InsideLegal

Thinking Out Cloud: Has Legal Reached the Point of No Cloud Return?

InsideLegal first started asking law firms and legal IT professionals about the cloud and if/when/how their firms would consider cloud computing well over 15 years ago as part of our annual ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Surveys. Thanks to new cloud innovations and legal cloud-specific applications, law firms with a well-defined 'cloud first' strategy, and oh yeah, a pandemic that has accelerated remote working and reliance on cloud architecture, and we can finally exhale and confidently say that cloud computing in legal has arrived ... for good.

InsideLegal's Jobst Elster, who originated Legal Management Magazine's "Thinking Out Cloud" recurring column on all things legal cloud, once again has his head in the cloud's with his recent feature in Legal I(nnovation)&T(echnology) Today. Legal I(nnovation)&T(echnology) Today is a must-read publication covering legaltech and legal innovation and is available for free online here. You can also access past issues here.

Thinking Out Cloud-Has Legal Reached the Point of No Cloud Return? takes us on a cloud journey, examines what a ‘why not cloud vs why cloud’ reality looks like and pulls in legal tech luminaries and experts to get their take on the state of the cloud in legal.

Enjoy the read and remember to subscribe to Legal I(nnovation)&T(echnology) Today online.

Replacing Legal Market Trends with Real World Realities

Welcome to the 'new (ab)normal'! When is the last time you were glued to the TV, social ... pick your media to figure out what's next, not only in your own life but with the economy, your own businesses and anything and everything you care about? Oh yeah and there's the working from home 'thing', 24/7, with or without a proper place or space to call your office.

While we are all looking to survive the COVID-19 pandemic and somehow come out stronger on the other side, the reality of what the legal community is going through is as many commentators like to say "fluid", at best. In other words, we have no idea what's next or what we are supposed to do, how we are supposed to act, and how aggressive we should be about business as usual without coming off as annoyingly tone deaf.

I was recently invited by Qorus Software (producers of sales enablement/proposal/RFP automation technology) to address the "how the hell should we market right now, what's our reality and how does this match up with 2020 marketing trends and developments." We decided to host a "10 Marketing Trends and Realities" webinar to drill-down further and provide law firm marketers with some guidance (and a sanity check) as to what they could/should be doing during this crisis.

In addition to the webinar (which in exchange for some contact info you are free to access here), Qorus also produced an easy to follow and practical to use eBook: Adapting to Change: Definitive Guide to Law Firm Marketing in 2020. The eBook includes 8 practical tips on how legal marketers can seize the moment and put their best marketing foot forward. If you don't have time to download the webinar or the eBook, check out the 14-slide PDF (with all ten trends and realities) from the program.

Here are a few of the trends (and realities) that legal marketers should not only acknowledge but consider acting on now:

Client-centric marketing: This might be a no-brainer ... "all marketing should focus on clients", but you'd be surprised how many campaigns miss the mark. Check out any corporate legal survey and you'll quickly realize how much outside counsel DO NOT listen to client challenges and demands. The current crisis gives you a 'do-over' of sorts when it comes to revealing your authentic marketing self. Your clients are swimming with you in the deep end so why not work together to your collective advantage

Strategic content marketing is king: Content marketing is nothing new. Devising a clever strategy of how to leverage and amplify hard earned content is still novel and not the norm in legal marketing circles. Spend some energy on "marketing your marketing" with a 1-4-7 approach. Focus on one concept; develop four related content pieces such as newsletters, webinars, eBooks, and whitepapers; and chose seven distribution channels for your content including online, social, communal and direct. 

Community building ... the new black: Acquiring new customers is 6-7 times more expensive than marketing to an existing community base. These days, word-of-mouth means engaging through social platforms, sharing educational resources while introducing clients to your network of subject matter experts and influencers. Legal communities are out there and waiting with open arms. Check out ILTA, LMA, ALA, and ABA Law Practice for starters.

We will be sharing more legal marketing trends and realities in future posts gleaned from legal marketing and business development experts.

Legal Influencers Weigh In On Legal Document Management

The hype and buzz surrounding artificial intelligence, lawyer robots, machine learning and predictive analytics in Legal is often times unbearable. Especially, when compared to the legal reality that this type of early adopter, nouveau tech is still in its infancy. Contrast this to document management systems (DMS), one of the most traditional, standard, yet mission critical applications within any law firm.

In this edition of "Legal Influencers Weigh In" we go under the hood with DMS. Specifically, we will drill down and deep on a recently completed DMS implementation survey and share commentary from some of legal's sharpest DMS minds. Also, anyone reading our corresponding feature ["Making Your DMS Migration (Relatively) Painless"] in the July/August issue of Legal Management will hopefully be able to connect the dots when it comes to DMS success and failure.

