Category Archives: General Legal IT

General IT, General Legal IT, Technical

Smartphones in law firms – which way’s the wind blowing?

1 Comment

Back in September I finished a poll on my site that asked which platform people thought was going to become the leader in law firms. iOS topped that poll which was not surprising from a consumer perspective, but from a costs perspective it was rather surprising given the high device costs AND the higher tariff costs for non-consumer tariffs (particularly in the UK where 50%+ of the traffic for this site comes from).

So since then I’ve been running a poll asking a slightly more specific question, focussing much more on the costs aspect to see if the results matched.

Are you considering as a firm to remain with BlackBerry 7 to control your costs? 

The results were interesting, 20% indicated they were going to stick with BlackBerry 7 devices (either keeping the same handsets or upgrading to the latest/last BB7 device). Only 12% said they were going to go BlackBerry 10, this roughly tallied with the 16% in the previous “Which mobile platform do you think will become the leading platform in law firms?” poll.

Still though I was surprised that 68% said they would go with a different OS, meaning one of iOS, Android or Windows Phone.

I still struggle to grasp how in such a cost sensitive industry like Legal there can be a cost-benefit analysis that justifies iPhones for all, smartphones yes but high end smartphones? It’s an interesting landscape that is going to change dramatically in 2014 I’m sure, but I still think that Windows Phone has a big part to play here. I know of a few large international businesses (outside Legal) that have gone the MS way, will further integration into products like Systems Centre for management of mobiles make this easier for firms? Or will a more consumer own device with business providing SaaS (Software as a Service) facilities be the norm? Time will tell.

 

p.s. I’m running another poll at the moment looking at what people use for news (rss) feeds since the demise of Google Reader. Why not take a vote? It’s at the top right of the home page of my site.

 

Share
General IT, General Legal IT, Legal

Looking back on 5 years of blogging part 5 – My favourites

Leave a comment

To finish up this look back on 5 years of blogging I’ve pulled out some of my favourite posts from the first few years.

Back in May 2009 I covered a topic that was and still is a hot topic across Legal. That of the “billable hour”. I’m sure there will be a blend of billing options for clients going forward, but I still like my example at the end of this post as to why for many clients fixed price may not be the nirvana to low costs. – The billable hour isn’t going anywhere!

I think there must of been something stuck at that “good enough to go” stage back in August 2009. The post I wrote was on the 80/20 rule. Looking at the extra effort that last 20% can take, when it’s the first 80% that will get you the majority of benefits. – Following the Pareto principle (aka the 80/20 rule)

The control and management of email has been a recurring topic over the last 5 years, topics on top tips, products to help etc. But this one I’ve pulled out with a title that sums it up nicely! It was less a help guide and more a rant at email that I’m sure will chime with many. – email, hate the stuff!

I alluded the other day to it taking a generation for law firms to change, well it could be Generation Y that starts that ball rolling. This post from April 2010 was an insight into the experience of a young lawyer just starting in BigLaw. – Generation Y trainees about to shake up Legal and Legal IT

Also from April 2010 I took a look at CRM systems in Legal and wondered whether LinkedIn could be a valid replacement? LinkedIn does seem to have gone a different direction since 2010 and is more focussed on business social with its groups and posts, but recruitment agencies certainly use it as their “InterAction” I’m sure! – LinkedIn to replace InterAction?

Finally a post from May 2011. It was looking at the challenges, both externally and internally, we’re going to have when communicating. Since this post I’ve experienced similar frustrations with firms that have twitter streams but don’t use them to communicate with customers. – What happens when a Baby Boomer lawyer meets a Generation Y client?

On a slight related note I could this great TED talk the other day that is worth watching on the challenges of working with introverts v extroverts.

Share
General IT, General Legal IT

Looking back on 5 years of blogging part 4 – Simplicity

Leave a comment

Continuing to look back at old posts I noticed one of the themes that has come up a few times is my wish that Legal IT suppliers would keep their software simple.

In fact it’s not just an issue with Legal IT, the product that has highlighted this to me more this year than any other is actually Google+. Google continues to push this product and in doing so bloats all their other products. It’s now in search results, in YouTube comments. Yuk, I long for when Google was just search and a great RSS reader**!

So here are three posts I’ve picked from 2009 and 2010 that distil some of my thoughts on simple design:

First up from September 2009 was a rant at Microsoft for creating IE8 bloatware, thanks goodness they saw sense with IE9 onwards which stripped Internet Explorer right back to basics. Shame Firefox didn’t learn from this as that once great browser is now more bloated than IE ever was! – No, no, no! Who asked for that?

