InsideLegal

LegalTech New York 2011: Influence of eDiscovery

Those of us who have been attending LegalTech New York for more than the last decade (this will be our 12th!), or even those partaking over the past five years or so, have seen a major shift in LegalTech's exhibit hall - namely the drastic vendor landscape shift from a broad collection of technology and service providers to what these days is a eDiscovery/litigation support world. While the need for applications and services required to manage the litigation lifecycle and accommodate the various phases of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) is undeniable, what has suddenly happened to all the other technologies that were previously touted as 'mission critical'. Remember when the exhibit hall highlights included accounting software, document management, time & billing applications, contact management solutions as well as an array of consultants who focused more on helping firms run their operations? Here are some stats to prove the point:

• In 2010, by our count 96 LegalTech NY vendors peddled eDiscovery/litigation support solutions (applications as well as services).The 2011 exhibitor lists includes 103 vendors, representing 43% (out of 237) of all LegalTech exhibitors.
• The theme continues as it relates to educational sessions and pay-to-play opportunities (i.e., sponsorships) as well - 53% of all sessions and tracks contain eDiscovery and related topics and 73% of all educational sponsors (excluding association sponsors such as ARMA, ILTA, etc.) are eDiscovery or litigation support vendors.

With so much attention on the $1.2 Billion eDiscovery market (according to a Gartner Group 2010 report), all the recent talk of cloud computing and the viability of using Microsoft SharePoint as an alternate document management system provides a breath of fresh air for those of us looking forward to a new decade with more legal technology balance. We'll all see what this week's 30th edition of LegalTech New York brings, but maybe we'll be wooed and wowed by cutting edge scanning and imaging products and financial management software that will revolutionize the way you count your firm's beans. 

Unofficial Guide to Legal Technology - LegalTech NY Edition

Here are a few tips and resources that will help you stay in the know for LegalTech NY - whether you are attending the show or following from your office.

LegalTech NY Twitter Activity Page
Not everyone is active on Twitter, but you shouldn't miss out on all the information that happens there, especially during an industry event. We've created a simple page that you can go to throughout the day and read the tweets regarding LegalTech NY. 

Free Pass for LegalTech NY
This free pass gives you access to the exhibit hall, keynotes and general sessions.

LegalTech Mobile
The iPhone app didn't make it in time for the show, but LegalTech did launch LegalTech Mobile, a website that is smartphone compatible and allows you to review the sessions, lookup exhibitors and create a schedule of your desired classes. 

InsideLegal
Jobst and I will be in meetings throughout the show and also meeting with many of the vendors as well. We will be compiling post each day on the recap covering who we met, what vendor announcements we heard, etc. Let us know if you would like to tell us about any new significant announcements you may be making. 

LegalTech NY Agenda Word Cloud
Know what LegalTech is all about? We turned the agenda into a word cloud so you can see for yourself. We'll also be doing daily word clouds that will judge the truth of what people talked about and had on their minds. Should be interesting...

LegalTech NY Sessions
The complete LegalTech New York agenda can be found here.

 

LegalTech New York 2011 Agenda Word Cloud

Here we are less than 24 hours before LegalTech New York 2011, described by organizer ALM Events as "the most important legal technology event of the year", and one thing is sure ... the next 3 days will see an abundance of legal, technology and related general business topics discussed among, not only the 1000s of expected attendees, but presented as part of the jam-packed 3 day agenda. A quick glance at the program guide reveals a total of 56 sessions - 49 classes (based on 18 themed tracks) and 7 'open to all' general sessions including daily keynote presentations.

While it is physically and no doubt mentally impossible for attendees to take in more than a maximum of 5 sessions per day, not to mention any time spent visting the 249 vendors on ther exhibit floor, using technology and aggregating related-twitter chatter will at least give us a decent sense of 'what's up' at this year's LegalTech New York.

With this said, we have created a LegalTech New York 2011 Word cloud  visually displaying all words/themes included in the event's 3 day agenda. Size and and color (the darker the bigger) of selected words dictate how often they have been mentioned or referenced within the agenda.

While 'client management', 'technology', 'data','firm', 'ediscovey' and 'business' register as most mentioned, how will this picture change within the next 3 days based on what attendees, session speakers, media, commentators and vendors are actually buzzing about? We will share daily twitter tag clouds to visually represent what LegalTechers are tweeting about (if they use the #LTNY or #LegalTech tag).

Stay tuned to our InsideLegal blog throughout the show as well as out @insidelegal twitter handle for timely updates. 

ADERANT Hires New CEO

As first reported on the Orange Rag blog, financial and practice management software developer ADERANT has named Chris Giglio as its new CEO. Giglio, a 20 year technology veteran well versed in implementing and selling large-scale enterprise technologies, replaces former president and CEO Mike Kohlsdorf who is assuming a Operating Partner position with a private equity firm.

Kohlsdorf spent nearly 5 years with the Atlanta-based legal technology vendor and according to a recent 'year in review' press release, led efforts in 2010 that saw more than 40 clients select or go-live on ADERANT products. The company also released several new applications such as ADERANT Practice Manager, Expert ClearView and Found Time.    

According to the official press release, prior to joining ADERANT, Chris Giglio was the Senior Vice President of the customer operations organization at Surgical Information Systems and previously held executive positions at McKesson and Cerner.  

Legal Helpdesk Statistics & Benchmarks for the Legal Industry

• How many law firm helpdesk tickets pertain to Microsoft Office questions? 
• What day of the week sees the most helpdesk tickets logged in a law firm?
• What percentage increase do law firm helpdesk departments see during a firm-wide software upgrade?

As we all know, there are more legal surveys, trend reports and law firm rankings floating out there than anyone knows what to do with. A few of them provide very valuable and timely information and findings, but others appear to be sponsored 'pay-to-play' analyst reports or surveys and less than objective industry analyses. One recently released report has gotten a lot of attention because of its 'no strings attached' availability and most importantly, applicability across various facets of the legal technology industry. The User Support Guru Guide is a 20-page PDF report that takes a close look at legal helpdesk (referred to as service desk globally) metrics and key performance indicators that will help law firms, corporate legal, legal technology vendors and anyone in the space operating a helpdesk better manage their operation. Intelliteach, a legal technology vendor and the only dedicated law firm helpdesk outsourcing provider, is the author of this invaluable resource and did a fine job of providing a statistically significant sample of metrics such as "Top ticket categories", "Conversion & upgrade impact on the service/helpdesk", "Tickets by origin" as well as "Tickets by Weekday".

The "Guru Guide" data is based on 600,000+ helpdesk tickets collected and analyzed from January to September 2010 across a variety of law firm sizes, locations and hardware/software configurations. There is some great information here independent of which side of the legal technology market fence you might sit on, so check out the dedicated Guru site or simply download the guide here. Also, if you want to go beyond this legal helpdesk primer, you can register to attend a 'Guru Guide' roadshow presented by Intelliteach CEO Lance Waagner in coordination with ILTA. The lunch-time seminars are being held in 20+ cities over the next 3-4 months. Check out the calendar here.  

[The answers to the questions above are: over 50% of tickets are Microsoft Office related; Tuesday sees the most helpdesk tickets logged; and tickets increased by 42% during firm wide upgrades.]