Articles Posted in Technology

Many law departments host a site on their company’s intranet and this blog has noted several of them (See my post of March 1, 2007 #2: Honeywell’s legal intranet; June 24, 2007: Cadbury Schweppes’ intranet; June 6, 2006: traffic on the Office of Legal Affairs, Univ. of North Carolina; and Sept. 25, 2008: LexisNexis group and its intranet patent information.).

Some innovative ideas have surfaced regarding corporate web sites by lawyers, such as to put a small legal window on business sites (See my post of March 13, 2007: mini-intranet sites at Bank of Montreal.), push clients to search for answers on the site (See my post of Sept. 10, 2005: charge time to clients if answers are on intranet.), and cutting-edge capabilities (See my post of March 27, 2005: artificial intelligence software on intranet.).

Items on this blog address still other aspects of legal department intranets (See my post of Feb. 7, 2008: track client usage of your intranet site; March 5, 2005: altruistic information sharing; July 21, 2005: PDF manual on the intranet; April 5, 2005: law firms might contribute material; and Dec. 21, 2005: disappointing levels of contributions to intranets.).

If any reader feels like enlightening me on vendors of encryption software that law departments might use, I would be grateful. I mention this because I have been consulting to a company whose legal group encrypts its computers with PointSec. They also use PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) to encrypt confidential documents; company proprietary material, and personal data that needs privacy protection.

Law departments in the United States undoubtedly use software from an entire thicket of encryption companies, but I have little to add about this cottage industry (See my post of Jan. 25, 2007: encryption of data transferred to matter management system; Oct. 1, 2006: BoardVantage’s built-in protections; April 22, 2007: e-billing data; and Aug. 15, 2008: encrypted email.).

Databases that track information about contracts, often called contract management software, has earned the respect of many general counsel. It helps control the flow of contract development, obligations under executed contracts, key milestones, and responsible parties.

This blog has referred many times to that genre of software (See my post of March 18, 2005: contract management; April 18, 2005: contract management; Oct. 20, 2005: software for contract management at Fair Isaac; Oct. 10, 2005: Roamware’s contract compliance database; Dec. 3, 2005: improve contract management; Jan. 3, 2006: contract management software; Jan. 4, 2006: contract life-cycle oversight; Jan. 6, 2006: BOC’s tracking system; April 27, 2006: Affinitext and DLA Piper; Dec. 8, 2006: Omniware; Feb. 11, 2007: survey data that ranks desirable software; and March 26, 2008: Cisco’s customized system.).

PLCLaw Dept. Quart., Vol. 3, Jan.-March 2007 at 21, reports survey data about how a group of mostly European general counsel view technology offered for their benefit by law firms. A stacked bar chart describes seven applications according to whether they are deemed “extremely useful,” “very useful,” “useful,” “quite useful,” or “not at all useful.” Combine the two most positive ratings (extremely useful and very useful) as a positive attitude and the two most negative ratings (quite useful and not at all useful) as a negative one and here are my eyeball estimates of the percentages:

“Secure email” 40% positive and 30% negative

“Access to extranet with know-how materials” 26% positive and 35% negative

EWeek, Feb. 4, 2008, at 34, lists 10 new technologies in the works at Big Blue, and three of them got me to thinking about law department applications.

(1) “The Virtual Team-Building Game is designed to improve trust and cooperation among colleagues unaccustomed to the notion of a virtual meeting.” A widely dispersed law department might find it intriguing to play this game; soon, an avant-garde department will meet virtually online (See my post of Nov. 18, 2007: Second Life and other online virtual worlds.).

(2) “Tag It collects tags applied to items to boost intranet search.” With a tool like Tag It, members of the legal department could tag different parts of the corporate intranet. The tags would make it easier to understand what their colleagues and clients see of value on the intranet (See my post of March 24, 2007: Technorati and tag clouds.).

When you customize software, someone writes new code. When you configure software, you rely on the code as written, but change field names, tables, arrangements on the screen, and other elements of the software (See my post of May 23, 2007 about GE’s technology efforts, the disadvantages of customized software, and references cited.).

Customization is often expensive, lengthy, and problematic; configuration enables minor modifications within the pre-set limits of the package. Customization depends on the technical skills of the vendor and their willingness to depart from their package. Configuration depends on the flexibility built into the software but mostly on the willingness of the law department to tailor the as-is software as much as possible to its needs. My bias, I suppose it is obvious, is toward configuration and away from customization.

