Articles Posted in Technology

ILTA’s 2011 Law Department Technology Survey gathered data in December 2010 from 54 law departments. Almost all of them were from the United States or Canada and three out of four were from companies with at least a billion dollars of revenue. The findings included that “Legal IT committees were reported from about one third of the respondents.” That means that even in a group that would appeal to law departments with a heightened likelihood of interest in things technological, since they belong to ILTA, and from mostly large departments, the incidence of technology committees is low.

Arguments in favor of such a committee are varied. There is less grousing about outdated software and technology if more members of the department understand corporate capabilities and limitations as well as departmental budgets. Further, a committee should be more representative of departmental users than other forms of decision-making. Third, apart from the technology decision-making, a committee can bring together lawyers and others who would not otherwise mix. It distributes the burdens of administration and management. Then too, people may believe that collective decision are better than individual decisions. And, finally, committees give people roles, voice, leadership practice.

The downsides of technology committees include demands for meeting time and sometimes a false sense of involvement. Also, committees can be hijacked by geeks and fanatics. They can create more frustration since there is an apparent means to act, but nothing changes. Also, they can slip into technology for its own sake rather than to cost-effectively improve the productivity of the department. Finally, committees of all stripes can degenerate into conflics and dysfunction.

Two years ago, the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) surveyed its law department members about their technology, including several specialized kinds of software for law departments (See my post of Feb. 15, 2009: three focused applications.). That survey covered 45 respondent law departments; this year’s increased slightly to 54.

For corporate secretary and entity management this year, four departments reported that they use ComputerShare – GEMS while one department each reported using ICSA Blueprint or NetSuite – OneWorld. That set of applications represents a dramatic change from two years before when the results were Secretariat (Bridgeway) – 20 percent of those who responded and World Records (Transcentive) – 5 percent. The results also listed Two Step Software Corporate Focus – 0 percent and “Other” – 27 pecent. I think the remaining 48 percent had no corporate governance software.

ILTA’s 2011 Law Department Technology Survey asked about intellectual property software, but 22 of the 54 respondents had none. Seven others had created an in-house system, which left 25 departments using at least one of ten applications. Those 25 named the system they have installed.

Five each (9%) use Computer Packages (CPI), Thomson Reuters (MDC) IP Manager, or CPA Global Memotech. Four departments (7%) use Thomson Reuters (MDC) IP Master or Dennemeyr DIAMS/DIAMS XE. Three (5%) use Anaqua or CPA Global FoundationIP while one each reported using Lecorpio, RightsLogic, or WebTMS. No one reported using OPSolutions Pattsy, Patrix Patricia, Innovator Enterprise Management System (MindMatters) or ipWorkflow – the last two were identified in the survey two years before. Obviously, the dominant three vendors are Thomson Reuters, CPA Global, and CPI.

From the comparable survey of ILTA two years ago a somewhat different set resulted (See my post of Feb. 15, 2009: 45 respondents reported on three classes of specialized software.) : “IPMaster (MDC) – 14%; Patent Management System (CPI) – 11%; Memotech/FoundationIP (CPA) – 9%; Anaqua (5%); ipWorkflow and Pattsy (OPSolutions), and Innovator Enterprise Management System (MindMatters) – 0%. Along with these seven, “Other” garnered 14%, which probably included custom packages, and “None” 48%.” Not much movement in this niche, at least according to this small sample.

As part of my series, here are the comments of Rob Thomas, for years the voice and pen of Serengeti: “Serengeti was founded in 2001 with ten employees. It arose from the ashes of ELF Technologies, a legal website company that failed for lack of funding in the aftermath of the Dotcom Bubble in 2000. ELF had developed Serengeti Tracker and gained about a dozen users, all of which were enthusiastic supporters. Ten of us decided to buy the company assets out of foreclosure, kept Serengeti going, added new features, and quickly ramped up new customers. Serengeti’s unique offering of both matter management and e-billing in a single online system, its ease of use, and its low cost all helped to fuel our rapid growth. It wasn’t long before Serengeti became the most widely used system for managing legal work in the world. Last year, Thomson Reuters acquired Serengeti to be the heart of its new technology platform for corporate law departments and their law firms.”

“Currently more than 420 law departments manage their legal work through Serengeti. Serengeti currently has over 25,000 individual law department users, and over 125,000 law firm and other vendor users, with an average of more than 3,000 new users joining Serengeti every month. We are particularly proud of the adoption of Serengeti across law departments of different sizes, from law departments with solo GCs working on their own, to some of the world’s largest law departments (e.g., American Express, Capital One, Disney, etc.).”

