InsideLegal

As the Legal Tech World Turns...

One of my favorite things about the legal tech community is the people, and in particular, the consultants. This is a little different than what we usually cover, but recently a few long-time industry leaders have had some exciting news so we thought we'd pass it on...

Andy Adkins 

When I first started in the industry in 1999, one of the first consultants I heard about was Andy Adkins. After more than two decades as a dedicated legal technology consultant, Andy “retired” in June 2010 as the President of the Legal Technology Institute at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. Andy was going to continue to do a little consulting, but try not to stay too busy. We should have known that wouldn't last! A couple of weeks ago, Andy became the new CIO of Steptoe & Johnson PLLC, a firm with about 210 attorneys and 600+ users. On top of that, he and his wife Becky have bought a new house and moved from Gainesville, FL to Bridgeport, WV - as he says moving from two seasons in Florida (green and brown) to four seasons. 

Matt Homann

Matt Homann is a legal innovation consultant, the Founder of LexThink, my co-producer on the Ignite Law events, the award winning blogger of the [non]billable hour, and the most talented, creative meeting facilitator I know or have worked with. Within the last two weeks, he's also added Husband to that list and married Jessica Prince (now Homann). For the last week, they have been making their way around Alaska, Vancouver and Seattle on their honeymoon and now are heading back to St. Louis to move into a new home. I originally met Jessica when she accompanied Matt on a trip to meet with us in Atlanta when Matt and I were first planning Ignite Law 2010. After an hour, we could tell she was perfect for Matt. Congratulations to you both!

 

Ross Kodner

As I mentioned above, Andy was one of two consultants I first heard about and met when I started in legal in 1999 - the other was Ross Kodner. Ross is the President of MicroLaw, a legal technology consultancy, which is celebrating it's 26th anniversary this year, and presents on legal technology at conferences all over the world. In 2003, I began co-producing the Annual Consultants and Technologists Dinner with Ross. We produced the event, which became known as "The Dinner", each year in Chicago bringing together a group of legal industry leaders for networking and industry awards. Well, now Ross has announced another event - his engagement to his high school sweetheart, Lisa. Next they will be setting the date - congratulations!

ILTA 2011 Photo Album

A picture is worth a thousand words so no need to spend too many column inches describing our truly diverse ILTA 2011 photo gallery (and there are captions...).

ILTA 2011 Conference Album August 21-25, 2011

 

In case you missed it, here is our previously posted album of the awards event held Thursday night...

ILTA Distinguished Peer Awards August 25, 2011

2011 ILTA Distinguished Peer Award Winners Announced

On Thursday evening, ILTA hosted it's 2nd annual Distinguished Peer Awards to honor the achievements of those ILTA members and vendors who are making technology work for the legal profession. The Peer Awards, which included 23 categories across individuals, vendors and regions, peers and organizations, was announced at the annual awards dinner as part of ILTA’s 2011 annual educational conference.

All of the short-list nominees were impressive and you can find the complete list here. Below is a list of winners and their award entries. We will have a complete ILTA photo album (check out the award pictures) online shortly. And the winners are:

PEER AWARDS

Communications Technologies Award

Joy Heath Rush, Director of Enterprise Multimedia Services at Sidley Austin LLP, has played a pivotal role over the past 15 months in successfully delivering nearly 35 state-of-the-art conference rooms, including five optimized high-definition videoconferencing spaces, a completely self-hosted and self-managed video bridging infrastructure, a fully functional desktop videoconferencing solution, as well as the people and processes to support them.

Desktop and Application Services Award

Kara Portwood, Practice Area Solutions Consultant at Armstrong Teasdale LLP, continuously brings value to the firm’s clients by facilitating desktop technology best practices. She often works with clients to help with collaboration, solve technology issues and contribute to building successful business relationships.

Emerging Technologies Award

Bill Caraher, Chief Information Officer at von Briesen & Roper, s.c., realized the vision of his managing partner and created a modular, social intranet like iGoogle. Using the latest in emerging and Open Source technology, Bill and his team created a graphically stunning, user-customizable intranet with easily editable portals. The intranet links to DMS documents, has external RSS content and hosts its own internal “social” platform with a Twitter-like microblog, a Craigslist forum and Facebook\Twitter iGoogle gadgets.