On premise, client-server DM systems have been around legal for 30 years and even native cloud-based solutions date back to 1999. Yet, still, after all this time one of the biggest challenges law firms as well as their legal technology business partners face is successfully navigating the DMS implementation, be it a new purchase, swap out or existing system upgrade.

Problems arise and DMS implementation survival is at stake, whether implemented internally by the firm; in collaboration with a business partner; fully outsourced to a DMS implementation partner or left up to the DMS vendor and their full service (from sale to implementation, training and firm ‘go live’) delivery. Why is that? What forces are in play that makes the DMS upgrade/DMS implementation the perpetual pain in legal IT’s, and especially firm users’, you know what?

Who better to ask then the experts? For the purposes of this post and my Legal Management DMS feature, I reached out to the leading minds (and hands) when it comes to legal DMS implementations, migrations, upgrades and the like. Our panel consisted of 21 experts, with a total of 2,848 law firm DMS projects under their belts, representing 16 of the leading DMS implementation, support, training, design, configuration and software solution providers. We asked the panel to complete a short survey focused on DMS deployment types; DMS implementation provider selection; tips for successfully navigating a DMS upgrade; and top reasons why DMS implementations (still) fail.

Looking toward the cloud
In order to provide an adequate technology baseline, we asked our experts, who collectively serve a broad range of small, medium, large, mega and global firms, to state the type of DMS projects they had been involved with over the past 12 months. 95% had worked on cloud-based DMS implementations followed by 71% involved with on-premise DMS to cloud DMS upgrades versus 57% busy with on-premise implementations. The bottom-line ...  law firms of all shapes and sizes are embracing the cloud, especially when it comes to DMS.

DMS selection survival
Selecting the right DMS service provider is nothing to scoff at. Its critical firms do their due diligence and ask the important, sometimes uncomfortable questions before it’s too late. According to our expert panel, the top five attributes and qualities to look for in a DMS implementation partner included: reputation (86%); peer feedback/what are other firms saying (76%); track record (71%): overall value (67%) and cloud experience (57%). In addition, several respondents cited the importance of finding a technology and business partner that is knowledgeable in the areas of Information Governance; change management; system design; user experience; cloud-based security, and possess the technology certifications and credentials to back this all up.

DMS implementation success
When asked to provide vital tips for navigating a successful DMS implementation, some of our experts focused on the importance of project planning, overall communication between firm and business partner teams, and achieving executive project buy-in. Kraft Kennedy’s Brian Podolsky, it's NY office Practice Leader, takes the notion of buy-in a step further: “Be sure to involve your attorneys and staff in some of the user interface and workspace designs, to ensure their workflows are considered and their ideas are heard.”

Others stressed the importance of user adoption, DMS usability and designing DM systems with adoption at the forefront. “With cloud services, the focus is now on designing for adoption and getting full value from the platform,” stated Joshua Fireman, Fireman & Company’s founder/president, and a recognized thought leader in areas such as knowledge management, change management and system design. “System design should involve IT and KM and include input directly from lawyers.”

Related to user adoption is user training. Most survey responses mentioned the need for training, pre, go live, and post, and the necessity to increasingly plan and budget for additional training to support the firm’s DMS ‘go live’.

Jason Scott, Senior Business Consultant with Tikit, and a track record of 200+ DMS firm implementations across the globe says it best: “Plan it, design it, build it, test it, communicate to the business what 'it' is, learn it and then roll it out.” He also emphasis the importance of having clear objectives going into any migration project ... "there should be a structured process in place to manage the implementation with clear objectives. and at the end, ensuring these objectives have been met. This might sound trite but you’d be surprised how often objectives don’t match up." 

Matthew Marcinek, DMS Team Manager & Solutions Architect at All Covered, feels strongly about leveraging data found in existing systems and analyzing the data at hand in order to make informed decisions. “Above all, perform a pilot migration with the firm's data. This will allow the firm to see the results of their design and the migration process to confirm it is what they expect.” Marcinek agrees with Fireman regarding the importance of design: "The most important step in any DMS Implementation is the Design."

Mike Sanders, Senior Solutions Expert with NetDocuments, has 200+ DMS implementations under his belt. His advice ... "become familiar with best practices of the new system and how that may change some of your current processes." Beyond that, test, test, test before going Live." According to Sanders’ colleague JB Trexler, NetDocuments' Senior Director of Professional Services, DMS implementation success is typically based on … “1. Project support and communication from the top-down; 2.Know your data and clean it up/plan accordingly; and 3. Spend the correct amount of time on workflow and security.”

