The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) released the results of its 2008 Law Department Survey of 45 law departments. One of the questions asked about the use of software that compares one version of a document to another version. The respondents reported use of three dedicated packages, one generic word processing function, and noted three other alternatives.
Workshare DeltaView (68%)
Microsoft Word document comparison (30%)
Back by popular demand, better than ever, here is your videogenic blogger starring in this second clip from LegalTech. It will rivet you to your seat (See my post of Feb. 3, 2009: the prequel has been viewed 37 times.). Unleash the viral marketing!
The same companies that provide matter management software for law departments exhibited this year as last year, minus that year’s Brazilian newcomer (See my post of Feb. 6, 2008: Tedesco.). Bridgeway Software (eCounsel, Law Manager) had a booth, and announced its partnership on the Secretariat side with Diligent Board Member Services. LT Online (LawTrac) occupied its familiar place on the third level, right at the escalators, and EAG (CaseTrack) was a level below. Mitratech was busy with its Team Connect as was LawBase. CT TyMetrix had a booth as did DataCert, which has purchased Corprasoft (See my post of Nov. 18, 2007: Legal Desktop.) and announced during the conference an impressive cluster of user-base accomplishments.
Serengeti (Tracker) was not at the big show. I also noticed that the 2008 Law Department Survey of ILTA at 9, asked about matter management systems. The ILTA list included all of the above as well as Practice Manager Group (Practice Manager) and Legal Files.
As I wandered the long aisles of e-discovery vendors at LegalTech the past two days I realized from at least two of the vendors that they use the term “early case assessment” with a definition different from how I have used it on this blog. Here I use it as a method to get a handle on a lawsuit within the first 60-90 days that it is filed, with such areas as costs, strategy, resolution options, and key legal issues laid out (See my post of Feb. 23, 2008: early case assessment with 8 references; June 10, 2008: law firm used only for ECA; and Aug. 5, 2008: GE saves millions with ECA.).
From the marketing literature of Autonomy I see that they use the term for software that enables a law department to “rapidly locate, access and analyze relevant data within the first 48 hours after a case is filed.” They cite a Fortune 100 company that filtered its data set of potential document by over 95 percent, which dramatically reduced their review set. OpenText uses the term in a similar matter. It’s software “identifies, crawls and indexes information from many enterprise data sources,” which allows litigation lawyers to understand much more quickly how many documents exist that might have to be stored, reviewed and produced. Early case assessment for litigation support is, therefore, another meaning of ECA.
For a charming and effective summary of Web 2.0 for law departments, read what Paul Lippe, the heart-and-soul of Legal OnRamp, flourishes in a recent column.
Lippe includes six Web 2.0 capabilities in his description. He covers wikis, “an online editing and collaboration system organized around a document” and blogs, which requires no definition if you are reading this one (See my post of Sept. 1, 2008: wikis with 8 references; and Dec. 31, 2007: Wikipedia and law department management.)
Lippe mentions forums as “a mechanism for an online conversation. Unlike a blog, a forum is multiauthor; unlike a wiki, the conversation is an end in itself, as opposed to yielding an integrated document.” A profile is “a Web page where an individual can convey information about themselves …, define their relationships with others (a ‘connection’ or ‘friend’), or aggregate incoming information.”
I keep searching for software that will enhance this blog. Two days ago, Bill Dimm, President of Hot Neuron, showed me one that impressed me.
Dimm demonstrated as I watched how his Clustify software organized 354 of my posts on productivity. The algorithm looks for and brings together posts that share words and concepts.
In the five-minute setup I picked a similarity cutoff, which is a threshold for when the software will identify a concept group. I could have also played around with words that are significant or words that should be ignored.
Here is a double handful of questions that ought to be covered during a demonstration or presentation on software (See my post of Nov. 5, 2007: get more from software demos; Jan. 19, 2008: scripts for presentations by law firms; and April 27, 2006: five ways to improve demonstrations.).
An inventor patented the facsimile in 1843. Fast forward 165 years and the utility is today universal. An important boost, according to Wired, Jan. 2009, at 47, came when courts “gave the tech a crucial blessing by certifying that a facsimile of a signature was legally valid.” Every law department – indeed, some senior lawyers and administrators individually – have their own fax machines and they stay busy.
In that regard, a minor annoyance in many legal departments is what to do with faxes that arrive and no one picks them up for long time. Sometimes the clutter around a busy fax machine is considerable (See my post of Jan. 13, 2008: systems for distribution of mail.).
The fax’s main rival is PDF, but that utility requires much more complex software, hardware and know-ware. True, we all send documents around electronically by e-mail, but if you hold document that is not in an electronic file, nothing beats dial-and-send-face-down and get a delivery receipt. This universal application is cheap, simple, does what it’s supposed to do with few glitches, and enjoys huge network benefits (See my post of Nov. 13, 2007: network effects.). The legal industry enjoys a Fax Romana.
Data about the prevalence of document management software comes from the First Law Department Operations Survey, published by InsideCounsel and Blickstein Group in cooperation with Huron Consulting and David Cambria of Aon Corporation. Of the 26 respondents who provided data, most of which are from large law departments based on the survey demographics, 65 percent of their law departments have “document management” software.
I presume the term as they applied it does not cover contract management systems or litigation support systems; rather, it should mean software for tracking word-processing documents, versions of them, and access to them (See my post of Dec. 6, 2007: document management with 15 references.). If so, the penetration of this software is not very high, especially if you take into account that some law departments can ride along with enterprise-wide software.
A contract management system can provide four primary benefits:
(1) It serves as repository of executed agreements and allows users to search for them. Typically the contacts are stored as PDF files with a summary of their key information (name of the other party, type of agreement, business group that signed the agreement, date, expiration, as well as internal roles such as the responsible lawyer, client executive, controller, contract administrator, and contract signer).
(2) It may help generate agreements, such as NDAs and simple services agreements. This capability might come from a document assembly module (See my post of Feb. 26, 2008: document assembly with 16 references.).
Law Department Management Blog