InsideLegal

Louisiana State Bar's 4th Annual Small Firm Conference

We spent last Thursday and Friday at the Lousiana State Bar Association's 4th Annual Solo & Small Firm Conference networking with old tech friends and taking in several of the sessions all focused on the bare essentials of helping solos and small firms setup and run their practices - in some cases more efficiently; in other cases run at all. Metadata sessions, email encryption conversations, tech budgets for small law firms, client satisfaction and how to best share calendars with firm staff were common themes making the rounds.

The 4th Annual Solo & Small Firm Conference featured 35 educational sessions enlisting the expertise and talents of 39 speakers including legal technology veterans (dare we say superstars) Jim Calloway, Tom O'Connor and New Orleans' own Ernie Svenson. The presentation topics ranged from hands-on use of Adobe Acrobat, the perils of metadata, paperless lawyering, social networking for lawyers, and billing strategies. Jim Calloway delivered both morning keynotes focused on the 'future of solo practice' and 'secrets of client satisfaction'. Other legal thought leaders such as Michael Adams, Craig Bayer, Jack Newton and Catherine Sanders Reach joined the speakers list.

The conference ended with one of the more popular legal technology conference sessions around (borrowed from ABA TECHSHOWs of the past) '60 Tips in 60 Minutes' featuring 60 websites any solo or small firm practitioner should find useful. While we appreciated the balance of the program - many non technical sessions were hands-on and practical in nature focused on taxes, ethics, trust accounting and Louisiana divorce basics and updates, we did realize that these local bar conferences are where the 'rubber meets the road' when it comes to basic technology training and tech know-how required to run your practice. While organizations like ILTA are focused on continually elevating the legal technology bar when it comes to expertise and application, events such as the LSBA annual small firm conference appeal to the fundamental needs of all attorneys, regardless of tech knowledge. 

The event had a small exhibit hall that housed its 16 sponsor companies - Gilsbar, LexisNexis, Clio, Fastcase, Fujitsu Computer Products, Gould & Lamb, Interactive E-Solutions, Law Library of Louisiana, Law Office Technology, Law Pay, Pine Grove Behavioral Health Hospital, LawTech Partners, West. By far, LawTech Parner's 'lemonade stand' booth advertising technology help for a nickel was the coolest and the attendees took advantage. They received all types of questions over the course of the 2 days.

No event in the Big Easy is complete without its social events. Thursday night saw 2 receptions - one hosted by the Young Lawyers Section of the Lousiana State Bar Association and one hosted by Clio. We weren't able to make it to the Young Lawyers Section reception although we heard it was very well attended. We did make it to the Clio Meet Up hosted by the gracious Jack Newton before heading out to dinner at Dante's Kitchen (thanks to Ernie Svenson!) with LawTech Partner's Adriana Linares and Mike Adams. All in all, it was a great conference and we enjoyed catching up with everyone.

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.

 

 

ILTA: Recent News & Announcements

InsideLegal spent some time with the ILTA conference and sessions team at LegalTech New York and wanted to share some of the recent scoop and announcements ... 

ILTA INSIGHT UK

ILTA will again be producing the INSIGHT 2011 event in London April 5th. INSIGHT will offer two tracks – The Business of Law 2020 and Law Technology 2020. The sessions offered tie into Law 2020, an ILTA multi-year, multi-platform educational programming initiative focusing on the ways in which law firms will have to adapt in order to thrive over the next decade. You can view the complete agenda online.

As always, INSIGHT is free and open to law firm or law department professionals. You can register here or by e-mail to Peggy Wechsler, ILTA’s Program Director.

Editors Note: InsideLegal is again a sponsor of INSIGHT UK and we look forward to this program this year. Last year will be hard to top. Great sessions and great people...

STAFF CHANGES

ILTA is excited to anounce some new internal organizational changes that will allow them to better tackle their new initiatives and their constant pursuit to top themselves with each Annual Conference. Peggy Wechsler remains as Program Director but will concentrate more on strategic planning, including focusing on vendor, alliance, and press relationships. TJ Johnson, who has been will ILTA since 2003 has been promoted to Program Manager of Conferences. You may not be familiar with TJ, but she is the lady behind the logistics of the conference, from the educational program to the details. You may have seen her running around the conference with a headset. In her new role, she will take over moreof the planning from Peggy of special events outside of the annual conference, i.e. INSIGHT and ILTA’s track at LegalTech. Another ILTA team member, Deb HImsel, has been promoted to Program Manager of Core Education. Deb will direct the coordination of all the regional meetings, roadshows and webinars (and other new media) in this new role. Gaynor Senyszyn, who previous served as ILTA’s Peer Group Coordinator, is moving over to Conference Coordinator to provide support to TJ and the conference planning committee.

