iPhone.]

Here are the problems I encountered with Sprint Nextel while ordering the phone and then trying to get it set up ("provisioned” in geek-speak):

Sprint’s own home page for the Blackberry instructs users to “push the wheel key”. Very useful considering my unit has no wheel key.

When I ordered the phone, the Sprint sales rep was wrong about two important facts: (1) a rebate form does not come by e-mail and (2) I cannot simply transfer the voice and data plans from my Treo. The rebate form is on the web and the BB requires a different data plan. It turns out to cost almost the same, so it’s not a big deal, but just more aggravation and lack of clear information, a problem I chronically experience with Sprint.

The set up process started very poorly. The “Getting Started” guide booklet that Sprint provides is very clearly written - but very wrong. Long story short: a tech support person immediately acknowledged that the printed documentation is wrong about e-mail set up. She was as frustrated as I that she has to handle many calls similar to mine.

Set up continued poorly. After 45 minutes on the phone with a very nice and knowledgeable tech rep, my phone still did not have the “service books” it needs. Not clear if this was a Sprint or Blackberry RIM issue.

I found Sprint’s documentation of how to install AOL instant messaging when logged into my account (which “knows” I have a BB 8830). The specific page I found is called “How do I access instant messaging on my phone?” It’s explanation for how to do IM on BB is just wrong. Moreover, during provisioning, was told I would get a “service book” for AIM but that did not happen. This morning I called tech support and the rep instructed me to go to several web sites on BB. After being instructed to several dead ends, got to a page with a download link. I was told to click that link - received “file to big” to download. Meanwhile, the tech rep was replicating the process on a handheld but she had only one bar of signal. Excellent decision by Sprint to locate a service center where there is bad coverage. After much discussion, I asked the rep to send an e-mail with instructions tested by Sprint and was promised delivery within 10 minutes. Another Sprint promise broken.

I installed the Blackberry software to synchronize to Outlook via the USB cable. Initially, it appeared the sync worked properly. That was 2 days ago. Now I am trying to perform a sync. The system wants to delete most of my 6,000 calendar entries (I like having my history on my handheld). As I inspect this, I see that the initial sync only captured appointments from the end of May forward, even though the on-screen messages suggested all had been synced. I am currently on hold with a Sprint tech rep trying to sort this out. I’ve just been promised, at 1225pm EDT that a supervisor will call back within 20 minutes to resolve the sync issue. I asked that the supervisor also check into the missing e-mail about AOL IM software.

Now waiting… to hear back re sync

Just see (1238pm EDT) that I received an e-mail from sprint asking “Do you have aim icon now?” Answer: no. So maybe there was supposed to be an AOL AIM or AIMpro “service book” after all???

More than 20 minutes has elapsed (now 1235pm) since promised call re sync issue. Another broken Sprint promise.

So it’s now 205pm EDT… no further word on above. So I’m hold with “Executive Services Department", waiting for a rep there to try to resolve the above. Are we having fun yet?

229pm EDT: Exec Services is friendly but tells me I should call a different number, advanced Blackberry support, to resolve this. Not exactly one-stop shopping. The rep tells me that the service level (SLA) agreement he has with other departments is three days. Wow, Executive Service Team gets worse service than ordinary customers? Not sure what Robert Johnson, Sprint’s Chief Service Office, appointed in 2007 (see Sprint 10-k) was thinking.

232pm EDT: On hold at advanced tech support.

237pm EDT: Talking to a tech rep. On AOL Instant Messaging (AIM), he points to me a Blackberry web site where I can down load the AOL IM servlet. It downloads fine. But then when I try to use it, the app says go back the same URL to activate my phone for IM. Of course, when I go back to that URL, the only option is to download the software. Looks like an infinite loop at this point. [It’s now 3:06pm - how’s that for productive use of time?]

320pm EDT: Still on with tech rep. Can’t get AOL IM to work. He suggests I download to my computer and then sync it to handheld. I run into error messages on attempted download. App shows in BB sync manager but not clear if that’s the download to BB handheld or my desktop. I abandon this for now… moving on to synchronization issue.

338pm EDT: We are unable to resolve the synchronization problem. Even sending e-mail to Sprint is a big challenge. My message with three screen shots takes multiple tries to get through. We schedule a call back for Monday… I ask that Sprint escalate, analyze, and propose a course of action that does not require hours more of my time. I did get an e-mail address from the rep but it’s a Hotmail account. What does this say about customer service that customer service reps reps don’t have corporate e-mail accounts? What does it mean for Sprint Nextel’s records retention and potential future e-discovery challenges?