“A couple of weeks ago we released Serengeti Intelligence — which for the first time aggregates live key performance data across the hundreds of companies and thousands of law firms that work in Serengeti. Serengeti users can now compare their own benchmarks with those of their peers related to spending, budgets, rates, allocation of work, etc.”

ILTA’s 2011 Law Department Technology Survey gathered data in December 2010 on the document management systems used by 54 responding companies. Tops was Autonomy iManage/Interwoven with 15 users (27% of the DMS users), followed by Microsoft Sharepoint (14 users). The remaining five systems were OpenText Livelink/Hummingbird, EMC Documentum, IBM Lotus Notes, FileNet, and Worldox.

Two years before, the same survey attracted 45 respondents and ranked document management systems among the 22 of them who used such systems (See my post of Feb. 13, 2009: ILTA corporate technology survey.). It offered the same seven vendors, albeit with somewhat different names than the recent survey. The DMS’s mentioned back then, with absolute numbers and percentages of the respondent base) were:

Open Text DocsOpen/DB (7, 30%)

A survey was conducted of UK and global companies that polled their general counsel and company secretaries. A detailed report of the survey’s findings involving board-level information can be found at:the Accelus website of ThomsonReuters.

One finding was that the average corporation surveyed prepares and disseminates nearly 6,000 pages of sensitive material to their board every year, with some companies producing more than 200 board packs per year.” If a Board has 10 members and meets five times a year, then 100 pages per meeting per member actually sounds modest.

A second finding concerned frequencies of how material is shared with board members:

The Walt Disney Company’s law department has some 350 lawyers companywide. To help keep them all part of the same kingdom, a “couple of years ago, the legal department began having global videoconferences three or four times a year to discuss influential changes in the business, such as emerging technologies.” This quote comes from SuperLawyers, Bus. Ed. 2011 at 18, and its article about Alan Braverman, the veteran general counsel of Disney. As I have written teleconferencing will become the handmaiden of globally distributed lawyers (See my post of June 8, 2011: videoconferences internal to law departments.). Note also that the video updates focus on the company’s operations, not substantive legal developments.

The article also states that Braverman “told his lawyers it’s imperative that each has and plays with a PDA or table computer.” The article does not say what hardware qualifies, since a Blackberry is a PDA nor whether the legal department pays for the device. But I commend the progressive view: these technologies and associated software will grow and glow in the near future (See my post of Oct. 10, 2011: apps and tablets in the future.).

Law Technology News, Oct. 2011 at 38, recounts a painful story of a large pharmaceutical company that needed to track and allocate legal costs to business units, products, or cost centers. Also, according to the author, Kenneth Jones of Xerdict Group, the general counsel’s office needed to break out legal costs by different types of litigation or transactional work.

Their solution? Add special codes for invoices processed through the corporate financial system in the invoice payment module. The codes can go more than one level and they allow the reporting of spend by the different reporting categories needed. Much training and testing was called for.

My question: why did this law department go through all the agitation to jerry-rig something in accounts payable rather than license its own matter management system? Why customize and contort the enterprise-wide accounts payable system to satisfy the legal department’s peculiar need when store-bought solutions are at hand? Perhaps the consultants or internal IT had their own agendas?

Law Technology News, Oct. 2011 at 19, says that “SAP and Tata Consulting Services now have an iPad application for their jointly developed Legal Management System.”

That pregnant sentence tells us at least four possible developments (1) SAP, one of the giants in ERP systems, has put its toe in the waters of matter management (See my post of Feb. 24, 2011: Hyperion prediction that major software companies will enter the legal department market.). (2) A powerhouse global consulting group has pushed further into law department automation (See my post of July 27, 2011: entrance to in-house technology market of global behemoths.). (3) Apps specifically for in-house counsel have appeared (See my post of Sept. 26, 2011: mobile apps.). (4) Tablet computers, prominently iPads, will become preferred hardware for in-house lawyers, even if not fully supported by corporate IT (See my post of Nov. 22, 2010: bring your own personal software to work.).

One of the general counsel interviewed by Law Technology News, Oct. 2011 at 18, praised videoconferencing with outside counsel. Glenn Weinstein of iRobot uses hardware and software from Logitech Vid and is “encouraging all of our outside counsel to get on the system.”

It sounds like this capability operates from conference rooms but it could also mean from individual offices. I refer to the former as teleconferencing and the latter as individual video-cams or webcams (See my post of Feb. 15, 2010: brief comment on not having seen these in law departments.), but that may be an idiosyncratic definition (See my post of June 8, 2011: videoconference with 7 references.). Either way, Weinstein’s experience and expectations will certainly become more common among in-house counsel.