A new team member, Kristy Cole, is joining ILTA as Communications Specialist and will be working with Executive Director and Editor, Randi Mayes, on ILTA's publication Peer to Peer and its popular whitepaper series. Kristy has spent the last five years as IS Communication Administrator and Web Content Editor for Mayer Brown so the ILTA content is very familiar to her.

ILTA PEER AWARDS

ILTA's 2011 Distinguished Peer Awards program, announced earlier this month, recognizes outstanding achievements in organizational and individual excellence involving areas of focus covered by ILTA's peer groups. Vendors and consultants will also be recognized, for superior achievements in thought leadership and innovation. The rather simple nomination and application process encourage ILTA members and vendors to nominate themselves, peers or their organization by the April 30th deadline.

In addition to the award itself, presented at the awards dinner at ILTA 2011 in August, winners will be featured on the ILTA website and in various ILTA publications.

Editors note: InsideLegal covered the inaugural ILTA Peer Awards last year and we were very impressed with not only the caliber of nominees and winners, but with the overall organization and presentation - check out the coverage from 2010. 

 

Launching a Legal Technology Product? Tips on When, Where & How

Have you ever been to a brand new restaurant (maybe even on opening night) and wondered why the place wasn't packed with patrons. Was it the food? The concept? Bad marketing? Or maybe, just maybe, it was supposed to be that way; a gutsy move by the owner to limit his restaurant's exposure early on in case something goes wrong - we tend to call this a 'soft launch'.

We have been following legal technology developments for 13 years and have seen our fair share of failed product launches, ridiculously over-hyped software introductions and way too many empty 'coming soon' promises. Is there a 'magic bullet' formula for a new product launch? Not really, but here are some pointers to keep in mind when preparing your next launch. 

Call a spade a spade: Don't deceive your prospects with false promises of your new launch, what your software can do, and what feature/functions are available now - not just as a part of a sales demo. Honesty and candor in communicating your 'next gen' solution (not the last gen with a new name) goes a long way in earning trust and respect with your targets. If your technology is still in beta but the features you do have already solve various prospect problems make sure this is understood. If you don't know exact timing of general availability don't make it up or guess. It's tempting since this sadly reflects the status quo of modern software launches but this is your chance to buck that trend and actually proactively involve the people you are doing this for, sooner rather than 3 software updates later.

'Come hell or high water' is not a launch strategy: Why is it that there are more new product announcements at ILTA and LegalTech New York than at any other time during the year? Surely, all vendor R&D teams are not on the same development schedule and just happen to launch new wares in late January or late August. Of course, the reason is based on maximizing exposure at the biggest tech events in our industry, but at what cost? It seems that too many vendors get caught up in the trade show launch 'arms race' and routinely forget that having one chance to make a first impression is not just an antiquated cliche.

Shooting off fireworks AFTER New Year's will get people's attention: What do you remember about this year's New Year's firework displays? Probably not much except maybe the duds or displays that were really cheap or short. What about an impressive display in February? This would surely get noticed and receive a lot more individual exposure than the mass blasts on the 31st. Cut through the clutter and step outside the noise.

Is the tail wagging the dog? Who is driving your product innovations? Are sales & marketing dictating product features and launch dates? Is development calling the shots? Or, are your vocal clients not only providing new feature feedback, but essentially turning you into their internal R&D department? While these are all extreme scenarios and the reality lies somewhere in the middle, there's no denying that special interests and agendas often drive the bus. Be cognisant of this and develop a new product launch plan that balances your objectives and desired results versus internal and external special interests.

Has 'how' taken a back seat to 'what'? Give a sales rep 10 minutes and they will give you more product factoids and solution superlatives than you can bare, but rarely do you leave this encounter (be it at the trade show booth or separate meeting) with a keen understanding on how this bleeding edge, industry's 'only' product will help you solve the business problems which compelled you to seek out the vendor in the first place. While the popular answer to this is the product demo, the reality is that most of them fall short, way short, when it comes to demonstrating how 'our product can help you' versus this is what it could generically and theoretically accomplish.

