InsideLegal

Ignite Law (TECH): The Future of Law Technology Event

Updates:

• Press Release on Ignite Law
• Submit topic to speak
• Register for tickets

JoAnna Forshee, CEO of InsideLegal, and Matt Homann of LexThink, are partnering again to produce Ignite Law 2011, to be held in Chicago Sunday, April 10, on the eve of this year's ABA TECHSHOW (April 11-13, 2011) and produced by the Law Practice Management section of the ABA. 2010's inaugural Ignite Law included 16 presentations covering a broad spectrum of law topics including advertising and ethics, information management, agile development, client service, and marketing. This year, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the ABA TECHSHOW, Ignite Law will again assemble the brightest legal and legal technology minds and practitioners to  muse about the future of legal technology delivered via six minute rapid fire presentations.

With a successful inaugural event under our belt, Matt and I anticipate fierce competition for the 12 presentation slots, especially since legal technology luminaries including Dennis Kennedy and Jim Calloway have expressed their desire to share and present their views. The submission process is open to all players in the legal community – consultants, media, vendors, law firms, and associations – and the topics submitted are then voted on by the community. While there's already a lot of buzz building for the second act, the official call for presentations - open to all via an online submission process - is now in the works and will be available at the Ignite Law website on Monday, February 28th.

Over the next 6 weeks, anyone interested in Ignite Law 2011 should stay connected with InsideLegal and the [non]billable hour blogs for updates. Thanks to ABA LPM's partnership, Ignite Law 2011 will be expanded to accommodate at least 250 attendees (vs. 150 last year).  Among the pre-event content, we will publish all presentation submissions (including online voting) and profile various presenters as well as videos and coverage from the 2010 event.

 

 

Not your average ILTA session...ILTA Vendor Education Program Addresses Legal Technology Vendor/Consultant Needs

The dust has slowly settled on an ILTA educational conference that not only ended with a bang (a la the inaugural ILTA Distinguished Peer Awards), but overall proved that NOTHING compares to this 4 1/2 day extravaganza of legal technology education, demonstrations and networking. The vendor education program, which has kicked off ILTA day one (Monday) for the past 7 years, proved, more than ever, that 'if you build it, they shall come'. In our case, as perennial producers of this program, this translated to tailoring educational sessions based on exhibiting vendor feedback; assembling bright, reputable, and established legal technology panelists; and filling a room with 85+ legal technology vendor and consultancy decision makers including CEOs, GMs, marketing and sales excutives, and technology product managers.    

The three and a half hour vendor education program kicked-off, as in previous years, with ILTA's Vendor Business Meeting, followed by a Working with ILTA (beyond the annual conference) session led by ILTA's Program Director Peggy Wechsler and Executive Director Randi Mayes. Peggy began by thanking all the exhibitors and consultants for supporting ILTA throughout the years and particularly during the conference's move from Nashville to Las Vegas this year. The great news was then shared that member attendance for 2010 was approximately 1,130 - indicating a 30% increase from 2009! That definitely set the stage for a high energy week. Last but not least, Peggy introduced the ILTA Board Members, Conference Committee and staff that were able to be there. Angela Roarke, Advertising Sales Coordinator, was brought up to speak about getting the most out of the exhibitors sponsorships and new opportunities to get involved with ILTA's publications through advertising. [Editors Note: Randi Mayes spoke to Jobst and me about her initiative to incorporate more rich media into ILTA's publications. Randi is very excited about including more audio, video and social media within their publications' content and is looking to the vendor community for ideas to help push the envelope here. This is a great chance to get involved and stand out!] 

The meat of our discussion started with the Advice for Selling to Law Firms session, which we first included last year based on vendor feedback. The panel was designed to give vendor executives and vendor sales folks an insider's view into what works and what doesn't work when selling to their law firm clients and prospects.

In order to make this a real worthwhile experience, we brought back Joy Heath-Rush, Enterprise Multimedia Services Manager at Sidley Austin and ILTA's past President, (who served on this inaugural panel last year) and added Scott Christensen, IT Director of Wildman Harrold, and current ILTA president. Joy and Scott are both technology decision makers for their law firms; in Joy's case a top 20 global law firm and in Scott's case a 200-attorney national firm. We asked a variety of questions related to the sales process and how vendors can most effectively work with them.

