The dominant software used in-house are word processing and e-mail/calendar, followed far behind by matter management, document management, spreadsheets and presentation software. My blog has discussed 27 types of specialized software. What else might a law department use?
1. Benefit plans, to test proposed changes (See my post of Jan. 24, 2006.)
2. Blogs (See my posts of July 20, 2005; and May 4, 2007 for an attack on blogs.).
Stalking the aisles of vendors at LegalTech NY I was surprised to see a Google booth. I learned that 50 of the AmLaw 100 law firms use Google’s Postini software to pre-filter emails – to remove spam.
But this is a blog about law departments, you know, so I pressed the Googlers in the booth about how their software might help them. They pointed out that the software could immensely help a law department cope with the email deluge when a company must collect, review and produce email messages. They also agreed that the software could use its “Content Policy Management” to pluck out documents sent by law firms.
Since efforts by law departments to collect electronic versions of law firm work product falter when in-house counsel have to do anything, a systemic solution that culls out attachments when there are clues in the email message might jump start this knowledge management activity. The documents thus collected could be relatively easily reviewed and placed in a repository online, to be searched, of course by a well-known program (See my post of March 5, 2005 on Google Desktop.).
At LegalTech NY I ran across Tedesco Tecnologia, a 13-year-old Brazilian software firm that offers an ASP matter management system for law departments. It has law departments using its software in 32 countries, including Air Liquide, Whirlpool S/A – Brasil, Wal-Mart – Brazil, BASF, and InBev, the world’s largest brewer. Marketing literature states that it covers more than 30 industries.
I did not take part in a demonstration of the system, but spoke with a principle and reviewed the company’s marketing materials. One feature of the Tedesco’s system is that it translates all but free text into 17 languages, so lawyers can see screen text, the system’s 25 fields, and data-entry selections in whichever of those languages they specify. Many currencies are also converted into local currencies.
US law departments are accustomed to the set of vendors known in this market, and they assume screens are in English. Tedesco offers a new, cosmopolitan alternative for consideration.
The ALSP Update, Vol. 1, Dec. 2007 at 11, the monthly newsletter of the Association of Litigation Support Professionals (See my post of Jan. 27, 2008 on ALSP.), introduced me to Women in e-Discovery (WiE). Begun in mid-2007, “it has grown to more than 700 members with 10 chapters and 16 additional chapters slated for 2008.” The fledgling, but fast-growing group has a web site and many of its chapters host monthly meetings.
Any in-house women who support, use, or care about technology in the discovery field should find out more about both WiE and ALSP.
A number of organizations cater to legal technology, and each of them offers members of law departments access to special groups for them (See my posts of Feb. 18, 2007 with its mention of the Sedona Conference; Nov. 17, 2006 on ILTA, the International Legal Technology Association; Nov. 20, 2007 on LEDES, the Legal Electronic Data Exchange System; and Feb. 18, 2007 about the Corporate Forum and more generally the benefits of knowledge networks.).
Geoff Gussis, writing on In-House Blog on Nov. 20, 2007, , summarizes the findings from a recent survey from Computer Weekly.
“A survey of 115 in-house lawyers at multinational firms said technology made their working life more satisfying despite the longer hours, as many were allowed to work from home.
The survey was carried out by law firm Kemp Little LLP and PLC Law Department magazine.
Pfizer spends $500 million in legal fees each year on more than 1,000 law firms worldwide. According to a post by David Hobbie about an International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) session on Aug. 22, 2007, the huge law department found it difficult to produce reports about that outflow from their ensemble of TeamConnect, budgeting and IP management systems. Note that Pfizer’s legal department uses Hyperion Planning for budgeting, which is the first time I have heard of a law department with software solely for budgets.
The solution to the problem with reports was a data warehouse, created by Oracle, which integrated Informatica “for most Extraction, Transformation and Load (ETL) routines” and Business Objects for report, dashboard, and ad-hoc development (See my posts of Aug. 24, 2006 on dashboards compared to reports; and April 13, 2007 for more on dashboards.). The application now produces a couple of dozen reports on a monthly or quarterly basis across the multiple systems.
Set aside the usual applications of email, word processing, redlining, spreadsheets, and scanning. Two other applications at firms vie to be the most valuable to law departments.