We don't want to end this post on a cynical note so here are some take-aways to ponder before your next product launch:

WHEN: Crazy idea...Launch products when they are truly ready to release to the market. Instead of letting trade show schedules dictate your launch date find out when your apps will make the most difference for your clients, i.e, a law firm budgeting software will not be a vital tech tool after March.

WHERE: The days of having to wait on a physical event to unveil a new product are gone. Whether it's an online virtual trade show or the many readily available social media outlets, there is no need to wait on the big tech show to make a splash. 

HOW: Be honest, cut the rhetoric and focus on solving real business issues and leverage the likes of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube to engage your prospects and solicit real-time feedback and critique.

With these tips in hand, a new legal technology or service launch will hopefully once again be something to remember and get excited about.

"Do Attorneys Know The Difference Between Their SaaS and a Hole In The Ground?": A Partner's First Trek to LegalTech NY

By Donald R. Barthel, Esq., Founding Partner, Bradford & Barthel, LLP

[InsideLegal Editors Note: Getting IT and Legal to not only 'play nice' but, god forbid, collaborate to meet collective goals and needs is the topic du jour at many of the legal technology confereces we attend. Getting 'buy-in' from someone like our guest-blogger (who is a Founding Partner of a 200+ person firm with 12 offices) is a major mission of legal IT & KM leadership. Understanding the partner perspective and, in this case, desire for straighttalk provide a solid start.]

As a co-founder of a fast-growing law firm, I’m comfortable with the “learn by doing” approach to life. Nevertheless, with nothing other than degrees in psych and poli sci, a JD and no (nada, zilch, zip, less-than-zero) formal training in computer science, technology and other “geeky” stuff, it was with more than a little trepidation that I flew from California to Manhattan to attend LEGALTECH’s “Most Important Legal Technology Event of the Year”.

Do I really know the difference between my SaaS and hole in the ground? Heck no! I’m potentially a fish out of water…but with a twist. From the presentations (and small talk) I’ve heard (and overheard), I’m reminded by some of the best presenters I’ve seen here that it is Baby Boomer Equity Partners who are exactly the “fish” (“prospects”, “internal customers”) that IT/KM must convert to ensure continued funding!

This was brought into focus particularly well at the “Leveraging Technology for Better Firm Efficiencies” session on day one of the show. Panelists Tom Baldwin (CKO, Reed Smith), Rachelle Rennagel (CKO, Sheppard Mullin), Meredith Williams (Director of KM, Baker Donelson) and George Rudoy (former Director of Global Practice Technology & IS, Shearman & Sterling ) all contribute to an essential take-away:

                      Equities need IT/KM’s help …

                      … a great deal of help…

                      … a great deal of choreographed help!

Yes, consider role-playing before presenting to us. Yes, keep it short (we probably need to be “somewhere else in 15 minutes” and, if we don’t, we’d better make sure everyone thinks we do!). Yes, throw-out the PowerPoint, probably the most overused and poorly used “speech aid”/crutch in the last hundred years...Disagree? I’ll bet you a buck King George VI would have been more comfortable speaking with a PowerPoint too, but I’ll bet you $10 that his audiences would still be assaulted by his stammerings.

Want to get your Equities on board? Don’t riddle us with jargon and do not (GASP!) ask us what we want (REALLY!). Why not? We don’t know and that ain’t our style. We’re lawyers. (How comfortable would you be with your attorney if he/she asked you how you wanted to proceed without outlining your options and the relative pros and cons? More to the point, most of us have no idea of the current tech options, let alone the predictions for 1, 5 and 10 years down the road. Please do the same for us (excepting the case law…case studies will do!). Tell us what your proposals can do and underscore the (a) efficiencies, (b) bottom line savings, (c) security issues, etc. Use small words (really!), don’t use acronyms (really, really)…and you will win us over…even if we don’t know our SaaS from a Saab from a ...

LegalTech New York 2011 Tweet Word Cloud

In an earlier LT NY Twitter stats post, we mentioned that spanning the course of 1 week (pre-during-post LegalTech ending February 3), 524 people covered the event on Twitter (using hashtag #LTNY) totaling 3,246 tweets. So what did all those folks tweet about? Check out InsideLegal's LegalTech New York tweet word cloud below to get a graphical perspective. You might also like to compare it to the LegalTech New York 2011 Agenda Word Cloud we published before the show.  

LegalTech New York 2011 Twitter Statistics

Over the course of the seven days surrounding LegalTech New York, we counted 524 people covering the event on Twitter (using hashtag #LTNY) accounting for a total of 3,246 tweets (an average of 463.7 tweets per day).