Both panelists continually stressed that building direct relationships with them directly is critical to any sort of success they might have selling (versus contacting their boss or others first). Contrary to popular belief, cold calling is an effective tool if utilized properly and respectfully. Joy made a point to say that if she does take a cold call, which she regularly does, she'll be more inclined to follow-up if she knows how long the introduction will be. For example, if she gets a cold call saying "I'd like to setup a 15 minute call to introduce you to our product", she is more likely to accept. She also urged vendors to be very clear about their intentions and not to over-promise or under-deliver, especially in the beginning of the sales process.

The session, which was very interactive with many questions coming from the audience, included other tips as well as "dos and don'ts", mostly focused on education and common sense business conduct:

• The panelists talked about the importance of being able to not only walk the walk in legal but also talk the talk. Specifically, they both said that it's very important to understand legal speak so if you're not a legal specific vendor, educate yourself on legal jargon, how law firms work and operate, their workflows, etc.  For example, the point was made, that anyone who refers to legal customers, as opposed to clients, evidently does not understand legal speak.
• Also, educate yourself on the legal technologies that a law firm relies on. Understand the technology infrastructure, how IT is structured, the importance of the IT department, and the overall selling process.
• Do your homework on the firm and the organizational structure within the firm. Treat the sales process like an interview; with all the online tools at your disposal and with the advent of social media, there's really no excuse to not be fully informed before making that first phone call.
• The legal community is very loyal so once vendors have established a solid reputation and earned respect from their law firm clients, future business opportunities are a natural progression of the relationship.
• Understand law firms' purchasing and procurement processes. Increasingly, larger, global law firms follow a formalized, centralized purchasing process for everything from tissue paper to servers and enterprise software solutions. So, while vendors may have relationships with one particular decision maker or influencer, there may be many more layers to uncover as it relates to firm-wide purchasing buy-in. On the other hand, smaller firms (i.e., Wildman Harrold) direct technology purchasing through the IT Group and give IT Directors (such as Scott Christensen) direct and final purchasing influence and decision making ability. The bottom-line: It's vital to identify and understand the legal target audience, from influencer to final decision-maker.
• Peer networking and peer recommendations are the key factors in law firm technology decision-making. As a legal technology peer networking organization, ILTA enables members to seek out each other's recommendations and experiences, critical aspects to comprehensively evaluating and purchasing technologies and related services. 

Up next was the session topic that received the most votes from the ILTA exhibitors - Vendor Thought Leadership, with a focus on how to establish it & maintain it. This particular topic has been near and dear to InsideLegal's heart for some time, and truly one of the core reasons we initiated the InsideLegal forum and blog as a means of promoting legal technologists regardless of their heritage (including vendors, consultants, law firm leaders, etc.). While we have long preached thought leadership (as opposed to blatant selling and promoting), the ILTA education session served as our kick-off to an ongoing initiative focused on not only educating vendors and others on the attributes and qualities of legal thought leaders, but also providing a forum for thought leader 'work product' if you will. While assembling the thought leader panel, we didn't waste time in reaching out to who we consider to be one of the poster children for legal vendor thought leadership ... Donna Payne. A well respected and experienced public speaker, author and legal technologist, Donna has managed the extremely difficult task of separating herself (and her expertise) from the successful vendor company (PayneGroup) she operates. During the discussion, JoAnna highlighted the importance of industry involvement, commitment to the industry and to organizations such as ILTA, and fine line between espousing subject matter expertise and shamelessly promoting vendor products and services. While Donna talked about the importance of integrity and honesty in paving the way for long term thought leadership, the group also came to the conclusion that there is still a stark bias and mis-conception when it comes to promoting vendors as thought leaders. Stay tuned for more content on this topic on InsideLegal (including exclusive legal thought leader video interviews filmed during the ILTA conference).

Continuing the theme of 'thoughtful' education, we next presented our public relations-themed session PR Doesn't Stand for Press Release focused on the components of a successful PR (read Public Relations) campaign (view presentation here). Again, this topic was voted on by the attendees pre-conference and was designed to help everyone from a vendor CEO to a marketing manager to a consultant understand what PR can and can't do for their company; what steps can be taken to engage clients in the proactive PR process; and how a focus on education and thought leadership can help establish meaningful relationships with the legal (traditional and social) media. The biggest take-away from the presentation was the continued relevance of developing client-focused content such as user case studies and client testimonials. As revealed earlier in the day during the Advice for Selling to Law Firms session (and mirrored in the 2010 ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey), peer recommendations and examples of other firms' technology best practices and implementations remain the top influences when it comes to legal technology purchases.

