ZERO, a provider of productivity automation solutions primarily for law firms, today announced the launch of Apollo. Apollo is a software product that automatically captures lawyers’ time spent on billable work on any desktop device. According to the ZERO press release, it seamlessly integrates it into their existing billing platform. ZERO claims, “Apollo is a Desktop-based time capture automation solution that records time spent on billable activity”.

 

I have written before about how ZERO transformed itself from an email management company to an automation provider. The transformation resulted from ZEROs focused commitment to listen to its customers. And as I have noted, ZERO offers practical solutions that work.

Continue Reading Zero Announces Apollo, a Desktop Automated Time Entry System,

So, as promised in my general post about Legalweek last week, here are my thoughts about the three most innovative and relevant products I saw at this year’s Conference (plus one).

As I said before, none of the three is groundbreaking in and of themselves. None will change the way we fundamentally practice. But taken together and added to any number of other products that are designed to address particular pain points, they collectively move the needle in various ways from efficiency to life balance. This is what good product developers do: they find a problem and try to solve it. Forget saving the world. Continue Reading New and Hot At Legalweek? Zero. Windtalker. LoopUp. And Casepoint

The typical law firm business model and lawyer hubris often stymie effective succession planning.

Not that long ago, there was a plethora of articles and consultants focused on succession planning for law firms. You couldn’t attend a legal conference without seeing numerous presentations by well-heeled so-called experts on the subject. Of late, though, the craze seems to have died down. Propose a presentation on the issue now, and you probably won’t be invited to speak. It will be met with heh….old topic, already covered.

That’s why I was surprised to hear Laura Leopard, founder, and CEO of the consulting firm Leopard Solutions, being interviewed on the podcast, The Geek in Review, on just this subject. I must admit; I almost didn’t listen because I thought the topic had been beaten to death, and because I thought it had nothing to do with tech or innovation.

Continue Reading Succession Planning for Law Firms. Hold My Beer

NOTE: Last week, I posted on the culture at Casepoint and about its legal hold product. After posting that article, I discovered there were a couple of inaccuracies that needed correcting. The inaccuracies didn’t change my fundamental conclusions about the culture at Casepoint—it’s still alive and well, just like always. I have corrected the inaccuracies in the post below.

Casepoint today announced yet another new product called ChatViewer which I think further reinforces my conclusions. According to Casepoint, ChatViewer, is product upgrade that significantly eases the review process for chat messages, including those from cell phone conversation apps and enterprise collection tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. Using ChatViewer, legal professionals can view, search, sort, and manage chat data more easily than ever — allowing them to reduce review time and discovery-related costs.

Mobile data poses lots of headaches and challenges for eDiscovery and legal professionals and is exploding in volume and complexity. Once again, Casepoint saw a pain point of its clients and came up with a tool to make their work better. I will offer more info on ChatViewer in the near future. But for now Kudos once again to Casepoint.

I recently had a chance to catch up with Matt Hamilton, Senior Director of Sales Engineering, and Amit Dungarani, VP Partnerships & Strategic Initiatives at Casepoint. Casepoint is an e-discovery cloud based provider that claims to offer data-based intelligence and full-spectrum eDiscovery. It includes cloud collection, data processing, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence tools. The platform enables review and customizable productions.

Continue Reading Casepoint Culture Seems Alive and Well

I had an interesting discussion recently with Peter Baumann. Peter is the CEO and founder of data privacy and governance software provider ActiveNav. According to its website, ActiveNav, founded in 2008, helps “privacy and compliance teams quickly identify, inventory and map sensitive data.”

 

Peter’s present goal is to develop solutions that address what he calls the “elephant in the room .”That is businesses having and maintaining too much unstructured that they really shouldn’t.

Continue Reading Law Firms and Unstructured Data: A Disaster Waiting to Happen?

Several articles have recently discussed the claim by a Google computer scientist that a Google AI system was a sentient being. The scientist, Blake Lemoine, used his interview with the AI program to support his claim that the program appears to have consciousness. If you go by some of the interview responses, I got to wonder whether a lot of lawyers can be considered sentient.

 

For those who don’t know, sentient refers to the ability to perceive or feel things. The general thinking is that only humans are sentient and in the club. Animals (Dogs? Cats?) are not. Certainly, computers are not.

Continue Reading Are Lawyers Sentient?

Law 360 on Monday of this week announced the results of its inaugural Social Impact Study of law firms. The study was designed to rank firms based on socially responsible business practices. In particular, the study attempted to evaluate firms across four pillars: racial and ethnic diversity, gender equality, employee engagement, and pro bono service. Law 360 only released the scores of those firms which scored in the top 100.

Continue Reading Law360 Announces Results of First Social Impact Law Firm Study

I was reminded through a couple of examples this week of the importance of listening to your customers if you are a product or service provider. It’s stating the obvious: if you want to sell something to someone, you ought to know what they think, Duh…

 

Yet, lots of lawyers seem to resist the notion of asking their clients what they think of the lawyer’s work, the lawyer, and the law firm. Like its somehow beneath the lawyer to ask what can be done better? What was done poorly?

Continue Reading Duh. Its Called Listening to Your Clients

Most recognize that cloud computing will be the new norm for lawyers, if it’s not already. But not just because of the usual cited reasons of accessibility, efficiency or security.
 
I chat periodically with David Carns, Chief Revenue Officer of Casepoint, to find out what his company is up to. But also to get his take on what’s going on in the legal tech world.
 Casepoint is an e-discovery cloud-based provider. It offers data-based intelligence and full-spectrum eDiscovery, including cloud collections, and review and customizable productions. It also data processing, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence service. I have written several posts about the company and our chats.

Continue Reading On-Prem v. The Cloud. It’s Game Over

I’ve been re-reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. I know there are criticisms of the book, but Isaacson is a good writer/storyteller. I realized Jobs engineered a return of Apple to dominance by doing two things really well. He forced the organization to make decisions quickly without endless debate.Second, the organization was decentralized. There weren’t silos or profit centers. These attributes let Apple get ahead even though it made mistakes along the way.

 

Of course, Apple was able to do these things because Jobs forced the whole organization to work together for the good of the whole organization. He had a vision for the organization—to make high qualitative usable products—that he and Apple relentlessly adhered to.

Continue Reading Law Firm Leadership: How To Knock Down Silos