From a PDF-flyer:

“American Legal Technology Insider – a new publication focusing on the large firms sector of the US and Canadian legal IT industry. From the same publishing company as the UK’s market leading newsletter Legal Technology Insider and The Orange Rag breaking news blog, and edited by the Insider’s award winning lawyer-turned editor Charles Christian, American Legal Technology Insider (or ALTi) will follow the UK newsletter’s formula of treating vendor and industry news as real news. Concentrating on the large firms market, along with news stories on who is buying what, the latest trends and developments in legal technology, staff appointments and moves, and vendor corporate news, regular features of American Legal Technology Insider will include: a guest thought leader/opinion piece by a vendor, consultant or law firm IT director; a round-up of the biggest deals of the month; a front page slot covering the product launch of the month; plus ‘up and running’ – an implementation or upgrade case study; and previews and reviews of all the major North American legal IT events.”

To receive this new publication, send e-mail to altisubs at legaltechnology dot com or visit http://www.americanlegaltechnologyinsider.com/ (this will go live on or around 7 August 2008, when the first issue launches; for now, this URL points to the Orange Rag blog).

Much as I am a friend and fan of Law Tech News, I think it will be good for the US legal technology market to have a competing publication.

Client-facing typically has meant extranets, document creation software, or content-rich systems, including online legal services. While new instances of these come to market periodically, innovation is now rare and existing systems no longer serve as a marketing differentiator.

Consider instead the idea of client service systems. With this broader view, law firms can take a different and better direction, one not bound by content.

PeopleFinder illustrates the way. A recent College of Law Practice Management blog post, InnovAction Award Entry by Mallesons Stephen Jaques describes the system. [Note that Malleson’s won a InnovAction Award in 2007 for its TalentNet, mentioned in some of my prior blog postst.] According to the blog post, provided by Mallesons in its award entry, PeopleFinder

“has resulted in over 10,000 more calls each month being answered by a person rather than voicemail…. an initiative designed to lift client service and promote Mallesons’ high standing in the Australasian professional services market.”

PeopleFinder enhances client service by integrating multiple internal information sources to determine lawyer and staff availability and location. The goal is to direct incoming client calls to the lawyer or staff person best able to respond on the spot, while the client is still on the phone. This speeds client service and avoids phone tag and the resulting client frustration.

PeopleFinder, available on the firm’s Intranet, indicates the status of each person, for example, Available, Busy, Out of Office, or On Leave. Users can set their status but absent intervention, the system infers it by evaluating Outlook calendars, instant messaging (IM) activity, BlackBerry usage, keyboard activity, and VOIP status. PeopleFinder does not reveal confidential calendar information such as the details of a meeting - it only conveys available times.

The system helps users connect to the right person, offering choices such as automatically dial an office or mobile phone, initiate IM, or send a text message. PeopleFinder also revives the useful Camp On feature of older central phone switches. If a phone line is engaged (busy), you can be notified and connected automatically when the line opens. Additional features help users deal with time zones, determine when someone will next be available, find a colleague’s office with a dynamically generated floor plan, and identify others working on a file (matter).

PeopleFinder reflects several conceptual and technical innovations:

• A coherent vision of and broad buy-in to improving how quickly the firm responds to clients
• Recognition that existing data can be collected and analyzed to find people and determine their status
• Integration of multiple back-end systems such as Cisco CallManager, MS Exchange, MS Active Directory, PeopleSoft, Metastorm Workflow, and several databases
• Creation of a Web 2.0 interface that makes usage easy

Now that Mallesons has changed our mind set from client facing to client service, it will be interesting to see if other firms innovate.

[Note: The firm shared information about PeopleFinder with me and I allowed the firm to review this blog post in advance. ]

The Legal Process Outsourcing Chapter of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals today held its second webinar, chaired by Mark Ross of LawScribe (his recent blog post describes the event).

Connie Brenton, Assistant General Counsel for Sun Microsystems, provided an in-depth case study of Sun’s decision to offhsore a large-scale document review project, from the search for the provider through the RFP process and concluding with Sun’s analysis of the projects outcome. High points of her presentation include:

• The drive to reduce cost motivated Sun to look at outsourcing starting in 2005 and to travel to India in 2006 to learn more about providers.
• The first offshore project in 2006 was a contract review. It did not go well but Sun learned many important lessons about how to outsource. {Editorial note: corporations understand that problems are learning opportunities, not failures; law firms find this idea difficult.}
• The second project was much better because Sun provided and required much more training and process guidance. Sun looked beyond the management of LPOs, who are often experienced US-trained lawyers, to assess the skill level and training of Indian lawyers. Sun also provided a project manager and contract templates. {Editorial note: Ms. Brenton did not use these words, but it sounds like first project was classic “lift and shift” outsourcing, which almost always fails, and second was a re-thinking of how to use different resources to do work a better way.}
• Beyond the savings from labor cost arbitrage and process improvement, Sun cut costs even further through a “dynamic bidding event” (DBE), a real-time, web-based process in which providers bid on the work. Total savings of offshoring coupled with DBE were 78% relative to budget. Project was “wildly successful.”
• Sun continues using LPOs. This year, it improved its approach, refining task delegation, pricing, and how it prepared and presented requirements to the LPO. In evaluating vendors this time round, Sun saw that leading LPOs are very flexible and highly sensitive to quality results.
• The company is committed to continue using offshore resources. Sun may insist that is US outside counsel work with offshore providers.