Enterprise Content Management Award

Ben Weinberger, currently with Bond Pearce LLP, while serving as Chief Information Officer at Lathrop & Gage LLP, was responsible for migrating the firm to a more robust matter-centric content management system. Consolidating 10 separate databases into a single DB and offering improved collaboration and workflow capabilities, the project achieved 100 % ROI in less than two years.

Financial Management Award

Tanielle Huff, Financial Systems Administrator at K&L Gates LLP, was responsible for upgrading the cost recovery systems while integrating a mix of systems and processes left over from a series of mergers and acquisitions. This project involved the firmwide implementation of a standardized cost recovery platform, including servers, software and databases, as well as all hardware attached to copiers, fax machines and phone switches, and it was successfully completed in five weeks.

Knowledge Management Award

Scott Rechtschaffen, Chief Knowledge Officer at Littler Mendelson P.C., consistently leverages his keen understanding of law firm business and legal practice to deliver innovative, cost-effective, high-quality knowledge management solutions for internal and client-facing use. Scott founded the firm’s knowledge management department and has developed it to become the largest KM department of any U.S. law firm. He was also one of the first to create client-facing knowledge management systems to help support the needs of clients.

Law Department Award   {TIE}

Larry Gianneschi, Legal Information and Technology Manager at Colgate-Palmolive Company, was responsible for the successful implementation of a third-party hosted solution combining off-the-shelf and customized platforms from multiple vendors to provide matter management, e-billing, document management, records management and IP management in a totally integrated solution across Colgate's global legal organization.

Mike Russell, Strategic Legal Technologist and Director of Business Systems Projects at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, pioneered the effort to drive financial savings and process efficiency by partnering enterprise legal services with corporate IT to design, develop and implement a technology solution for distributed paper-capture, document management workflow and VoIP communications. This enabled geographically aligned "hub" units of centralized paralegals and staff to support legal tasks for attorneys. During the first four months in operation, this project contributed to a $1.5 million expense run-rate reduction.

Litigation and Practice Support Award

Julie Brown, Litigation Technology Manager at Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP, championed litigation and practice support by re-engineering e-discovery workflows to streamline processes, reduce client costs and ensure that processes are repeatable and defensible. She implemented in-house analytics tools, a workflow-based project management system and creative methods for educating attorneys and paralegals in electronic discovery. Julie is also a public speaker and author on the topic of litigation and practice support, and an active participant in EDRM and ILTA.

Professional Services Award

Kim Craig, Director of Project Management Office at Seyfarth Shaw LLP, was responsible for developing and leading the transformation and innovative implementation of legal project management within her firm. Kim's team of certified project management professionals work on client-facing, revenue-generating matters with attorneys. She has led her team in the convergence of legal project management, process improvement and Lean Six Sigma, knowledge management and practice management with innovative and creative technologies.

Risk and Records Management Award

Gillian Glass, Practice Support and Records Manager at Farella Braun + Martel LLP, implemented a successful records destruction procedure that matches the firm’s retention schedule. The result of this project has saved the firm thousands of dollars in offsite storage costs. She also managed the conversion of the firm's records management system, implementing software that will enable parallel management of the firm’s electronic and paper records.

Server Operations and Security Award

Sean Power, Manager of Enterprise Infrastructure and Security at Lathrop & Gage LLP, achieved a significant upgrade and consolidation of the firm’s network and security infrastructure to develop a highly available computer and network environment with high visibility into performance and operations. This project was completed in an 18-month period.

User Support Services Award

Justin Hectus, Director of Information at Keesal, Young & Logan, is charged with delivering the right information to the right people at the right time to support good business decisions. Over the past year, Justin has led the development of a learning environment that measures end-user skill levels across all applications and job functions and provides personalized training opportunities and credit for participation via a custom-built Web-based system.