Failure to communicate

As evidenced by our expert conversations and survey feedback, communication breakdowns are more times than not the source of DMS projects gone badly. According to Jeff Alluri, Principal, VP Consulting with Element Technologies, DMS needs and the overall business case are not always clearly spelled out. “The message as to "why" we are choosing a DMS needs to be clearly understood by everyone within the law firm. With that being said, communication both internally at the law firm and externally with the selected DMS vendor is vital, and many times one or both of these are dropped or there is simply not enough of it.”

Jennifer McComb, a consultant with Software Analysis Corporation, also doubles down on the importance of communication. “Lack of communication is reason #1, #2 and #3 why DMS implementations often fail. Remember, your implementation person can't work in a vacuum. Make sure the people who will be actually using the product have a say in its setup. And, remember, implementation doesn't end at go-live. Be available for follow up.”

Another “why DMS implementations fail’ argument made by several of the surveyed DMS experts focused on the lack of change management and the overall perception that “we are dealing with a technology not a business issue.” 

Adds Michael Georgopoulos, eSentio’s Director of Document and Information Management Systems: "IT-led projects focus only on the technical conversion issues” making the point that a myopic, IT only view might make it more difficult to affect broader change. Viewing it only as a technology project fails to see the larger picture of how the system impacts business for the entire firm. It can also make another critical factor for success that much more difficult — leadership and staff buy-in.

Finally, lack of planning, regardless of where it starts, can bring down even the savviest and brightest technologists and product experts, and, most cutting-edge technology. 

The future is now

As I wrote in Legal Management, so much of what is wrong with DMS projects is most definitely also what’s right. Don't cut corners, plan accordingly, create a 'buy-in' culture, test until  the cows come home, (over) communicate, and when you think everyone's 'up to speed' on the DMS, offer up more user training. and more hands-on DMS KM transfer.

Legal Leaders. Legal Winners

Spring has Sprung and so has the legal/legal IT award season. While most legal associations, related special interest groups as well as many vendor user conferences have some sort of an award program, there are a handful more than worthy of a shout out.  
  

ABA honors Jeffrey M. Allen with its 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award

The American Bar Association Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Division honored our longtime friend, Jeffrey M. Allen with its 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes the efforts and accomplishments of outstanding solo and small firm practitioners as well as bar leaders and associations. Allen will receive his award at the Solo and Small Firm Awards Luncheon on Friday, May 13, during the 2016 Joint Spring Meeting. 

We have known and worked with Jeff for the last 15+ years so we were more than excited to read the ABA's announcement recognizing his contributions to the legal space. Allen has been a member of the American Bar Association since 1973 and has been active in the GPSolo Division for most of that time, holding several leadership positions in the last 34 years, making him the member with the longest standing record of continuous leadership service to the division. He has chaired many substantive and administrative committees for the division and currently serves as the editor in chief of GPSolo Magazine and the GPSolo eReport. Allen also serves on the council of the Senior Lawyers’ Division and as a member of the editorial board for Experience Magazine and the Voice of Experience. Allen also served on the editorial board of the ABA Journal for six years and as a member of the ABA Standing Committee on Technology and Information Services (SCOTIS). Allen has written hundreds of articles on technology and legal practice and regularly writes for several magazines, including GPSolo Magazine, Experience Magazine, the American Journal of Family Law and the GPSolo eReport.  

ACEDS awards eDiscovery visionary Craig Ball, Esq. with ACEDS Lifetime Achievement Award

The Association of Certified eDiscovery Specialists (ACEDS) recently announced the winners of the 2016 ACEDS Awards, marking the organization's second annual celebration of eDiscovery professionals and experts. The nominees, who were nominated by their peers, were all pioneers and innovators in the e-discovery industry and are dedicated and committed to advancing the profession and remaining at the forefront of technology advancements, education, and training. 

Among the 2016 award winners, our legal tech friend and colleague Craig Ball was honored for his "lifelong commitment to the advancement of the eDiscovery profession." Well deserved. Craig has been an eDiscovery 'guiding light' since we've been around legal (17+ years) and even long before that. You don' t need to read his long list of accolades and credentials to quickly realize he knows his stuff. No matter how busy, he'll take time to say hello and lend his expertise where applicable.

