You don’t have to talk to too many law firm leaders these days before you get the sense that 2012 is shaping up to be a challenging year. While the recent headlines on the overall economy show some welcome rays of optimism, you get the sense that things in the trenches are not bouncing back in some pockets as quickly as one would like to see. The latest Peer Monitor Index showed law firm demand fell in the fourth quarter, and was up a scant 1.0% for all of 2011.
Competition seems to be heating up, not only as firms fight for more business, but also as clients seek greater demonstrated value for work performed, increasingly pushback on rates, and use more competitive bidding and convergence.
All this makes it imperative that firms find ways to improve efficiency and productivity. A recent Serengeti survey found that while the most cited reason that firms are not retained was (not surprisingly) fees, 51% of clients said that inefficiency was also a factor.
Friction points that lead to inefficiencies can pop up at multiple points in matter management, client management and firm management. And technology can provide key solutions to ease some of those friction points.
Many of those solutions are being unveiled, demonstrated and discussed this week at LegalTech New York, including new mobile solutions such as the WestlawNext iPad app and ProView eReader app, MatterSphere for integrated matter management, and Westlaw Drafting Assistant – Transactional integrated drafting tools and content for transactional attorneys, to name just a few.
The new year always starts off with hope for a better year, and excitement around new technologies. And we look forward to talking with you, not only at LegalTech, but throughout the year to find out more about how your needs are changing in a rapidly evolving marketplace, and how we can hopefully help meet those needs.
Allison Guidette is senior vice president, large law firms, Thomson Reuters
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Demand for LiveNote real-time technology continues to grow rapidly, thanks to the advantages of real-time reporting as well as the growth of West’s litigation software tools in the law firm market, including West Case Notebook, which includes West LiveNote. We want to make sure we are doing everything possible to make it easy for court reporters and agencies to deliver the premier real-time solution to their law firm customers.
LiveNote introduced tokens a few years ago as a way to deal with potential intellectual property litigation. It was an admittedly imperfect solution, and we at Thomson Reuters have been working to implement alternatives to tokens with the ultimate goal of eliminating them all together.
I am happy to report that we are another step closer to the demise of the pesky token.
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The court reporting industry has seen major changes and renewed growth in recent years. New technologies – including real-time transcription, streaming video, online transcript repositories and case management software – have opened new opportunities and made the court reporting industry an indispensable component of litigation case management.
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The U.S. Constitution is one of the most powerful and impactful documents in existence. It literally touches every American’s life, and has since its creation in 1787. Recently, I had the opportunity to view the document first-hand as part of a new exhibit, “We the People: The First Official Printing of the U.S. Constitution,” sponsored [...]
Earlier this week, we released our 2011 Annual Report in an interactive format available online at thomsonreuters.com. Along with information on the company’s financial performance as well as business unit overviews, this year’s annual report contains a variety of dynamic content including interviews with our new business leaders as well as stories of how we [...]
We’ve got a great episode for you this month, kicking off with our “Chaos in the Courts” segment that, believe it or not, is yet another story about the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas. Since our March podcast, another person has fallen victim to the establishment’s trademark bypass burger.
Then in our “On the Blawgs” [...]
