All posts by Jason

General Legal IT, Legal

Lawyers need to understand the web and media (aka web 2.0 and new media)

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Did you see the #trafigura storm on twitter yesterday? It was down to the “Guardian gagged” story in the press (Go over the editors blog post for a good synopsis of what went on or if you want a shorter version take a look at Peninsulawyer’s post)

Now I’m not going to get into political commentary (if you want to read the political blogosphere’s take on the story try Iain Dale or Guido Fawkes blogs) or touch on the legal ramifications, I wanted to do a quick post on it from a Legal IT point of view.

In fact one twitter post stood out for me yesterday and this kind of sums up my thoughts:

The Carter-Ruck/Guardian/Trafigura press censorship story is classic example of what happens when old time lawyers meet Web 2.0 media

It’s not about actually using web 2.0. I really don’t believe that every lawyer should have a blog, be on facebook or linked in, update twitter, use instant messaging (IM). To me these are all just tools, just as the old telephone is. In fact think about it, you wouldn’t evangelise about the telephone and how everyone really must use it would you? People either use it or they don’t. The key point is that they know what it is and what it is useful for (and as important what it’s useless for).

The same goes with blogs, micro blogs, wikis, social networking, IM etc. Lawyers need to know what it is, how it is used and how it is now mainstream (don’t believe me? Read “Youth can’t live without web” and “Finland makes broadband legal right“). If they choose to use it great, but it doesn’t matter as long as they know and understand what it is.

And this is where I believe Legal IT departments can help.

I remember, back in the late 90’s when the Internet was still fairly new, doing a series of presentations with a colleague around our firms UK offices. The aim was to talk to lawyers about the technology behind the web. This was mainly for technology and media lawyers, but it was giving them an insight into the technologies that their clients would be talking about. This is what law firm IT people need to be doing now. Not necessarily advocating they use it, but talking to lawyers and helping them to understand the web 2.0 technologies, how they are used and in this case how it is impossible to “gag” a story anymore (the “Streisand effect”).

Final thought, the term “web 2.0” or “new media”. Is it me or does this seem really dated? Surely it’s just “web” and “media” now?

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General IT, Tips & Tricks

Run! She’s gonna blow! – Top 5 tips for controlling your inbox.

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You may be interested in a BBC TV program on tomorrow evening (5th October ‘09), “email is ruining my life” on BBC4 at 9:30pm.

Libby Potter investigates whether e-mail helps or hinders workplace performance, and shows how to control it rather than letting it control us.

Is your inbox out of control? Is your day managed through reaction to the next email received? Do you wish you could come back from holiday to less than ten emails?

Who said No? Can I please swap places with you?

I totally agree with the BBC programs synopsis, email is out of control. There’s far too much about. But you can’t just sit and complain, you really need to keep on top of it. Especially if you use Outlook and Exchange (if you’re using the former at work, you’re probably using the later also).

Why?

Firstly large numbers on items in your inbox, calendars etc = POOR performance.**

I usually recommend no more than about 2500 – 5000 messages in any of the critical path folders.  The critical path folders are the Calendar, Contacts, Inbox, and Sent Item folder. Ideally, keep the Inbox, Contacts and Calendar to 1000 or less. This from a blog post on The Microsoft Exchange Team blog.

Secondly, if you’re a lawyer then you really should be looking after the electronic file in the same way you do a paper file. Keeping an organised inbox can help with this.

So here’s my top 5 tips on how to tackle the ever increasing deluge of email:

  1. Deal with it immediately. If the email is a simple question or can be dealt with in <5secs then do it, then immediately delete or file it. For anything else move to step 2!
  2. Use sub folders and file incoming email immediately. Create sub folders for matters, projects or non matter groupings. Then file the incoming email on receipt. You can always use an Outlook search to read unread emails across all these sub folders. This way you keep your inbox item count low.
  3. Get into the habit of cleaning out your calendar regularly. Either go into your calendar and delete old items once a month or create an “Archive Calendar” and move your old appointments into it (that is if you really want to refer to what you were doing on 7th September 2004!)
  4. Get rid of junk mail. You may be lucky and be in a firm that uses a good spam filter already (if not take a look around at the personal spam filters available – I quite like SpamFighter). But in addition unsubscribe from all those vendor emails, news lists etc emails to cut down the noise coming into your inbox.
  5. Finally, Archive! Get rid of large volumes of old email by archiving it. If your firm has a document management system that you can file emails to, then file them (if you’ve used step 2 this should be easier). Your firm may also have an enterprise archiving tool, get your emails in that and out of your inbox! If neither of these, then simply archive to a PST (then burn the PST to DVD and remember, only attach it to Outlook when required!).