Then in December 2009 was a look at another place where simplicity is useful, policies! I still love the social media policy from ABC in Australia. – “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” – social media policies

Last up from May 2010 which re-iterates the first two posts a bit, this time the ire was aimed at Spotify (who’s basic product has gotten worse with all the addins!) – Simplicity rules

** have you voted yet on my poll in the top right? I'm looking to identify what people now use as a replacement for Google Reader.
Share
General Legal IT

Looking back on 5 years of blogging part 3 – Interwoven to Autonomy to HP

Leave a comment

As you’d expect from a Legal IT blog I’ve posted a number of stories about the key Legal IT suppliers over the last five years. But one supplier has proved interesting due to the takeovers it’s been involved in and its almost ubiquitous coverage in law firms. That company is Netright Technologies! I’ve picked out four stories from 2009 to 2010 that take you through the Autonomy takeover.

The first post from January 2009 sets the scene nicely as it was written just as the takeover was announced. You can debate on how much came true in the comment, but I definitely got the new name right in the last paragraph! Interwoven and Autonomy – WorkSite, IDOL and iManage?

I wrote a couple of posts in February of 2009 as information became a bit clearer. The first was picking up more information via Tikit, I think this was my first lesson in the care required when blogging as my original published article had a number of release dates that Tikit had mentioned but weren’t for public exposure until the Autonomy/Interwoven deal was completely done. A quick retraction was needed. There are some worries highlighted in the post that I think in hindsight came true for many during the “Autonomy period” – News on Autonomy/Interwoven

The other February post was more an idea of mine for a simplified DMS design. However I include here just to announce that in hindsight I am rather ashamed of my last sentence! – Calling Autonomy!

Finally to wrap up the Autonomy period is a post from December 2010. Less to highlight the content specifically, more because it shows that really it took from January 2009 all the way to December 2010 to really sort things out in terms of the product and service on offer. Autonomy iManage WorkSite 8.5 and on

The fact I have posted virtually nothing on the HP takeover probably indicates it was an easier and much more successful transfer. There certainly has been more development in the HP era already (LinkSite) but the remaining small concern I have is with the core worksite product, if you read the December 2010 post above the main change is only the release of v9. But it’s been over 3 years, shouldn’t we now be talking about v10?

Share
General Legal IT, Legal

Looking back on 5 years of blogging part 2 – Recession and Legal

1 Comment

Looking back the trigger for me starting a blog was the credit crunch and global financial crisis that hit at the end of 2008. Because of this timing I’ve followed the impact of the financial crisis on Legal through the last five years and posted a number of entries along the way.

Below are some of the posts I’ve picked out:

In February 2009 I was clearly a little optimistic on when the upturn would appear! Looking back we didn’t realise just how long it would take to start the road back to economic recovery. Are we prepared now? – Are you ready for the upturn?

I still stand by my post from March 2009, though I don’t see the type of Legal shakeup favoured by Susskind etc. I see more of a long haul change of a saturated market. Lots more consolidation, shrinking supply, lower fees = lower lawyer take home. It’ll be the next generation of lawyers, the ones still in primary school now, that will be the ones to shake it up as they won’t have any expectation of the salaries currently in BigLaw – Last time it was manufacturing, this time it’s white collars turn! I also took a look at this consolidation of law firms in a post from July of 2009 – Consolidation within the UK 200?

I then revisited the above thinking in February 2010 as well, looking at the whether the good times would ever return to Legal – Law Firms, the good times are gone for ever! and yet again in November  of that year – “A company from here doing rather well over there” and vice versa

By 2011 outsourcing was on the radar in a big way in Legal as many firms continued to look at ways of cutting costs. I looked at this in a post in February 2011 – Outsourced!

By 2012 the long talked about ABS structure started appearing more and more. I took a look at this in February 2012 – ABS on ABS (or another blummin’ story on alternative business structures!) and looked at how it could be interesting for Legal IT. Looking back and hearing some stories from within IT depts within ABS firms I’m not quite as optimistic now.

By the end of 2012 the economy was clearly on the verge of turning the corner, but consolidation and cost cutting was still going on in Legal. This led to a slightly topical Olympics title in October – London 2012 – the rise of the regional upstarts?

2013 saw only one topic on this subject after reading Richard Susskinds latest book, I wavered a little on my thinking for a “revolution” in Legal but I think the post roughly follows the thinking I’ve had since 2009! – Tomorrow’s Lawyers – still waiting for tomorrow!

And finally there were a number of posts where I looked specifically at Legal IT depts. Echoing a recent post in the wake of the NatWest IT issues I took a look at the impact of the recession on the IT depts in law firms in July 2009. – Does IT matter in law firms?. Then in January 2011 took a look at whether the Legal IT dept had a future when the rapid technology change combined with the recession. – RIP Legal IT?

