Reinventing Professionals

I spoke with Dale Drury, Vice President of AlphaLit, about his recent recognition in LTN's President's Corner and the company's release of PrivLog Builder, which helps create and manage privilege logs. Drury attributes the development of the new program to the "good ideas of our very smart clients." As he approaches his 23rd anniversary with the company, he notes that common sense and technology can help the industry move forward in this environment. He also highlights that strong project management can help with the recovery in the second half of the year because clients rely on their vendors' project managers to be their advocates.

I spoke with George Ruge, a partner with and co-founder of Paradocs, a company that creates e-briefs and deposition digests for law firms and corporations. We discussed the adoption by courts across the country of electronic briefing and streamlined pleading management, as well as the benefits to judges and practitioners.

I spoke with David Cowen, the managing director of The Cowen Group, an executive search and market analysis firm focusing exclusively on litigation support and e-discovery. We discussed hiring trends and the market for legal talent. While he is observing a flattening of the employment market in law firms, and possibly a depression, following years of double-digit growth, he is seeing an upward demand for staff on the corporate side. Cowen highlights that the moment an organization makes the decision to insource, they realize they need the talent to drive that strategy and will likely get it from law firms and vendors. He views the corporate market as similar to the positioning of major law firms in 2003-2005, who were just establishing major e-discovery practices. As such, he has an optimistic view of the employment picture.

I spoke with Jason Mark Anderman, President and co-founder of WhichDraft.com, a completely free automated contract assembly service, who advises members of the legal community that this is the greatest time to possibly start a business because there are a lot of services that you can offer in a down economy that save people money (e.g., drafting contracts for free). He notes that hopeful software architects need to take responsibility for determining what their product/service should look like themselves. Anderman suggests simply sitting down with a pencil and paper to sketch out the functionality, then scanning that image into a pdf and sending it directly to the developer. He discourages would-be entrepreneurs from taking a vague concept to a developer and hoping to cost-effectively bring the business to fruition.

I spoke recently with Nicole L. Black, a renaissance lawyer, who is a member of the legal Twitterati (@nikiblack), a quintuple blogger and the creator of LawTechTalk.com, which she describes as the "Consumer Reports of Legal Technology." She connects lawyers to Web 2.0 and other aspects of legal technology using screencasts that compare different offerings. Her most recent program, Web-Based Law Practice Management Systems, focuses on Clio, LawRD, and Rocketmatter. Nicole also offers practice management tips in her Legal Currents column for The Daily Record. To enhance efficiency, she suggests that lawyers use, among others, Google Apps and virtual assistants.

I spoke with authors Shawnna Childress, an Associate Director of Navigant Consulting and co-founder of Women in eDiscovery, and Allison Brecher, the Senior Litigation Counsel and Director of Information Management and Strategy at Marsh & McLennan Companies, about the publication of their new book, eDiscovery Plain & Simple: A Plain English Crash Course in E-Discovery (Author House, June 25, 2009), which reflects on the duo's vast experience . Written from a multi-disciplinary perspective with graphic supplements, the book is meant to aid lawyers realizing that as Brecher noted in our conversation, "All discovery is e-discovery."

I spoke with Mike Kohlsdorf, CEO of Aderant, an application software company that focuses on professional services firms, about the changes in the economy and an increased need for technology solutions at law firms. We discussed criteria that law firms use to evaluate technology, i.e., quality, implementation speed, and customer support. He highlighted that great products are architecturally open, scalable, feature-rich functionally, and have a low total cost of ownership. He also offered his predictions for the remainder of the year, noting "We are starting to approach, at least in the legal vertical, some level of stability." He referenced Citi Private Bank's Managing Partner Confidence Index, which reports, according to this article in The Recorder, "About two-thirds of 133 managing partners or chairmen surveyed said the economy is the same or better than six months ago, and 59 percent expect a stable or improving economy over the next six months." In fact, "there is a lot more optimism today than there was as little as two or three months ago," Kohlsdorf said.

I spoke with Kevin Chern, the President of Total Attorneys, Inc., which founded the Total Practice Management Association and served as the principal sponsor of the conference. There were purportedly 250 live attendees and over 2,100 unique log-ins to its real-time web stream. Kevin highlighted: By doing things smarter, you can work less and be more successful, e.g., instead of managing staff, hire virtual assistants. There is a misconception that you have to start working at 9am and leave the office at 5 or 6pm. By having balance, there does not need to be a strict demarcation between your personal and professional life. His ultimate message: You can have a better quality of life and be more successful while working more reasonable hours.

I spoke with Steve Matthews, the founder of Vancouver-based Stem Legal, which helps lawyers with SEO optimization and coordination of their social media efforts, about the usage of LinkedIn by legal professionals. In tracking the tool for over a year, Matthews found that about 100,000 members of the legal industry worldwide maintained LinkedIn accounts in April of 2008 At the beginning of June, the number of lawyers on Linkedin increased to over 800,000. He offers insights on that rise and suggestions for taking advantage of LinkedIn to help raise your profile.

I spoke with Grant Griffiths, the co-founder of Blawging Lawyers, about the value of blogging for legal professionals and ways in which law students can help practitioners jump-start their marketing efforts. Grant offers great insight on starting a blog and the time commitment involved in the endeavor.