If you’ve got any other killer tips for keeping the email volume down, then put them in the comments.

And finally, take a look at this YouTube video that introduces Google Wave. Google Wave is Google’s attempt to look at email/electronic communication from a fresh perspective.  Maybe one day email will be truly a thing of the past!

** this point is for Exchange 2003, which is still the most widespread version in corporate IT

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General IT, General Legal IT

No, no, no! Who asked for that?

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I was reading an article yesterday, from an interview with Steve Balmer. It was about Microsoft’s direction and its competitors (in particular FireFox, Google and Linux). One comment stood out:

Yeah, we’re right now about 74 percent overall with the browser market, roughly speaking. But we’re having to compete like heck with IE 8, with great new features.

This to me showed how “off the ball” Microsoft are!

Now before I go on let me say the following. I hate seeing Micro$oft. I am not an Apple or Linux fanboy, in fact I would go as far to say I really don’t care of MacOS that much. Yes I really like the iPhone interface, but would never buy one thanks to having to have iTunes to activate the thing. So I use a Windows Mobile device. I’ve used Ubuntu and think it’s alright, but actually I honestly prefer Windows. I love the xbox. So I’m not Microsoft bashing here.

There now I’ve said that, back to the quote. In particular this sentence “But we’re having to compete like heck with IE 8, with great new features.”

My response as per the title, no, no, no, who asked for that? I don’t want more features, in fact I want less. I want my browser to be small and very fast and just let me browse. If IE8 had come out and was barebones fast as you like, I would probably have switched back from FireFox!

This got me thinking about lawyers and legal software and the same applies. Just give them the features they require. Make the next release of the Document Management System, the CRM system, the finance system, the template management system, the digital dictation system leaner.

Take Word or any Word Processor. How much functionality does the average lawyer need? Most law firms will also have multiple add ins to provide more functionality. The integration with the add ins should be slicker and removing of the unnecessary proprietary options easier.

Most people want to get on with the task in hand, the software should help that both quickly and easily. So with the browser, it should help me browse, end of! The DMS should help be file and retrieve my documents. Outlook should let me manage my email. etc etc 

So no more new features please unless it’s going to make the task I’m using the software for easier and faster!

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General Legal IT

Dictation – Dying out or recession buster?

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Some recent experiences got me thinking about dictation and whether it was either a dying art or whether it was a crucial technology to help firms beat costs? First the list the things that gave thought to the fact that dictation is dying out:

  • Comments from lawyers on the differences in the generations. This was actually a discussion on the quality of the dictations, in that the younger lawyers were “embarrassed about their own voices” and dictated more quietly. This made me think that this behaviour may be leading to the next generation of lawyers actually being happier typing up the draft themselves rather than dictating it.
  • Also there does seem to be a number of lawyers now that don’t dictate at all. Again is it easier for them to type up drafts themselves?

But then with digital dictation, especially when the system allows for workflow, I thought there would be a number of added benefits:

  • Devices can be used more effectively for just relaying instructions in addition to dictating documents. Using tools like BlackBerry clients or standard phone lines to route these instructions quickly to secretaries makes this much easier. 
  • Workflow systems generally can make more efficient use of secretaries and document production units, this can be used to smooth peaks and troughs across secretaries (in some cases I guess it can also facilitate use of external companies, as I presume Eversheds recent deal will utilise such technology).

So will dictation die out or take off?

Well I think analogue dictation will die, the days of the tape surely are numbered! But I don’t think digital dictation will die out. Sure there may be some lawyers who can type up short documents as fast as they could dictate them, but for others and for all but the short documents dictation will be faster.

Also with the added benefits workflow brings it will still be beneficial. Given that, in this year especially, the lawyer-to-secretary staffing ratio has increased, the ability to spread the load using workflow will be a big benefit once the growth returns.

