“Do Attorneys Know The Difference Between Their SaaS and a Hole In The Ground?”: A Partner’s First Trek to LegalTech NY

Posted on February 8, 2011 by InsideLegal

By Donald R. Barthel, Esq., Founding Partner, Bradford & Barthel, LLP

[InsideLegal Editors Note: Getting IT and Legal to not only 'play nice' but, god forbid, collaborate to meet collective goals and needs is the topic du jour at many of the legal technology confereces we attend. Getting 'buy-in' from someone like our guest-blogger (who is a Founding Partner of a 200+ person firm with 12 offices) is a major mission of legal IT & KM leadership. Understanding the partner perspective and, in this case, desire for straighttalk provide a solid start.]

Don Barthel As a co-founder of a fast-growing law firm, I’m comfortable with the “learn by doing” approach to life. Nevertheless, with nothing other than degrees in psych and poli sci, a JD and no (nada, zilch, zip, less-than-zero) formal training in computer science, technology and other “geeky” stuff, it was with more than a little trepidation that I flew from California to Manhattan to attend LEGALTECH’s “Most Important Legal Technology Event of the Year”.

Do I really know the difference between my SaaS and hole in the ground? Heck no! I’m potentially a fish out of water…but with a twist. From the presentations (and small talk) I’ve heard (and overheard), I’m reminded by some of the best presenters I’ve seen here that it is Baby Boomer Equity Partners who are exactly the “fish” (“prospects”, “internal customers”) that IT/KM must convert to ensure continued funding!

This was brought into focus particularly well at the “Leveraging Technology for Better Firm Efficiencies” session on day one of the show. Panelists Tom Baldwin (CKO, Reed Smith), Rachelle Rennagel (CKO, Sheppard Mullin), Meredith Williams (Director of KM, Baker Donelson) and George Rudoy (former Director of Global Practice Technology & IS, Shearman & Sterling ) all contribute to an essential take-away:

                      Equities need IT/KM’s help …

                      … a great deal of help…

                      … a great deal of choreographed help!

Yes, consider role-playing before presenting to us. Yes, keep it short (we probably need to be “somewhere else in 15 minutes” and, if we don’t, we’d better make sure everyone thinks we do!). Yes, throw-out the PowerPoint, probably the most overused and poorly used “speech aid”/crutch in the last hundred years…Disagree? I’ll bet you a buck King George VI would have been more comfortable speaking with a PowerPoint too, but I’ll bet you $10 that his audiences would still be assaulted by his stammerings.

Want to get your Equities on board? Don’t riddle us with jargon and do not (GASP!) ask us what we want (REALLY!). Why not? We don’t know and that ain’t our style. We’re lawyers. (How comfortable would you be with your attorney if he/she asked you how you wanted to proceed without outlining your options and the relative pros and cons? More to the point, most of us have no idea of the current tech options, let alone the predictions for 1, 5 and 10 years down the road. Please do the same for us (excepting the case law…case studies will do!). Tell us what your proposals can do and underscore the (a) efficiencies, (b) bottom line savings, (c) security issues, etc. Use small words (really!), don’t use acronyms (really, really)…and you will win us over…even if we don’t know our SaaS from a Saab from a …

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LegalTech New York 2011 Tweet Word Cloud

Posted on February 4, 2011 by InsideLegal

In an earlier LT NY Twitter stats post, we mentioned that spanning the course of 1 week (pre-during-post LegalTech ending February 3), 524 people covered the event on Twitter (using hashtag #LTNY) totaling 3,246 tweets. So what did all those folks tweet about? Check out InsideLegal's LegalTech New York tweet word cloud below to get a graphical perspective. You might also like to compare it to the LegalTech New York 2011 Agenda Word Cloud we published before the show.  

InsideLegal's LTNY 11 Tweets Word Cloud

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LegalTech New York 2011 Twitter Statistics

Posted on February 4, 2011 by InsideLegal

Over the course of the seven days surrounding LegalTech New York, we counted 524 people covering the event on Twitter (using hashtag #LTNY) accounting for a total of 3,246 tweets (an average of 463.7 tweets per day).

 

InsideLegal LTNY Tweets Graph

The Top 10 contributors & their total tweets included:

  1. @econwriter5 - 272
  2. @jasnwilsn - 176
  3. @VMaryAbraham - 114
  4. @VaHenschel - 112
  5. @ginabuser - 87
  6. @btannebaum - 69
  7. @TrialPad - 59
  8. @mobilelawblog - 56
  9. @discoverapplied - 51
  10. @legaltypist - 50

Note: Two of the top 10 did not attend LegalTech, but tweeted from afar.