 

The Top 10 contributors & their total tweets included:

1. @econwriter5 - 272
2. @jasnwilsn - 176
3. @VMaryAbraham - 114
4. @VaHenschel - 112
5. @ginabuser - 87
6. @btannebaum - 69
7. @TrialPad - 59
8. @mobilelawblog - 56
9. @discoverapplied - 51
10. @legaltypist - 50

Note: Two of the top 10 did not attend LegalTech, but tweeted from afar.

In the last 7 days:

• 3,246 tweets
• 524 contributors
• 463.7 tweets per day
• 37+% of all tweets occurred on day 1, January 31
• 32.2% come from "The Top 10" (representing less than 2% of all contributors)
• 26.0% are retweets
• 43.0% are mentions
• 42.3% have multiple hashtags

More LegalTech fun facts and stats to follow ...

InsideLegal’s LegalTech NY Day Three Recap

Click to view InsideLegal's LegalTech NY Photos

All the talk about the pending ‘storm-zilla’ heading for New York on Wednesday had a definite impact on day 3 exhibit hall foot traffic but on the upside, eased the typical long breakfast lines at the Hilton Marketplace restaurant. Despite the lower attendance numbers, the overall vendor consensus was positive, both from a booth traffic and lead quality standpoint.

Our day kicked-off by meeting with Brett Burney of Burney Consultants and a long time legal technology influencer. While Brett spends most of his time consulting with corporations on eDiscovery and litigation preparedness strategies, he is always acutely aware of general legal technology trends and developments. At breakfast, he mentioned his current crusade of promoting mac-based/compatible technologies for lawyers including involvement in last year’s MiloFest, an annual conference for ‘Mac-lovin lawyers’. The conversation turned to tech tools for small firms and how the popular web-based practice management systems are not comprehensively closing the loop on helping them manage their practice. Specifically, RealPractice’s Brad Cooper talked about offering services and technology to help lawyers generate more leads, convert those leads by using Smartphone technologies to push follow-up reminders, and lastly, manage those leads via an integrated practice management platform. New products unveiled at LegalTech like My RealPractice are designed to address both small firms’ marketing and new business needs as well as the integration with a matter/case management platform. As Cooper mentioned, who cares about having a full-featured matter management system if you have no new client and matters to manage. 

As it turns out, Wednesday turned into ‘ILTA day’ as we took plenty of time to meet with the fabulous ILTA crew including Peggy Wechsler, TJ Johnson, and Deb Himsel. The ladies previewed some exciting staff changes (check back @InsideLegal in a few days for more details) and talked about plans for another INSIGHT UK event taking place April 5th in London. It was also good to hear that planning for ILTA’s annual conference in Nashville is on track and the Gaylord Opryland Resort is freshly renovated and back up and running since last year’s horrible flooding.

Next, we spent the final show hours roaming the exhibit hall looking for interesting vendor news or aiming to get product updates from companies we saw last year. Here are some of day 3 vendor news highlights:

YouSendIt: The Web-based digital file delivery service that allows users to securely transfer electronic files that are too large or too sensitive to e-mail has officially added the legal vertical to one of its target markets. According to Andy Chafee, Director, Worldwide Legal Markets, YouSendIt has been in legal since November and looking to expand its legal presence by offering secure file transfers on a firm-wide basis versus the current one-off, individual lawyer accounts that are rampant within many firms. Beyond YouSendIt strict security protocols, special features that are bound to attract more legal users include an Outlook plug-in as well as admin functionality that lets users schedule or time out downloads based on bandwidth, etc. 

Vu Telepresence: We first talked with these guys at LegalTech West Coast last year and over the last 6 months they have made more inroads into legal, especially by touting Vu’s accessibility and affordability when it comes to video conferencing. Vu’s regional director told us that legal has responded well to their message of using Vu to make depositions easier as well as enabling web conferencing via a PC/laptop connection. This seems like it would go over really well considering all you need to videoconference with Vu is a PC equipped with a web cam.

SAP: Last LegalTech, SAP’s Susie Krupa told us about the Waldorf, Germany-based software giant’s plan to pursue the top 20-50 global law firms with integrated HR, financial management, business intelligence and resource planning solutions. This year, Susie highlighted SAP’s LegalTech session on 'Why ERP Now for Law Firms?' co-presented by Baker& McKenzie’s Martin Telfer, Global Director, GTS (Baker & McKenzie is currently deploying SAP’s ERP solution having already gone live on HR mini-master, a part of SAP's Human Capital Management solution, and planning to go-live on Financials later this year). She also told us about SAP’s recent Business Transformation Study featuring Howrey LLP and their associated ROI calculations. 