No modern legal conference would be complete without the almost obligatory social media/web 2.0 session so it was appropriate that the Leveraging Web 2.0/Social Media to Reach Your Prospects topic throughout the day, the primary goal was to make it relevant and valuable for legal technology vendors, in this instance ranging from those who have never tweeted to others who actively use a variety of social media tools to enhance their marketing communication efforts. The social media faculty included InsideLegal's JoAnna Forshee (Twitter @InsideLegal), a regular presenter and educator on the topic of social media, Donna Payne of PayneGroup (Twitter @donna_payne) and Rob Robinson, VP of Marketing for Orange Legal Technologies (Twitter @complexd). While many of the basics were covered in a similar session at last year's conference, attendee feedback indicated a desire to dive into the details of how various social media tools can be better leveraged. Rob for example shared his philosophy of using social media to provide value to his audiences including twitter followers, LinkedIn group subscribers or those that regularly read his blog posts. He talked about his controversial (but successful) strategy of including all industry news relevant to his readers - including that of his competitors. [Editors Note: Rob wrote an excellent social media strategy article for Peer to Peer. Check it out here.] In addition to providing and adding value, the panel emphasized the ability to use twitter and LinkedIn to engage in conversations, gain valuable client and industry feedback, but also leverage various tracking tools to monitor what others are saying about topics and themes of interest to vendors.

The vendor program concluded with the annual presentation by Jobst Elster of the annual InsideLegal/ILTA's Member Technology Purchasing Survey. The 2010 survey, which was administered by ILTA and analyzed and published by InsideLegal, focused on feedback from ILTA member law firms with 50 or more attorneys and covered IT budgeting; technology purchasing patterns; selection criteria and influencers; technology trends & IT challenges, and state-of-the-economy questions. The 7th annual survey yielded a new high 18% response rate - 109 unique firm responses ranging from 50 to over 3,000 attorneys. A complete survey summary and commentary can be found here.

In closing, InsideLegal truly appreciates the opportunity to continually collaborate with ILTA on producing the annual vendor education program and is always looking for feedback and suggestions to improve session content for future programs. Please send any ideas and comments to JoAnna Forshee. Remember, marketing to the ILTA membership is something you should be doing all year round, not just at the Annual Conference. Start now and you'll be ahead of the game by the 2011 ILTA Annual Conference, August 21-25 at the (newly renovated) Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville.

ILTA/InsideLegal Vendor Education Program - Faculty Announced!

For the 7th year, InsideLegal will be producing the ILTA Vendor Education Program at the Annual ILTA Conference. This program was started by ILTA and InsideLegal years ago to provide added value to ILTA's sponsors. The program is open to executives and marketing contacts for all ILTA's exhibitors and consultant pass holders. 

This year, we shifted the focus from 'how-to' sessions to more strategic marketing and industry strategy sessions and we opened the topics up for vendors to vote on. Below is the final schedule for the program. We will be announcing all the speakers soon. If you are interested in attending any or all of the sessions, please RSVP to JoAnna Forshee with your name, title, company and email. We look forward to seeing you there!

ILTA/InsideLegal Vendor Education Program

Monday, August 23rd  |  2-5:30pm  |  Meeting Room - Pinyon 1

2-2:45p
ILTA Vendor Business Meeting/Working with ILTA (outside of the Annual Conference)
What you need to know about this year's conference and other ILTA programs & meet ILTA's staff and Board
Faculty - Peggy Wechsler & Randi Mayes (ILTA)

2:45-3:15p
Hot Topic - Advice for Selling to Law Firms   (#3 in poll)
ILTA law firms tell you from their point of view
Faculty – Joy Heath Rush (Sidley Austin) (Past President of ILTA) & Scott Christensen (Wildman Harrold) (ILTA President)

3:15-3:45p
Hot Topic – Vendor Thought Leadership  (#1 in poll)
How to establish it & maintain it
Faculty – JoAnna Forshee (InsideLegal), Donna Payne (Payne Group)

