Reinventing Professionals

I spoke with Jay Leib, who leads the advice@kCura team at kCura, which makes Relativity. Leib’s team performs custom solution development and provides workflow guidance. We discussed the new Relativity Ecosystem, interoperability trends focusing on tools that solve business problems, and the buzz about creating apps for legal technology software at kCura’s annual user conference, Relativity Fest.

I spoke with Lisa DiMonte, CEO of MyLegal.com, a website that helps lawyers select vendors, about the site’s new Legal Vendor Deals program, in which a MyLegal member provides a discount on its services to those in the legal profession. In an effort to reinvent the typical daily deals model, MyLegal has combined these offers with vendor reviews. As such, the site offers information about an organization or individual, as well as access to any available ratings and commentary associated with that organization or individual.

I spoke with Chris Rider, an organizational sociologist, who serves as an Assistant Professor of Organization & Management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School to discuss his working paper – Networks, Hiring, and Inter-organizational Mobility: Evidence from Law Firm Dissolutions. According to the article, Heller Ehrman; Thelen; Thacher Proffitt Wood; WolfBlock; Dreier; and Morgan & Finnegan ceased operations in 2008 and 2009. Professor Rider tracked the employment of the 1,426 attorneys left jobless by the dissolutions of their firms by reviewing LinkedIn, Martindale-Hubbell and other online directories. He confirmed that 88% found jobs and noted that many of those positions were the result of proactive networking (he highlighted that more of them may have found jobs, but he could not locate them). Among other trends, he concluded that firms are more likely to hire a lawyer’s former colleagues and those from a particular alumni network. Listen to our interview in which he remarks that “the p

I spoke with Stephen Greenwood, the co-founder of EasySign, a mobile e-signature application for consumers that is reinventing the way individuals execute documents on the go without printers, scanners or fax machines, about the genesis of EasySign, the success of its iPhone app, the upcoming launch of its Android app, and the future of the mobile applications market.

I spoke with M. Cherif Bassiouni, current chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry to Investigate Violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law in Libya. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 for his work in the field of international criminal justice and for his contribution to the creation of the International Criminal Court, M. Cherif Bassiouni, is the epitome of a global statesman. I had the privilege of interviewing him for an upcoming article and he made a number of inspiring comments during our conversation. This is an excerpt.

I spoke with T.M. Ravi, chief marketing officer for Iron Mountain Digital, the division of Iron Mountain that provides electronic information management. We discussed Iron Mountain's recently announced information management strategy, e-discovery trends, ranging from cost reduction to client control, and location/media agnostic solutions for managing information.

I spoke with Ron Collins, the founder and CEO of Credenza, a practice management software company, as well as the founder of Gavel & Gown Software, makers of Amicus Attorney. We discussed the release of Credenza (described in this video), how it differs from Amicus Attorney, practice management trends, and what the introduction of Credenza signals about the evolution and the future of legal practice.

I spoke with Manfred Gabriel, a managing director in FTI Technology’s New York office. An expert on e-discovery processes and tools, Gabriel helps lead FTI’s all-in-one legal document review service offering, Acuity. Prior to joining FTI, Gabriel practiced antitrust law at Latham & Watkins and handled many large-scale second request and e-discovery matters. We discussed Acuity, FTI's goal in developing the solution and the advantages of using a reference set of materials along with "suggested coding" tools.

I spoke with Paul Brabant, the senior vice president for eDiscovery at Epiq Systems, a provider of integrated technology services for the legal market. We discussed IQ Review, the reliance on machine-based processes to determine the relevance of documents, as well as the defensibility of such efforts.

I spoke with Dan Tacone, President of IntApp, a technology company that focuses on data governance within large global law firms. Tacone was recently featured in the prestigious President's Corner column in Law Technology News. Before joining IntApp, Tacone was the Senior Vice President of Global Customers at Thomson Reuters. We discussed the key considerations for law firm management addressing data governance issues, the evolution of data governance since intApp's founding a decade ago, and his predictions for data governance within the large law firm market.

I spoke with Jason Goitia, the founder of the Goitia Law Firm in Tampa, whose mission is to empower clients to use a Florida law firm online. His website, FloridaVirtualLawOffice.com, allows flat-fee online document assembly. We discussed the genesis of his firm, the advantages of operating a virtual office, the value of flat fee arrangements for his clients, and the similarities between the evolutionary trend in the law to those that have taken place in the retail banking industry.

I spoke with Steve Fletcher, the Chief Information Officer for Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP, as well as the winner of LTN's "IT Director of the Year" award. We discussed the firm's collaborative approach to marketing, business development and technology, focusing on its creation of Parkway, an intranet platform that centralizes information and enables the firm's lawyers to showcase their capabilities to potential clients.

I spoke with Brian Wick, the Chief Marketing Officer for Hewlett Packard's Information Management division, which focuses on records management, archiving and data protection. We discussed the February release of TRIM 7, a records management solution focused on content created using Microsoft SharePoint, and how this new version impact data usage in the legal market, as well as records management and archiving trends affecting the legal community in 2010.

I spoke with Todd Brunia, the founder and CEO of Xilution, Inc., a software development company based in Urbandale, IA, which makes Time 2.0, an online time tracking and reporting application. In addition to a free version for the PC, Xilution offers mobile apps for the iPhone, BlackBerry and Droid. We discussed the company's history, the problem that Time 2.0 addresses, the advantages of the mobile component and the future of time capture.

I spoke with Dan Nye, the former CEO of LinkedIn and current Executive Director of RocketLawyer.com. We discussed how technology is transforming the legal industry, who benefits from that transformation and what will the delivery of legal services will look like in five years.

I spoke with Rick Borstein, the Business Development Manager specializing in the Acrobat-Legal Market for Adobe Systems Inc. Rick also writes the popular Acrolaw blog. We discussed the evolution of PDF and the efficiencies it creates.

I spoke with Richard Jackson, the founding President and CEO of Speak Write, an off-site transcription service, which I have used for a few years in connection with enhancing my productivity.

I spoke with Neil Araujo, the CEO of Autonomy iManage, which focuses on applying technology to a variety of information processing tools for law firms and corporate legal departments, including records management, legal hold, and early case assessment. We discussed the key evolutionary changes in legal technology since Araujo founded iManage in 1995, the advantages of the trend in corporate collaborations, and the trajectory of the industry over the next year.

I spoke with Kurt Jensen, the President and CEO of Daegis, an e-discovery professional services company. We discussed the company's position in the market and the trajectory of the e-discovery industry in 2010.

I spoke with Jim McGann, the Vice President of Marketing for Index Engines, a provider of tools to manage data and make ESI more accessible. We discussed the company's receipt of the gold LTN Award for Best New Product of the Year for its unified discovery platforms, as well as the silver LTN Awards for litigation support software and records management software. We also focused on how technology is transforming the accessibility of data discussion and the evolution of that issue over the next year.