Share
General Legal IT

Looking back on 5 years of blogging part 1 – Wrong predictions!

3 Comments

For the last four years I’ve started the year with a series of predictions, but after five years of blogging I thought I’d spend a few posts looking back at some of the things I’ve written in that time. Starting with a highlighting a few posts with predictions or ideas I got a bit wrong.

First up are a few posts from 2009 which were a little off the mark:

I started in January 2009 raving about what a great idea Microsoft Tag was, well QR codes have sort of taken off but I think Microsoft have long since retired the tag! – Microsoft Tag – perfect for the paper file?

Also in January 2009 I thought that a product acquired by Google may become the enterprise twitter, however I suspect few now even remember Jaiku. Now Yammer there’s another story…. – Jaiku v Twitter

In May 2009 I didn’t so much get a prediction wrong, but reviewed two great twitter products that were both taken over and then either disappeared or left to the dusty top shelf of technology to whither away – Tweetdeck v Seesmic Desktop.

In 2010 I was clearly hedging my bets, or more likely making a U turn faster than Bill Gates on the internet! I started in January 2010 convinced that the iPad would fail in the corporate world (Apple iPad – a disappointment for legal) but by June 2010 I was extolling the fact that it was now a game changer in the corporate world (Stop printing your emails – the iPad’s a game changer!). If you ask me know I would say the tablet will enter the corporate world en masse in the next few years but it won’t be the iPad (apart from as a BYOD device).

Finally one from 2013, so soon to get things wrong? Well yes, I somehow got excited by the Q10 as a possible saviour for BlackBerry. I then carried this into LawTech Futures 2013 where I suggested that BlackBerry’s Secure Workspace product would do the same. I think 2014 will prove me wrong on both counts. – BBX (BlackBerry 10) – spoke too soon?

 

However for balance I also took a look back on my very first Top 5 for Legal in 2010 and had put : Instant Messaging, Windows 7/Office 2010 and Mobile Apps. These are all pretty mainstream now in Legal, the other two Search and Speech Recognition have been tried and are continuing to be pushed by law firms. Top 5 Legal IT technologies of 2010

Share
General Legal IT, Legal

NatWest computer problems. Will this be Legal IT in a few years time?

1 Comment

Looking at the banking industry you can see a mirror being held to the legal industry in a few years time. A mature industry that has battled to maintain profit margins year on year in tough times. One bank this month looks to have misjudged the fine line between hard cost savings and going too far. NatWest’s IT is under the spot light and it seems to have made too little investment in its IT over the last few years, this under investment is coming back to bite it. Customers forgave it the last time but will they this time?

RBS IT problems 2013
RBS IT problems 2013 – Metro newspaper Monday 2nd December

It’s taken 10 years of tough cost savings to get into this mess in banking. Given that legal started hard cost savings in about 2009, how many law firms are going to be seeing similar IT issues later this decade? The pace of IT change is on the increase again so we may not even have that long!

 

Share
General Legal IT

Microsoft Project Gemini

3 Comments

Gemini3The name of Microsoft’s latest internal project name made me smile as this was used as an internal IT project name early in my career at our firm. The project was our first look at matter centric document management, some years I’d like to add before the big two legal DMS providers were moving this way! Four years after we implemented that system we launched a “Project Apollo” which brought a matter centric iManage WorkSite 8.x into the firm.

So what are the Microsoft “Gemini” apps? These are Microsoft’s touch optimised Windows 8 Office applications. They are rebuilding the user interface (UI) of office from the ground up to ensure it works extremely well with touch devices as well as with a traditional keyboard/mouse combo. Beyond the “Touch friendly” Office 2013, think the interface of the OneNote app in Windows 8 over OneNote bundled with Office 2013.

Now I know there are many that think Office is dead, but in my opinion these people out there with those that insisted that the Y2K bug was going to be then end of the world!  Also after a good few months running a Surface after a year or more with an iPad, I think the dual touch & keyboard/mouse approach is the way forward. The iPad is excellent for annotation or a bit of editing and there are some fantastic apps in the iOS world to help this, but it just isn’t suited for heavy duty document editing, spreadsheet work or presentation creation. This is the beauty of a Windows 8 tablet and what will be the core of “Gemini”. It still looks as though Office will also appear for the iPad at some point and for the editing use cases it will be a fine addition.

