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.

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

Take it away guys …

For those still considering upgrading Amicus Attorney or looking at Small Firm Solution, Craig Bayer @ Law Office Tehnology has been posting all week simple tips and tricks we all come across.

Searching Custom Fields to Outlook Crashing an HotDocs problems with version 7. This VARs focus is the Legal community not like others we encounter who support SMBs and just happen to have attorneys has clients.

He also took a moment an offered a simple review of Small Firm Solutions. Unlike other posts where emphasis is on technology, Mr Bayer offers simple concise bullet points that address the concerns important too your decision.

Take a moment and add his feed to your reader or sign-up with feedburner an receive simple e-mail notices when new posting are available.

NOTE: Craig and his staff will be a little busy Saturday afternoon as No 12 South Carolina visits Baton Rouge. I’ll be locked down that evening @ 6:45 p.m. CT • Tuscaloosa, Ala. • Bryant-Denny Stadium (92,138) where round 2 of the Crimson Tides turn-around will be slapped upon the Bull Dogs of Georgia, they have not met since 2003 (32-yard field goal with 38 seconds left in Athens gave the Bull Dogs a bone) but Georgia has never beaten Alabama 3 times in a row since 1916. {Nov 3 LSU vs Tide @ Tuscaloosa}

Readers of this blog know that I want them to know that I know people like rising Web 2.0 star and fellow southwest-suburban lawyer Rick ‘there is no spoon’ Klau. Yes it’s no secret I admire what Rick is doing a little too much. Naturally many of you have asked what I do when I’m not busy sucking up to Rick. The answer is reading blogs about how to get rich on the Internet without really trying. So there I was one day looking for the next big thing and boom! Google buys FeedBurner. Cha-Ching! Now my course was clear: it was time to bask in reflected glory. I then set out to interview my friend Rick, VP at FeedBurner, who would remember me from … well I hoped Rick would remember me.

See it’s not what you know so much as who you know. After only 11 hours of research I was able to get in touch with Rick’s cleaning lady and ask her to put a note on the refrigerator for Rick’s driver to give his assistant who, with some cajoling, would pass it on to Rick or at least give him the gist of it. But even before Imelda put up the note Rick personally agreed to make this statement:

As Google’s new Strategic Partner Development Manager in charge of Content Acquisition I’m really excited but also still trying to find all the free food so I don’t have time to sit for an interview with … who did you say you were again? Never mind, check in with me once I’ve settled into the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA.

Now that’s class. And Rick, a deal’s a deal; I promise to stop calling your house.

All kidding aside though, best of luck Rick. Keep in touch as you and Google conquer the rest of the online world, and save a piece for us.

document automation :: process consulting :: e-discovery consulting