3:45-4:15p
Hot Topic – PR Doesn’t Stand for Press Release (#4 in poll)
What are the components of a successful public relations campaign
Faculty – Jobst Elster (InsideLegal)

4:15-4:45p
Hot Topic – How do you leverage Web 2.0/Social Media to reach your prospects?   (#2 in poll)
Faculty – JoAnna Forshee (InsideLegal), Donna Payne (Payne Group), Rob Robinson (Orange Legal Technologies)

4:45-5p
2010 InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey Results
Hear the highlights and get your copy | Check out the 2009 survey here
Faculty – Jobst Elster (InsideLegal)

5-5:30p
Networking Reception

ILTA/InsideLegal Vendor Education Program

For the 7th year, InsideLegal will be producing the ILTA Vendor Education Program at the Annual ILTA Conference. This program was started by ILTA and InsideLegal years ago to provide added value to ILTA's sponsors. The program is open to executives and marketing contacts for all ILTA's exhibitors and consultant pass holders. 

This year, we shifted the focus from 'how-to' sessions to more strategic marketing and industry strategy sessions and we opened the topics up for vendors to vote on. Below is the final schedule for the program. We will be announcing all the speakers soon. If you are interested in attending any or all of the sessions, please RSVP to JoAnna Forshee with your name, title, company and email. We look forward to seeing you there!

ILTA/InsideLegal Vendor Education Program
Monday, August 23rd  |  2-5:30pm  |  Meeting Room - Pinyon 1

2-2:45p
ILTA Vendor Business Meeting/Working with ILTA (outside of the Annual Conference)
What you need to know about this year's conference and other ILTA programs & meet ILTA's staff and Board

2:45-3:15p
Hot Topic - Advice for Selling to Law Firms   (#3 in poll)
ILTA law firms tell you from their point of view

3:15-3:45p
Hot Topic – Vendor Thought Leadership  (#1 in poll)
How to establish it & maintain it

3:45-4:15p
Hot Topic – PR Doesn’t Stand for Press Release (#4 in poll)
What are the components of a successful public relations campaign

4:15-4:45p
Hot Topic – How do you leverage Web 2.0/Social Media to reach your prospects?   (#2 in poll)

4:45-5p
2010 InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey Results
Hear the highlights and get your copy | Check out the 2009 survey here

5-5:30p
Networking Reception

InsideLegal Working on ILTA Vendor Program & ILTA's Member Technology Purchasing Survey

         

We at InsideLegal have been working with ILTA's Program Director, Peggy Wechsler to update the 2010 ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey that spotlights the technology purchasing history and future plans for law firms with 50 attorneys and up. This will be the 5th year we have administered and produced the survey for ILTA and the survey findings will be presented by Jobst Elster, InsideLegal's Head of Content at the ILTA Annual Conference in August. You can review last year's survey here.

Also in the works is the Vendor Education Program that we produce each year at the ILTA Annual Conference. We will be offering sessions on Selling to Law Firms, Working with the Legal Media, Social Media, Review of the Technology Purchasing Survey, Working with ILTA, etc. If you have any suggestions for a topic you would like covered, please email us and let us know. We will be announcing the program details soon, but you can plan on attending Monday afternoon, 8/23.

Also, as you've probably heard by now, the ILTA Conference will be moving from it's planned location in Nashville due to the recent flooding. If you had already booked rooms for your team at the Gaylord in Nashville, ILTA has asked that you to contact the hotel to cancel the reservations. ILTA has selected another facility and is in the process of finalizing and will be announcing the new location soon. The show will go on!

Sizing up the U.S. Law Firm Market: Pulling back the covers on stats, rankings, projections and associations that matter (to be continued)

When we first got our feet wet in legal over 12 years ago, our initial quest was a simple one ..."get to know the key players in this industry, find out how many law firms there are, drill down into market size and trends, and walk away with an accurate statistical picture of the US legal landscape." While our aim back then was absolutely pure and true, we failed miserably at sourcing this info and couldn't find anyone or any institution who had such data at their fingertips. We began to scratch and dig for tidbits of info and slowly but surely began compiling our version of the legal market tip sheet. We published our first "U.S. Legal Industry Overview: Understanding the Landscape" summary (never more than a double sided sheet) in 2004 and have continued most years (we too experience "writers/researchers block") since then. Again, the goal was, and remains, not to create a monstrous research project around the U.S. law firm landscape, but to aggregate a variety of sources (law firm rankings, technology surveys, association reports, consultant market advisories) that already existed, polish things up a bit, and make them widely available. Fast forward to 2010, there still is not a single source (besides back issues of our since retired  LegalMarketingNews newsletter), and yes, the same questions still remain, largely unanswered.

