(... still more) Predictions ...

I was going to write something clever here but … screw it. This is what I think is going to happen in 2010.

1. Big law firms lose clients due to high overhead and lack of value
2. Small law firms pick up the clients and their profitability jumps
3. Unemployed grads go solo en masse depressing all lawyer wages
4. Home and flex offices, telecommuting, and telepresence catch on
5. Inefficient lawyers lose while those with social media savvy win
6. Walled gardens like Facebook thrive at the expense of open ones
7. Lawyers will use Twitter and Facebook at last, but still suck at it
8. Lawyers.com beats Avvo by selectively going public on some level
9. Blogs v. Twitter: Kevin O’Keefe and Rex Gradeless fight to the death
10. Real-time search and social media change legal research forever

Bonus: I finally stop making stupid predictions about the future of legal tech.

Feel free to share your thoughts about the coming year in the comments section below. See you in the new year.

2010 Social Media Influencers – Trend Predictions

This month’s installment from Cybercontrols is about the E-Discovery Pilot Program run by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.  The Pilot runs from Oct. 1 ‘09 to May 1 ‘10 and is intended to motivate informational exchanges between counsel relating to electronically stored information (ESI) through a proposed standing order that select district judges, magistrates, and bankruptcy judges in the Seventh Circuit have already agreed to use. The principals set out in the proposed order go beyond the 2006 ESI amendements to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to include subjects such as

Zealous Representation. Principle 1.02 specifically addresses the zealous representation excuse for obstructionist behavior – the principles state that “An attorney’s zealous representation of a client is NOT compromised by conducting discovery in a cooperative manner.” (Emphasis added)

Proportionality. Principle 1.03 calls attention to Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C), which permits objections to discovery requests where the burden or expense outweighs its likely benefit considering such things as the resources of the parties and the amount in controversy.

Meet and Confers. Principle 2.01 specifically references Fed. R. Evid. 502. If the pilot project can find a way to minimize the amount of attorney time spent in pre-production privilege reviews it would have made a huge contribution to achieving the overall goal of securing the “just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action.”

E-Discovery Liaison. Principle 2.02 contemplates the appointment of an e-discovery liaison for the purpose of meeting, conferring or attending court hearings on e-discovery issues. The liaison may be an attorney but can also be a third party consultant or an employee of the party. The liaison needs to know or have access to the people who are familiar with a party’s electronic systems and capabilities, as well as the technical aspects of e-discovery

Preservation. Principle 2.03 explicitly disfavors broad requests for preservation and encourages the exchange of specific information to help determine appropriately specific preservation agreements.

Scope of Preservation. Principle 2.04 covers the scope of preservation. 2.04(b) requires a party seeking information regarding the other party’s preservation and collection efforts to confer with the other party before initiating such discovery. 2.04(d) enumerates types of information that would NOT ordinarily be preserved, e.g. deleted, slack, fragmented or unallocated data.

Identification of ESI. Principle 2.05 encourages parties to discuss such things as treatment for duplicative ESI, filtering based on file type, date ranges, etc, and use of keyword searching, topic or concept clustering or other advanced culling technologies.

Production Format. Principle 2.06 states that ESI and other tangible or hard copy documents that are not text-searchable need not be made text searchable, meaning, evidently, that scanned paper documents would not need to be OCR’d.

Education. Principle 3.01 states a judicial expectation that counsel will be familiar with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governing electronic discovery. Considering that the ESI rules have been in effect for three years as of December 1, 2009, and they were much publicized prior to their adoption, that hardly seems unreasonable or overreaching.

Seventh Circuit E-Discovery Pilot Program: 7th Circuit E-Discovery Program

CyberControls E-Discovery Request Considerations: E-Discovery Request Considerations

CyberControls specializes in electronic discovery and production, computer forensics, and integration of computer technology in civil litigation. Visit www.cybercontrols.net.

Lawyers are calling it social networking burnout. Law.com reports that corporate America is losing its taste for social networking sites and shutting down access to Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. Recent back-to-back studies show a big chunk of corporate America banning Twitter and Facebook from the workplace. The news for the media world is even grimmer. According to an August survey by ScanSafe, 76% of companies block employee use of social networking sites — up 20% from February 2009. And social networking sites have become productivity enemy #1. Indianapolis-based Barnes & Thornburg is seeing companies block Facebook “all the time.” The firm has banned Facebook itself, and Twitter is next. I think what’s happening is social media is starting to simmer and the lawyers, PR teams, HR teams, and marketers are realizing that all these problems can occur, said one associate at Gunster Yoakley & Stewart of West Palm Beach, Florida.

I think what’s happening is social media is starting to simmer and the lawyers, PR teams, HR teams, and marketers are realizing that all these problems can occur, said one associate at Gunster Yoakley & Stewart of West Palm Beach, Florida who focuses on technology and the Internet.