InsideLegal's JoAnna Forshee named on ABA LTRC’s Women of Legal Tech 2016 list

In keeping with the spirit of progress, the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center recently presented its inaugural “Women of Legal Tech” for 2016. From tech founders and CEOs to small business owners, the list, with the addition of 10 new honorees in 2016, now includes 50 female legal influencers. JoAnna Forshee, my partner in crime and InsideLegal & Envision Agency CEO, was deservedly included in this year's list, further adding to her legal 'trophy case' [she was also the recipient of the 2004 Lex Proficio Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Advancement of Legal Marketing awarded by Ross Kodner and a 2015 Fastcase 50 honoree].

 

Upcoming legal tech awards to keep an eye on include the Fastcase 50 (July), ILTA's Distinguished Peer Awards (late August at ILTACON) and the College of Law Practice Management's InnovAction Awards (honored at Futures Conference in September).

 

Furiously Innovative: 2015 'Fastcase 50' Award Winners

Award shows, 'best of show' galas and fancy award ceremonies are dime a dozen ... especially the legal community has its fair share of 'attaboys' recognizing any legal-themed superlatives you can think of. And there's the Fastcase 50, an annual no-strings attached recognition of entrepreneurs, innovators, and trailblazers — people who have charted a new course for the delivery of legal services, and are paving the way for new legal disruption by providing a first look at what’s next for law and technology.

The 2015 Fastcase 50 recognizes 50 such innovators bringing the total of '50ers' to 250 since the inaugural award in 2011. Legal tech 'heavy' and Fastcase 50 brainchild (and CEO) Ed Walters points out how much collaboration there is among honorees. “There are only 250 people who we’ve recognized, but the world of legal tech is a small town, especially in a time of social networks and conferences. Many Fastcase 50 winners from 2011 are working with honorees from 2014 and 2015.”

The Fastcase 50 class of 2015 again showcases the brightest and most 'rogue' and disruptive of what our law firms, law schools, legal think tanks, courts, bar associations, government legal and legal technology companies have to offer. First off, JoAnna Forshee, my long time colleague  and fearless leader of InsideLegal and Envision Agency, made the 2015 list for her 16+ years of service within the legal technology space. When she recognized a gap in information between legal technology providers and legal professionals over a decade ago, she created InsideLegal.com to serve as an online community and blog for legal pros about doing business in the legal technology marketplace. Also, JoAnna herself is no stranger to legal awards, having collaborated with legal legend Ross Kodner on the annual 'Dinner' a who's who of legal influencers for 7 years and co-producing the 'CityWealth 100' with editor Karen Jones in 2004.

And yes, there are 49 other just as deserving 2015 recipients representing law firms [11]; academia: universities, legal think tanks and incubators [8]; legal (technology) companies [16]; bar associations/state practice management advisors [9]; and government legal/judiciary [6]. 30% of this year's honorees are Founders and/or CEOs of their respective organizations.

InsideLegal congratulates all 2015 winners and is particularly proud and excited to share the stage with long time legal colleagues and influencers Laura Calloway, Director of the Practice Management Assistance Program at Alabama State Bar and Natalie Kelly, Director of the Law Practice Management Program, The State Bar of Georgia.

Legal Influencers Weigh In On Legal Technology Startups

Entering Startup. While you would probably pass right by Startup, a 4-square mile town in Snohomish County, Washington with a population of 676, the tidal wave of startup businesses and entrepreneurs hitting the legal shores is hard to ignore. We’ve all heard of the new, post 2008-recession ‘normal,’ and the legal technology startup scene is definitely a part of it. How big of a part? Is it just noise? An exciting distraction or a true disruption poised to change the legal game forever?

All intriguing questions … and ones that our esteemed colleagues at Legal IT Professionals asked us to address in the current issue (hot off the press today) of Legal IT Today (LITT). “Start me up … I’ll never stop” pulls back the covers on the legal version of the startup craze to better understand it. Who are the leading legal entrepreneurial minds? What are they looking to change? And how’s it going?

 

In the spirit of collaboration, we have reached into our treasure chest of legal influencers and crowd sourced some prolific commentary and opinions on the startup topic. Check out the LITT article for some of these gems and keep on reading for our ‘Legal Influencers Weigh In’ series, ‘Startup’ edition. We requested feedback on a multitude of questions including state and rise (or fall) of legal startups; current startups - fad, trend or true disruption? And, which startup apps and legal services are winning the race?

 

Startup trend = disruption in legal?!

On disruption in legal (and whether startups will lead this charge), David Perla, President of Bloomberg BNA Legal Division and Bloomberg Law offers a ‘big picture’ view. “The last decade has brought a methodical move toward efficiency, predictability and transparency across virtually every area of law. Since none of these areas has historically been core to lawyering, it’s been very difficult for the establishment to keep pace with market demands. The large number of startups that have been able to enter this space with little or no prior legal experience is impressive. However, few will affect real disruption, as the need increases for sophisticated (and capital-intensive) analytics technologies that can be deployed on the massive sets of unstructured data that permeate the profession.”