The process Ms. Brenton laid out is a great road map for other law departments that want to outsource.

I hear from friends in multiple BigLaw firms that they face pressure to reduce travel costs. If “necessity is the mother of invention” and there is a “silver lining in every cloud,” then perhaps we will see wider adoption of collaborative technology. Much non-client-billable law firm travel is to attend conferences or visit other firm offices. Many web-based technologies allow teams to collaborate and people to present without anyone leaving their desks.

Relatively old technology includes web conferencing, webinars, and instant messaging (IM). Relatively new includes a host of Web 2.0 systems, from shared applications (e.g., Google Apps or Basecamp), to easy point-to-point video, to social networking (e.g., Facebook, Linkedin, and Legal Onramp).

Law firms looking to reduce travel cost can “kill two birds with one stone” by using the cost cutback as an incentive to cause lawyers and staff to use the web in lieu of travel. Beyond cost savings, this will mean less personal and environmental wear and tear.

PS - I finally broke down this weekend and established a Facebook profile. I can see the promise, but as one of my friends messaged me, “be careful about drinking the Kool Aid.”

The July 2008 American Lawyer, in the “Bar Talk” section, has an article Irony, Thy Name is Guidance sub-titled “Howrey’s EDD provider has EDD problems of its own.” The short article reports that discovery practices of Guidance Software, Inc., makers of popular EDD software EnCase, “have come under attack” for how it produced e-mail in an employment matter.

That an EDD vendor may have its own EDD problems is perhaps newsworthy. But the article opens by asking “Did Howrey bet on the wrong horse when in linked up with electronic data discovery provider Guidance Software, Inc. in May?” Two paragraphs later: “The same month that Guidance announced its alliance with Howrey, an arbitrator in Los Angeles admonished the Pasadena-based company for its discovery practices in an employment suit in which it is a defendant.”

So what? The implication seems that Howrey is somehow at fault. I don’t get it. The magazine, instead of analyzing the business value of Howrey’s alliance with Guidance, implies the firm has chosen poorly. What is the standard of care for a law firm (or any entity for that matter) in choosing products or business partners? Should customers not use a leading product because the company has what may be a minor legal problem?

For the many BigLaw partners I’ve met over the years who believe that American Lawyer has an axe (or two or three) to grind, this article will certainly confirm their views.

Who would have thought that the seeming black and white of the binary world would lead to the moral equivalent of moodiness. And I don’t mean dystopian visions such as HAL in 2001. I mean here and now, on each of our desktops or laps.

Recent personal examples… (1) A fresh MS Outlook 2003 install on a new computer crashed regularly on opening; re-building the Outlook profile did not fix the problem. Four months later, the problem seems to have, by and large, fixed itself. (2) A new Dell computer would not connect to a WiFi access point in the line of sight. Six months later, miraculously, it just connected, with no user intervention. (3) The status bar in MS Word hides itself once a week for no apparent reason. (4) Sprint’s newly installed (and re-installed several times) Mobile Broadband Connect software refuses to work on my PC, the trouble shooting efforts of the highest level tech support notwithstanding.

Mainframes, IBM punch cards, and timesharing were frustrating to use but consistent. Likewise, early PCs. Then came local area networks. Then came the Internet. Then came patches, automatic software updates, and a host of other behind-the-scenes operating system and application activity. With every re-boot creating, in essence, an altered ecosystem, PCs behave more moodily than most people. Applications stop working, then they start. Systems freeze for no apparent reason (or, worse, display the dreaded blue screen of death).

Of course, all this takes a big toll on personal productivity. And it’s led me to say, with a straight face, “My computer is in a bad mood so I’m in a bad mood.” Maybe I need to start saying “I hope my PC’s mood is better tomorrow.”

[Yes, I do use MS Windows. Yes, I know with a Mac or Linux it would be better. And no, those are not viable solutions in most businesses.]

Market data on the number subscribers, and revenue is not available; as far as I know, the best listing of these types of systems is my Online Legal Services list. Anecdotal evidence suggests that online advisory system development crested around 2002 or 2003 and that many firms did not earn the hoped-for return.

We may be seeing another round of investment now; see below for two relatively new services. Here is why I think we may see a resurgence:

The technology cost to create web-based systems has fallen. Hardware, software, and hosting is all much easier and cheaper today than a few years ago.

