Check out the video at Google Apps for Business

Hey Microsoft, stick this in your hard drive! Google Apps for Business, already fast gaining ground with both Fortune 500 and SMB customers with its dead simple suite of cloud-driven, maintenance-free business applications, just brought the smack down, introducing over 60 new applications (all Google properties) to every account for the bargain price of $0/month.  Game, set, match.

Posted via email from practice (redux)

43% of litigators who participated in a recent ABA survey say that they use litigation support software. As for the 57% of you wondering what exactly litigation software is, this is your lucky day. The term litigation support software refers to an entire subgenre of database software for storing, searching, and reviewing discovery and evidentiary material. Way better than manually going through a physical file, that’s for sure! Here’s a helpful chart produced by the ABA of the different litigation software out there. For more information on the respective companies and how their software can facilitate your your litigation practice, take a look at the websites below and decide for yourself (this applies to both the 43% of you already familiar with the systems as well as the 57% of you who may be interested in making the switch):

1. Anacomp CaseLogistix
2. Lexis Nexis Concordance
3. ILS Edge
4. iCONECT
5. ImageDepot
6. IPRO eReview
7. Lexbe
8. MasterFile
9. Nextpoint
10. CT Summation iBlaze

The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies:
Smart Ways to Work Together

“Law practice is, has been, and will continue to be a collaborative process”
Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighelle

Summary: The Lawyer’s Guide offers a solid list of resources for lawyers seeking to collaborate. It is practically jargon-free as well, and frames its discussions with a look at the past before discussing more modern modes of collaboration. The book is also a great introduction to technology for lawyers of a certain age (i.e. Baby Boomers), although younger lawyers may find it to be a little too basic.

The Good: The authors of The Lawyer’s Guide display sensitivity to attorneys who came of age before the Internet was pervasive, and they do it without over-explaining or being too didactic.

The Bad: The authors do their best to treat the products attorneys have been using for decades, such as Microsoft Office programs, as collaboration tools. By today’s standards these programs are more likely to obstruct collaboration than to enable it. In the age of Twitter, Wikis, Zoho, SaaS, and Google Wave, they are part of the problem, not the solution.

The Ugly: As I read The Lawyer’s Guide I kept asking myself why the authors didn’t treat technology-enabled collaboration as a smart way to business instead of like the Rubic’s Cube of law practice (perplexing, complex, exasperating). It really isn’t that hard.

Evaluation: Keeping in mind what the books sets out to do, I give The Lawyer’s Guide a hearty endorsement and 4 hacks out of 5. In places it is a bit too basic but overall you can’t go wrong giving this book a read – either because you are a lawyer of a certain age or because you work for one.

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.