Law Department Management Blog
Every manner of software is used by some law department, somewhere. Much of that software has company-wide application, such as word processing, document management, spreadsheets and e-mail, not to mention all the operating system and network products, and offers nothing unique to law departments.
A handful of applications, however, run only or principally for the benefit of law departments (See my post of Jan. 25, 2007 on GM and nine applications.). What might be considered law-department specific includes software for board portals, corporate secretary and subsidiaries, e-billing, EDGAR filings, litigation support, matter management, options tracking, and patent and trademark databases.
This blog has commented on all these genre (See my posts of Jan. 25, 2007 on board portal software; Feb. 15, 2007 on corporate secretary packages; Aug. 21, 2005 on e-billing and matter management systems; Jan. 4, 2005 on the spreading acceptance of e-billing, March 21, 2007 on law firm vexations, and March 6, 2007 on the modest penetration of e-billing into law departments; Jan. 24, 2006 on EDGAR filings; Sept. 10, 2005 on costs of litigation support software, Feb. 23, 2006 on patents for such software, and Feb. 9, 2006 on the profusion of lit support vendors; Sept. 5, 2005 on myths of matter management software; Jan. 24, 2006 on options valuation and tracking; as well as Feb. 4, 2007 on Honeywell and its patent and trademark databases.).
Midway between generic software and law-department specific software are a few other packages. Extranets, file room software, and document assembly packages are found commonly with law departments but are not exclusive to those sites.