With this bit of history, what you'll read below is a compilation of legal market stats, facts, and surveys meant to enlighten and inform, not provide a "silver research bullet". What you'll see here over the coming weeks is a "greatest hits" version of relevant stats and facts starting with U.S. firm statistics and law firm rankings & lists. In addition, we'll focus on the legal 'business' landscape, the Canadian legal market, the UK legal landscape and eventually end up in Australia.

North American Firm Size Statistics 2010   (Sources: Zap Data (a division of Dunn & Bradstreet))

• There are approximately 1,320 law firms in North America with 100 employees or more (~40+ attorneys). Of those, 366 firms have 250 employees or more (~100+ attorneys).
• Firms with 100 employees or more account for roughly 0.4% of the entire U.S. law firm market. 
• 68% of all U.S. firms have 2 to 4 employees, 3% higher than in 2007.
• 91% of all U.S. firms and legal service providers have less than 10 employees (approximately 4 attorneys).
• According to the ABA Market Research Department, there are 1,180,386 licensed lawyers’ in the U.S., and roughly 1.5 million legal professionals total including legal administrators, paralegals, IT, etc.

U.S. Law Firm Market Surveys, Lists and Rankings 

Law Firm Financials & Demographics

• Am Law 100: 2009 ranking of America’s top 100 revenue grossing law firms included 13 firms exceeding the $1 billion mark. Skadden leads the pack with $2.2 Billion in gross revenue. 
• Am Law 200: 2009 rankings range from Bracewell & Giuliani’s $275.5 million to Morris, Manning’s $99 million gross to round out the 200.
• Global 100:Consists of 75 U.S.-based firms and 16 from the UK including the top three - Clifford Chance, Linklaters and Freshfields. 
• NLJ 250: National Law Journal’s 2009 list of largest law firms based on number of attorneys includes DLA Piper at the top (3,785) and Nexsen Pruet at 250 with 174 lawyers. 

Technology Surveys

• 2009 InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey:  The 9th annual ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey includes feedback from 115 ILTA member law firms with 50 or more attorneys, and covers IT budgeting; technology purchasing patterns; selection criteria; purchase influencers; technology trends & IT challenges; and state-of-the-economy questions. 
• ILTA’s 2009 Technology Survey:  2009 included 455 respondents representing 88,000 attorneys and 190,000 end users with 31% of responses coming from “under 50” attorney firms. The survey is exclusively focused on the statistics and numbers pertaining to all technologies used in ILTA law firms. 
• 2009 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report: Produced by ABA’s Legal Technology Resource Center, the survey consists of 6 volumes including technology basics, law office technology, litigation and courtroom technology, web and communication technology, online research and mobile lawyers.
• 2009 Case, Matter, and Practice Management System Software Study: The ‘CMS Study’ is produced by the University of Florida Levin College of Law's Legal Technology Institute and features a 320 page report detailing current use and future trends of legal case, matter and practice management systems.

Legal Technology Awards

• Law Technology News Awards:  The 7th annual LTN Awards in February 2010 recognized the best technology use spanning 8 law firm/legal department and 25 vendor categories.
• ILTA Distinguished Peer Awards:  Inaugural recognition during 2010 educational conference; award categories include organization, individual peers, vendors and ILTA region of the year.
• InnovAction Awards:  Presented by the College of Law Practice Management and focused on innovation and ingenuity in law practice management (since 2004).
• CIO 100 Awards: Every year, CIO Magazine honors 100 companies that demonstrated excellence and achievement in IT from various industries including legal.  Foley & Lardner last won in 2007.

Join InsideLegal.com (for free) today to receive the Legal Market Series including overviews on:  U.S. Law Firm Rankings; U.S. Firm Statistics; U.S. Industry Trends & Projections; U.S. Legal Business Landscape; Canadian Legal Market; UK Legal Market; and Australian Legal Market.

Also, if you have questions about the legal industry, please email us.