INDIVIDUAL AWARDS

Young Professional Award

Meredith Williams, Chief Knowledge Management Officer at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC, is a 34-year-old who is passionate about KM. Meredith started the knowledge management department at her firm over 10 years ago and has grown it into a world-renowned program.

Leadership Award

Loretta Auer, Chief Information Officer at Fish & Richardson P.C., has championed initiatives to improve firmwide administrative systems and staff productivity through best practices. Loretta has mentored and developed an IT and information management staff that has accomplished projects using the best examples of emerging technologies and development platforms in the legal industry, including .Net-based reporting applications, SharePoint, Windows 7, Office 2010 and e-discovery.

VENDOR AWARDS

Consultant Award

Howard Russell, Co-Chief Executive Officer at RBRO Solutions Inc., founded the company to enable law firms to maximize organizational and employee efficiency by utilizing document management solutions. He is committed to providing his clients with the best technology solutions and the highest level of end-to-end services, integrated software products and customized software solutions.

Vendor Thought-Leader Award

Lance Waagner, President and Chief Executive Officer at Intelliteach, Inc., has spent the last 20+ years championing ILTA and providing exemplary user support services. Within the last 12 months, Lance developed the "Guru Guide to User Support" project, including a legal industry-exclusive helpdesk metrics report, a 30+ city ILTA roadshow, a dedicated Guru website with free resources and downloads, several articles for ILTA publications and a presentation (and follow-up webinar) as part of the 2010 ILTA conference.

Vendor Implementation Award

Founded in 1997, Hubbard One is part of Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. Our innovative set of software and solutions include Web communications, contact and relationship management, experience and pitch management, competitive intelligence and intranets and extranets. Hubbard One’s team of experts also offers a wide range of creative, technology and consulting services.

Innovative Vendor Award

Handshake Software is the leader in providing products and services to enhance SharePoint for intranets, extranets, search, document and email management and mobile access. Some of the world's largest law firms use Handshake products for SharePoint page personalization; out-of-the box integration with applications like Elite/Aderant; to extend SharePoint document management functionality to provide a complete law firm system; to allow non-programmers to quickly create or modify SharePoint Web Parts; and deliver information to mobile devices.

REGIONAL AWARDS

City Rep Champion

Stacie Oste, Training Coordinator at Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP, is the Charlotte, North Carolina City Rep.

Region of the Year Award   {TIE}

South Pacific: Exceeding Your Expectations. Inspired by ILTA members and driven by their commitment, the South Pacific Region sets the highest standard for knowledge-sharing, peer-networking and client service among legal technology professionals. Teamwork and team spirit, camaraderie, generosity, excellence, distinction, achievement, collaboration and creativity reign.

Middle Atlantic: Delivering a Large Daily Dose of ILTA. The Middle Atlantic Region’s strong commitment to ILTA’s core values, focus on quality programming and legion of volunteers are hallmarks of the region. They’re proud of their growth, expansion and collaboration with sister organizations, their innovative meeting formats and the large pool of volunteers who contribute their time and knowledge in many different ways, including service as a director or officer, speaking and authoring.

ORGANIZATIONAL AWARDS

Project of the Year Award

Littler Mendelson P.C. has developed Littler CaseSmart™, a case-management solution that combines a Littler-developed proprietary technology platform, rigorous quality assurance measures and an alternative attorney staffing model. This solution streamlines the way that cases are managed and is designed to increase efficiency, productivity and accountability, while providing clients greater confidence that work is being managed with the highest possible quality standards.

SharePoint Innovator of the Year Award

Bingham McCutchen LLP has designed internal dashboards to promote efficiency and improved communication across the firm. The dashboards' improved delivery of real-time intelligence about clients on a firmwide level; provided lawyers with instant access to their internal financial metrics; and gave both lawyers and staff a comprehensive view of their individual HR information.

Innovative Member of the Year Award

Bryan Cave LLP has taken a structural approach to innovation that mirrors the research and development functions found in the best global companies. As a result, it has been able to develop innovative solutions on a broad front and bring many more such innovations to market than is typical in large global law firms.

