Reinventing Professionals

I spoke with Peter Mercer, the founder and managing director of Vound, an Australia-based software development company focusing on forensics and e-discovery, which is the maker or Intella, the company’s signature tool for processing, searching, and analyzing electronically stored information. We discussed the growth in user-created data, the trend of law enforcement technologies being adapted to e-discovery, and the increased focus on productivity, which Mercer noted is driving the adoption of this technology. He predicts that the rise in cloud adoption and the interest in reviewing data more simply will help to transform the forensic and e-discovery industry in 2013.

I spoke with Eddie Sheehy, the CEO of Nuix to discuss Proof Finder, a unique venture by the company to offer its e-discovery and investigation software to users at $100 per year (limited to a maximum case size of 15 gigabytes), with 100% of the proceeds from all sales given to Room to Read, a global non-profit organization focused on literacy and gender equality in education.

I spoke with Desiree Moore, an attorney and the founder of Greenhorn Legal & Greenhorn Bold. Moore is also the author of Thrive – A New Lawyer’s Guide to Law Firm Practice (American Bar Association, 2012). We discussed her venture providing what she describes as “the foundational information law students and lawyers need,” her motivation for writing Thrive, and the launch of her on-demand practical skills training series, which focuses on professionalism, time management, communication, networking, and marketing, among other core competencies.

I spoke with Eric Hunter, the Director of Knowledge, Innovation & Technology Strategies at California-based Bradford & Barthel, as well as the Executive Director of Spherical Models, a business model innovation consultancy. We discussed his firm’s transformation to a completely Google Apps environment and his team’s efforts to create a social media-like atmosphere the leveraged internal champions to motivate this shift by 100 lawyers and over 250 users. He recommends developing a clear workflow and to give users time to adapt. Hunter also discussed how his success at Bradford & Barthel fueled the creation of Spherical Models.

I spoke with Matt Homann and JoAnna Forshee, producers of the annual LexThink.1 legal innovation conference, which is being held in Chicago on Wednesday, April 3rd on the eve of the ABA Techshow. Homann is the well-known founder of LexThink, a legal innovation consultancy, as well as the creator of the popular [non] billable hour blog. Forshee is the CEO of InsideLegal, which she describes as “the insider’s guide to doing business in legal technology.” Homann noted that LexThink.1 started 4 years ago as Ignite Law. Participants have 6 minutes (as in one-tenth of an hour of billable time) and 20 slides, which rotate every 18 seconds, to convey their ideas on this year’s theme – disruption. Prior sessions focused on the future of law, the future of legal tech, and client service. (I had the privilege of participating in the inaugural event in 2010, with a session called: What I Learned About the Future of Legal Marketing From Playing Wii Bowling With a 4 1/2-year old.) Ten speakers selected by “more than one thousand votes cast” online will cover a variety of topics ranging from Big Data or Big Brother (Eric Hunter) and Don’t Do What You’re Good At (Jay Shepherd) to Knowing the Unknowns (Roe Frazer) and LegalZoom is Eating Legal’s Lunch (Mark Britton). The only participant, who has appeared in all four productions is Will Hornsby, who will be discussing Gaming the System: Are lawyers ready to game-up? Forshee notes that speakers typically rate the difficulty of the experience at about an eight on a ten-point scale and Homann suggests that in addition to practice, participants should focus on their transitions to get comfortable telling a story in equal segments. Those interested in following the sessions on Twitter can search for the Hashtag: #lexthink.

I spoke with Roe Frazer, the founder of Cicayda, a Nashville-based software company providing cloud-based e-discovery tools; Case Logistix, now owned by Thomson Reuters; and, Digome, a digital marketing firm. Frazer noted that the name of his new venture, Cicayda, comes from the quest to find a rare blue-eyed cicayda and compared it to a legal team’s search for documents in the era of big data. Calling it “Angry Birds for e-discovery,” he highlighted that Cicayda offers an app-like look and feel for all of the company’s offerings. Frazer’s goal is to make software that lawyers can use while bringing “transparent pricing and price sanity” to the marketplace through a pay-per-use model. He considers this new offering “iteration 0.0” because he expects that customers will drive future development through social media channels.

I spoke with David Netzer, the founder of the legal industry job site, LitigationSupportCareers.com, where companies, including law firms, litigation support providers, e-discovery vendors, and government agencies, among others, advertise open positions for the legal vertical. It also offers a searchable resume database, as well as resources for career development. We discussed the genesis of LitigationSupportCareers.com (created in 2008), how it is distinct from other “niche” job boards, the costs of use, and its potential for reinventing the executive recruiting field. Netzer advised that in addition to expanding its robust resume database, LitigationSupportCareers.com is developing partnerships with other job sites, adding multi-lingual features, and launching on different human resources platforms and applicant tracking systems.

I spoke with Cynthia Nerland, the Business Development & Communications Manager at Dye & Durham Corporation, a British Columbia-based legal support services firm, about her expectations for the Canadian legal market in 2013. Among other developments, Nerland predicts a rise in the number of international mergers. She cited the 2012 combinations of Canada’s Fasken Martineau and Johannesburg-based Bell Dewar, as well as SNR Denton, Salans LLP and Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP effort to form Dentons, as evidence of this trend. She advised that to prepare for these changes, legal support services providers need to be mobile and leverage multiple platforms. Nerland also expects more lawyers to blog and engage in social media to raise their profiles in the recovery.

I spoke with Naritomo Ikeue and Sunil Mudunuri, President & COO and Senior Manager of Marketing & Business Development, respectively, for UBIC North America, Inc., the maker of Lit i View, an e-discovery tool that evaluates English and Asian-language characters, encoding schemes, and native file systems. We discussed the global landscape for electronic discovery and multi-lingual predictive coding, among other topics.

I spoke with Bill Young, the product line and legal operations executive for Bridgeway Software, a legal solutions provider focused on process technology support. We discussed key trends and ways that organizations can prepare to address them. Young sees a growing alignment between the legal department and disparate business divisions. He also expects a movement towards mobility and initiatives focused on sharing the right information with the appropriate executives.