 

Perla adds: “Disruption has the potential to radically change how lawyers work and think about their clients, but it also requires significant capital and a keen understanding of how lawyers consume information. This is where startups will struggle. The massive capital needs and long time frame required are a mismatch for the funding sources currently investing in legal startups – angel, venture and strategic. As a result, most legal startups won’t make it – and change will come from the few that do, plus a handful of existing larger players with the requisite combination of capital and legal and technology prowess.”

 

We first took note of Fastcase and its CEO Ed Walters back in 2010, when the company announced its free legal research app for the iPad, a bold and innovative move. We asked Ed about the future of startups and what will occur first – further expansion of the startup landscape, consolidation or increasing dissolutions? “There will be *both* expansion and consolidation for the next two years. Venture funds now see the opportunity in legal tech. Legal services are broken – but change (intelligent agents, document automation and analytics) is coming. There will be ample capital available for attackers, and the market will expand. At the same time, the market will consolidate in two areas. Global publishers will continue to divest business units (even big ones) that don’t keep pace with international growth targets. And unless innovators can achieve both scale and profit in time, they will have to be acquired. If the stock market remains high, and interest rates stay low, there will be ample capital available for acquirers as well.”

 

State of the current legal (tech) startup space

Basha Rubin is the CEO of Priori Legal. Like many of her fellow startup founders, Rubin is a lawyer who identified a major gap between existing legal services and what she would want to access as a potential client. While Priori Legal is focused on high value business-attorney matchmaking, Rubin sees a lot of similarities between the large pack of startups: "We all have the same short term goal of changing behavior. As a community, we can all collaborate to change the way consumers and businesses source legal services and how these services are made more accessible." In terms of where startups are now, Rubin sees continued opportunities for growth. “We are still in the very early days with lots of room for innovation and legal problem solving.” According to Rubin, new entrants focused on law practice management, legal services marketplaces and legal research are bubbling to the top. Also, per Rubin, the April acquisition of Shake, a legal forms and agreements startup is “a big deal” and perhaps the sign of more M&As to come.

 

Dan Lear, Avvo’s Director of Industry Relations, blogger, legal technology meet-up founder and legal hacker, knows a thing or two about the startup growth path. "There is definitely a lot of interest in the space. It’s a combination of a well-performing technology sector combined with a fair number of out of work or underemployed, under-utilized, or just plain unhappy lawyers who are looking to do something different.” Lear notes we are at an inflection point with technology as well. “The cloud, mobile, greater broadband access and some interesting technological innovations are really opening peoples’ minds to some amazing possibilities.”

 

Rob Saccone, CEO of SeyfarthLean Consulting (SLC), leads a team of 35 legal service design and technology professionals focused on law department optimization and legal service design. SLC is a subsidiary of Seyfarth Shaw and operates across all types and stages of legal, risk and compliance work. “I feel like the window has passed for events such as LexRedux (a legal startup/investment event platform created by Rob, Josh Kubicki, and Dave Perla a few years back) or ReInvent Law. There was a wave of interest in activity which I feel has slowed down over the past several months, as startups shift into execution mode and buyers take a more practical and detailed look at their options. Some startups continue to do well, particularly in the B2C space, but activity is definitely down from what it was this time last year.”

 

SLC is still pushing ahead with legal innovation. “Seyfarth has made active investments in its captive innovation and R&D efforts for 10 years. We’ve invested in more failed attempts than most firms have invested at all, and our culture supports the ‘fail fast’ mindset to truly innovate and learn,” concludes Saccone.

 

Rise of legal technology and business of law startup companies

According to Dr. Roland Vogl, Executive Director of CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, “there is a new generation of savvy ‘lawentrepreneurs’ using existing web technologies to provide new options for corporate clients demanding more efficient delivery of legal services. At the same time, many startups are trying to find new ways to empower consumers, providing them with more affordable legal documents or legal advice.”

 

“Not all of these startups will succeed. Some will go out of business. Others will merge with competing startups. A few will be acquired by (or partner with) the large legal information companies. It's not clear whether there first will be consolidation between startups or acquisitions by larger companies, but I am quite certain that, five years down the road, there will not be dozens of players in the various legal technology ‘sub-verticals’ and application areas.” What’s next? “The next generation of legal innovation will likely develop from companies that provide ‘computable law,’ where technology can process legal rules and can automate legal decision making, or where contracts are smart and ‘operationalized.’ Computable law techniques will also embed legal information in the systems that we use every day (e.g., cars) and bring it to the person who needs it in real-time,” surmises Vogl.