So with “Gemini” on the horizon, which legal IT providers are going to take up the baton for us and allow us to launch a “Shuttle Program” within our firm? If you’re interested here are my requirements basic requirements:

  • A touch friendly DMS (document management system) app, that works with the “Gemini” UI design and has the ability to launch into Gemini Office
  • Full integration into “Gemini Office” with the simplicity of the SkyDrive integration in Office 2013
  • A well designed user interface for email filing in “Gemini Outlook”, something like simple swipe gestures to file or a OneNote like rotary menu to access actions for filing
  • A well designed reader app (like Pocket) for the DMS to allow me to build a simple offline reading file that I can swipe to turn pages

The Microsoft “Gemini” Office apps are earmarked for summer of 2014 for Windows 8, I really hope we see some innovation from legal IT in this area next year also.

Share
General Legal IT

Education, education, education – solving the dropbox problem

14 Comments

Security firms would have you believe it, vendors tell you it in sales pitches, but the fact is the Dropbox problem isn’t anything new. In fact it’s been around since 1996. Of course back then it wasn’t called “dropbox”, no back then it was known as “Hotmail”. We could put files easily in the cloud and access them from multiple different devices anywhere in the world, oh and security wasn’t that great either (in 1999 you could get into any Hotmail account with the password “eh”).

In fact I suppose you could go back further and draw an analogy to the briefcase stuffed with paper files that you took home with you.

So what is new? Why is there all of a sudden a push to solve this problem? Is there a problem to solve technically? Or is in fact the easiest solution the same solution that has always been there? Education.

I remember visiting a law firm on the west side of the Pennines and on exit I saw signs on each exit door reminding the fee earners on what files they should not be taking away with them off premise. These signs were referring to the paper file, but isn’t the same education required for the electronic file?  We trusted lawyers with the paper file why not with the electronic file? The IT dept know the risks, so why do we think the lawyers won’t “get it”? The flipside to this is of course that the lawyers take the responsibility and not blame the CIO when things go wrong!

So we don’t need the new “dropbox” tools? Well lets look back again, when we needed to securely transport paper files we came up with the lockable briefcase, when Hotmail came about we created Outlook OWA to provide similar functionality to the corporate email. No I think there is a space for these tools providing the user experience is matched (and that means more than just an iOS client to cover mobility!).

The better the UX and the more secure the product the better it will be for the lawyer, but tech alone won’t crack the “dropbox” problem!

Share
General Legal IT

Tikit TMS (Template Management System) v6

Leave a comment

Thursday 26th September saw the launch of version 6 of Tikit TMS at BT Tower, the iconic building of Tikit’s new parent company. I last saw this product when I was presenting at the Tikit Word Excellence Day back in 2011 and it’s come on a long way since then!

The key ambitions of the TMS development team were that:

  • It would require “no code”
  • It would separate the developer and template creator
  • Use native Word functionality

The first bullet was stressed a number of times during the presentations, a move that certainly will be welcomed in a lot of law firms as it will allow the end to end development of templates to be moved away from developers to the Word experts. Yet still maintain control of the firms templates and enable the sometimes complex functionality demanded.

Tikit TMS launch 1
Mark Garnish introduces Tikit TMS v6

Mark Garnish kicked things off and explained some of the key features and desires for version 6 in his intro.

  • An aim to reduce deployment time
  • No custom code (there’s the no code again!)
  • Native support for any language – Unicode
  • Two-way sync with any SQL database
  • Compatible with any DMS
  • Built in integration with carpe diem
  • Uses windows workflow
  • Use native office functionality

Clare Waller then took us through a demo of template creation and it was pretty impressive. Once things have been set up in the Tikit Template Manager they are available to built a template in Word through either drag and drop from the right hand pane or selecting from the ribbon. It’s hard to summarise all it can do without a demo, but some of the workflows you are able to set up verge on a simple document automation tool.

Nathan Lusher then delved a bit deeper into some of the workflows a developer could set up for a template creator. The key being that once they are set up once they can be reused by the creators. Using the built in data-links and form designer, together with some simple SQL a simple but effective “update person details” form was created that pulled and then updated details in a database. To finish off some of the actions were shown that could be integrated into the workflows. A simple integration with carpe diem was demoed, so once you closed a template it would fire an action to prompt the lawyer to record time directly into carpe diem.

I had a few questions that I had noted at this point, these though were answered either in Mark’s summing up or during other peoples questions:

  1. How does it deal with Styles? A: Tikit’s restyler will be standard in future versions
  2. How does it manage remote offices or offline? A: it uses a local SQL database to manage the templates
  3. Can it use loosely coupled data sources, say a web service? A: coming in future versions

The product has been built from the ground up and so to move from v5.5 to this version is to start from scratch. This though is a good thing as legacy code and support for legacy office products can be left behind, also the version is no charge to those currently on previous versions (presumably paying maintenance still!).

View from the top of BT Tower
View from the top of BT Tower

 

Share