The panacea and key technology to secure the future of dictation is of course speech recognition, as it has been ever since I moved into Legal IT. But this is still a long way off in my opinion!

This article over on “The Greatest American Lawyer” that I found after writing this blog post has a good bullet point list of advantages of digital dictation and is worth a read.

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General Legal IT

The electronic file myth

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The title of this post could easily be the paperless office myth. The promise of multiple software vendors that they are the answer to eradicating paper and ensuring everything is electronic.

It’s the unachievable goal!

I’ve posted a lot about managing emails recently and just before I left my vacation I had a great phone call with a partner. The phone call was about the electronic file and how current systems didn’t cut it. I’ve mulled this over for a week or so and realised it’s just not possible to eradicate the paper!

One part of the conversation summed it up for me. It was when the partner was talking about preparing for a call with the client, picking up the lever arch folder with the correspondence in and flicking through recent discussions with the client on the matter. Doing this in the electronic file was a pain, and I’m sure from this simple scenario you can see why.

And this wasn’t the grumblings of a few non-tech savvy old partners, this mainly came from the younger lawyers who have grown up with technology.

Underneath it’s the same conundrum as eBooks. Paper books are just, well, easier. You can flick about, scan pages easily, stick post-its on pages, write in margins etc.

We talked briefly of options available (one of which has been aired at numerous Autonomy iManage WorkSite user groups – that of the blue arrows to navigate backwards and forwards through open emails in a folder, why isn’t it available in WorkSite as in Outlook?). But afterwards I concluded that non of these will truly solve the problem.

That is not solve it yet!

In the world of eBooks things are slowly starting to change. Specifically designed devices like Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader are starting to offer a real alternative to paper books.

Also better user interfaces are appearing like Microsoft’s Surface, where you can move documents around the “surface” like you would paper on a desk.

Microsoft Surface

Yes I know it’s all a bit Tomorrow’s World, a little bit of future gazing. But imagine if your desk was a “surface” type device and you had a handheld tablet device (like a Kindle). These were linked to the firms document/email management system seamlessly. The desk would also recognise your “eBook device”, so you could simply push electronic documents around your desk, identify the ones you wanted to read and then push them onto your “eBook device”. Then you can simply pick up your “eBook device”, read through, bookmark and make notes.

It’s then and only then can I see a paperless office!

Until that time it needs to be a case of not focussing on the storage capacity of our SAN’s, the disaster recovery solutions, the global access issues, the information security requirements etc etc (still important yes, but not #1). No, we should be refocusing on making it easier for the lawyer to file and handle the electronic versions of their email and documents, in as logical and easy way as the current technology will allow.

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General Legal IT, Technical

Looking after those WorkSite links

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Last week I had a webex with Paul O’Connor from GrantSelect, Paul’s an ex Autonomy iManage employee and was demoing a new product GrantSelect have developed for WorkSite.

There are three main areas to the product:

Sending WorkSite Documents/Links

This I think is the neatest area and is a very simple (from a user perspective, not for one minute suggesting technically it’s simple!) solution to a classic WorkSite problem.

For those that use WorkSite, do you default your “Attach worksite document” as an NRL link or as a Copy of the document? If it’s set to the former you risk sending your clients useless NRLs, but if the later you could clog up your inboxes internally with large attachments (and lose all your version control as people use the copy in the Inbox rather than the latest copy in the document management system).

The GrantSelect solution is a service that sorts this out. You can set WorkSite to always send an NRL link, if it’s internal then great! People get the small link and all the version control, security etc WorkSite brings. If it’s external then the GrantSelect product swaps out the link for an actual copy! Thus your client gets a useful document.

It’s a simple yet effective solution to a simple but annoying problem. My only question is will it be cheap enough? It’s one of those problems that probably can’t justify a high priced solution.

Receiving documents in emails as attachments

Next part of the product is for incoming emails, specifically those with attachments. The email is processed before the inbox and the documents are replaced with NRL links, the documents are then filed in a secure workspace (I think Paul said they are secured to the email recipients, but can’t be 100%).

If you subsequently file the email from your inbox into WorkSite, the documents are also refiled to the same workspace (for example, alongside the email in the client matter workspace).

This one I wasn’t too sure about and after a few chats I got similar feedback. Which is although the storage saving and single version controlled instance of the attachment is very nice, you’re ultimately messing with the email. We couldn’t help thinking that fee earners won’t appreciate their email not being as it was sent from the client.