 

Peter Ozolin, Manzama’s CEO & Chairman attributes the rise in legal startups to a few technology shifts. “Innovation Debt: in the period from 2004-2010, we didn’t see a lot of disruptive legal technology brought into the marketplace (other than small firm solutions). As a result, when new entrants like Manzama came along, there was a strong interest in new approaches from firms to develop business, largely fueled by the worst recession in recent memory, and a sense that it wasn’t going to be ‘business as usual,’ which meant that new methods and practices needed to be encouraged at the firms themselves. Secondly, cloud computing raised the potential for firms to consider new technologies at relatively low cost that, if successful, could easily displace enterprise applications that required more of a footprint both in terms of servers and people, as well as vendor support.”

 

Fred Cohen, CEO & Founder of Zola and Amicus Creative Media, groups the wave of new startups into three primary categories: “Uberification: Connecting idle legal resources with those that demand it, whether in a B2B or B2C context. An example is a service which enables business lawyers to make themselves available on demand as in-house counsel to small businesses. Specific technology (providing brilliant solutions to very narrow problems): Most of these are in the practice management space, such as services that enable clients to stay abreast of billable hours or ingenious task management solutions. The challenge with many of these tools is that they rarely work well with larger practice management solutions, so lawyers are often forced to do double data entry and deal with multiple applications, the burden of which may not justify the increased productivity afforded by the solutions. AI: Finally, the most interesting category in the legal tech space involves tools that leverage unprecedented computing power for artificial intelligence used to review legal documents. While many of these are at a very early stage, over time they could supplant attorneys - at least when it comes to many transactional matters.” 

 

Doug Caddell is the owner of Legal CIO Consulting LLC and former CIO of Foley & Lardner. He has spent the last 22+ years leading the technology efforts of various legal organizations, including mid-sized and large law firms and a governmental law department. During that time, he has witnessed several waves of legal technology innovation including the third and latest wave staring around 2011. So why the current rise? “New foundational technologies such as cloud computing and increasingly flexible programming languages have made it easier to develop products, and meet the needs of underlying changes to law firm business models created by the recession. The recession changed law firm economics and the market for legal services from a seller’s to a buyer’s market, putting dramatic pressure on law firms to become more efficient to meet client demands,” notes Caddell.

 

Dr. Rick Kabra, CEO of CosmoLex Cloud, sees the surge of legal technology solutions as a “…result of evolving technology making it possible to offer ‘next-generation’ solutions that significantly improve a lawyer’s daily work life. In the law practice management space, the first generation cloud based legal technology solutions handled only a single function (like billing or practice management). Now 2nd generation solutions offer multiple, integrated functions (such as billing & accounting & document management) - along with mature, dependable & secure mobile access - that is a much better fit to the way lawyers actually work. It’s a lot like how the mobile phone went from being a simple PDA type device to a smartphone performing dozens of useful tasks that have revolutionized everyone’s daily life.”

 

Stevie Ghiassi, Co-Founder of Australian-based Legaler believes “advancing the delivery of legal services” is a major startup priority, but there are two key areas that need the most attention – access and communication.” Ghiassi adds: “It is well documented that there is a monumental access to justice/legal services problem not just in the US, but globally. In the US alone, up to 80% of consumers are not able to access legal services for reasons such as complexity, affordability and sheer unapproachability. However, the lesser known fact is that poor communication is the main culprit in up to 90% of legal malpractice suits. Both figures are staggering and have no right to exist in this day and age of technology. History has shown startups can have a rampant and immense social impact in a very short time and it is now our responsibility to tackle these problems head on. Communication should be the lawyers’ biggest asset, not a sword to fall on.”

 

This concludes our legal startup ‘weigh in.' The LITT article along with this companion piece with additional contributors’ comments will hopefully get you thinking. Look us up, share with your peers and keep the conversation going. Also, if you don't already subscribe to Legal IT Today, sign up today to receive the free online subscription delivered directly to your inbox. Enjoy. 

 

ILTA Announces "Browning Marean Scholarships" for ILTACON 2015

Browning Marean

In August 2014, the legal community lost a great friend. Browning Marean, a Partner at DLA Piper, touched the personal and professional lives of many within the legal sector.

In honor or Browning’s work in the litigation field and his extraordinary international ambassadorship, the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) has established two scholarships to their annual conference, ILTACON 2015 - one for individuals who live and work in the U.S. and one for those outside the U.S. 

