practicehacker

Prism Legal‘s Ron Friendman liveblogged (a/k/a real-time blogged) Richard Susskind’s discussion of the future of the profession at ILTA 2009.  Here are the Top 10 disruptive legal technologies on the list:

Document Assembly. Has already changed markets. Providing document assembly online allows for economies of scale. Charges and hours don’t have to relate, making this technology “disruptive.

Always on Connectivity. Lawyers can, and are expected to, be on call 24/7.  Deal with it.

Electronic Legal Marketplace. Your value in the  a frictionless marketplace. Clients can select legal services in the electronic marketplace and even choose to go with non-lawyer alternatives.

E-Learning. Law schools have long been falling down on the job. The Internet can revive learning with realistic simulations.

Online Legal Guidance. Interactive advice systems in the “latent legal market” (see Suskind, The Future of Lawyers). Sounds like self-guided document automation.

Legal Open-Sourcing. A la Wikipedia. Crowd-sourcing communities of interested individuals can result in better answers than throwing the problem to a single individual.  Consumers more likely to talk to friend with similar problems than a lawyer.

Closed Legal Communities. See Legal Onramp. Clients and In House Counsel can pool legal information and check a common knowledge-base before consulting pricey outside counsel.

Workflow and Project Management. High volume, low value work can be made into off-the-rack solutions; making certain lawyers into de facto project managers. Project management requires significant training, but lawyers aren’t getting any. This is a disruptive trend because it highlights the fact that as efficiency increases, billable hours decrease.

Embedded Legal Knowledge. In the future legal knowledge will be built into compliance systems making the contributions of highly-trained counsel less necessary except for unusual assignments.

Online Dispute Resolution. Dispute resolution as a service. Services like CyberSettle versus time spent in Court or in the arbitration system.

Making Pacer User Friendly

Friday I stumbled on Recap and was impressed.  How impressed? I downloaded it immediately and signed the online petition to make federal case-law available for free. Yeah – that impressed. Recap seems to have impressed some others as well; it has even enlisted top-shelf talent like the lawyer-activist-millionaires over at Justia (you might be more familiar with their last project, Findlaw).

How it works: Recap saves every document you view on PACER, adds meta-tags and other features, makes the item easier to find, and posts it to a central locale.  The next time a user goes to PACER and wants that document, if it’s already been “liberated” then the user can download it free of charge.

Granted, you end up paying the 8 cents per page, which means that someone else gets a free ride, but the idea is that someone else could be doing the same and so on.  Of course the fact that Recap exists begs the question of why we Americans must pay to view the fruits of our own justice system. Westlaw and Lexis figured out that answer a long time ago.

To use Recap you must use Firefox, the open-source alternative to Internet Explorer. But I suggest you download Firefox even if you don’t download Recap. It’s just a better browser.

Feedback:  If you’ve used Recap or have an opinion sound off in our comment section or contact me, Hacker in Chief, at mhedayat@mha-law.com

Microsoft Office 2010

Just when the future of its venerable franchise was in doubt this movie about Microsoft Office 2010 reminds us that the company can still afford top-of-the-line PR.  On the other hand it remains to be seen whether Redmond can produce software that isn’t bloated and crash-prone.

Whatever the answer, by the time the dinosaurs at Microsoft roll out their “finished” product they will already have had to compete with the likes of Google Apps, Zimbra, Zoho, LiveOffice, and much, much more. Maybe that’s why the rumored price for the next-gen office suite is $0.00; take that everyone else in the world!

Does anyone else think Microsoft’s unweildly size and sluggish reaction times have finally overcome its monopoly power?  Hey, a guy can dream.

Thought I’d share some choice video from TechShow 2009 featuring all 4 of the Best of Show winners that I wrote up in TechnoLawyer, plus interviews with some of my heroes such as Bob Ambrogi, Jay Funeberg, and Kevin O’Keefe, as well as sightings of legal blogging all-stars like Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighelle. I’m still excited.

