During a recent consulting project, I learned that the Environmental Health and Safety function of a company maintains an elaborate database of information about environmental remediation sites. The environmental lawyers of the company can access that information. In a similar way, employment lawyers can extract information from the databases kept…
At ACC Europe’s recent annual meeting, as reported in Legal Week (July 23, 2005), one of the speakers was Wubbo de Boer, President of the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market. He spoke about the European Community Trademark and boasted that “since the Community Trademark was set up in…
Online trademark applications have increased steadily since 1999. Corporate Legal Times showed a graphic of the rise of electronic applications, based on data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. I estimated the numbers for the table below. The final entry covers the first quarter of FY2005 (the USPTO fiscal…
I have wondered why law departments do not share intranet material. [See my post on April 5, 2005 referring to law firms contributing material.] Hildebrandt research recently found no interest in that seeming no-brainer, swapping material for intranets. There have been reported, however, some collaborative technology efforts between legal departments.…
If there were some way to state numerically the power of computers as used by a skilled lawyer in, say, word processing, searching databases, and e-mailing; and if we could find a representative sample of corporate counsel and test their actual use of their laptops and desktops against that potential…
One of the most effective ways to encourage participation at a large meeting, such as a Town Hall or a retreat, is to use electronic voting pads and software. With it, those who attend can vote anonymously and see results instantaneously. (I have teamed several times with Express Interactive Solutions.)…
A European company I have been consulting to asked seven of its major European law firms to submit bills electronically. The law department asked for them to comply with the standard LEDES 98b format. Four or five of the law firms demurred. They responded that they could not report from…
In the glare of downsizing, law departments debate letting go their own staff who analyze budgets, handle the procedures of compensation and promotions, or support the hardware and software in the department. Relying instead on the Finance, Human Resources, and Information Technology departments sounds attractive when heads are being counted. …
I have written extensively for years, with the outpouring far outpacing my ability to remember. A little nag says to me as I write “Rees, you have probably spun together some words on this before, but where?” So when I read about this free software that takes your files and…
Spend some time on www.denniskennedy.com/blog if you have an interest in legal technology topics. Dennis Kennedy , the blogger, has made a name for himself in this area, with a constant stream of activities and memberships.