The buzzword in a lot of firms these days is “efficiency”. Firms are under pressures from client to demonstrate greater value in the services they provide. That often means achieving greater efficiency in how the firm manages cases.
The result is often higher productivity for the firm, and lower costs for the client, creating a win-win situation that strengthens the firm-client relationship and can result in more business for the firm.
In a recent post on the ABA’s Legal Rebels blog, Allison Guidette, senior vp and general manager, Large Law Firm Segment, discusses how technology can help firms achieve greater efficiency.
Posted by Jessica Leibrock in:
Industry trends | Law firm business | Technology and innovation |
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I have a bias (heck, i have many biases, but when it comes to LegalTech I have a specific bias). My bias: the world falls into one of two categories: data or process. For example, professional services = process; enterprise search = data. Oversimplified, of course. But sensible in a slightly maniacal way.
On Day Three of LegalTech, I discussed the show’s themes with a long-standing client. She mentioned some of the latest tools, but came back to the basics of project management. I said, aha! The process side is winning out. Nope, the client said, that’s too easy. And she was right. The tools, even the latest triangle graphs, attempt to present themselves as a tool to facilitate process. I need to chew on this one a bit further, but here’s my initial take on this epiphany.
So what are the “right” types of tools that appeared to resonate this year? Maybe we’re talking about the ones that most efficiently bridge the data/process gap. A discovery platform that provides as much value with small data sets as large. Research tools that more accurately find the most relevant cases. Ecosystems of tools that individually solve specific problems and together track data/documents through a process. The ability to eliminate rummaging through piles of books, contracts and/or transcripts to insert the right quote with accurate citations. Each solves a practical process problem, but has better reach into the data.
It’s like the old adage: if your tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Don’t get me wrong. I still carry my bias, but maybe I’ll put down the hammer and pick up a wrench every now and again.
Posted by Jeff Friedman in:
Technology and innovation |
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Thomson Reuters recently hosted two technology conferences designed to showcase the latest trends and technology buzz impacting the market, as well as highlighting Thomson Reuters innovative technology, ranging from mobile to artificial intelligence, search and machine learning.
Attendees of the Thomson Reuters Technology Conference 2012 enjoyed one of many sessions.
In early January, the company hosted an internal technology conference drawing nearly 1,000 employees. The external technology conference was hosted about a week later and around 300 technologists spent the day on the Eagan campus.
Attendees were offered numerous sessions that included such topics as mobile web versus mobile apps, the cloud, collaboration, Android versus iOS development, and more. During the internal conference, James Powell, chief technology officer for Thomson Reuters, gave the keynote address about the central role of technology at Thomson Reuters.
At the external conference, attendees received a keynote address from Carolyn Parnell, chief information officer for the State of Minnesota. She discussed the issues facing the state surrounding consolidation and virtualization of the IT function, as well as how innovation is needed to succeed.
The panels featured leading technologists from Thomson Reuters, including Bob Schukai, Dan Bennett, Brian Quinn and Dr. Khalid Al-Kofahi. Other notable presenters included: Dr. Abhishek Chandra, University of Minnesota; Chris Derner, Informatica; John R. Fox, SWAT Solutions; and Dr. Jamshid Vayghan, IBM.
During each conference, Thomson Reuters hosted a coding competition where attendees could test their skills against their peers and win some great prizes.
Posted by Jeff McCoy in:
Company Current | Events | Technology and innovation |
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An excellent resource for large law firm practitioners, the Practice Innovations Newsletter has just published the October edition.
The feature article highlights a case study on the role of the Alternative Fee Manager, discussing existing and emerging roles for the AFA Manager and how AFAs aid in fee conversations with clients.
Also in this issue is information on how women today are influencing leadership values, and an article on how to improve associate morale through career coaching.
This great resource is available four times a year. Subscribe to the Practice Innovations Newsletter to receive an email when each new edition is posted.
Posted by Anne Ellis in:
In Practice | Practice tips | Technology and innovation |
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The ILTA 2011 Conference finished with the annual ILTA Awards Dinner at the Gaylord Opryland. While we were sorry to see the conference come to an end, the evening and conference were capped off with Hubbard One receiving the “Vendor Implementation of the Year” award.
The award, which recognizes outstanding achievement by a vendor organization that has celebrated a highly successful technology implementation for a client in 2010, went to Hubbard One in recognition of the implementation of InGeer, an innovative SharePoint project for Australian law firm, Herbert Geer.
Herbert Geer – with offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane – wanted to find a better way to access, manage, and leverage the firm’s arsenal of information to drive better business decisions and shape the client experience. The firm engaged Hubbard One to build InGeer, an intranet that brings together information from across the firm into a single portal to facilitate more efficient and effective decision making, and also shape the client experience.
Hubbard One successfully implemented a comprehensive financial reporting and matter planning portal built on XMLAW SharePoint technology that serves the entire legal community of Herbert Geer. The portal provides the firm’s lawyers with the ability to access detailed client and matter information and provides a holistic view of client activity in real-time.
We’re delighted that InGeer has been recognized at the ILTA awards – this was a fantastic project to get involved in and we enjoyed working with the team at Herbert Geer on every stage of the process.