ABA TECHSHOW 2010 Recap

[InsideLegal's Photos from TECHSHOW]

Vendor Education Program

Wednesday, March 24th, the day before the official ABA TECHSHOW kick-off, was super busy; the Practice Management Advisors (PMAs) had a retreat off-site at ABA HQ, exhibitor set-up was in full effect, and the vendor education program - 2 hours of sessions designed to help vendors work with legal media and understand social networking - was in session. For the second year, InsideLegal.com produced this program courtesy of the ABA Law Practice Management staff and board offering 2 sessions - "Working with the Legal Media" and "Utilizing Social Media to Market Your Company". 

The "Working with the Legal Media" session included the following panelists ... 

• Jobst Elster, VP of InsideLegal and legal industry PR expert [Moderator]
• Robert Yates, executive editor, Chicago Lawyer, Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
• John Delavan, editor-in-chief, Legal Management, ALA News
• Reginald Davis, assistant managing editor, ABA Journal
• Joy White, editor, Law Practice, Law Practice Today

The session gave an overview of each publication; each editor's preference for receiving vendor news; publications' rules for content; and their social media involvement.

The next session, "Utilizing Social Media to Market Your Company", included:

• JoAnna Forshee – CEO of InsideLegal (@InsideLegal) and social media expert  [Moderator]
• Tim Baran - uMCLE-Mandatory CLE Unplugged! (@umcle)
• Larry Port – Rocket Matter (@rocketmatter)

The discussion covered the basics of social media, setting up Twitter accounts and tips for vendors on determining their social media strategy.  We'd like to thank all the panelists as well as the vendors who took time from their exhibit setup to join us.

Later Wednesday, InsideLegal produced (with Matt Homann of LexThink) the Ignite Law event (see previous post).

Thursday was the beginning of our many briefings during the show.  We would like to extend a special thank you to all of the TECHSHOW board members, faculty and technologists, consultants and bloggers we met with (easily more than 40 of you) during TECHSHOW. In particular, we really appreciated having quality “sit down and meet” time with Jeff Allen (of GPSOLO and ABA Technology eReport fame), Dennis Kennedy (of the widely popular DennisKennedy.com blog), Laura Calloway (The Alabama Bar’s practice management advisor), Tom Mighell (successful legal blogger and TECHSHOW board member), Brett Burney (of Burney Consultants), Debbie Foster (2010 TECHSHOW Chair and MC) and Andy Adkins (legal case and practice management guru and Director of University of Florida’s Legal Technology Institute). When we weren't in meetings, we were roaming the exhibit hall...

Exhibit Hall

Friday was reserved for a visit to the exhibit hall to see what the vendors were were up to. Here is a sampling of a few of the folks we spoke with:

Rocket Matter: Founding Partner Larry Port was a busy guy this week, first participating in InsideLegal's TECHSHOW social media panel, then presenting his Ignite Law talk on Wednesday evening, and in addition, talking up Rocket Matter's new legal trust accounting functionality.

Digital Direction: Chicago-based, this provider of outsourced telecom management services (i.e., will handle all of your telecommunications services from contract negotiations thru billing), exhibited at TECHSHOW at the urging of one of it's law firm clients (now that's commitment). According to the DD folks, law firms can save upward of 25% on outsourced telecom management services. 

Omega Legal: Every legal technology show we cover, we usually run into the happy-go-lucky Omega Legal crew - TECHSHOW was no exception. Steve Bentley and Kelly Gall reported consistently strong demand for their integrated financial and practice management system and mentioned that Chicago in particular showed lots of promise with firms actively replacing existing systems and upgrading to newer versions.

Scrible: With a tagline of "Scrible does for research what gmail did for email", you are bound to get some raised eyebrows. Add to that, free "booth-side" champagne and fresh, energetic faces of a new company in a new market at their first official trade show and you have Scrible, an affordable (it's free for now!) online research review alternative enabling fast and easy collaboration. One of the most lively guys, Scrible co-founder & CEO Victor Karkar, shared that Scribble was designed with small firms & solos, and their resource and technology challenges, in mind. Currently, Scrible is in beta and offering free accounts.  

