I recently listened to Stephen Poor‘s podcast entitled Pioneers and Pathfinders. I am a regular listener and find it to be always enlightening. (Poor is Chair Emeritus of the large and innovative law firm, Seyfarth Shaw). This past week, Poor’s guest was John Alber, a former partner at Bryan Cave and its Strategic Innovation Partner for many years. Alber was one of the first chief innovation officers in a big law firm, so his experience in that regard, I thought, would be pretty revealing. And he didn’t disappoint. 

Continue Reading When It Comes to Tech, Lawyers in Law Firms Are Entrepreneurs

The truth is law is just not a client service driven business. And it looks like the pandemic has done little to change that.
Wolters Kluwer’s 3rd annual Future Ready Lawyer Survey came out this week. The Survey seeks to demonstrate how (or maybe how little) the legal profession is evolving. How ready (or how little) the profession is prepared for the future.
 
Lots of data and statistics that  pundits like Bob Ambrogi and Richard Tromans have studied and analyzed and provided their views of what the data all means.  What it shows, particularly in the legal tech and innovation space. Lots of good points here as always.
But one set of non-tech statistics from the Survey caught my eye.(Just like it did with last year’s Study btw). And it has to do with client satisfaction. Here’s what Wolters learned about the attributes clients most value in their outside lawyers—-and how well those lawyers meet their clients’ expectations:


Continue Reading The Wolters Kluwer Future Lawyer Survey: Law Just Ain’t Client Service Driven

I have talked before about legal tech products that either try to do too much or are so nonintuitive that lawyers who bill by the hour won’t use them. One problem often begets the other: in attempting to do too much, a product often becomes too cumbersome to learn and use. I have found examples though of legal tech developers that get it right. Casepoint, for example, which I have written about before. More recently, LexisNexis’ Product Liability Navigator has found the sweet spot as well.
Continue Reading Trellis: The Google of State Court Analytics?

Every year since 1995, Mary Meeker issues a comprehensive, exhaustive and, definitive internet and social media trends report. This Report underscores the most important statistics and technology trends on the internet. It focuses on internet usage, advertising trends, and other tech trends. Almost everyone in the tech and social media areas pays particular attention to Meeker’s findings and statistics. This year’s Report came out in June. Meeker, left Kleiner Perkins last fall after eight years at the VC firm and is now with Bond Cap LLC.

I recently listened to the Kennedy-Mighell podcast in which they discussed the Report and its findings, which caused me to wade through the 334 slides that compose Meeker’s observations and analysis. I found key metrics that should interest lawyers and particularly trial lawyers.

Continue Reading The Meeker Report: What’s Important to Lawyers

I have been intrigued of late with the potential power of big data and data analytics to disrupt the practice of law and provide insights into areas previously governed by lawyer “gut instinct.” For example, litigation data analytics can provide useful and significant insights into such things as experience and tendencies of opposing counsel, judicial inclinations, and timing. Analytics is revolutionizing the counsel selection process as clients use data to learn the truth about lawyer marketing claims and determine the best fit for matters.

Continue Reading Data Analytics and Legal Bills: The Holy Grail?

This week I’m attending the Enterprise World Conference in Toronto put on by OpenText. OpenText is an Enterprise Information Management (EIM)  company that works with businesses of all sorts to manage digital information and then use that information to better achieve their goals. If that sounds broad, its because it is. OpenText has its hands in almost every industry.

OpenText recently made a big play to get into the LegalTech space and is trumpeting this entry at the Conference. OpenText’s legal section and programs have been mentioned prominently in the company keynotes and educational sessions and it has devoted significant space on the exhibit floor to its legal related products.

Continue Reading Lawyers Are In the Information Business. Get Over It

Wilson Sonsini and its new tech ancillary business, SixFifty, may be ushering in a new wave for providing legal services and law firm marketing. The combination promises to provide automated legal services for more commodity type services under the Wilson Sonsini brand in hopes that it will generate more lucrative business for Wilson Sonsini later.

Background

Continue Reading Wilson Sonsini/SixFifty: a New Wave for Legal Services (And Damn Good Marketing)

Sometime ago, I read an article about a former biglaw litigator, Kathleen Dooley, who left biglaw to go in-house for Hu-manity.co. Hu-manity.co is dedicated to enabling individuals to claim legal ownership of their inherent human data as property (i.e., doing good for the world).

Since I, too, was a former biglaw litigator who recently left for something else, I reached out to her to see what prompted her to make the change and how she went about it. I found her to be a fascinating person who gave her change process a lot of thought. Here is my interview of her in which she candidly talks about her change, what she’s doing now and the state of women in law. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did doing it.

Continue Reading Kathleen Dooley: Her Journey From BigLaw to Doing Good and More