In the last 7 days:

  • 3,246 tweets
  • 524 contributors
  • 463.7 tweets per day
  • 37+% of all tweets occurred on day 1, January 31
  • 32.2% come from "The Top 10" (representing less than 2% of all contributors)
  • 26.0% are retweets
  • 43.0% are mentions
  • 42.3% have multiple hashtags

More LegalTech fun facts and stats to follow …

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InsideLegal’s LegalTech NY Day Three Recap

Posted on February 3, 2011 by InsideLegal

Click to view InsideLegal's LegalTech NY Photos

All the talk about the pending ‘storm-zilla’ heading for New York on Wednesday had a definite impact on day 3 exhibit hall foot traffic but on the upside, eased the typical long breakfast lines at the Hilton Marketplace restaurant. Despite the lower attendance numbers, the overall vendor consensus was positive, both from a booth traffic and lead quality standpoint.

Our day kicked-off by meeting with Brett Burney of Burney Consultants and a long time legal technology influencer. While Brett spends most of his time consulting with corporations on eDiscovery and litigation preparedness strategies, he is always acutely aware of general legal technology trends and developments. At breakfast, he mentioned his current crusade of promoting mac-based/compatible technologies for lawyers including involvement in last year’s MiloFest, an annual conference for ‘Mac-lovin lawyers’. The conversation turned to tech tools for small firms and how the popular web-based practice management systems are not comprehensively closing the loop on helping them manage their practice. Specifically, RealPractice’s Brad Cooper talked about offering services and technology to help lawyers generate more leads, convert those leads by using Smartphone technologies to push follow-up reminders, and lastly, manage those leads via an integrated practice management platform. New products unveiled at LegalTech like My RealPractice are designed to address both small firms’ marketing and new business needs as well as the integration with a matter/case management platform. As Cooper mentioned, who cares about having a full-featured matter management system if you have no new client and matters to manage. 

ILTA As it turns out, Wednesday turned into ‘ILTA day’ as we took plenty of time to meet with the fabulous ILTA crew including Peggy Wechsler, TJ Johnson, and Deb Himsel. The ladies previewed some exciting staff changes (check back @InsideLegal in a few days for more details) and talked about plans for another INSIGHT UK event taking place April 5th in London. It was also good to hear that planning for ILTA’s annual conference in Nashville is on track and the Gaylord Opryland Resort is freshly renovated and back up and running since last year’s horrible flooding.

Next, we spent the final show hours roaming the exhibit hall looking for interesting vendor news or aiming to get product updates from companies we saw last year. Here are some of day 3 vendor news highlights:

YouSendIt: The Web-based digital file delivery service that allows users to securely transfer electronic files that are too large or too sensitive to e-mail has officially added the legal vertical to one of its target markets. According to Andy Chafee, Director, Worldwide Legal Markets, YouSendIt has been in legal since November and looking to expand its legal presence by offering secure file transfers on a firm-wide basis versus the current one-off, individual lawyer accounts that are rampant within many firms. Beyond YouSendIt strict security protocols, special features that are bound to attract more legal users include an Outlook plug-in as well as admin functionality that lets users schedule or time out downloads based on bandwidth, etc. 

Vu Telepresence: We first talked with these guys at LegalTech West Coast last year and over the last 6 months they have made more inroads into legal, especially by touting Vu’s accessibility and affordability when it comes to video conferencing. Vu’s regional director told us that legal has responded well to their message of using Vu to make depositions easier as well as enabling web conferencing via a PC/laptop connection. This seems like it would go over really well considering all you need to videoconference with Vu is a PC equipped with a web cam.

SAP: Last LegalTech, SAP’s Susie Krupa told us about the Waldorf, Germany-based software giant’s plan to pursue the top 20-50 global law firms with integrated HR, financial management, business intelligence and resource planning solutions. This year, Susie highlighted SAP’s LegalTech session on 'Why ERP Now for Law Firms?' co-presented by Baker& McKenzie’s Martin Telfer, Global Director, GTS (Baker & McKenzie is currently deploying SAP’s ERP solution having already gone live on HR mini-master, a part of SAP's Human Capital Management solution, and planning to go-live on Financials later this year). She also told us about SAP’s recent Business Transformation Study featuring Howrey LLP and their associated ROI calculations. 