Element55: We also caught up with Element55's sales director Tim Norton who tells us business for his company and other automatic time capture solutions (think IntApp, TimeKM, Smart Time) is good and getting better every day. On a side note, the Massachusetts-based company, one of the early entrants (launched in 2002) in this niche, is one of several TECHSHOW "first timers" we talked to.

CCC Technologies: This local converged communications company promotes moving all of a firm's communications - voice and data - to a single network, thus, supporting existing systems and infrastructure. While we haven't seen CCC at other legal tech shows, it was good to see another local provider try out TECHSHOW. 

Business Integrity: We first met BI at the vendor education session on Wednesday (Anatoly Sofer thanks for joining us for the media panel) and briefly caught up with them Friday to learn more about Contractexpress.com, their cloud-based document assembly solution.

FastCase: We chatted with Ed Walters, CEO, mostly about Ignite Law (which he attended) and how refreshing the rapid fire talk format was compared to traditional hour long presentations. FastCase provides online legal research (first to develop a iPhone free research app!) to 380,000 lawyers and 17 bar associations and their members.

Clio: Undoubtedly, CEO Jack Newton was still buzzing from his "Zappos model for legal" Ignite Law talk which received great feedback and is still picking up steam on YouTube.  Clio announced a newly enhanced Clio Calendar, e-mail integration and an overhauled billing system within Clio, its cloud-based SaaS practice management product for solo attorneys and small law firms. 

Beer for Bloggers

Friday evening was kicked off with the Beer for Bloggers event in the lobby bar of the Hilton. The event was hosted by Kevin O'Keefe's LexBlog and the ABA Journal and was attended by the who's who of legal bloggers and consultants including Dennis Kennedy, Tom Mighell, Dave Bilinsky, Jim Calloway, Dan Pinnington and Ernie Svenson. 

"60 Sites in 60 Minutes" Session

In TECHSHOW tradition, the popular "60 Sites in 60 Minutes" session wrapped up the show Saturday to a packed room. The expert panel consisted of Debbie Foster, Adriana Linares, Toby Brown and Ernie Svenson and they shared some of the most valuable websites and services they have come across.  Take a minute to view the list of their recommendations as well as the recommended 60 Sites from TECHSHOW years past.

We'd like to thank the TECHSHOW Board, and Chair Debbie Foster in particular, as this was the best TECHSHOW to date.  We look forward to ABA TECHSHOW 2011, April 11-13, under the supervision of the new incoming Chair, Paul Unger.

Ignite Law: The Future of Law in 6 minute Presentations - Act 2 & Video and Photo Links

Last week's Ignite Law event, presented by LexThink and InsideLegal.com on the eve of ABA TECHSHOW 2010, started with a bang. In our previous Ignite Law post, we spotlighted the first 8 speakers and their 6 minute contributions to the future of law practice. Act 2 "igniters" included 5 lawyers, a trial consultant, cloud software provider, and legal research vendor. Jack Newton with Clio kicked-off post break providing a very insightful synopsis of Zappos' customer service focus and how extraordinary service can elevate a commodity product company to a specialized service provider (who happens to sell shoes).  Jack referenced Richard Susskind and how an extreme service focus could catapult lawyers to stardom.

Will Hornsby's musings on lawyer advertising and the ethics of it all was next up. While Will discussed the ability or inability of the legal profession to regulate the modern incarnation of lawyer advertising- web 3.0 and portable avatars, the crux of the argument focused on the content of ads and promos not the vehicles. 

Teresa Rosado, a seasoned trial consultant, spotlighted our self-service, full access society and the implications technology and social media have had on juries. Her 6 minutes focused on how the jury box has changed since web 2.0 and what litigators (and judges) can do to limit outside juror influence.  

Axiom Law's Rebekah Stafford spent her 6 minutes speaking about the evolution of the legal model and how corporate counsel can make sense of changes such as alternate fee arrangements and performance-based compensation to select the best services available to them. The key mantra of her talk: impart "value, predictability and trust" when introducing alternative law firm business models to your clients.

CaseMaker's Steve Newsom pondered the viability of offering free online legal research in the future, an interesting proposition considering his company currently charges for its online research solution, and along with the likes of Thomson and Lexis, competes for legal research dollars. Along the lines of free, Newsom offered current examples including Google Scholar free searching and FastCase's wildely popular free iPhone app. His parting shot-free online legal research is a very viable option for future law practice.