 

 

"In Their Own Words": MyLegal.com's Lisa DiMonte

Last month, InsideLegal was invited to cover MyLegal.com's inaugural social media conference "Making the Case for Social Media". As reported in our event recap, MyLegal.com's founder and event brainchild Lisa DiMonte, put to great use her 30+ year court reporting and litigation support experience and delivered a value-added first time event. We wanted to follow-up since we were particularly curious about Lisa's passion for social media and to what extent the legal community has embraced her emerging MyLegal.com social network for legal professionals. Here is Lisa "in her own words" to provide more insight...

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your passion for legal and especially social media?

I’ve been in the legal industry for over 33 years and became a court reporter because I loved the idea of learning something new every day and meeting new and interesting people. During my court reporter training, I was fascinated by technology and utilizing technology to be more productive. As I gained more experience as a court reporter, I became more intrigued by technologies that were designed to help lawyers and other legal professionals become more efficient. My passion for people, technology and continual learning is being fulfilled by my work at MyLegal.com, where we help legal professionals use simple social media tools to get more clients and build professional relationships.

What is MyLegal.com and how do you see it helping lawyers meet their objective of running a successful practice?

MyLegal.com is a social network for all legal professionals, not just lawyers. So whether you’re a lawyer or a legal vendor, everyone seems to want the same thing - more clients. But there’s so much competition amongst firms of all sizes and there are so many choices, that many legal professionals are confused about where to start with social media or what to do, so they do nothing. I also think that many attorneys and legal professionals are risk averse. If you couple aversion to risk, with some of the state restrictions on advertising for lawyers, it’s no wonder that many legal professionals find it easier and safer to be in the stands as a spectator, rather than participating “on the field.”

That’s where MyLegal.com comes in. We help legal professionals use simple tools to increase their online presence and visibility in a professional and ethical way. Legal professionals create a professional profile on MyLegal.com and then associate their content with their profile. This content can include press releases, blogs, podcasts and videos that are geared at educating and not advertising. The more content that is associated with your profile; the more likely it is that you are going to be found by someone who is in need of your services. We eliminate the barriers to create and distribute the content with our easy-to-use tools, by providing our members with a simple template to create a blog or press release, or, alternatively, the ability to simply browse and upload their content or insert a link and tag it for search engine indexing.  

We are an all inclusive community and believe that one of the ways lawyers can be successful and competitive is by keeping abreast of new technologies and methodologies. Legal vendors are in the best position to keep lawyers informed in this regard because they are the ones who provide solutions to those problems. On the flip side, legal vendors need to know the issues and obstacles that interfere with lawyers' ability to practice law efficiently and effectively.

How does MyLegal.com interact and partner with the legal technology vendor community?  

As discussed, we provide the same tools and services for legal vendors as we do for lawyers. We help legal vendors promote themselves and their products through the posting and distribution of product demos, press releases and interviews on our talk radio show, “The Legal Exchange.” We also provide the online portal for vendor groups so they can share intellectual insights and develop best practices through the discussions and wikis associated with each group.

Once they start engaging with social media, what can or should lawyers expect? What should they not expect to happen?

Before lawyers and other legal professionals engage in social media, they need to understand that social media is not a silver bullet. In order to see results, the legal professional has to be authentic, consistent and committed. Authenticity is at the core of all relationships, whether online or face-to-face. Consistency is important because people want to know what to expect from you. And, finally, you need to be committed to your social media plan and goals because it takes time to build your network, establish your credibility and achieve your professional goals.