The most likely candidate for the top spot is an effective document management system. If the lawyers in a law firm can efficiently locate prior work product, they will most help their law department client. This blawg has many comments on document management from the law department side (See my posts of Sept. 10, 2005 on the costs of that software; Dec. 20, 2005 on staff reductions that might accompany its installation; Jan. 3, 2006 with a comparison to “unified content management; Sept. 21, 2005 on the 19 lives of documents; March 18, 2005 about law departments that use it to manage contracts; April 30, 2006 on technology solutions ranked by law departments; Jan.14, 2007 about GE’s investment in document management; April 30, 2006 and Feb.11, 2007 on survey data from law departments; and June 20, 2007 on three examples.).
If there is no document management system, or even if there is one, a database of work product may be the second-best technology asset among a law firm’s applications (See my posts of Aug. 16, 2006 on sharing work product among law firms; May 17, 2006 on policies at Schering-Plough; Aug. 22, 2006 about the futility of law departments collecting work product; Feb. 18, 2007 on records management; and Dec. 23, 2005 about information asymmetry.).
Topics on this blog have touched on some sophisticated technology (See my post of June 6, 2006 about biometric fingerprint identification; Oct. 18, 2006 on RFID devices for filing; Jan. 4, 2006 intelligent agents; May 15, 2005 on Monte Carlo simulations; Oct. 26, 2006 on bubble-scan bills; March 27, 2005 on artificial intelligence software; April 7, 2006 and neural networks; April 3, 2005 on PDAs; and May 7, 2006 concerning network mapping software.). So far, I haven’t written about keypads for security or bar codes.
Other topics have scraped along the bottom of the barrel of technology (See my post of Aug. 10, 2007 about a spreadsheet for a bare-bones matter management system; April 30, 2006 with a reference to thermofaxes; March 17, 2006 on dictation to stenographers; and Oct. 18, 2006 on shredders.). I have yet to tackle the complexities of anti-glare screen protectors, lava lamps and pencil sharpeners.
Here are some more tips for how to take the most away from a software demonstration (See my posts of April 27, 2006 for five other suggestions; and Sept. 18, 2007 for additional suggestions.).
First, have diverse observers, which should include at least a lawyer or two, a paralegal or someone who will use the system the most, an IT person, and perhaps attendees from internal audit or security (See my post of Sept. 18, 2007 on the value of calling users of the software.).
Second, allow ample time. In my experience 90 minutes is the minimum for a vendor to explain why they should be selected and for your people to look carefully at the offering. If, however, you go more than two hours, your people start to glaze over.
In a previous post about survey data on e-billing at AMLAW 200 firms (See my post of Oct. 26, 2007.), I strongly questioned the data, in light of the previous year’s data and my consulting experience. To test my reaction, I sent the post to six vendors of e-billing solutions and asked them to comment. Here are the observations, edited slightly, of Rob Thomas of Serengeti and Mary Clark of LexisNexis Examen, both of whom made thoughtful points and graciously permitted me to attribute their comments. First are their explanations for the inaccurate data, and then their company statistics
Incomplete knowledge by respondent. A major problem with surveys is that they are generally dependent upon the scope of knowledge of the volunteer who received the form. Unless that person makes an effort to hunt down answers to questions throughout a large law firm, their responses on behalf of the entire firm will be inaccurate. This is particularly a problem when you ask a “technology manager” (whatever that means—not a typical title in a law firm) whether a large law firm with multiple offices is using e-billing, a technology that may only need to be used by a few billing clerks. [Rob Thomas, Serengeti]
E-billing doesn’t rise to awareness of many. With most vendors, e-billing involves no installation of any hardware or software. It also doesn’t involve an acquisition decision by the firm, whose clients make the decision to require e-billing from their firms. Because e-billing does not necessarily cause the firm to change its internal bill approval procedures, just the final step of transmitting the bill, it is conceivable that only billing clerks at some firms need to know that e-billing is happening. Therefore, it is not uncommon that the powers that be at large law firms are not aware that their firm is conducting e-billing at all, let alone e-billing involving specific vendors. [Rob Thomas, Serengeti]
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