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Here is the latest backgrounder on a leading matter management system’s founder, Joe Bookman of CompInfo (currently the CEO of PinHawk).

“CompInfo was incorporated in 1978. Yiorgos Athanassatos and I, along with other early CompInfo people, had worked for CBS News Elections and Surveys. We were part of a small group responsible for the Election Night computer system and we started out with large system consulting projects.

Our first law office project came in 1980 when Skadden Arps asked us to develop an accounting system to help them run the firm. We exchanged lower consulting rates for the right to license the resulting software, and LawPack for Law Firms was born. The idea of running a law firm like a large business was unique at the time. The system gained lots of attention, mostly as a curiosity. Eventually, the system was implemented in 11 of the 50 largest law firms in the U.S.

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Many blogs and websites have directed readers here and I have thank over a hundred of them in previous posts (See my post of Nov. 15, 2009: history of this series; Jan. 4, 2010: seventh set; May 28, 2010: eighth set; and Jan. 18, 2011: ninth set of referral sites.). Here are 14 more of recent vintage and current appreciation.

  1. Acritas (Lisa Hart)
  2. AMS Legal Solutions (Larry Bridgestone)
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A profile in Asia-MENA Counsel, Vol. 9, Issue 7 at 40, describes the role of the Group General Counsel of ANZ Bank, the third largest in Australia. The role requires Bob Santamaria to report to and interact on a daily basis with three of the bank’s most senior stakeholders, the CFO, Chairman, and CEO. Yet although Santamaria has daily dealings with the CEO, the in-house function ultimately enjoys an autonomy that, in the words of the article, “some general counsel may only dream of.”

Santamaria explains that “I am appointed and can only be removed by the Board,” referring to the Board’s ability to ensure a sufficient level of independence from management. In other words, the CEO cannot unilaterally fire the general counsel. This reporting line and its protection for the general counsel is an unusual arrangement from my experience. In fact, if I were a general counsel at odds with my CEO, I would find little solace in the “protection” of the Board.

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One question on a recent Mitratch survey regarding law department technology asked respondents “Do you currently invest in” and listed six classes of law department software. In order of declining percentages, the responses checked off by respondents were matter management systems (72% said they were invested in it), e-billing (52%), governance, risk and compliance (41%), e-discovery (41%), contract management (37%), and entity management (25%).

What seems noteworthy to me from this prioritization finding is the governance, risk and compliance showing. If that class includes online training software for the likes of FCPA, discrimination, antitrust and other common concerns, I can understand the relatively high ranking. In fact, most large corporations have some required training modules. Other than those applications, however, I am at a loss for what kinds of software applications the respondents might have invested in.

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It turns out that it may not be at all clear that prospects of change in regulations deter companies from proceeding with their initiatives. Here is how the Economist, Oct. 29, 2011 at 88, summarizes a recent article by a senior Treasury official: “She found no evidence that regulatory uncertainty is holding businesses back from hiring or investment.”

If the unsettled regulatory environment makes no difference to companies, it becomes harder to claim, without empirical support, that the same environment burdens law departments with significant and complex workloads. In the financial industry, everyone assumes, regulatory demands have soared, and perhaps in healthcare. But for large portions of U.S. industry, perhaps the desk-crushing load from governmental rule-making is less than touted (See my post of Aug. 3, 2010: Sox with 19 references and March 28, 2011: costs of regulation and value of law department with 7 references.).

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“We’re not buying pencils!” the implication being that Procurement may know how to buy trivial objects by bullying fungible providers, but sophisticated legal brains far overmatch their petty purview.

“Costs matter less than quality and results!” Procurement wants cheap; law wants brilliance and victory, and the twain can ne’er o’erlap.

“They aren’t lawyers!” so how could they possible understand the subtle mysteries of the Most Great and Noble Profession.

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Yesterday, Vista Equity Partners (Vista), a private equity firm with some $6 billion in investments, acquired Mitratech, one of the leading providers of software for law department matter management, e-billing, as well as governance, risk and compliance. The press release says that the capital and management experience of Vista will bring added stability and operational expertise to Mitratech, which has been providing software solutions to legal departments for 24 years.

As part of the acquisition, Eric Thurston will become the new President, replacing Afshin Behnia, who has served as Mitratech’s President and CEO since 2004.

I have no profound insights regarding this major shift in the field of cost control software for inside-counsel. It will take months, even years, to assess the tradeoffs and consequences from the acquisition. On the one hand a family-owned company with years of laser-like focus on a niche market; on the other hand, access to capital, broader managerial experience, and a different level of business discipline. This change in ownership may presage others in the specialized industry (See my post of Nov. 27, 2010: Thomson Reuters acquired Serengeti; and July 27, 2011: major international players have entered the niche, legal department software market.).

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Stephen Nagin, Of Counsel, at Peretz, Chesal & Herrmann, in Miami, Florida, sent this after my post about unbundled, limited services by lawyers.

“The ABA model Code of Professional Responsibility never was crafted to deal with unbundling in a comprehensive manner. It protects the guild from unsupervised paraprofessionals. It does not, however, specify the quantum of supervision necessary; whether that supervision can be undertaken by an outsourced provider rather than by the lawyer who will use the work-product, etc.

Consequently, numerous ethical issues can arise. Those issues may deter some legal departments from embracing robust, efficiency-producing unbundling. The concept of productive efficiency — which is not coterminous with allocative efficiency — is not a concept law departments necessarily understand. Allocative Efficiency is achieved when resources are used to produce legal services that clients want; technological advances that increase utility or functionality improves allocative efficiency. By contrast, Productive Efficiency is achieved when least costly techniques are used to produce legal services; process innovations that lower the cost of producing and providing a service improve productive efficiency. Consequently, unbundling or outsourcing tends to yield greater productive efficiency.

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The pace of participation has picked up and there is a decent chance that this year’s final report will embrace 1,000 departments. As of today, there were 600. They reported more than 26,000 lawyers, $13.5 billion of legal spend, and $43 trillion of revenue. In addition to 22 basic industries, by the way, the December report will include at least four segments of industries: automotive suppliers, national laboratories, manufacturers who belong to MAPI, and semiconductor companies. More industry segments will appear if there are at least six companies and they will get quartiles and means as greater detail in the report.

This year the report tilts a bit more than last year to English-speaking countries, but still with 155 from Europe. The data on matter management system vendors has enriched steadily and will form the basis of an innovative analytic report late this year to be sent to all participants.

Learn from the thousand. No cost to submit data or get the 75-page PDF report in December. Click for the quick, secure survey and enter your six staffing and spending figures.

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The International Legal Technology Organization (ILTSO), founded in early 2011 by a group of people involved in legal technology and law, has published guidelines for best practices and standards for all aspects of law firms’ technology needs. From my quick glance through them, they look meaty. The rest of the website suggests very little other activity, however, because several parts are under still construction.

None of the board members are in-house lawyers or with service providers primarily to legal departments so the initiative appears to be limited to law firms. Still, it is good for this to be underway, and to be applauded even more if it extends to the in-house community’s technology.