Lisa DiMonte 
MyLegal.com
Twitter: @mylegal

Announcing the COLPM 2010 Fellow Inductees for Legal Achievement

The 2010 Fellow Inductees to the College of Law Practice Management (COLPM) have been inducted today and they are... [Link to pictures of the announcements and introduction of each Fellow]

• Stephen Dempsey, Sidley Austin
• Susan Saltonstall Duncan, RainMaking Oaisis, Inc. 
• Jeffery Flax, Jeff Flax and Associates, LLC 
• William Freivogel, Freivogel Ethics Consulting 
• Patrick J. Lamb, Valorem Law Firm 
• Norman Letalik, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP
• Stewart Levine, ResolutionWorks 
• Susan Manch, Shannon & Manch 
• Aric Press, ALM 
• Jeff Reade, Cole Valley Software, Inc. 
• Vedia Jones Richardson, Olive & Olive, PA 
• Elonide Semmes, Right Hat LLC
• Caren Ulrich Stacy, Lawyer Development Strategies LLC

COLPM Fellows have to be nominated and must have made a significant - and sustained (at least 10 years) - contribution to the field of law practice management. Congratulations to all!

Mary Mack Resigns from Fios

Today, Fios announced that long-time Fios spokesperson Mary Mack has resigned. She will be joining ZyLab as 'enterprise technology counsel'. According to the EDDUpdate blog, "She will work from the company's California offices, and start her new post on  November 7,  after more than a decade with the Portland, Ore.-based e-discovery provider (Fios) as its corporate technology counsel." In addition to serving as Fios' corporate technology counsel, Mary is a regular on the legal technology speaking circuit, serves on many industry boards and is the author of the eDiscovery blog, Sound Evidence.

In Their Own Words: Legal Thought Leaders Interview Series

Here we are, a month removed from the ILTA 2010 Conference and for InsideLegal, our biggest takeaway was the re-affirmation of community in the legal technology space and specifically the contributions individual ILTA members and vendors make on an ongoing basis to provide a content and experience-rich environment for all, from the 20 year ILTA veteran to the first timer. In recognition of this dedication, volunteerism, subject matter expertise and intellect, we set out to capture the essence of some of our legal thought leaders ... "in their own words". Below are interviews with Joy Heath-Rush, Jonathan Maas, Norm Thomas, Brian Zeve, Bob Tennant, Randi Mayes, Peggy Wechsler, Lance Waagner, Donna Payne, Joseph Scott, Susie Krupa and Brad Sidwell.

[Editors Note: While we have found rich media such as video, podcasts, webcasts and the like to be en vogue, we are still on the fence about the efficacy of these media for our purposes - promoting the legal technology industry and its people. Since we are undecided here, we opted to intermingle old fashioned written content and commentary with concise, informal (albeit Blair Witch style - no, these were not professionally produced) video snippets ranging from 1.5 to 5 minutes in length. In the future, we will increase the quality of these videos. Our goal here was to catch-up with some legal industry leaders to garner impromptu feedback on the 2010 ILTA conference; find out about what they and/or their companies are excited about these days; and finally get their 'off the top of their head' candid insight on thought leadership and what defines thought leaders in our industry]

Joy Heath-Rush - Enterprise Multimedia Services Manager, Sidley Austin

A familiar face, Joy Heath-Rush from Sidley Austin, joined us to recap her ILTA experience as well as her involvement with InsideLegal's annual vendor education program. Unfortunately our trusty camera sort of died in midstream (ironic since Joy is the Enterprise Multimedia Services Manager for Sidley Austin) so you'll need to go to ILTA TV if you want to see Joy in full color. We revisited some of the points that Joy made during the panel when it came to selling to law firms and specifically asked her about the best ways to work with her from a vendor standpoint. We also drilled down into the RFP process because this is something that we're seeing more and more vendors spend a lot of resources responding to. This led to the question of who is actually driving the RFP process and where are they coming from? Joy made an interesting observation that a lot of the RFPs currently being issued are being driven by be the e-discovery market and specifically the need for discovery solutions by law firms. Also, based on the fact that there are so many vendors providing e-discovery services, RFPs are a way of managing that process. Lastly, we talked with Joy about the pure networking nature of ILTA and the importance of legal vendors establishing relationships, building credibility and earning members' trust and loyalty.