Our thanks to ILTA for the award, and for hosting another outstanding annual conference. We’re already looking forward to ILTA 2012!
Mark Schiff is president, Hubbard One
Posted by Mark Schiff in:
Technology and innovation |
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Three firm representatives discussed coaching programs and their experiences implementing these programs: Sharon Ford of Sidley Austin LLP, Jan Huber of Baker & Daniels, and Julia Montgomery of Arent Fox LLP.
The speakers differentiated coaching from training. Training was described as a traditional classroom or virtual classroom environment with one teacher and more than one student. Coaching is a one- on-one experience that is customized for the pupil. While many firms have training programs in their firms, fewer have coaching programs.
The three offer tips on setting up successful technology coaching programs. Handouts are available on the ILTA website.
One example cited involved the rollout of Office 2007. Initial traditional training was well attended but the attorneys did not retain the content of that single session. Since training for attorneys is not mandated in most cases as it is for staff, they do not have to attend the group trainings. Attorneys may be embarrassed about their lack of technology expertise, leading to their reluctance to attend group training. The panelists felt – both from their own observations and requests from some attorneys –that attorneys often need additional customized one-on-one training. Attorneys felt they were the weak links in creating Office documents, causing additional work for others in their team to fix mistakes. Current trends in firm hiring include less administrative staff, requiring attorneys to create more of their documents themselves. And alternative fee arrangements increase the attorneys’ desire to increase their efficiency. One-on-one coaching allows the attorney to learn these skills without feeling pressure from others observing them.
Panelists shared several tips that helped turn their coaching experiments into permanent programs. Pre-coaching meetings with attorneys allowed trainers to see what products the attorneys used and how they used them. Follow up meetings with the attorneys’ secretaries gave additional insight and gained the secretaries’ acceptance in the process. It is important to coordinate with the attorney’s secretary and the help desk to ensure all parties have a consistent strategy and message. The coaches had the goal of providing customized training but had to balance that with specific core competencies that needed to be emphasized to every attorney. The Help Desk call logs were analyzed to discover which of the attorneys’ skills were commonly underdeveloped, and these were the focus of the core curriculum. Proper preparation of a core curriculum, and customizing it for each attorney allowed both goals to be achieved. Training documentation was posted privately to attorneys, so they did not feel put on display. Coaches always asked attorneys for permission when they wanted to publicize attorney success stories.
Another key to success that all speakers agreed upon was word of mouth promotion by the initial group of attorneys trained. It was emphasized to them that they were getting special coaching that was specifically designed for them.
It looks as if personal coaching of attorneys has a place in the overall training plans of law firms. We will have to wait and see whether this trend continues and becomes more popular in other firms.
Josh Wolf is a technology manager with Thomson Reuters
Posted by Josh Wolf in:
Technology and innovation |
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I was pleased to see a mixture of Elite Enterprise IT and Finance staff attending my session at ILTA 2011: Maintaining a Healthy Elite System. Almost everyone takes away a nugget of information to explore further, either gained directly from the presentation or from group discussion. IT staff, whether new to managing Enterprise systems or veteran administrators, often find it useful to review tips for troubleshooting and keeping their systems running smoothly. Finance staff usually leave the session with increased comfort that their systems largely take care of themselves with scheduled maintenance jobs that run automatically, and also with an appreciation for the manual technical tasks that they may not have known their IT staff performed. I believe the nuggets discovered this year included PAL, SQL Nexus, and check_schema.ksh.
PAL (Performance Analysis of Logs) and SQL Nexus, both free downloads from codelplex.com, are two open source utilities that help system administrators run quick performance bottleneck analyses. Tuned for specific server roles and hardware configurations, both utilities quickly process large volumes of historic performance data and show the results in easily readable reports—a nice alternative to importing the raw data into Excel and defining formulas and graphs to search for problem trends. Further, these tools provide a straightforward way to identify a qualitative performance baseline against which to compare future performance.
Soon after the conference, Elite will post check_schema.ksh on its knowledge base. Producing a report that can be used to identify missing standard objects, like indexes and columns, this Korn shell script compares the schema of your actual Enterprise database against the standard schema that the source code for your Enterprise version defines. Reestablishing missing indexes or columns will help avoid performance problems or application errors that may result from the missing objects.
For the most part, maintaining a healthy Elite Enterprise system is a hands-off activity. However when problems do arise, having knowledge of the system infrastructure and a few powerful but uncomplicated tools in your arsenal will reduce the stress and time needed to resolve them.
Bruce Rosen is a team lead technical consultant with Elite
Posted by Bruce Rosen in:
Technology and innovation |
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In the ILTA 2011 session on Open Source Gurus, self-proclaimed geeks gathered to share their experiences of using open source software in the law firm environment. Topics of discussion varied, from challenges in implementing open source software to cost savings realized from going with an open source solution versus a commercial one.
Panelists included: Nathan Smith, network manager at McKee, Voorhees & Sease; Lance Rea, CIO at Davis & Gilbert LLP; Dale Qualls, director of IT at Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldson LLP, and; Jerry Askew, principle consultant at Network Solutions. They took the stage to discuss their individual experiences with open source software.