I would love to hear other people’s comments on this one:

What do you think about the whole "email as a record" question?

Do you think people in general will get it?

Working remotely (without WorkSite for BlackBerry!)

This one’s another nice simple idea, especially for those Blackberry or Outlook Web Access (OWA) users without access to the document management system.

Basically it allows you send an email to a "Doc Request" email address, be it either an NRL or just a document number. The product will then email you back a copy of the document for you to access either through your BlackBerry or OWA.

Again like “Sending WorkSite Documents/Links” it’s  a simple solution to a common problem (especially if you started defaulting all your internal links as NRLs!).

Paul also mentioned that they were considering this for InterAction, so you could email in a contact and receive details of that contact in return.

 

Overall I think these are very nice simple solutions to common problems (they’re not major WorkSite issues, but niggles that crop up time and time again). The key to these products will be cost and scalability. I can’t see people wanting to spend huge amounts on these problems (especially at the moment), but at a reasonable cost they could form part of a usability and email management solution. The scalability due to the volumes of emails medium/large law firms will receive.

There is also the benefit of reduced storage space (which for email could be considered a major issue due to the exponential growth of the stuff!) and keeping the multiple copies of emails with links to single instances of the documents will facilitate this, but as I’ve mentioned I’m not sure about the ramifications of this email “alteration”? Also this area will need some hard case study evidence as to the cost benefit.

The full name of the product is GS Link Warden for Worksite and there’s more information over on the Grant Select website (http://www.grantselect.co.uk/products/products.htm)

One final thing that I thought was in relation to my recent posts on email management. That is with WorkSite 8.5 on the horizon, Zantaz EAS (or other email archiving) and Exchange already in use, it’s a lot to think about tying all these technologies together into something that in the end makes file management (especially of emails) easier for the fee earner. I mean the fee earner doesn’t care about IT storage issues, they want their electronic file to be as easy to browse, read and manipulate as the paper one was/is!

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General Legal IT

Following the Pareto principle (aka the 80/20 rule)

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An experience over these last few weeks reminded me of the 80/20 rule or the Pareto principle. In software development this is the observation that the first 80% of requirements are easy, the remaining 20% are difficult. And most importantly it’s usually the important requirements, the ones that realise the most benefits that are in your 80% (as you usually focus on the key requirements first).

As a number of software companies understand, once you’ve got your 80% then deploy the software. Yes, we all would like things 100% perfect. But there comes a time in building software that the extra effort to realise that last 20% is just not cost effective. In fact you may be totally wasting your time on working on requirements that are simply not that important or worse completely irrelevant.

8020.jpg

There is of course a risk that you may have an important requirement in the final 20% of requirements. But you could put a lot of effort into those last 20%, significantly delaying the completion of a project, and find none of them were that important.

If you deploy at 80% you get most of the important requirements out there available to the end user faster and you are more likely to identify the remaining important requirements quickly afterwards. You deliver to your customer and can see in the field which remaining requirements are important, de-scoping the rest (and thus reducing the length of your project).

Another great example of the 80/20 rule that I think is relevant to law firm IT departments (or any IT department) is one that I found in Tim Ferriss’ book “The 4-Hour workweek”. That is to fire the 20% of customers who take up the majority of one’s time and cause most trouble.

Now I don’t recommend firing or ignoring the 20% of your customers in the law firm that are the most troublesome! But rather you do not allow your time to be totally taken up by looking after this 20%, rather focus your efforts on the 80% who are as important but perhaps not as vocal in their complaints!

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General Legal IT

Found my document, can I open the workspace in iManage WorkSite?

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This week we got a suggestion from a fee earner in one of our offices for improving WorkSite. It was a simple request and once I’d thought about it fairly obvious omission from the functionality.

It was a comment that came from a document search and from there you can see where the document is located. The query was once you knew where the document was located from the Where Filed/Where Used dialogue, whether there could be an enhancement to allow you to access the workspace from here?

Where Filed/Where Used dialogue

I can see how this could be a requirement. A colleague passes you a document and asks you for advice and mentions there are comments from the client in the emails folder of the workspace.

