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Everyone is talking about the recent Partners Compensation Survey conducted jointly by Major, Lindsay and Africa, and Law360. Perhaps rightly so. The data for the Survey came from some 1800 equity and nonequity partners. While it was not specified, my guess is that those surveyed primarily came from larger firms.

The big headline from the Survey is that 2021 was a great year to be a partner in big law, at least financially. It was a record year across the board. So much for the notion that you can’t be productive working from home. But there were some other takeaways that are perhaps not so attention-grabbing. I recently talked with Craig Savitzky, Senior Data Analyst of Law360, about some of these.Continue Reading The Partners Compensation Survey: Lots of Interesting Non Comp Findings

Just like Moneyball concepts changed baseball forever, perhaps the same may be happening in legal tech. Yes, legal tech companies are making more data and financial based decisions. But the old days seemed, well, more fun.

Another day, another announcement by a legal tech company of increased integrations, acquisitions, or consolidations. Monday, Reveal announced that it acquired Technically Creative. Tuesday it was MyCase announcing an integration with LawToolBox for rules based court calendaring.

Integration, acquisitions, and consolidation are all the rage in legal tech these days. We have seen FastCase partner with Visalaw.AI for a state of the art immigration case management platform. (October 25). On October 17, it was announced that Netdocs was acquiring Worldox. Clio recently announced advanced several third party app integrations. (October 10). Haystack acquired Business Intelligence Associates (September 7). Relativity acquired Heretic (August 29). BigHand acquired Digitory Legal (August 22).Continue Reading Moneyball Comes to Legal Tech? Or Am I Just An Old Curmudgeon?

As things stand now, it looks like Elon Musk’s deal to purchase Twitter will go through. I fear what that all means for Twitter users and the legal tech community.

A couple of things seem certain. First, Musk has repeatedly said he plans to cut Twitter staff by a jaw dropping 75%. Secondly, he has promised to open Twitter to those who may have been banned or at least muzzled in the past for outrageous, untrue, or abusive tweets. Both could significantly affect the platform’s future usefulness for those in the legal community.Continue Reading Wither Twitter: What It Could Mean for the Legal Community

I recent returned from the annual Clio conference, at which it released its 2022 Legal Trends Study. This Survey of Clio lawyer  customers and others comes out every year.

In addition, Aba Practice Forward Group also recently realized its own Survey of some 2000 members.

The two Surveys are interesting both because they offer a look at the post-pandemic (we hope) world and because the findings are in many ways similar. Since the studies presumably were not of all the same people, the similarities give a lot of credibility to both results.Continue Reading CLIO and ABA Recent Surveys: A Tale of Two Studies

“By the way, you know, when, when you’re telling these little stories, here’s a good idea. Have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!”

Neal Page (played by Steve Martin) in the 1987 movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Clio’s Legal Trends Report came out this week at Clio’s annual conference. One of the key findings is that lawyers and legal professionals don’t want to return to the office like they used to. I know. It’s those lazy younger workers who want to drink coffee and sit around in their pajamas at home and not work. I mean, who wouldn’t want to commute an hour each way to get to an office to do the same thing  they do at home. And be berated by a senior partner for being so uncommitted.Continue Reading How to Build Culture, Train Associates and Make People Happy in a Remote World

The big, extravagant Clio legal tech Conference kicked off today in Nashville. ClioCon is one of the most attended and well respected legal tech conferences. It’s famous for its well known keynote speakers from all walks of life, its training sessions and tracts, workshops, and of course, parties. This year’s Conference is the first in-person Conference since 2019. It’s been missed.Continue Reading ClioCon 2022: First Rate Conference That Sends the Right Message

Several weeks ago, after ILTACon, I wrote a piece questioning what the maturing of the legal tech market could mean. I specifically wondered what the influx of venture capital and the acquisition mania whereby the big get bigger might mean long term. I also questioned the long-term impact if those without legal experience and understanding become more dominant in the field. Or as larger legal tech players focus more on integration than products themselves. Or those businesses traditionally not in the legal space try to adapt their products to legal.

This week I had a chance to catch up with Joey Seeber, Level Legal CEO, about this very issue and his concerns. Level Legal provides global legal related managed services to law firms, in-house legal departments, and government agencies. It specializes in privacy, compliance, regulatory, antitrust, and eDiscovery issues. Level Legal recently announced a jaw dropping 191% increase in year-over-year revenues through the first half of 2022. It also announced several impressive additions to its leadership team.Continue Reading The Maturing of LegalTech: Ominous Clouds for Customers?

The more I am around legal product and service providers, the more I think many of them have a lot to learn about lawyers and marketing. Too much jargon, too much BS, and too little understanding of what drives lawyers. I’m not a vendor, but I did practice law for a long time and have seen lots of pitches. So at the risk of perhaps stating the obvious (which some vendors still seem to need to hear), here are my top 10 tips for legaltech vendors:
Continue Reading Ten Marketing Tips for LegalTech Vendors

Earlier this month, EY, the mega accounting firm and one of the Big 4 accounting firms, announced plans to spin off into two separate businesses. One business would be devoted exclusively to providing audits to EY clients. The other business would be devoted to providing a variety of consulting services to EY’s business clients. The consulting business will likely be a public company which suggests where EY is putting its future priorities.

The split must be approved by some 10,000 EY global partners, which will take some time. The thought is that this split will eliminate conflicts created by EY’s auditing function. The split will remove obstacles to the consulting and business services EY can provide.Continue Reading The Big 4: A Growing Risk to Law Firms?

As I have discussed before, the legal profession, especially the law firm end of it, can’t be thought of as a monolithic marketplace. Instead, today’s legal marketplace is composed of various segments. These segments have business models and goals that are so different that they might be thought of as distinct businesses entirely. Marketers and vendors need to understand that different the sizes and types of law firms are have fundamentally different motivations and concerns. They also need to know where all law firms are similar. And various surveys can help in this understanding.

Toward the end of this year’s ILTA conference, for example, ILTA released an Executive Summary of its annual technology survey. This tech survey, along with those done by the ABA and ALM, forms the basis of much of our law firm knowledge when it comes to tech. The ILTA survey respondents tend to be from larger firms and are people who work in the legal tech field as opposed to practicing lawyers.

Continue Reading ILTA 2022 Tech Executive Summary: Law Firms’ Tech Approaches Vary By Size