You must apply for the scholarships, no later than June 5th. If selected by the judging panel, your attendance at ILTACON 2015 (August 31 - September 3 in Las Vegas, Nevada) will be covered, including registration fee, lodging and all reasonable travel costs.

View scholarship application and submission information here.

 

For more information on ILTACON 2015, visit the website here.

10 Legal Tech Influencers Weigh In On the State of the Legal Cloud

Over the past few months, my mind has been in the clouds ...literally. The Association of Legal Administrators asked me to author a "working in the cloud" feature for the May issue of Legal Management (LM), ALA's member-only publication. The idea; talk to law firms, CIOs, technologists, vendors and analysts and gauge the state of legal cloud computing. What are firms doing? which cloud technologies are hot? what's the overall attitude toward cloud alternatives? and what's next on the path to 'cloudy skies'? You can read the full article, "Getting Comfortable in the Cloud" here.

Obviously, this is a topic with many angles and 'it depends' and 'what if' scenarios, especially in the legal market. The LM article and accompanying sidebar only scratch the surface in documenting the relevance of cloud technologies in everyday law firm life.

Since I've had way too many great conversations to fit into one feature, I figured it would be practical to include additional expert quotes and commentary here. Consider it the companion guide to our Legal Management content.

State of the (cloud) union

So David Houlihan, Principal Analyst with Blue Hill Research, was one of my bar mates in New York recently when we joked about the cloud (still) being the hottest trend in annual legal technology surveys and benchmarking studies. Hot might describe the rate at which firms are increasingly open-minded when it comes to cloud applications and starting to deliver business value to their users via various ‘as-a-service’ models. Or, hot might describe the earnest belief that this ‘cloud thing’ is new. As David stated “the irony is that thanks to LexisNexis and Westlaw, legal has actually been doing cloud solutions for longer than we've had ‘the cloud,’ we just don't think of it that way.” The same goes for email … Microsoft launched Hotmail (now Outlook.com) in 1996 and 8 years later Google introduced Gmail. Right around the Great Recession in 2008, folks started giving this web-based/application service provider model a new label … cloud computing.

Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney, the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, and Legal Technology Evangelist at MyCase.com: "After solo and small firms, I think that large firms will be the next to incorporate on a large scale cloud computing into their systems that store confidential client information. Right now most large firms are already using cloud computing for less sensitive data but will eventually use the cloud, most likely via private clouds, for other types of data as well. And midsize firms will be the last to move to the cloud in full force. The biggest barriers for many firms are security concerns. However, when lawyers educate themselves about the security of their data as it now exists in their firms when stored on premises versus the security offered by many cloud computing providers, they often realize that many legal cloud computing solutions offer more secure storage for sensitive data than what they're currently using."

Adds Houlihan: "Cloud/SaaS models create deployment and pricing models that put software capabilities within reach of the limited financial and IT resources of small firms. eDiscovery is increasingly a cloud market as well, especially as the market matures and basic capabilities are commoditizing."

Speaking of cloud-based eDiscovery ... Brett Burney, owner of Burney Consultants, 2015 ABA TECHSHOW Chair, prolific speaker and author on all things legal tech (especially eDiscovery/lit support): "Most of these SaaS-focused eDiscovery and litigation support players have been in the market for the last 7-10 years but just like any cloud-based service, they continue to be questioned about their overall security capabilities. Lawyers continue to find it incredibly difficult to overcome their irrational fear of using cloud-based services, even though every lawyer uses unencrypted e-mail every day to send the most sensitive and confidential information to clients."

"The biggest advantage of SaaS e-discovery tools is that they’re so easy to use. If you can upload a picture to Facebook, you can upload a .PST file to these services. Files are processed on the backend and presented to reviewers so they can filter, search, tag, and produce the files themselves. And these tools come with all the advantages of any other cloud-based platform in that updates and security patches get applied automatically without the firm having to worry about it," concludes Burney.

The cloud at work 

Microsoft Office 365 and Azure have given Houston-based Bracewell & Giuliani an easy, cost effective platform to build out a firm alumni and emergency site as well as a client extranet solution. Azure provides the ability to securely tie back into the firm’s network, saving internal users from providing multiple logins and passwords.

Sean Luman, Senior Director of Knowledge Management at Bracewell & Giuliani: “After discussing benefits, costs, and limitations of each, we opted for the Azure solution. Maintenance of these machines is much easier than on-premise or private data center boxes and speed is solely dependent upon internet connection performance. While the above issues could be problematic with on premise solutions, the Azure cloud deployment has made so many of the arduous and mundane tasks we loathed obsolete.”