CT Tymetrix: We stopped by CT Tymetrix, a legal management solution for corporate legal and insurance providers. The company’s big buzz for New York was the unveiling of RateDriver, a mobile application that estimates the average rate of any lawyer in the U.S. Based on the 2010 Real Rate Report, a statistical analysis of $4.1 billion in legal invoices, the mobile app is the first data driven model that identifies and quantifies the real drivers of U.S. lawyer rates.

LegalTechNY020211 (1) (Medium) Lastly, our painstaking quest for a simple explanation of ‘What the hell do I need to know when it comes to eDiscovery?’ was finally answered with a handy dandy eDiscovery for Dummies pamphlet compliments of RenewData (request a copy). Now if only the eDiscovery community could band together to provide an easy to understand guide of who provides what when it comes to EDD solutions (vs. the 'we do stuff to the left of EDRM and we are recognized by Socha-Gelbman and can do it all for you' claims). 

Our LegalTech NY parting shots include a ‘big’ thanks to LegalTech for not selling out the Bridges Bar for overpriced sponsorships and making it available for general meeting space which has always been a premium at this show. Also, we thought the biggest promo buzz was RealPractice’s offer to LegalTech NY 2012 provide free professional social media headshots to all conference attendees – they had well over 100 lawyers, vendors, media and consultants take advantage. All in all, it was great to see everyone and catch up. Until January 30, 2012…

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InsideLegal’s LegalTech NY Day Two Recap

Posted on February 2, 2011 by InsideLegal

Energy is often contagious and that was very evident Tuesday morning at ALM’s annual editor and blogger breakfast which assembled a majority of ALM’s legal publication editors and contributors (easily 20 strong) as well as a room full of legal industry bloggers spanning substantive legal topics to niche legal market and trend coverage.

It was nice (from my perspective at least) to walk into a jam packed room at 8am and feel motivated to catch up with folks and make new connections. Among the hot topics was the re-launch/new look & feel of Law Technology News and the publication’s move to a content-driven publication (see our previous LTN post). Some of the ’early birds’ we chatted with included David Snow, ALM Media’s editorial director for technology and former legal technology editor for law.com, Steve Salkin, editor, Law Journal Newsletters, and Sean Doherty, the multi-talented (lawyer, tech guy and journalist) technology editor for Law Technology News.

During the bloggers meet and greet, we visited with Bowtie Lawyer Joshua Gilliland who has built a ‘cult like’ following for his Bow Tie blog within a few short years, and MyLegal.com’s Lisa DiMonte who clued us in on her social media site’s new ratings and reviews feature created to enhance lawyers’ existing online marketing and brand-building efforts. Thomson Reuters’ Legal Current blog, providing information and commentary on the business and practice of law, represented by communications specialist Nicole Hansen gave us a glimpse into their LegalTech coverage and focus on all things ‘hot and trendy’. We took a few seconds to share our initial insights on LegalTech as well.

Speaking of initial impressions, it was useful to catch up with some editors to get their take on what’s going on at the show. While LJN Legal Technology newsletter editor Adam Schlagman was struck by the attention being paid to small firms and solos, Charles Christian of the Orange Rag has heard a lot of buzz around strategic technology outsourcing, Office 2010 deployment and SharePoint. We definitely agree with Adam’s point that small firms are again on the radar, a refreshing trend considering 90+% of the nation’s legal professionals are within small or solo environments, and custom small firm technology solutions have always been elusive or way to complicated and expensive to gain real traction.

Chris O'Brien We spent some time in the afternoon walking the exhibit hall and while we had the sense that the hall was busy but not slammed, initial feedback from vendors (especially the financial management folks we talked to) indicated that leads were qualified and prospects more than willing to learn about vendor products and services. Our final stop ended with Client Profiles and a brief chat with sales director Chris O'Brien who proudly shared the company’s latest news, the acquisition of New York-based case management vendor Saga Inc. According to O’Brien, the acquisition adds the award-winning Saga Practice Manager software to Client Profiles' product portfolio, and expands the company's client roster through the addition of more than 430 law practices in metropolitan New York. 