612pm EDT: Self-help department: I changed configuration options on sync software so that only future calendar appointments sync. I don’t have all my past entries, but at least now I can sync without deleting data in Outlook. Separately, RIM Blackberry web site on AOL AIM for Blackberry says I can download IM software onto the BB phone at http://www.blackberry.com/instantmessaging. Not true. That page has no available links.

658pm EDT: Cleaning up e-mail. Found an e-mail from Sprint on how to install AIM. Go to bookmarks on handheld and click on “Install AOL Instant Messenger”. Nice, but “page could not be found.” Sprint Nextel or RIM Blackberry at fault?

It’s very hard to understand why setting up a smart phone should be so hard and time-consuming. With 85% of Americans owning cell phones, many upgrading with some regularity, one might think it would be in the provders’ own interest to simplify to provisioning process. Apparently not.

Though law firms are laying off staff, I have seen no evidence (yet) that legal IT workers are particularly at risk. That said, it’s always good to be prepared 

Every professional who wants to remain employed should have a current resume. You just never know when it might come in handy. I see many resumes because I hire, network, and informally advise my friends on their careers and resumes. A few simple resume rules that I see violated surprisingly often:

• Two pages. Period.

• No typos (that’s what friends and families are for!)
• Professional look overall (e.g., no cramming text with font and spacing games)
• Positioning of your experience appropriate to the target job (i.e., you may need multiple versions)
• PDF (not Word)
• File title that’s descriptive (e.g., Ron Friedmann - Resume - July 2008.pdf)

In this day and age, especially if you are a technical expert or technology manager, you should also be findable on the web (see my post, Managing the Brand Called You). At minimum, get a Linkedin profile. It may not help but it’s hard to see how it can hurt.

If you do a job search, make sure you have a short, cogent cover e-mail message or letter. It should explain what you seek and why you are qualified. Even if you’ve just had a great conversation with a contact do this. Your contact may want to forward your e-mail, so it should be self-contained. That way your contact can simply write a short cover note like “Great person, I endorse her if you have anything open that might fit … see below.”

Have reasonable expectations of search professionals. Remember, their client is the employer, not you. If you’ve worked with search professionals previously and have a relationship, it’s fair to expect at least a bit of advice and words of encouragement. But absent prior, decent relationship, expect a response only if your credentials happen to match a search currently underway.

If all this seems obvious, sorry, but as mentioned, I never cease to be surprised at how many of these simple guidelines are violated.

Update, 25 July 2008: A reader asked a good question, prompting a clarification. The 2-page resume limit is for resumes you send by e-mail to a contact and, I would say, even to an HR department. If you have a web-based resume or submit your resume to career web sites, then I have less personal experience. Certainly for web based resumes (if you have your own site, as this reader does), longer may be better because you get more potential hit words. I suspect anyone relying on career sites should read separate advice for how best to optimize resumes in that venue.

I am a long-time fan of the UK-based Legal Technology Insider and its companion Orange Rag blog. So I was pleased to learn that a US edition launches soon. 

From a PDF-flyer:

“American Legal Technology Insider – a new publication focusing on the large firms sector of the US and Canadian legal IT industry. From the same publishing company as the UK’s market leading newsletter Legal Technology Insider and The Orange Rag breaking news blog, and edited by the Insider’s award winning lawyer-turned editor Charles Christian, American Legal Technology Insider (or ALTi) will follow the UK newsletter’s formula of treating vendor and industry news as real news. Concentrating on the large firms market, along with news stories on who is buying what, the latest trends and developments in legal technology, staff appointments and moves, and vendor corporate news, regular features of American Legal Technology Insider will include: a guest thought leader/opinion piece by a vendor, consultant or law firm IT director; a round-up of the biggest deals of the month; a front page slot covering the product launch of the month; plus ‘up and running’ – an implementation or upgrade case study; and previews and reviews of all the major North American legal IT events.”

To receive this new publication, send e-mail to altisubs at legaltechnology dot com or visit http://www.americanlegaltechnologyinsider.com/ (this will go live on or around 7 August 2008, when the first issue launches; for now, this URL points to the Orange Rag blog).

Much as I am a friend and fan of Law Tech News, I think it will be good for the US legal technology market to have a competing publication.