Jonathan Maas - Assistant Director, Ernst & Young

After Joy, we had a chance to catch up with Jonathan Maas, 30 year litigation support industry and litigation technology veteran, and current assistant director of Ernst & Young's Forensic Technology & Discovery Services team in London. Jonathan, who spoke at several ILTA sessions and attended several others, made an interesting, perhaps even controversial, point (controversy?! all in a day's work for Mr. Maas) related to cloud computing. Specifically, he thought it was sort of peculiar that cloud computing is this huge buzzword and clearly the number one show topic but in his mind, he really didn't see the difference between cloud computing and software-as-a-service and other web-enabled delivery methods for technologies and services. His point being that there is virtually no differentiation or anything that sets cloud computing apart from what's already being done aside from an updated catch-phrase. His point reminded us of our recent legal cloud computing interview with Microsoft's Norm Thomas and his statement that Microsoft has been involved in cloud development for the past 15 years but not many consumers realize that because it wasn't called cloud computing back then and it did not apply to highly visible consumer services.

Brian Zeve & Norm Thomas - Director & Manager, Microsoft Professional Services

On the heals of InsideLegal's recent interview with Norm Thomas focused on Microsoft's legal cloud strategy, we wanted to catch up with Norm and his colleague Brian Zeve, who leads the charge for Microsoft's legal vertical efforts, to collect their thoughts on legal futures; Microsoft's commitment to the legal industry; and also explore to what extent the cloud 'rubber' has hit the road for the company. With the cloud topic being hot and very apropos for Microsoft, we asked Brian to share Microsoft's top benefits of cloud delivery versus others. While most of his answers (cost savings and infrastructure consolidation/streamlining) reflected industry standards, his bigger point about the significance of increased collaboration and interoperability was our biggest take-away. On the topic of thought leadership, Brian believes having a business vision, as well as the ability to identify and overcome future obstacles, before they become show stoppers, are critical ingredients.   

Bob Tennant - CEO, Recommind

Next we caught up with Bob Tennant, Recommind's CEO, to talk about his impressions of ILTA 2010, information governance, its increasing relevance in the legal eDiscovery space, as well as the launch of the company's predictable costs in eDiscovery initiative based on its Predictive Coding technology. According to the company's ILTA release, the Axcelerate Review & Analysis solution (based on predictive coding) allows law firms to offer fixed-fee arrangements for document review, a major breakthrough in the industry's ongoing efforts to better predict and reign in eDiscovery costs. On the topic of thought leadership, Bob mentioned the importance of forward thinking and compared it to hockey, stating the desire to move to where the puck will be, versus where it currently is. 

Randi Mayes & Peggy Wechsler - Executive Director & Program Director, ILTA

What would an interview session be without talking to the energetic go-getters who coolly orchestrate the ILTA conference year after year ... Randi Mayes, ILTA's Executive Director and Peggy Wechsler, ILTA's Program Director. While Randi focused her video snippet on how vendor partners can work with the organization on providing members with content and thought leadership via the various publication and media vehicles, Peggy provided an insider's view on final attendance numbers, vendor participation and 2011 conference location details (Nashville!). One of the key points, gleaned from both Peggy's and Randi's comments on thought leadership, was the importance of commitment to legal and the energy, sacrifice and time it takes to establish credibility and earn respect within the ILTA community.   

Lance Waagner - CEO, Intelliteach

We caught up with Lance Waagner, CEO of Intelliteach and former CIO of Atlanta-based Kilpatrick Stockton, who had just wrapped up a successfully panel session focused on helpdesk and deskside support. The session, which he co-presented with Tony Hartsfield and Franklin Stevens of Bryan Cave, drew 135 law firm support managers and user services personnel looking for practical ways to provide better helpdesk support while increasing analyst morale and keeping user satisfaction high. In fact, Lance's video snippet speaks to the Guru's Guide he and his analysts developed in order to provide law firms with heldpdesk statistics and metrics in order to help measure satisfaction and helpdesk efficacy.

Donna Payne - CEO & Founder, PayneGroup

A short time later, Donna Payne joined us and continued the thought leadership conversation we first kicked off earlier in the week during the vendor education program's legal thought leadership panel discussion. Donna, who juggled running PayneGroup's booth with four speaking slots during the conference, is an ILTA fixture, not only as a valued and trusted vendor partner, but also as a peer and thought leader to the entire ILTA membership. Whether she is travelling the country as part of ILTA's Office 2010 presentation tour or having one-on-one technology conversations with leading firms' managing partners, Donna has always applied the right mix of subject matter expertise, industry knowledge and straight-up business acumen. 