Nikki Black tackled the topic of lawyers and change and how adopting change is critical to the alternative of facing extinction. Black's view of change in legal comes in the form of web based technologies, mobile applications, social media and cloud computing. Her appeal to lawyers: boldly go "where no lawyer has gone before" and take a leadership role in embracing such tech-influenced change.

Ignite Law saved the best for last with the final two presenters. Doug Sorocco (photo on right), an Oklahoma based IP and technology lawyer, focused his insights on how small firms and small firm thinking can slay the large firm beast. He encouraged the Ignite audience to fight dirty, explore some dirty places, be fearless and most notably "grow a pair" when it comes to standing toe to toe with large firm competitors. "You'll fail, get over it and move on".

Ernie Svenson (aka Ernie the Attorney) placed the Ignite Law cherry on top of with his information processing for lawyers talk. Ernie pointed out that since over 80% of all communication is electronic, there's absolutely no need to create more paper especially when it comes to taking emails and printing them out- that's just crazy he stated.  Ernie is a New Orleans lawyer with a passion for the paperless office and commonsense efficiencies powered by technology.

We want to thank our sponsors -  ABA TECHSHOW, ABA LPM, ABA Journal, Peach New Media, Clio, JD Supra, CaseMaker, RocketMatter.  We'd also liked to thank Kristin Bakota with the ABA LPM and Andrea Cannavina for all their help.

Ignite Law was conceived on the premise of "build it and they will come", and we built it and they came, and survived for 6 minutes X 16, and left with the future of law squarely in the present.

Event Links

• Videos from Ignite Law
• Photos from Ignite Law 
• Ignite Law Sponsors (Thanks to our sponsors for making this event possible. Please take a minute to visit their sites.)

InsideLegal Vendor Education Program - ABA TECHSHOW

For the second year, InsideLegal is producing the Legal Vendor Education program at ABA TECHSHOW courtesy of the ABA Law Practice Management staff and board. The complimentary program will be held Wednesday, March 24, 2:00-4:15pm in the SW Hall/Vendor Track Area of the Hilton Chicago. We are offering 2 sessions - "Working with the Legal Media" and "Utilizing Social Media to Market Your Company" - with each panel consisting of 3-4 faculty, including ABA staff and recognized industry experts.  Exhibiting vendor executives and marketing/PR managers are encouraged to attend and will learn:

• How to submit press releases and content that legal editors will read and consider for their publications
• When to pick up the phone and call editors vs. relying on the "process"
• How you can champion your clients' successful use of your technologies
• How you can benefit from social media without being an expert
• What can be gained by using social media monitoring tools to keep up with the legal market
• Why now is the perfect time to get your feet wet with twitter

Here's the complete schedule:

2:00   Introduction

2:05   Legal Media Panel - Working with the Legal Media 

• Jobst Elster, vice president, InsideLegal (Moderator)
• Robert Yates, executive editor, Chicago Lawyer, Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
• John Delavan, editor-in-chief, Legal Management, ALA News
• Reginald Davis, assistant managing editor, ABA Journal
• Joy White, editor, Law Practice, Law Practice Today

3:00   Utilizing Social Media to Market Your Company

• JoAnna Forshee – InsideLegal (@InsideLegal) Moderator
• Tim Baran - uMCLE-Mandatory CLE Unplugged! (@umcle)
• Larry Port – Rocket Matter (@rocketmatter)

4:00   Question and Answer session

4:15   Conclusion

To participate, please RSVP for each attendee with name, company, title and email address to JoAnna Forshee.  Thanks again to the ABA TECHSHOW and the TECHSHOW Board - particularly Debbie Foster, TECHSHOW Chair and Kristin Bakota, TECHSHOW Meeting Planner - for making this valuable vendor education program possible.

Ignite Law: The future of law practice in six minute increments

 InsideLegal and LexThink will be presenting Ignite Law 2010: The future of law practice in six minute increments in Chicago the night before ABA TECHSHOW opens.

What happens when you give fifteen speakers just six minutes and twenty slides each to discuss their vision of the future of law practice? Ignite Law! Ignite Law will be a fun evening of entertaining, rapid-fire presentations that all answer the simple question: What is the future of law practice?

We hope to see you at Ignite Law!

Submit a Presentation be considered for Ignite Law

Register to Attend

For Sponsorship Information

Ignite Law press release