See related videos here and find me on YouTube as practicehacker.

We're the ABA Damnit! We own you!

This was my 10th year at ABA Technology Show in Chicago. This year was particularly cool.  Here’s why:

Meeting The Heavies: To me, seeing people like Dennis Kennedy, Tom Mighelle, Bob Ambrogi, Jim Calloway, Kevin O’Keefe, Brett Burney, Andy Atkins, Jay Foonberg (!) and the rest of my pretend blog friends … I mean pretend LinkedIn friends … is like reconnecting with long lost relatives. Exciting and a little intimidating. But all of them were really great and down to earth. Except that Kennedy. Such a prima donna. I kid, I kid.

Meeting Canadians: Who can forget meeting the Great Librarian of Upper Canada! Beat that. Then there was Phil of the Future (my name for him), Steve Matthews (nice guy), Brett Burney (I think he’s Canadian), Dominic Jaar (vive la Quebec libre!), the boys from Clio (or as I called them, the Booth Babes), and a host of other talent from the Great White North. It was great to meet you all: now go back where the ice doesn’t melt until July.

Technology Becoming Accepted: This year for the first time in memory I noticed a preponderance of grey hairs and the careful gait of partners scoping out potential buys for their offices.  This was not the brash, flash-in-the-pan TechShow of the late-90′s in which the Internet was decried as a fad.

SaaS, Saas, and more Saas: Software as a service was all over the place, and by next year it will be pervasive. This year I was knocked out by the number and variety of kick-ass SaaS providers at the show including Clio, RocketMatter, and VLO Tech. Clio was my hands-down favorite for a number of reasons – I intend to use it in my own practice. Whatever your cup of tea, the idea of throwing away the IT department in favor of the Cloud is gaining traction fast.

Less is … Less: One lamentable fact about this  year’s show – there was less of it than I’ve seen in a long time. Another casualty of the economy I’d say, but we shouldn’t overlook the fact that many legal technology vendors have been slaves to profit instead of boosters for innovation and the slow economy is making it painfully apparent what a royal screw job they’ve been giving lawyers all these years. Many players couldn’t make it ? Good riddance to bad company.

Other than that however, it was a great experience as always and one that I heartily recommend to one and all. If you haven’t been to TechShow, go there. If you have, come back. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

For more coverage see my SmallLaw Column in TechnoLawyer.

Check out Twitter coverage of TechShow.

As always, I’d love your thoughts. E-mail me at mhedayat[at]mha-law.com or tweet me @practichacker.

ttyl

Law.com published this piece on a Pennsylvania Court microblogging (i.e. twittering) with participants about its ‘fugitive safe surrender’ program. With successful results all around, the Court has since begun posting status updates (‘tweeting’) and thus far has nearly 20 followers … a number that will explode as attorneys, clerks, paraprofessionals, court reporters, and members of Sheriff, Police, and Fire departments wake up to the potential for twitter and its ilk to speed up communications beyond recognition. – MH

Penn. Courts ‘Tweet’ on Micro-Blogging Site

Amaris Elliott-Engel, The Legal Intelligencer [Oct 22, 2008]

… [T]he 1st Judicial District has been brisk about getting onto Twitter, an online service that allows users to send brief updates about their activities to other users. When the FJD and other partners held the fugitive safe surrender program Sept. 17 to 20, the FJD sent out updates about the safe surrender program via Twitter to 10 of its volunteers who don’t have BlackBerrys and were unable to receive e-mail updates remotely. But because most people have cell phones, that group of 10 was able to receive updates on their cell phones via Twitter…

… [U]sers can receive Twitter updates on the Web site … by text messages on their cell phones … via e-mail and other Web applications.

The court decided after the safe surrender program wrapped up to see if the bar would be interested in following the court on Twitter … [r[ight now the court is only sending out Twitter updates, or “tweets,” that are also posted on the FJD’s “News and Announcements” section on the Web site.

As of last week, 18 people were following the court on Twitter …