 

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InsideLegal’s LegalTech NY Day One Recap

Posted on February 1, 2011 by InsideLegal

Monday, January 31 marked day one of LegalTech Year 30 and our 12th year of attending and covering the what? where? when? and how? of this show. Beyond the obvious show benefits – attending sessions and previewing vendor solutions, the biggest 'perk' of LTNY has always been networking and meeting old friends. With that said, we kicked off our week by catching-up with Curt Meltzer and Joe Bookman of Pinhawk LLC. Roughly a year ago, Curt started editing PinHawk's Law Technology Daily Digest, an aggregation of relevant legal technology news, announcements and business strategy. Today, the daily e-newsletter reaches 12,000+ legal professionals and influencers and has become a staple for many of us in the industry. Hat tip to Curt and Co. for not only aggregating relevant legal tech news, but also for his spot on and sometimes provocative commentary on the day's top news items. You can registration for free here.

After PinHawk coffee, we joined a throng of conference goers for the first of three daily keynotes: "Legal vs. IT: Turn the Battle into a Solution to Meet Compliance". Presented by Gabriel Buigas, HP's Debuty General Counsel, the kick-off session definitely attracted a standing & sitting room-only crowd, but disappointed in terms of unearthing any new 'learnings' or best practices' related to enhancing the IT vs. Legal relationship, within large corporations and law firms. While Buigas stressed the importance of communication between IT and legal as well as the identification of mutual interest or overlap as the key to creating collective buy-in and forging mutual results, the session provided little practical advice to handle the true disconnect that exists between legal and IT. The session fizzled after about 40 minutes of presentation and Q&A. 

As has become tradition at LegalTech NY, we briefed with several legal technology editors and commentators throughout the afternoon starting with Charles Christian who made the trip across the pond from the UK to find out what vendors like RealPractice and CompuLaw were showcasing this week. Charles, who authors his highly successful Orange Rag blog, also publishes and edits the Legal Technology Insider and American Legal Technology Insider, newsletters dedicated to covering legal IT news in the UK and North America, respectively. After Charles, InsideLegal spent some quality time with Rob Ameerun, the multi-tasking brainchild of Legal IT Professionals (LITP), the global legal IT LinkedIn group and website attracting over 14,000 subscribers from legal vendor executives to IT managers, directors and law firm CIOs. Rob, based in the Netherlands, has developed a remarkable resource for legal IT-related news and insight. Daily news alerts provide recaps of vendor announcements and an impressive cadre of permanent columnists and guest authors that tackle all aspects of legal IT and business. We were very excited to finally meet Rob in person (again, the beauty of networking at LegalTech) and were truly impressed with his passion for legal IT and the legal community as a whole, all reflected in what he has built in a very short time with LITP.

Later in the afternoon, we shared coffee with Mark Santiago, Managing Partner for the North American operation of KermaPartners, an international management consultancy with a distinct focus on the legal market. Having known Mark for over a decade, it was good to catch-up and hear about his ambitious plans for a major outsourcing project involving global law firms- more details to follow within the next few weeks. We ended our day with Adriana Linares, lawyer trainer and small firm consultant extraordinaire and owner of LawTech Partners, and collectively came to the conclusion that although 'super busy and buzzy' with attendees and exhibitors, no announcements or product launches rivaled the extravagant WestLawNext launch from 2010. With that said, here's a short list of product news crossing our desk on LTNY Day 1 2011:

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LegalTech New York 2011: Influence of eDiscovery

Posted on January 31, 2011 by InsideLegal

Those of us who have been attending LegalTech New York for more than the last decade (this will be our 12th!), or even those partaking over the past five years or so, have seen a major shift in LegalTech's exhibit hall – namely the drastic vendor landscape shift from a broad collection of technology and service providers to what these days is a eDiscovery/litigation support world. While the need for applications and services required to manage the litigation lifecycle and accommodate the various phases of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) is undeniable, what has suddenly happened to all the other technologies that were previously touted as 'mission critical'. Remember when the exhibit hall highlights included accounting software, document management, time & billing applications, contact management solutions as well as an array of consultants who focused more on helping firms run their operations? Here are some stats to prove the point:

  • In 2010, by our count 96 LegalTech NY vendors peddled eDiscovery/litigation support solutions (applications as well as services).The 2011 exhibitor lists includes 103 vendors, representing 43% (out of 237) of all LegalTech exhibitors.
  • The theme continues as it relates to educational sessions and pay-to-play opportunities (i.e., sponsorships) as well – 53% of all sessions and tracks contain eDiscovery and related topics and 73% of all educational sponsors (excluding association sponsors such as ARMA, ILTA, etc.) are eDiscovery or litigation support vendors.