PeopleFinder, a new system by leading Australian law firm Mallesons, makes clear that previous views of client facing technology have been too narrow. 

Client-facing typically has meant extranets, document creation software, or content-rich systems, including online legal services. While new instances of these come to market periodically, innovation is now rare and existing systems no longer serve as a marketing differentiator.

Consider instead the idea of client service systems. With this broader view, law firms can take a different and better direction, one not bound by content.

PeopleFinder illustrates the way. A recent College of Law Practice Management blog post, InnovAction Award Entry by Mallesons Stephen Jaques describes the system. [Note that Malleson’s won a InnovAction Award in 2007 for its TalentNet, mentioned in some of my prior blog postst.] According to the blog post, provided by Mallesons in its award entry, PeopleFinder

“has resulted in over 10,000 more calls each month being answered by a person rather than voicemail…. an initiative designed to lift client service and promote Mallesons’ high standing in the Australasian professional services market.”

PeopleFinder enhances client service by integrating multiple internal information sources to determine lawyer and staff availability and location. The goal is to direct incoming client calls to the lawyer or staff person best able to respond on the spot, while the client is still on the phone. This speeds client service and avoids phone tag and the resulting client frustration.

PeopleFinder, available on the firm’s Intranet, indicates the status of each person, for example, Available, Busy, Out of Office, or On Leave. Users can set their status but absent intervention, the system infers it by evaluating Outlook calendars, instant messaging (IM) activity, BlackBerry usage, keyboard activity, and VOIP status. PeopleFinder does not reveal confidential calendar information such as the details of a meeting - it only conveys available times.

The system helps users connect to the right person, offering choices such as automatically dial an office or mobile phone, initiate IM, or send a text message. PeopleFinder also revives the useful Camp On feature of older central phone switches. If a phone line is engaged (busy), you can be notified and connected automatically when the line opens. Additional features help users deal with time zones, determine when someone will next be available, find a colleague’s office with a dynamically generated floor plan, and identify others working on a file (matter).

PeopleFinder reflects several conceptual and technical innovations:

• A coherent vision of and broad buy-in to improving how quickly the firm responds to clients
• Recognition that existing data can be collected and analyzed to find people and determine their status
• Integration of multiple back-end systems such as Cisco CallManager, MS Exchange, MS Active Directory, PeopleSoft, Metastorm Workflow, and several databases
• Creation of a Web 2.0 interface that makes usage easy

Now that Mallesons has changed our mind set from client facing to client service, it will be interesting to see if other firms innovate.

[Note: The firm shared information about PeopleFinder with me and I allowed the firm to review this blog post in advance. ]

Today inhouse counsel at Sun Microsystems shared hands-on experience with legal outsourcing. This is the best legal process outsourcings (LPO) presentation I have seen to date by an actual customer. 

The Legal Process Outsourcing Chapter of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals today held its second webinar, chaired by Mark Ross of LawScribe (his recent blog post describes the event).

Connie Brenton, Assistant General Counsel for Sun Microsystems, provided an in-depth case study of Sun’s decision to offhsore a large-scale document review project, from the search for the provider through the RFP process and concluding with Sun’s analysis of the projects outcome. High points of her presentation include:

• The drive to reduce cost motivated Sun to look at outsourcing starting in 2005 and to travel to India in 2006 to learn more about providers.
• The first offshore project in 2006 was a contract review. It did not go well but Sun learned many important lessons about how to outsource. {Editorial note: corporations understand that problems are learning opportunities, not failures; law firms find this idea difficult.}
• The second project was much better because Sun provided and required much more training and process guidance. Sun looked beyond the management of LPOs, who are often experienced US-trained lawyers, to assess the skill level and training of Indian lawyers. Sun also provided a project manager and contract templates. {Editorial note: Ms. Brenton did not use these words, but it sounds like first project was classic “lift and shift” outsourcing, which almost always fails, and second was a re-thinking of how to use different resources to do work a better way.}
• Beyond the savings from labor cost arbitrage and process improvement, Sun cut costs even further through a “dynamic bidding event” (DBE), a real-time, web-based process in which providers bid on the work. Total savings of offshoring coupled with DBE were 78% relative to budget. Project was “wildly successful.”
• Sun continues using LPOs. This year, it improved its approach, refining task delegation, pricing, and how it prepared and presented requirements to the LPO. In evaluating vendors this time round, Sun saw that leading LPOs are very flexible and highly sensitive to quality results.
• The company is committed to continue using offshore resources. Sun may insist that is US outside counsel work with offshore providers.