Yes, you could look at the document properties, then note the client and matter number, then search for the workspace, check it is the same workspace as you saw on the Where Filed/Where Used and then add the workspace to your your My Workspaces/My Files. But that’s quite a few clicks!

Or an option could be added onto the Where Filed/Where Used dialogue to allow you to add the workspace to My Workspaces/My Files. I can’t see how you could access the workspace direct from there, but a shortcut to the workspace seems feasible.

So I thought I’d put it out there in the hope Autonomy see this, if you use WorkSite and think this would be a good addition could you mention it in the comments of this post?

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General Legal IT

Give them a bigHand!

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Sorry, I know that’s a terrible pun!

A warning, this is a bit of a techie post. So for the non-IT readers of the blog, a summary of the post:  “if more vendors/suppliers did what bigHand do in their software design your IT department could upgrade software or change the settings for you much faster!”

On with the post…

As firms grow in size there are a number of IT challenges that can become more and more difficult due to the additional numbers. One of these challenges is those “small” upgrades to get to the latest version that seem to lengthen exponentially with the number of extra desktop PC’s supported. This also goes for changing the configuration or settings of those software applications. Especially when you want to alter a setting that is located locally on the PC (for example, iManage FileSite holds a lot of it’s client settings/configuration in the local PC registry, whereas with Workshare it’s in an XML file on the PC).

bigHand though seem to have a different approach.

At the moment we’re looking at an upgrade of our bigHand digital dictation installation to v3.2.3 and because of this I spent Tuesday on a technical training course for the new version. During the course we went through the client configuration.

And in bigHand for the most part these can be set using roles in the central database. This means they’re very simple to change instantly and also means you can simply manage different configurations for different people. All this can be done without the need to deploy patches, upgrades or do any amendments on the desktop PC.

Other settings for things like drivers to use for microphones can be managed using group policy using the bigHand provided administrative template file (.adm files). Again no mucking about on the desktop PC.

Simple and brilliant!

So if you need to disable a menu option for all the users? Simple! Just amend the role and apply once centrally! This makes upgrades easier as well as your client deployment can be a simple default install without the need to heavily customise for all those specific settings (especially if you have one configuration for fee earners, one for secretaries, one for support staff etc etc).

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General Legal IT

Sent Items – current bane of email management

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Here’s a problem for you all, let’s see if this blog post can generate some comments on possible solutions.

Lawyers travel a lot, whether they’re in a regional firm or a global firm they will travel and they will want to use IT whilst they travel (especially email). Now although we are in a WiFi world the hotspots aren’t always accessible or cheap and so offline or limited connection is still the norm away from the office.

The problem I’m building up to is caused when you want to file email in a matter centric way within a document management system (DMS). I’m sure the ideal for most lawyers is to maintain a full electronic file using the DMS just as they’d maintain a full and proper paper file. But the electronic file is usually the current file too and thus they want to have access to these emails when away from the office (the same as historically they would have carried a pile of papers in a briefcase).

As a lawyer in the office, from an Autonomy iManage point of view using WorkSite, I can maintain the electronic file for all my documents. But the answer for out of office access is either by using their OffSite product or by using the WorkSite for BlackBerry product. Both an expense, did I say I also didn’t want to spent a lot of money solving this problem?

Now with WorkSite 8.5 the new synchronised folders within the Outlook Inbox is fantastic, I can keep all my emails in Outlook/Exchange (which is running in cache mode so all my emails are on my laptop offline or available in the Blackberry) and I know that they are being filed/synchronised into WorkSite. Thus at the end of the matter I can remove the folder in Outlook with confidence that the emails are on the electronic file.

Perfect!

Now here’s the problem. Sent items! What do I do with them?

Filing them has always been difficult, products like Send and File help with this by suggesting filing locations as I send the email. However if I move the email on Send and File then I can’t refer to the emails out of the office? But I can’t copy as I want the ability to keep my Sent Items clean like my Inbox, removing emails I’ve finished with!

An ideal would be for Send and File to move the email into the synchronised sub folder in my Inbox, that way it’s filed, available offline and out of my Sent Items. But I’ve checked with Autonomy, it doesn’t do this!

So there it is. How do I keep my Sent Items clean and tidy, have access to my emails through Outlook cached mode and ensure filing in the electronic matter?

Comments very much appreciated!

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