The lawyer time cost has also fallen. First, law firms invest more in marketing now, both out of pocket expenses and lawyer time. In 2000, the cost of creating an online system seemed enormous. Today, in comparison to other marketing hard and soft costs, the development effort just may not seem as big relative to other initiatives. Second, the growth of knowledge management in many firms coupled with lower cost technical means of accumulating information means that firms are more easily able to “mine” work that they already do for other purposes. That is, firms realize they have a lot of useful information and the marginal cost to re-package it for web-based delivery is not that great.

The explosion of web-resources generally - e.g., Google, newspapers online, Wikipedia, and government statistics - creates subtle market pressures for law firms to keep up.

Here then are two services I came across recently:

MoFo IT Advises: ‘Listen to Your Users’ in Law Tech News (3 July 2008) reports on a new Morrison & Foerster affiliate that offers an online legal service: the “International Privacy Database is a comprehensive, current assessment of the obligations of various privacy and data security requirements and includes in-depth analysis of virtually every privacy law in the world… We created a subsidiary, Summit Privacy Resources, to offer this content via subscription. It was created so that this information could be shared with entities that presently are not clients. Started in April 2007, the system is now in pilot production.”

Construction law made easy by large Australian firm Minter Ellison “is a dedicated online resource for all construction, property and infrastructure industry professionals.”

The MoFo system is by subscription; the Minters one requires free registration. A future post will cover another system I recently came across.

A panel discussion at the Strategic Technology Forum in Lisbon, hosted by LegalWeek in Lisbon last month addressed the question. The panelists were David Coates, IT Director of Bond Pearce and formerly of UBS; Jason Haines, Director of IT, Allen & Overy LLP and formerly of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC); and Malcolm Simms, IT Director, Eversheds LLP and formerly of Disney/ABC Television Group.

The panelists pointed out several differences:

In legal it’s about words; in corporate it’s about numbers. This makes a big difference in how CIOs present business cases to management.

Lawyers resist change, industry embraces it.

Corporate management asks “what’s the business case?” Law firm management asks “what are other firms doing?”

Legal market software suppliers are few; corporate many. A corollary: legal software vendors are less innovative.

Corporations do zero-based budgeting, meaning CIOs have to justify items each year. In law firms, budgeting is a continuous and incremental process without the need to justify each year.

“There is no PowerPoint in law firms.”

All of these resonated with me. One comment on “no PPT in law firms.” I think this difference has a deeper meaning than many may think. Presentations are not just about content; they are about guiding or controlling a conversation. When I started as a manager in a large law firm, I met frequently with the management committee to discuss tech projects. Discussions wandered and were, as a consequence, often unproductive. So I decided to use a presentation as a way to help guide the discussion. The resistance to my doing so was palpable. I wish I had had a chance to pose this hypothesis to the panelists for confirmation or rejection.

Large UK law firm Eversheds recently released its Law Firm of the 21st Century report. I found it provocative and had hoped to comment about it but too much time has elapsed, so let me point you to two good commentaries on it.

Eversheds Brings Us “The Law Firm of the 21st Century” by Adam Smith, Esq., provides both a summary and trenchant comments, including “My take on it is that the changes expected are both more and less radical than we have imagined.”

Ed Poll of Lawbiz.com, a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and legal consultant, posted The Future of the Law Firm - A report prepared for Eversheds law firm at the College’s blog. He offers an excellent analysis and historical perspective on the issues in the report. Poll examines the “disconnect between lawyers and their clients in large corporate enterprises.”

For just the most recent evidence of that “disconnect,” see The Rating Game in the July issue of Inside Counsel (follow link to PDF of article). The disparity between inside and outside counsel views are quite evident.

In my own view, many of the problems the Eversheds report raises and the commentary on it stem from my thesis in my recent “Modest Proposal” posts, that the underlying problem of the legal market is that customers do not exercise their market power.

The New York Times reports in New Flavors for Addresses on the Web Are on the Way (27 June 2008) that the authority regulating Internet domain names, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), has approved custom “top level domains” (TLD). Common TLDs are .com, .edu, .org, .net, and a host of two-letter country codes. Moving forward, at six-figure plus cost, anyone can purchase a custom TLD. So I could purchase .friedmann or a law firm, say Skadden, could buy .Skadden.

The article does mention the confusion this may cause. But think of the branding opportunities…. www.securities.skadden or www.mergers.wachtell. Of course, this extends to e-mail addresses such as smith@energy.sutherland or jones@antitrust.howrey. This type of naming is distinctive and potentially memorable; it could also create style and usage challenges.

Beyond the potential visual appeal of a practice_area.law_firm_name URL, marketers could more easily create customized e-mail addresses for one-time use in tracking inbound inquiries from print or web ads. Of course, this might require some back-end e-mail administration.

And let’s not forget the legal disputes that may well arise over trademarks and name usage. That likely will keep at least a few lawyers busy.