Articles Posted in Technology

One of the contributors to a recent article in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 17, March 2009 at 35. makes the statement that the most technically efficient legal departments are the ones with dedicated legal IT reporting to the general counsel instead of to the CIO. I agree, but an in-department technology person is a luxury available only to the largest departments.

I had a much stronger reaction to the comment made next: “This structure cuts out the middleman in translating requirements to technology and ensures that the legal department is serviced with the most cost appropriate technology in a timely manner without the constraints of corporate IT policy.” (emphasis added). There I disagree. Corporate-wide policies about security, retention, downloading, equipment, ASPs, and software suites remain in place. No law department is an island and even with a cadre of excellent technical staff, the general counsel must abide by the over-riding rules of the IT function.

I can’t make sense out of an answer in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 17, March 2009 at 35. The question asked was “What technologies would a new general counsel look to in setting up a legal department? What are the priorities?”

One of the respondents replied: “First are basic technologies that foster legal department communication with the business units it supports. These tools, often platforms or portals, are utilized by inside and outside attorneys, but directed to the business consumers of legal services as a vehicle for demonstrating value. This helps align legal strategies with business strategies and increases transparency between attorneys and business partners.”

At the top of the technology list for a new general counsel is not software that communicates with clients, unless that includes e-mail. My recommendation for the starter-set of software in a law department is a matter and expense tracking system.

David Munn spoke at the ACC Annual Meeting, Oct. 30, 2007. His materials listed 36 programs for contract management, ranging from relatively inexpensive programs, through matter management systems that include contract management features, to full-blown CLM systems. He points out that most of these vendors have extensive information on their web sites. I haven’t confirmed any of the sites, and during the intervening 16 months or so several of the sites and facts have probably changed.

1. Apttus Delivered only as a service. Integrated with SalesForce.com
2. Ariba

This is still a nascent genre. According to the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) 2008 Law Department Survey, when asked which packages they use, three quarters of the 45 respondents said “none.” And these were mostly large companies with large law departments.

The software used by the remaining quarter of the departments includes Boardvantage (11% of the respondents), Computershare Boardworks (5%), 80/20 Leaders/online (2%), Virtual Boardroom and Diligent Boardbooks (0%), and “Other” (5%) (See my post of July 19, 2006: Board software with two other vendors mentioned; and March 9, 2007 #1: more on software to assist Boards.).

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) 2008 Law Department Survey at 11 reports on three kinds of specialized software for law departments. This post lists the packages and the percentage of the 45 respondent law departments, mostly large, that reported using them. The software with zero percent were probably on a multiple choice list but no respondent used them.

Entity management: Secretariat (Bridgeway) – 20%; World Records (Transcentive) – 5%; Two Step Software Corporate Focus – 0%; and “Other” – 27% (See my post of Aug. 12, 2008: corporate secretary role with 21 references.).

Ethics compliance: LRN (Legal Research Network) – 20%; Integrity Interactive – 11%; and PLI/Corpedia, and “Other” – 2%. One out of three law departments in the survey had no such program and about the same percentage had developed one internally.

The website of LegalMaster lists approximately 131 companies and what seems to be the e-billing system their law department uses. After some scrubbing of that data, I can pass on below the number of users for two dozen packages and their percentage of the website’s group.

CSC Litigation Advisor 34 (26%)

CT Tymetrix 24 (18%)

Matter management systems all have reporting capabilities, from canned reports that come with installation to elaborate report writers. The low-tech way to supplement those capabilities is to export data to a spreadsheet and massage it there (See my post of May 8, 2008: export data to a spreadsheet.).

Further sophistication comes from third-party packages that collect and report from databases, such as the six report-writers covered by the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) 2008 Law Department Survey. I list them in the order that the 45 respondents checked them off as being used.

Crystal (48%)

No one boasts of their plain-vanilla software, their program that gets the job done and thank you ma’am. Everyone in articles brags about chrome-plated, futuristic, leading-edge whizbang that is the talk of the town. Magazines praise you and pick you for awards if you have dared state-of-the-art technology. Vendors splash the term around unstintingly.

Periodically I rant about purple prose, the clichés that riddle GC-speak (See my post of June 11, 2008: best practice, leader innovation, strategic and world class.). In the jargon of general counsel, other terms have been used so much they ring hollow. In this sad lot I also include with “state-of-the-art” the weary words “partnering,” “bet-the-company-litigation” and “proactive” (See my post of May 1, 2005: the dark side of partnering; Feb. 28, 2006: BTCL; and Sept. 17, 2006: proactive counseling.).

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) released the results of its 2008 Law Department Survey of 45 law departments. The respondents could check all that apply, so there may be more systems than departments. In declining order of use, the DMS’s mentioned are:

Open Text DocsOpen/DB (30%)

Interwoven and, EMC Documentum (18%)

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) released the results of its 2008 Law Department Survey. Forty-five departments responded, and about 34 of them were in companies with more than $10 billion in revenue, so we have a substantial population of large law departments. The report provides some very useful information.

For example, one question asked how law departments protect the attorney-client privilege for their information. The most widely used method is to use “access control lists” to control who can see confidential material on servers that others can access. I think this means that only certain users are granted permission to log on and view information. Next was to “maintain a separate physical server that has all the attorney/client materials on it with limited IT support having access.” A third method, selected by four departments is to “use VM technology to isolate attorney/client materials on a separate ‘virtual server’.”

Law departments have to pay attention to how it protects confidential information such as reserves, litigation strategies, numbers of matters and the like (See my post of Feb. 16, 2008: attorney-client privilege with 18 references.).