CT Tymetrix: We stopped by CT Tymetrix, a legal management solution for corporate legal and insurance providers. The company’s big buzz for New York was the unveiling of RateDriver, a mobile application that estimates the average rate of any lawyer in the U.S. Based on the 2010 Real Rate Report, a statistical analysis of $4.1 billion in legal invoices, the mobile app is the first data driven model that identifies and quantifies the real drivers of U.S. lawyer rates.

Lastly, our painstaking quest for a simple explanation of ‘What the hell do I need to know when it comes to eDiscovery?’ was finally answered with a handy dandy eDiscovery for Dummies pamphlet compliments of RenewData (request a copy). Now if only the eDiscovery community could band together to provide an easy to understand guide of who provides what when it comes to EDD solutions (vs. the 'we do stuff to the left of EDRM and we are recognized by Socha-Gelbman and can do it all for you' claims). 

Our LegalTech NY parting shots include a ‘big’ thanks to LegalTech for not selling out the Bridges Bar for overpriced sponsorships and making it available for general meeting space which has always been a premium at this show. Also, we thought the biggest promo buzz was RealPractice’s offer to provide free professional social media headshots to all conference attendees - they had well over 100 lawyers, vendors, media and consultants take advantage. All in all, it was great to see everyone and catch up. Until January 30, 2012...

InsideLegal's LegalTech NY Day Two Recap

Energy is often contagious and that was very evident Tuesday morning at ALM’s annual editor and blogger breakfast which assembled a majority of ALM’s legal publication editors and contributors (easily 20 strong) as well as a room full of legal industry bloggers spanning substantive legal topics to niche legal market and trend coverage.

It was nice (from my perspective at least) to walk into a jam packed room at 8am and feel motivated to catch up with folks and make new connections. Among the hot topics was the re-launch/new look & feel of Law Technology News and the publication’s move to a content-driven publication (see our previous LTN post). Some of the ’early birds’ we chatted with included David Snow, ALM Media’s editorial director for technology and former legal technology editor for law.com, Steve Salkin, editor, Law Journal Newsletters, and Sean Doherty, the multi-talented (lawyer, tech guy and journalist) technology editor for Law Technology News.

During the bloggers meet and greet, we visited with Bowtie Lawyer Joshua Gilliland who has built a ‘cult like’ following for his Bow Tie blog within a few short years, and MyLegal.com’s Lisa DiMonte who clued us in on her social media site’s new ratings and reviews feature created to enhance lawyers’ existing online marketing and brand-building efforts. Thomson Reuters’ Legal Current blog, providing information and commentary on the business and practice of law, represented by communications specialist Nicole Hansen gave us a glimpse into their LegalTech coverage and focus on all things ‘hot and trendy’. We took a few seconds to share our initial insights on LegalTech as well.

Speaking of initial impressions, it was useful to catch up with some editors to get their take on what’s going on at the show. While LJN Legal Technology newsletter editor Adam Schlagman was struck by the attention being paid to small firms and solos, Charles Christian of the Orange Rag has heard a lot of buzz around strategic technology outsourcing, Office 2010 deployment and SharePoint. We definitely agree with Adam’s point that small firms are again on the radar, a refreshing trend considering 90+% of the nation’s legal professionals are within small or solo environments, and custom small firm technology solutions have always been elusive or way to complicated and expensive to gain real traction.

We spent some time in the afternoon walking the exhibit hall and while we had the sense that the hall was busy but not slammed, initial feedback from vendors (especially the financial management folks we talked to) indicated that leads were qualified and prospects more than willing to learn about vendor products and services. Our final stop ended with Client Profiles and a brief chat with sales director Chris O'Brien who proudly shared the company’s latest news, the acquisition of New York-based case management vendor Saga Inc. According to O’Brien, the acquisition adds the award-winning Saga Practice Manager software to Client Profiles' product portfolio, and expands the company's client roster through the addition of more than 430 law practices in metropolitan New York. 