The majority of the session centered on sharing of a list of favorite open source software currently being used at the panelists’ firms:
ProjectPier – is Linux-based project management software which boasts an intuitive interface for managing tasks, projects, and teams through a web browser.
OpenVPN – is a web-based, open source VPN software with very reasonable pricing. Clients are available for Windows, Linux and Mac. Panelists agreed that software performance has improved significantly in recent versions and that it is a viable, inexpensive solution for creating a VPN at a smaller firm.
ZoneMinder – is an open source video camera and surveillance system which works with most off-the-shelf cameras. The panel commented that the system is very feature-rich, with advanced capabilities like motion detection and split-screen images.
WebCDwriter – Lets users burn CDs from anywhere on your network to a shared CD or DVD burner. One of the panelists commented that this application is very useful for his firm, where many systems no longer include an optical drive.
JBackpack – A personal backup program which allows users to run their own incremental backups by using a simple, Java-based interface. Backup is increasingly important at law firms, and some panelists found that giving users control to store and retrieve their own files led to less downtime in the event of a data loss.
Zend.To – is a file transfer program for sending large files across a network without using email. One of the more unusual features is that it can integrate with active directory. With email restrictions becoming increasingly strict at law firms, this software can be a simple solution to large file transfers.
Bates Master – A solution for Bates-stamping PDFs.
FreeEed.org – A free eDiscovery tool which can pull data from a variety of sources and quickly process them. The panel mentioned that the website has the Enron data posted for users to test out the software.
Synergy – Allows a user to manage multiple computers and monitors using the same keyboard and mouse. The connected machines don’t have to be on the same operating system, and no special hardware is required. This tool is popular among system administrators who constantly split time between computers.
OpenWRT – A widely popular open source router firmware, which allows a tech-savvy user to replace a router’s built-in firmware to gain deep control over their router’s hardware. By utilizing this firmware a systems administrator could effectively save money by adding features to cheaper routers.
The session wrapped up with a discussion of success rates of open source projects. Overwhelmingly, the responses were positive, but panelists cautioned that the right tool for the job should always be selected. The best method for selecting software, they said, is to work backward from end-user needs and then work within budgetary constraints. Sometimes open source tools fit the bill perfectly; other times, a commercial solution is more appropriate.
One final comment seemed to resonate well with the audience: “The thing I like about open source is I don’t need to spend anything to try it out. I can install it right away and see if it works for my firm. If it doesn’t, I can always buy the right solution later.”
Posted by Andrew McLennan-Murray in:
Technology and innovation |
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This morning I had the opportunity to sit in on the session titled Talking Technology to Attorneys at ILTA 2011. The session was very well attended, indicating how top of mind this topic is for today’s legal technology leaders.
The panelists were Judith Flournoy from Loeb & Loeb LLP, Martin Metz from Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, and Curtis Meltzer from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, and the panel was moderated by Angel Garcia-Manso from Hubbard One.
The focus for the session was how to communicate with lawyers about technology strategy. The panelists shared some insightful information about how best to talk technology strategy with attorneys and build consensus for new technology initiatives.
Metz highlighted that the most important aspect in communicating with attorneys about technology is to have a strategic plan in place. By having a strategy and a framework in place, law firm leaders can establish creditability with attorneys. Metz suggested five questions that should guide a strategic plan:
1) What’s the current situation?
2) What kind of firm do you want to be?
3) What’s our guiding philosophy?
4) What are the IT costs?
5) What projects do we want to tackle next year?
The panelists also highlighted building relationships and rapport as another important factor in successfully discussing technology with attorneys. Flournoy suggested seeking out targeted groups of attorneys to use as sounding boards for new technology initiatives and projects. Building rapport with attorneys and making them part of the process helps build consensus and support for new initiatives. However, Flournoy reminded the audience that law firm leaders can only build their reputation and relationships by delivering on their commitments.
Posted by Callie Hodge in:
Technology and innovation |
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Information Technology (IT) plays a critical role in today’s law firm, being increasingly entwined in the day-to-day workflow of attorneys.
But IT groups often find themselves planning their projects in a “silo”; that is, they find themselves preparing for the IT future of the firm without the input of key stakeholders within their organization. This lack of communications can lead to a variety of problems within a firm, ranging from end user frustration to competitive disadvantage in the market for the firm as a whole.
In their ILTA 2011 session, “Expanding the Technology Strategic Planning Process,” Robert Craig, from Baker Hostetler, Janet Day, from Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP, and John Alber, from Bryan Cave LLP, spoke about ways to connect the right stakeholders into their planning processes.
Each shared their organizational experiences and challenges with implementing large-scale IT projects within law firms. Though their individual approaches differed, they all had experience with so-called “silo” IT planning.
They shared some warning signs to look for at firms which might suffer from similar problems, as well as steps firms can take to make their IT departments a key center of innovation and competitive advantage:
Read more… (more…)
Posted by Andrew McLennan-Murray in:
Technology and innovation |
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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” [...]