Skip Lohmeyer, Jackson Kelly’s CIO: “The core competency of a law firm is not to purchase and maintain a bunch of software and hardware. But, purchasing and maintaining makes  perfect sense if there is a competitive or operational advantage.  However, if a service company has commoditized the same, functional service in the “cloud” (or SaaS, IaaS, etc.) and the cost is about equal, it stands to reason the firm should be looking at those as serious alternatives. Security, compliance, continuity, functionality, and performance all top the list when considering cloud services vs. in-house/firm owned and operated solutions. [See Lohmeyer’s "Should Your Firm Head to the Cloud" Legal Management sidebar for more]

Rick Varju, Foley & Lardner's Director of Engineering & Operations: “Firm leadership understands the value that hosted applications and services can offer, provided we maintain full ownership and control of our data and the hosted service provider meets and maintains industry standard data security requirements. We've been moving closer and closer to a ‘cloud first’ approach to new application and services planning and provisioning over the past couple years. Today, more and more of our new technology discussions start off with a focus on whether or not the cloud-based offering of the application can be pursued as an alternative to hosting it all internally.” [Look for more from Rick and what Foley's is doing in the Cloud in the upcoming October issue of Legal Management]

Jared Correia, Assistant Director and Senior Law Practice Advisor for the Massachusetts Law Office Management Assistance Program, advises the state’s practitioners on law practice technology decisions and purchases including the cloud. "The gateway drug for most solos and small firms with respect to the cloud is case management. Those are the systems that people will buy first, then, they start adding. That's once they've figured out the benefits of an law practice management system."

“Most of the innovation in our community comes from lawyers situated in the entrepreneurial sectors of the big city (Boston). These are usually solo lawyers or very small firms, whose managing partners have a significant interest in technology for gaining efficiency … hence the interest in the cloud. Generally, solos and small firms discover cloud technology when an existing system fails: the server goes, or the case management system that hasn't been updated since 1998 gets too wonky; then the potential cost-savings, at least initially, become very appealing to them.”

Seizing up cloud training

Stacy Gittleman, CEO and Founder of Encoretech, a nationally recognized technology training, learning and development organization, looks at cloud computing from a firm user’s and overall training impact perspective. “Until recently, users have had a lifetime of experience navigating drop-down menus, tool bars and right-click functionality with relative minor change to the user interface and application workflow for each new version of software; that all changes with a move to the cloud,” notes Gittleman.

Editor comment: If we state the case for cloud computing, can't we make the same assertion for non-traditional, cloud-based training? Lawyers are increasingly mobile as are their clients so the services offered to support technology use and overall productivity have to match this ‘lifestyle’. However, Gittleman and other professional trainers will make the case that instructor-led hands-on classroom training is still warranted. Especially for new cloud rollouts, initial live support is crucial since most of the “learning” happens when users are back at their desks. 

Cloud futures: we have SaaS and many 'as-a-service' models ... what's next?

Doug Horton, CEO of Handshake Software: “The next big thing for computing in law firms will be a "service-as-a-service" model … rather than mid to large sized firms hiring full time application/technology-skilled staff, they will be able to "rent" them as needed for discrete projects, just as they can "rent" data space and computing power.  The advantage to the law firm is that they do not have to carry excess capacity and are able to "staff" up accordingly based on specific projects.”

Horton contends that the only full time employees in law firms might well be the lawyers, paralegals, KM or other staff who are directly involved in providing the legal services to the clients - the actual work product of the firm.  Various law firms are already outsourcing different back-office and operations functions so the service-as-a-service model may not be so farfetched.

Matt Duncan, CEO of NetDocuments: “The future of the cloud will rely on an increasing focus on system integration and customization to firms’ unique technology landscape. Apps and integration marketplaces and platforms, open APIs, and the technology and channel partners to support them, will be at the forefront of legal technology innovation.”

Duncan concludes: The biggest challenge firms are facing today revolves around the client demands for security and compliance. The Am Law and Global 100 firms are faced with an onslaught of audits coming from their big-name clients. This presents an incredible opportunity for specialized vendors to address these information governance and data privacy concerns, without putting the burden on the firm itself. Meeting these client demands is simply not possible or feasible with on-premises or hosted solutions as it becomes prohibitively expensive and cumbersome for a firm to tackle global data privacy, security, and data encryption demands."

This concludes our impromptu legal thought leader cloud 'sound-off'. Also, I hope you take a moment to check out the Legal Management cloud feature or peruse the entire May issue -- free for members, available on a subscription basis for non-members. Enjoy.