Legal Technology

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

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).

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.