 

InsideLegal's LegalTech NY Day One Recap

Monday, January 31 marked day one of LegalTech Year 30 and our 12th year of attending and covering the what? where? when? and how? of this show. Beyond the obvious show benefits - attending sessions and previewing vendor solutions, the biggest 'perk' of LTNY has always been networking and meeting old friends. With that said, we kicked off our week by catching-up with Curt Meltzer and Joe Bookman of Pinhawk LLC. Roughly a year ago, Curt started editing PinHawk's Law Technology Daily Digest, an aggregation of relevant legal technology news, announcements and business strategy. Today, the daily e-newsletter reaches 12,000+ legal professionals and influencers and has become a staple for many of us in the industry. Hat tip to Curt and Co. for not only aggregating relevant legal tech news, but also for his spot on and sometimes provocative commentary on the day's top news items. You can registration for free here.

After PinHawk coffee, we joined a throng of conference goers for the first of three daily keynotes: "Legal vs. IT: Turn the Battle into a Solution to Meet Compliance". Presented by Gabriel Buigas, HP's Debuty General Counsel, the kick-off session definitely attracted a standing & sitting room-only crowd, but disappointed in terms of unearthing any new 'learnings' or best practices' related to enhancing the IT vs. Legal relationship, within large corporations and law firms. While Buigas stressed the importance of communication between IT and legal as well as the identification of mutual interest or overlap as the key to creating collective buy-in and forging mutual results, the session provided little practical advice to handle the true disconnect that exists between legal and IT. The session fizzled after about 40 minutes of presentation and Q&A. 

As has become tradition at LegalTech NY, we briefed with several legal technology editors and commentators throughout the afternoon starting with Charles Christian who made the trip across the pond from the UK to find out what vendors like RealPractice and CompuLaw were showcasing this week. Charles, who authors his highly successful Orange Rag blog, also publishes and edits the Legal Technology Insider and American Legal Technology Insider, newsletters dedicated to covering legal IT news in the UK and North America, respectively. After Charles, InsideLegal spent some quality time with Rob Ameerun, the multi-tasking brainchild of Legal IT Professionals (LITP), the global legal IT LinkedIn group and website attracting over 14,000 subscribers from legal vendor executives to IT managers, directors and law firm CIOs. Rob, based in the Netherlands, has developed a remarkable resource for legal IT-related news and insight. Daily news alerts provide recaps of vendor announcements and an impressive cadre of permanent columnists and guest authors that tackle all aspects of legal IT and business. We were very excited to finally meet Rob in person (again, the beauty of networking at LegalTech) and were truly impressed with his passion for legal IT and the legal community as a whole, all reflected in what he has built in a very short time with LITP.

Later in the afternoon, we shared coffee with Mark Santiago, Managing Partner for the North American operation of KermaPartners, an international management consultancy with a distinct focus on the legal market. Having known Mark for over a decade, it was good to catch-up and hear about his ambitious plans for a major outsourcing project involving global law firms- more details to follow within the next few weeks. We ended our day with Adriana Linares, lawyer trainer and small firm consultant extraordinaire and owner of LawTech Partners, and collectively came to the conclusion that although 'super busy and buzzy' with attendees and exhibitors, no announcements or product launches rivaled the extravagant WestLawNext launch from 2010. With that said, here's a short list of product news crossing our desk on LTNY Day 1 2011:

• Clearwell Systems Breaks Barrier in Concept Search Usability for E-Discovery: Clearwell’s Transparent Concept Search opens traditional “black box” process to deliver interactive, relevant and defensible concept search results.
• RealPractice™ Announces New Website Building Tools and Lead Management with Latest Release of My RealPractice™
• ADERANT Announces Paperless Prebill Application, a new ADERANT Expert module that enables firms to more easily and efficiently manage the prebill process.
• Judges Select Grand Prize Winner in LexisNexis Ultimate Law Firm Marketing Makeover Contest: Case, Rajnoha & Boudreau, LLP Wins $50,000 worth of Online Marketing Products and Services from LexisNexis.
• LexisNexis Introduces LexisNexis Litigation Profile Suite: Launches with LexisNexis Expert Witness Profiles as first in a series of releases, provides analytical information on more than 200,000 experts in North America.
• IntApp Wall Builder Now Manages Law Firm Ethical Screens and Confidentiality Controls for Over 1 Billion Documents Globally.
• Exterro simplifies and accelerates electronic discovery with version 4 of Exterro Fusion, the award-winning legal solution suite: Exterro Fusion 4 cuts litigation costs for several Fortune 500 and Am Law 100 customers.
• Worldox Productivity Suite: Affordable Workflow from World Software Corporation is Unveiled at LegalTech New York.