The process Ms. Brenton laid out is a great road map for other law departments that want to outsource.

Several large law firms have laid off lawyers and staff. Less publicized are other cutbacks. 

I hear from friends in multiple BigLaw firms that they face pressure to reduce travel costs. If “necessity is the mother of invention” and there is a “silver lining in every cloud,” then perhaps we will see wider adoption of collaborative technology. Much non-client-billable law firm travel is to attend conferences or visit other firm offices. Many web-based technologies allow teams to collaborate and people to present without anyone leaving their desks.

Relatively old technology includes web conferencing, webinars, and instant messaging (IM). Relatively new includes a host of Web 2.0 systems, from shared applications (e.g., Google Apps or Basecamp), to easy point-to-point video, to social networking (e.g., Facebook, Linkedin, and Legal Onramp).

Law firms looking to reduce travel cost can “kill two birds with one stone” by using the cost cutback as an incentive to cause lawyers and staff to use the web in lieu of travel. Beyond cost savings, this will mean less personal and environmental wear and tear.

PS - I finally broke down this weekend and established a Facebook profile. I can see the promise, but as one of my friends messaged me, “be careful about drinking the Kool Aid.”

The American way is “innocent until proven guilty.” The American Lawyer way seems to be “guilty by association”. 

The July 2008 American Lawyer, in the “Bar Talk” section, has an article Irony, Thy Name is Guidance sub-titled “Howrey’s EDD provider has EDD problems of its own.” The short article reports that discovery practices of Guidance Software, Inc., makers of popular EDD software EnCase, “have come under attack” for how it produced e-mail in an employment matter.

That an EDD vendor may have its own EDD problems is perhaps newsworthy. But the article opens by asking “Did Howrey bet on the wrong horse when in linked up with electronic data discovery provider Guidance Software, Inc. in May?” Two paragraphs later: “The same month that Guidance announced its alliance with Howrey, an arbitrator in Los Angeles admonished the Pasadena-based company for its discovery practices in an employment suit in which it is a defendant.”

So what? The implication seems that Howrey is somehow at fault. I don’t get it. The magazine, instead of analyzing the business value of Howrey’s alliance with Guidance, implies the firm has chosen poorly. What is the standard of care for a law firm (or any entity for that matter) in choosing products or business partners? Should customers not use a leading product because the company has what may be a minor legal problem?

For the many BigLaw partners I’ve met over the years who believe that American Lawyer has an axe (or two or three) to grind, this article will certainly confirm their views.

It’s surprising, but computers seem less predictable and more moody than people. 

Who would have thought that the seeming black and white of the binary world would lead to the moral equivalent of moodiness. And I don’t mean dystopian visions such as HAL in 2001. I mean here and now, on each of our desktops or laps.

Recent personal examples… (1) A fresh MS Outlook 2003 install on a new computer crashed regularly on opening; re-building the Outlook profile did not fix the problem. Four months later, the problem seems to have, by and large, fixed itself. (2) A new Dell computer would not connect to a WiFi access point in the line of sight. Six months later, miraculously, it just connected, with no user intervention. (3) The status bar in MS Word hides itself once a week for no apparent reason. (4) Sprint’s newly installed (and re-installed several times) Mobile Broadband Connect software refuses to work on my PC, the trouble shooting efforts of the highest level tech support notwithstanding.

Mainframes, IBM punch cards, and timesharing were frustrating to use but consistent. Likewise, early PCs. Then came local area networks. Then came the Internet. Then came patches, automatic software updates, and a host of other behind-the-scenes operating system and application activity. With every re-boot creating, in essence, an altered ecosystem, PCs behave more moodily than most people. Applications stop working, then they start. Systems freeze for no apparent reason (or, worse, display the dreaded blue screen of death).

Of course, all this takes a big toll on personal productivity. And it’s led me to say, with a straight face, “My computer is in a bad mood so I’m in a bad mood.” Maybe I need to start saying “I hope my PC’s mood is better tomorrow.”

[Yes, I do use MS Windows. Yes, I know with a Mac or Linux it would be better. And no, those are not viable solutions in most businesses.]

In the late 1990s, large law firms started creating web-based interactive legal advisory systems. What happened to that trend? 