Joseph Scott - Vice President & General Manager, CompuLaw/Deadlines on Demand

Joseph Scott, GM of legal calendaring solution provider CompuLaw and Deadlines On Demand, took time out from an extremely busy CompuLaw booth to share his ILTA experience. It was good to hear Joseph reiterate 'the economy has rebounded' message and talk about loosening purse strings of large firms pursuing calendaring and docketing solutions. Joseph, who spends much of his time speaking with firm risk managers and attorneys throughout the country about the malpractice risk associated with calendar and deadline-related errors, provided a unique slant on our thought leadership themed question. Specifically, he identified thought leaders as those that ask questions no one has asked before and in turn pursue answers. Asking those 'wow, I never thought of that' questions according to Scott is a lot more important and impressive than 'talk leaders' who repeat what others have already espoused before them.  

Susie Krupa - Industry Principal, Professional Services, SAP America

We were delighted to spend a few minutes with Susie Krupa who shared with us what SAP and its professional services vertical partner, Tata Consulting Services, are up to in legal and also gave us an insider's view on the G100 Global CIO Forum, a meeting of the world's top law firm CIOs, which occurs on ILTA day one. Susie represented SAP as part of a G100 financial management panel discussion (along with Microsoft, Elite and Aderant) and talked about how the global company's leadership and track record in other professional services (such as accounting) can go a long way in helping law firms embrace and adopt future technologies that will define their organizations 5-10 years from now.

Brad Sidwell - Vice President & General Manager, LexisNexis InterAction

One of our last interviewees at conference was Brad Sidwell, responsible for LexisNexis Interaction. Brad shared with us InterAction's big ILTA conference news - the release of InterAction 6.0 for Microsoft Outlook and corresponding positive ILTA attendee feedback, and had a lot of fresh perspectives to share on legal technology, the ILTA community and thought leadership. In terms of the big product news, Brad, the former CIO of Troutman Sanders, also shared with us his company's core product principals, no doubt critical in the development of InterAction 6.0. Specifically, he cited increasing CRM user adoption rates (which they hope to achieve via common workflow within Outlook); renewed focus on partnerships, specifically Microsoft; and embracing Office as a platform (vs. an application) and as such being able to embed InterAction services/functionality within the new framework.

While ILTA 2011 is roughly 11 months away, the news, views, and insights shared by our legal thought leader interviewees can be put to use now and reflected upon over the next year. While it is commendable to occasionally focus on specific technology themes (cloud, virtualization, etc.), the topic of thought leadership, and the subjects broached by those we consider 'thought leading', will be shared and commented on by InsideLegal for a long time to come. 

Podcasts & Coverage of the 2010 ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey

We had the opportunity to speak with many industry editors and blogs/podcasts about the 2010 InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey. Below are a few...

ILTA TV

For the past two years, ILTA has provided ILTA TV during the annual conference. For those not able to attend the conference, ILTA TV Live is the perfect way to tune-in for a live video broadcast, or easily access the recording after the conference. ILTA TV is again hosted by ii3 Inc. CEO Shy Alter. InsideLegal's JoAnna Forshee was interviewed by Shy and you can find the recording here. Also check out other interviews by industry thought leaders such as Joy Heath Rush, Judi Flournoy, Brian Zeve, Donna Payne, Marty Metz, Ron Friedman and John Alber (just to name a few). Thanks to Shy and ILTA! 

The Kennedy-Mighell Report

The latest podcast of legal technology superstars, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell, focuses on "Geolocation: Where Everyone Knows Your Name AND Location". In their parting shots segment, Dennis and Tom highlight the 2010 InsideLegal/ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey as the "best resource available for getting hard data on what law firms are actually doing in the area of legal technology". Thanks Dennis and Tom!  Download the podcast here and subscribe to The Kennedy-Mighell Report on iTunes.

