Articles Posted in Technology

BTI Consulting Group reported the results of asking more than 200 corporate counsel this question: “If you could create the ideal technology solution, what capabilities would you most like to have?” As reported in Law Practice, Vol. 32, April/May 2006 at 13, those respondents most wanted technology solutions to be “user friendly” (19.3%). Next came “document management” (13.3%) and “bill management” (9.6%).

Lagging those top three were the bottom four: “information sharing” and “integrated platform” (both 6.0%) and “accessibility” and “matter tracking” (both 4.8%).

An odd list. Two are characteristics of any software: user friendliness and accessibility (and does that mean whether users can start the program readily?). Three others on the list are applications: document management, bill management (e-bills?), and matter tracking. “Information sharing” goes beyond technology whereas “integrated platform” could refer to software or hardware.

1. Send the vendor a summary of your relevant facts. Ask them whether they need to know more facts to do a good presentation and try to supply them.

2. Tell the vendor what you want emphasized in the demonstration, rather than let them trot around their accustomed bases. For example, if reports are most important to you, don’t let the vendor monopolize the time showing data entry screens. Ask the demo person to show you how to do what is important to you.

3. Choose the five or six characteristics that should enable you to choose among the competing packages. Make sure those who attend the demonstration pay attention to those characteristics and grade the package on each of them on a scale.

A law department that wants to choose a matter management system can look to ASPs – software hosted by the vendor on its servers – or at self-hosted packages on the corporation’s servers (See my post of March 26, 2006 about IT departments and ASP’s in terms of support.). Into that decision inevitably come information technology staff. They might, for example, decree that the company favors or frowns on ASP systems, for concerns over data security, durability of the infrastructure, cost, or other reasons.

The inherent tension, however, is that IT staff may say they will support a self-hosted system, but a law department has no completely persuasive way to test that claim or enforce it later. IT may want to control all applications, but what if they are enmeshed in larger, enterprise-wide implementations? What if they are short-staffed or lack necessary skills? For these reasons, the corporate technology support available to the law department is not a disinterested party in the decision between third-party hosted and self-hosted software.

One of the conclusions of a study of legal technology in law departments of North West England is that in-house practices are “generally better equipped with hardware, software and systems than Private Practices of a similar size.” Gill Hague, “Factors Affecting the Use of Information and Communications Technology by In-House Legal Practices in North West England,” J. Info. Law and Tech., Dec. 15, 2004 at 1.

A five-lawyer department benefits from snuggling in the technical womb of its company, which is likely to over $750 million in revenue and with IT infrastructure and investment to match. No five-lawyer law firm can go toe-to-toe on tech.

Where IT improves, however, is in the law firms with hundreds of employees and a profit incentive to spend on effective technology. There the IT comparison flips, so the big firm enjoys a wider range of more current technology, enhanced with better training.

One of the attractions for general counsel that application service providers (ASPs) have is that they do not demand much, if anything, from corporate information services. The law department can license and use software without need for internal help.

As noted by Legal IT, June 16, 2005 (John Rogers), most corporate counsel “are generally starved of the investment necessary to develop effective systems of their own.” Enterprise-wide capabilities and profit-making systems far outrank the odd software package that serves a tiny group of employees in a cost center – law department software – so “corporate lawyers often find it difficult to engage the interest or support of their own IT department.”

At LegalTech in New York City, I was struck by how many litigation-support software vendors referred to their patents on software, “technology,” or algorithms. I noted Attenex (“suppression and de-duping technology”), Dolphin Search (“neural network technology”), Discovery Mining (“cluster computing technology”) and MetaLINCS (“algorithms for culling, de-duping and indexing”), and undoubtedly missed others.

Although a post on this intellectual property may seem remote from law department management, there are some links. One connection is that the patented software must necessarily be proprietary – as compared to open source – so a licensee law department needs to recognize that legal complexity. A second link is that the vendors in this field are competing mightily, which means many won’t survive and many more will merge or morph, possibly leaving law departments high and dry. Third, the patina of a patent may either distract a shopper or properly lure them. Finally, where there are patents, there are infringement risks, which are risks that anyone who has licensed the patented technology buys into (cf. Blackberry from RIM).

On Jan. 25th, ALM’s Law Technology News announced the law department winner in its third annual Law Technology News Awards program.

Libby Throughton, Legal IT Manager for Home Depot, won the “Most Innovative Use of Technology by an In-House Legal Department” award. Her legal IT team developed a secure “TeamConnect” matter management system, improving the quality and frequency of the department’s communication with its outside counsel. Doesn’t strike me as particularly innovative, but it is good that law departments have their own category and awards.

Because off-the-shelf software didn’t take into consideration all the costs of developing and protecting a patent for RIB-X, a small biotech company, its chief patent counsel and a financial analyst developed an Excel program. The program “can predict costs based on just about every conceivable variable that might impact the cost of filing, prosecuting and maintaining a patent,” as stated in Corp. Legal Times, Vol. 15, Sept. 2005 at 38.

The program asks for and handles priorities of patents, all governmental fees, the complexity of patent applications, outside counsel costs and more. The model it produces shows how much each patent in the company’s portfolio costs per month and for the coming five years.

During a recent consulting project, we inventoried a surprising number of software packages used by the law department’s Corporate Secretary. Serving a modest-sized company, it has software that administers stock options; that maintains original Board minutes and executed transaction documents (Extempore); that helps manage subsidiaries (Transcentive); that completes Form 16s; and that prepares documents for filing through Edgar (Edgar Filing Direct).

This technology-savvy group also has software that lets it communicate with its registered agent (CT Corporation) when creating and updating corporate matters, and software for tracking subsidiaries (it has more than 800 of them). ISS Compass lets it test proposed changes to benefit plans. Finally, the Corporate Secretary group has software for calculating the value of options (for purposes of the annual report), and specialized software supported by lawyers at Howrey & Simon.

Ten different packages, each to support a specialized Corporate Secretary function!

Recent posts discussed sources online for legal research (See my post of Oct. 31, 2005 about Casemaker and Thecorporatecounsel.net.) and lawyers using search engines for an hour a day or more (See my post of Jan. 10, 2005 about Google.)

Dozens of posts would not be enough to chronicle the digitized legal information available at low or no cost, but let me chip away at the backlog. The New York State Law Reporting Bureau (LRB) Web site, for example (NYSBA Journal, Vol. 78, Jan. 2006 at 32.) The LRB makes available all decisions published or abstracted in the Official Reports from January 2000 through the present. There is no charge to visit the public site.

Second, I read about a topic-based online electronic research tool, called LawyerLinks Advantage. It’s modus operandi differs from the word-search tools because it has organized material into legal topics.