Market data on the number subscribers, and revenue is not available; as far as I know, the best listing of these types of systems is my Online Legal Services list. Anecdotal evidence suggests that online advisory system development crested around 2002 or 2003 and that many firms did not earn the hoped-for return.

We may be seeing another round of investment now; see below for two relatively new services. Here is why I think we may see a resurgence:

The technology cost to create web-based systems has fallen. Hardware, software, and hosting is all much easier and cheaper today than a few years ago.

The lawyer time cost has also fallen. First, law firms invest more in marketing now, both out of pocket expenses and lawyer time. In 2000, the cost of creating an online system seemed enormous. Today, in comparison to other marketing hard and soft costs, the development effort just may not seem as big relative to other initiatives. Second, the growth of knowledge management in many firms coupled with lower cost technical means of accumulating information means that firms are more easily able to “mine” work that they already do for other purposes. That is, firms realize they have a lot of useful information and the marginal cost to re-package it for web-based delivery is not that great.

The explosion of web-resources generally - e.g., Google, newspapers online, Wikipedia, and government statistics - creates subtle market pressures for law firms to keep up.

Here then are two services I came across recently:

MoFo IT Advises: ‘Listen to Your Users’ in Law Tech News (3 July 2008) reports on a new Morrison & Foerster affiliate that offers an online legal service: the “International Privacy Database is a comprehensive, current assessment of the obligations of various privacy and data security requirements and includes in-depth analysis of virtually every privacy law in the world… We created a subsidiary, Summit Privacy Resources, to offer this content via subscription. It was created so that this information could be shared with entities that presently are not clients. Started in April 2007, the system is now in pilot production.”

Construction law made easy by large Australian firm Minter Ellison “is a dedicated online resource for all construction, property and infrastructure industry professionals.”

The MoFo system is by subscription; the Minters one requires free registration. A future post will cover another system I recently came across.

How does managing legal technology compare to managing corporate technology? 

A panel discussion at the Strategic Technology Forum in Lisbon, hosted by LegalWeek in Lisbon last month addressed the question. The panelists were David Coates, IT Director of Bond Pearce and formerly of UBS; Jason Haines, Director of IT, Allen & Overy LLP and formerly of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC); and Malcolm Simms, IT Director, Eversheds LLP and formerly of Disney/ABC Television Group.

The panelists pointed out several differences:

In legal it’s about words; in corporate it’s about numbers. This makes a big difference in how CIOs present business cases to management.

Lawyers resist change, industry embraces it.

Corporate management asks “what’s the business case?” Law firm management asks “what are other firms doing?”

Legal market software suppliers are few; corporate many. A corollary: legal software vendors are less innovative.

Corporations do zero-based budgeting, meaning CIOs have to justify items each year. In law firms, budgeting is a continuous and incremental process without the need to justify each year.

“There is no PowerPoint in law firms.”

All of these resonated with me. One comment on “no PPT in law firms.” I think this difference has a deeper meaning than many may think. Presentations are not just about content; they are about guiding or controlling a conversation. When I started as a manager in a large law firm, I met frequently with the management committee to discuss tech projects. Discussions wandered and were, as a consequence, often unproductive. So I decided to use a presentation as a way to help guide the discussion. The resistance to my doing so was palpable. I wish I had had a chance to pose this hypothesis to the panelists for confirmation or rejection.

Law firm CIOs who think strategically need to understand the where the legal market and large law firms are heading.  

Large UK law firm Eversheds recently released its Law Firm of the 21st Century report. I found it provocative and had hoped to comment about it but too much time has elapsed, so let me point you to two good commentaries on it.

Eversheds Brings Us “The Law Firm of the 21st Century” by Adam Smith, Esq., provides both a summary and trenchant comments, including “My take on it is that the changes expected are both more and less radical than we have imagined.”

Ed Poll of Lawbiz.com, a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and legal consultant, posted The Future of the Law Firm - A report prepared for Eversheds law firm at the College’s blog. He offers an excellent analysis and historical perspective on the issues in the report. Poll examines the “disconnect between lawyers and their clients in large corporate enterprises.”

For just the most recent evidence of that “disconnect,” see The Rating Game in the July issue of Inside Counsel (follow link to PDF of article). The disparity between inside and outside counsel views are quite evident.

In my own view, many of the problems the Eversheds report raises and the commentary on it stem from my thesis in my recent “Modest Proposal” posts, that the underlying problem of the legal market is that customers do not exercise their market power.