With so much attention on the $1.2 Billion eDiscovery market (according to a Gartner Group 2010 report), all the recent talk of cloud computing and the viability of using Microsoft SharePoint as an alternate document management system provides a breath of fresh air for those of us looking forward to a new decade with more legal technology balance. We'll all see what this week's 30th edition of LegalTech New York brings, but maybe we'll be wooed and wowed by cutting edge scanning and imaging products and financial management software that will revolutionize the way you count your firm's beans. 

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Unofficial Guide to Legal Technology – LegalTech NY Edition

Posted on January 31, 2011 by InsideLegal

Here are a few tips and resources that will help you stay in the know for LegalTech NY – whether you are attending the show or following from your office.

LegalTech NY Twitter Activity Page
Not everyone is active on Twitter, but you shouldn't miss out on all the information that happens there, especially during an industry event. We've created a simple page that you can go to throughout the day and read the tweets regarding LegalTech NY. 

Free Pass for LegalTech NY
This free pass gives you access to the exhibit hall, keynotes and general sessions.

LegalTech Mobile
The iPhone app didn't make it in time for the show, but LegalTech did launch LegalTech Mobile, a website that is smartphone compatible and allows you to review the sessions, lookup exhibitors and create a schedule of your desired classes. 

InsideLegal
Jobst and I will be in meetings throughout the show and also meeting with many of the vendors as well. We will be compiling post each day on the recap covering who we met, what vendor announcements we heard, etc. Let us know if you would like to tell us about any new significant announcements you may be making. 

LegalTech NY Agenda Word Cloud
Know what LegalTech is all about? We turned the agenda into a word cloud so you can see for yourself. We'll also be doing daily word clouds that will judge the truth of what people talked about and had on their minds. Should be interesting…

LegalTech NY Sessions
The complete LegalTech New York agenda can be found here.

 

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LegalTech New York 2011 Agenda Word Cloud

Posted on January 30, 2011 by InsideLegal

Here we are less than 24 hours before LegalTech New York 2011, described by organizer ALM Events as "the most important legal technology event of the year", and one thing is sure … the next 3 days will see an abundance of legal, technology and related general business topics discussed among, not only the 1000s of expected attendees, but presented as part of the jam-packed 3 day agenda. A quick glance at the program guide reveals a total of 56 sessions – 49 classes (based on 18 themed tracks) and 7 'open to all' general sessions including daily keynote presentations.

While it is physically and no doubt mentally impossible for attendees to take in more than a maximum of 5 sessions per day, not to mention any time spent visting the 249 vendors on ther exhibit floor, using technology and aggregating related-twitter chatter will at least give us a decent sense of 'what's up' at this year's LegalTech New York.

With this said, we have created a LegalTech New York 2011 Word cloud  visually displaying all words/themes included in the event's 3 day agenda. Size and and color (the darker the bigger) of selected words dictate how often they have been mentioned or referenced within the agenda.

LTNY11AgendaWordCloud1

While 'client management', 'technology', 'data','firm', 'ediscovey' and 'business' register as most mentioned, how will this picture change within the next 3 days based on what attendees, session speakers, media, commentators and vendors are actually buzzing about? We will share daily twitter tag clouds to visually represent what LegalTechers are tweeting about (if they use the #LTNY or #LegalTech tag).

Stay tuned to our InsideLegal blog throughout the show as well as out @insidelegal twitter handle for timely updates. 

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ADERANT Hires New CEO

Posted on January 25, 2011 by InsideLegal

ChrisGiglio

As first reported on the Orange Rag blog, financial and practice management software developer ADERANT has named Chris Giglio as its new CEO. Giglio, a 20 year technology veteran well versed in implementing and selling large-scale enterprise technologies, replaces former president and CEO Mike Kohlsdorf who is assuming a Operating Partner position with a private equity firm.

Kohlsdorf spent nearly 5 years with the Atlanta-based legal technology vendor and according to a recent 'year in review' press release, led efforts in 2010 that saw more than 40 clients select or go-live on ADERANT products. The company also released several new applications such as ADERANT Practice Manager, Expert ClearView and Found Time.    

According to the official press release, prior to joining ADERANT, Chris Giglio was the Senior Vice President of the customer operations organization at Surgical Information Systems and previously held executive positions at McKesson and Cerner.  

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