The Un-Billable Hour with Rodney Dowell

JoAnna Forshee & Jobst Elster of InsideLegal were the guests on The Un-Billable Hour podcast with Rodney Dowell to discuss the highlights and budget data from the 2010 ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey. Thanks Rodney!   Download the podcast here and subscribe to The Un-Billable Hour on iTunes.

[Both The Kennedy-Mighell Report and The Un-Billable Hour are part of the Legal Talk Network.]

Legal Current

InsideLegal's Head of Content, Jobst Elster, was interviewed by Kevin Hunt, Editor of LegalCurrent.com, the blog from Thomson Reuters.Thanks to Kevin and Angie from LegalCurrent.com!  You can view the post and video here and subscribe to the blog for updates at LegalCurrent.com.

Pam Woldow joins Edge International

We received an announcement from Jordan Furlong that Pam Woldow has joined Edge International as partner and general counsel. According to Jordan, Pam is "one of the world’s top legal consultants and an unparalleled expert in legal project management and alternative fee arrangements. Pam’s written work includes some of the most incisive commentary available on AFAs and project management in the legal services marketplace, and her accomplishments and observations have received much legal media attention."

Edge is also announcing Pam's new blog At The Intersection and she will continue her Twitter feed at @pwoldow.

Nominees for ILTA’s 2010 Distinguished Peer Awards Announced

ILTA announced this year that they were launching an annual recognition program titled ILTA’s Distinguished Peer Awards. The inaugural ceremony will be held during ILTA's Annual Educational Conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, August 26th. 

The award applications, which were submitted in June, have been counted and the following nominees have been announced. You can read more about each award on the Awards page. Congratulations to all!

ORGANIZATION AWARDS

Innovative Member of the Year

• Mayer Brown LLP - Electronic Balloting
• Mayer Brown LLP - Merger & Combination Playbook
• Bradford & Barthel, LLP - Google Apps Collaboration

Project of the Year

• Bingham McCutchen
• Fish & Richardson, P.C.
• McInnis Cooper

SharePoint Innovator of the Year

• Dickinson Wright PLLC
• Miller Johnson
• Reed Smith LLP
• Seyfarth Shaw LLP

INDIVIDUAL AWARDS

ADERANT Champion 

• Lin Yang - Miller, Canfield, Paddock & Stone, P.L.C.
• Jeff Olson - Ulmer & Berne LLP

Infrastructure Technologies Champion

• Carlos Rodriguez - Nexsen Pruet, LLC
• Jason Najacht - Mayer Brown LLP
• Dean Leung - Davis LLP

Knowledge Management Champion

• Tom Baldwin - Reed Smith LLP
• Meredith Williams - Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz
• Eric Hunter - Bradford & Barthel, LLP

Litigation Support Champion

• Duane Lites - Jackson Walker L.L.P.
• Joanne Lane - MetLife
• Julie Brown - Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP

Marketing Technology Champion 

• Kristyn Sornat - Much Shelist Denenberg Ament & Rubenstein, P.C.

Microsoft Champion

• Beau Mersereau - Fish & Richardson, P.C.

Mobile, Remote and Wireless Champion

• Drew Collier - Polsinelli Shughart PC

Open Source Software Champion 

• David Nevala - Lukins & Annis PS

Open Text Champion 

• Brook Lee - Fox Rothschild LLP

Practice Management Champion 

• Michelle Mahoney - Mallesons Stephen Jaques

Project Management Champion 

• Jennifer Potter - Fish & Richardson, P.C.

User Support Champion

• Maritta Terrell - Lloyd Gosselink Rochelle & Townsend, P.C.
• Denise Ash - Robinson & McElwee PLLC
• Chris Myatt - Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP

VENDOR AWARDS 

Innovative Vendor Award

• Guidance Software
• iManage Universal Search
• IntApp, Inc.
• Omega Legal Systems, Inc.
• Rosslyn Analytics

Technology Implementation of the Year

• Datacert, Inc.
• DocAuto, Inc.
• Recommind