An article in Legal Tech. News, April 2008 at 36, lists many easy things any legal team in a company can do to protect the environment. Six of the actions are possible for every law department. (1) Remove your name from mailing lists that send out paper catalogs. (2) Install software that omits the last page of printouts from the web, the page that only shows a line or two from the bottom of the website (they refer to Print Greener software www.printgreener.com). (3) Conduct interviews of candidates and law firms by video conference. (4) Power down computers and printers: “for every dollar spent on IT hardware, 50 cents is spent on powering them.” (5) Distribute more reports electronically and design them with an eye toward them efficient printing. (6) Install lower-energy flat panel monitors.

I will add that one law department I have worked with has collection bags for used batteries and its printers are set to print double sided. Another department has ended the practice of spewing out a cover sheet before each print job (See my post of April 23, 2008: filing cabinets and environmental costs; Dec. 26, 2007: lights and energy-saving; April 27, 2007: environmental sensibilities of recycling.).

The responsibilities of Leslie Lawson, the paralegal in charge of e-discovery for Eastman Chemical Co., include reviewing software that might help her tasks. In Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, April 2008 at 76, an article describes Lawson’s role and mentions that “Eastman recently considered purchasing a software program to handle data mapping that would have cost about $300,000.” The company decided to “build the same thing on a customized basis for about one-tenth the cost.” That statement triggered several thoughts.

1. Legal software can be very expensive (See my post of Dec. 23, 2005: cost of a matter management system. Very roughly speaking, this particular offering costs as much as almost two lawyers, or four paralegals, in the first year, and then probably a paralegal a year for maintenance fees.

2. Automated solutions are available even for niche functions of a law department (See my posts of Feb. 9, 2008: 27 packages for law departments; Feb. 6, 2007: PSS Systems for litigation hold management; and March 19, 2006: nuts and bolts of hold requests.).

A recent survey found that “Approximately one-third (30%) of in-house counsel sought input from their law firms when evaluating collaborative technologies that they would use together, primarily online matter management and ebilling systems.” This finding comes from the 2007 ACCA/Serengeti Managing Outside Counsel Survey, selected results of which are presented in the ACC Docket, Vol. 26, April 2008 at 14.

I find it hard to imagine that law firms have much to offer a law department client that wants to choose a matter management system. What do firms know about that specialized in-house software (See my post of Feb. 9, 2008: 27 other kinds of esoteric software for legal departments.). In contradistinction, law firms may know much more about certain aspects of e-billing systems than does a client since law firms have to cope with so many of them (See my post of Nov. 28, 2007: law firm complaints about e-billing.).

The short squib does not mention them, but what about extranets and discovery software? Both are ubiquitous and both are very familiar to law firms. As to extranets (See my posts of Aug. 27, 2005: low-cost tool; Oct. 17, 2005: Virgin’s extranet; Oct. 21, 2005: used other than in major litigation; Oct. 31, 2005: JennerNet; Oct. 31, 2005: real-time access to everything at a firm; Jan. 3, 2006 and April 22, 2007: Tyco’s extranet; Jan. 30, 2006: ChevronTexaco’s; Feb. 12, 2006: compares extranets to portals; April 4, 2006 #2: extranets haven’t caught on; Oct. 18, 2006: unremarked extranets; Jan. 18, 2007 and Dec. 11, 2007: DuPont’s capabilities.). As to discovery software (See my post of March 26, 2008.). More information and the survey results are available from Rob Thomas, the report’s author.

PEER to PEER, Vol. 23, Nov. 2007, the magazine of the International Legal Technology Association describes ILTA’s Law Department practice group. Headed by Sally Letteri of United States Steel, it facilitates the sharing of information by law-department technologists. For example, the practice group will host a symposium on April 4, 2008 in New York City. Other leaders of the group (at pg. 68) include Frank Kilsdonk of Johnson Controls; Pamela Martin of DuPont; Mike Russell of Liberty Mutual; and Tom Morrissey of Pharma. I’m sure any of they would welcome hearing from prospective members.

ILTA has shown up in previous writings on this blog (See my posts of Nov. 17, 2006: multiple e-billing systems; Feb. 19, 2007: litigation support software; Feb. 12, 2006: client-specific extranets; and Dec. 12, 2007: Pfizer and its data warehouse.).