Legal Technology

Refresh memory with InterAction IQ

Over the course of our lives, most of us have forgotten more people than we now know. Take this fact and apply it in the law firm setting by multiplying by the number of attorneys in the firm. Do you get the picture? There may be many professional contacts that you are neglecting at a time when every contact counts. Toward this end, LexisNexis released the next iteration of InterAction IQ, a customer relationship management tool for law firms last month.

Last month you say? Yes. I am a bit behind the curve. But when I miss a call, I am quick to jump out of the dugout and go kick up some dirt on the playing field.

InterAction IQ searches for patterns of relationships based on the frequency of contact across multiple communication points, e.g. e-mail, memoranda and notes. The system can be configured to add the uncovered contacts to a global contacts list, without manual entry, and analyze the new information to assign a “strength-of-relationship score” and make it visible to all of the firms InterAction users.

Contract Assembly the Easy (and Free) Way

By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

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.

Listen to our interview here.

Ari L. Kaplan, Esq.
Ari Kaplan Advisors
(646) 641-0600

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Legal technology writer and author of the Amazon.com bestseller, The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Thomson-West, 2008).

The Rise of the Renaissance Lawyer and the Legal Twitterati

By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

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.

Her blogs include:

• Sui Generis, a New York law blog
• Legal Antics, a blog about legal humor
• Practicing Law in the 21st Century, a technology blog
• The Epicurian Esquire, a blog about cooking and "the misadventures of a foodie lawyer"
• Lawyerist, a collaborative blog about all things legal

Learn more about why she believes blogging is so valuable in her recent post for Lawyerist called Start a Blog, Get a Job.

Listen to our interview here.

Ari L. Kaplan, Esq.
Ari Kaplan Advisors
(646) 641-0600

Follow Me on Twitter and Join My LinkedIn Group

Legal technology writer and author of the Amazon.com bestseller, The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Thomson-West, 2008).

E-Discovery Plain & Simple

By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

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."

Listen to our interview here.

Ari L. Kaplan, Esq.
Ari Kaplan Advisors
(646) 641-0600

Follow Me on Twitter and Join My LinkedIn Group

Legal technology writer and author of the Amazon.com bestseller, The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Thomson-West, 2008).

nQueue + Billback = cost recovery

No sooner than I finish reading Robert C. Mattern’s “Law Firm Cost Recovery Is Here to Stay” when I see that nQueue merged with Billback Systems' North America operations to form nQueue Billback, which aims to help law firms increase their profitability by helping them capture data, manage expenses, and recover costs. Take 1: I don’t think they will have any contention in registering the new name. Take 2:  This is an appropriate time for any firm to get a handle on their expenses.

Digital Reef aims to expand out-of-the-box experience

Digital Reef, a manufacturer of unstructured data management technology, announced a partnership with EntropySoft, a developer in the enterprise content integration market. Digital Reef hopes that Entropy's read/write connectors will expand its out-of-the-box reach to all major enterprise content management systems.

Are You an Expert?

By Mark S. Britton
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

Avvo toured the West Coast recently (six cities in five days) speaking to hundreds of lawyers regarding law practice marketing, specifically online marketing.  It was a great trip full of interesting discussions and tips from our different panels of experts.  One of our panelists was the great marketer, Los Angeles divorce lawyer Kelly Chang Rickert.

On our Los Angeles panel, Kelly offered the following advice, “It is important for every lawyer out there to build your reputation as an expert.  Clients want to hire experts.”  On its face this feels like pretty simple advice; but, as Kelly’s point was teased out by fellow panelists (Stephen Fairley from The Rainmaker Institute and lawyer, writer and blogger J. Craig Williams, the power of her suggestion started to sink in and it got me thinking. 

Legal services are a product that offers few differentiation opportunities.  They are not like automobiles or electronics, which can be designed with any combination of marketable bells and whistles. Instead, what any lawyer can offer is limited by what is permitted by the legal process. Yes, there is some creativity in it all; but lawyers are hired to deliver an expected outcome, and as such the differentiation is in the downside rather than the upside. In other words, the differentiation opportunity is similar to that of an airline or drug company -- something to the effect of “Use us because we won’t screw it up.”

I call this “disaster differentiation,” and the only way to succeed in this differentiation is to ensure prospective clients that the expected will occur (or, conversely, that the potential disaster will not). In the legal profession, the “expected” is that you to know more than any potential client regarding their legal issue and the legal system that governs it.  You satisfy this by establishing that you have the expertise to avoid any downside – that, similar to a pilot, you will not lose control of the plane in a storm. 

In Los Angeles, our panelists focused on three principal tools for demonstrating (or do I dare say “advertising”?) your legal expertise:

• Interviews by the press: Rickert talked about television as a powerful medium for establishing your legal expertise. If a credible news channel asks for your legal point of view, who will doubt your expertise? Same goes for a credible periodical or radio show. You can see a number of Rickert’s television interviews on her Avvo Profile.
• Blogging: Offering your opinions on a blog allows others to understand and reference your expertise. If many in the blogosphere, including traditional media outlets, are referring to your blog posts, your status as an “expert” is dramatically enhanced.  
• Testimonials and Endorsements: Politicians have used these for years, and lawyers are only now getting around to using them effectively. One of the reasons that LinkedIn has boomed is because it allows people to speak to and endorse the expertise of another (Avvo offers the same for lawyers). That’s powerful stuff.  Anytime someone takes the time to compliment your expertise, it helps reinforce that you are in fact an expert.

For some lawyers, “advertising” their expertise feels too salesy. For others, it is a critical part of their marketing strategy, and they are out there every day turning their expertise into business. It’s ultimately your call; but, in an environment of limited differentiation, the only real choice is to market yourself as the expert that you are and that your potential clients expect you to be. 

Mark Britton is the Founder and CEO of Avvo. He is a 17-year lawyer with deep experience in the legal and e-commerce industries. Mark is the former general counsel of Expedia.com and has worked as an attorney in large, medium and small law firms. In 2007, Mark was named one of Seattle’s "Top 25 Innovators" by Seattle Business Magazine. He is also a frequent commentator on financial, legal and other business issues, regularly appearing on programs such as ABC’s "Good Morning America," Fox Business’ "America’s Nightly Scoreboard," CNN "Money" and Dow Jones "MarketWatch."

Has the economy stabilized?

By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology blog

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 functionality 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.

Listen to our interview here.

Ari L. Kaplan, Esq.
Ari Kaplan Advisors
(646) 641-0600

Follow Me on Twitter and Join My LinkedIn Group

Legal technology writer and author of the Amazon.com bestseller, The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Thomson-West, 2008).

Remote Wrap-Up of LegalTech West Coast 2009

Legal Technology Editor Sean Doherty monitored developments at LegalTech in L.A. One thing Doherty was sure about: The show went on without him. Many vendors focused on mobility features while e-discovery providers touted early case assessment, collection and advanced search tools.

How to Work Less and Be More Successful

By Ari Kaplan
Special to the Legal Technology Blog

A few weeks ago, the Total Practice Management Association sponsored the Get a Life conference, which it describes as an event to help attorneys "manage all the moving parts of a successful law practice and still have a life."  I spoke with Kevin Chern, the President of Total Attorneys, Inc., which founded of 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.

Learn more by listening to our interview here.

Ari L. Kaplan, Esq.
Ari Kaplan Advisors
(646) 641-0600

Follow Me on Twitter and Join My LinkedIn Group

Legal technology writer and author of the Amazon.com bestseller, The Opportunity Maker:  Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Thomson-West, 2008).