Legal Technology

Wikis put lawyers on a collaborative path

A wiki -- software that allows direct collaborative editing of content and structure -- provides an instant source for new research and collaborative document authoring. Wikis provide editorial control and focus on content rather than conversation -- surpassing the shortcomings of e-mails that often miss key contributions of lawyers who are inadvertently left off a thread or hide key insights in inboxes. Peter Buck, managing director of Baker Robbins, puts wiki collaboration in the law firm context.

The bottom line on client analysis

Software and consulting firm Redwood Analytics examined client "realization" rates -- the percentage of normal fee rates received -- for 16 law firms and saw room for improvement. Client analysis technology can improve realization, raising a firm's bottom line -- but getting the data requires overhauls not only in IT, but also in accounting and financial analysis. Perfecting client analysis means hard work, whether building a system from scratch or integrating new software with an existing system.

Cutting a winning edge in law firm blogs

While the most successful law blogs educate clients, and occasionally prospective clients, they also educate the firms that put them up in how to do a blog right -- and about the benefits and limitations of the medium. Author Alan Cohen provides answers to the questions many firms still have about blogs, and shows that when run wisely, blogs can be an effective, cost-efficient way for a firm and its lawyers to market themselves, network and strengthen relationships with clients without getting into trouble.

Benefits of Mac meeting Intel

Researchers with the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Cyberinfrastructure Center (NEESit) wrote open-source software that turns an Intel-based Apple laptop into a real-time seismograph. NEESit's iSeismograph software combines Apple's technology used to protect the hard drives in laptops from damage due to falls (tri-axis accelerometer, sudden-motion sensor) and the iSight video camera used in Intel-based Mac laptops for videoconferencing.

Converting paper to PDF

To meet the challenge of converting paper documents into a searchable or editable digital format, attorney Alan Pearlman recommends ABBYY FineReader OCR 9.0. FineReader includes Adaptive Document Retention Technology that can accurately detect and preserve native Microsoft Office formatting.

Messaging requirements gives FCS some FaceTime

FaceTime Communications and FCS (Forensic and Compliance Systems) have brought their technologies together to archive unstructured data, including e-mail and IM. FaceTime's IMAuditor interoperates with the FCS Cryoserver Compliant Messaging Archive Appliance and offers the potential for IT departments to meet message compliance requirements and greater capabilities to perform e-discovery on all messaging systems including:

• Email Platforms: Microsoft Exchange, Novell Groupwise, IBM Lotus Domino, Sun One, Scalix and most Linux services
• Public IM Networks: Skype, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, GoogleTalk, ICQ, and more
• Enterprise IM Networks: OCS, LCS, Sametime, Jabber, Parlano MindAlign; and
• Professional Community Networks: Reuters, Bloomberg, Communicator Inc., PivotSolutions

Practice Makes Management Software Perfect

When you bought your practice management software, did you expect it to revolutionize the way you practice law? Do you now find that you pretty much use it as an electronic calendar, and as a place to file the information from business cards you get at trade shows? Don't be embarrassed -- you're not necessarily a Luddite just because you can't learn everything this powerful software can do in one day. Consultant Storm Evans offers some tips to painlessly build your practice management expertise over time.

How was that Date Calculated?

As an attorney, you never want to hear "how was that date calculated?" after you missed a deadline. This is a much better question to ask yourself up front, especially if your are calculating a date with the court for you and your client. Now, Compulaw has caught on to that bit of calendar culture.

CompuLaw's Vision Web Portal version 3.3 includes a new feature: "How was this date calculated?" It provides a quick and easy way to identify each step of CompuLaw’s date calculation process. So, whether your are checking on your own dates or another's, you can verify just how it was calculated by Compulaw.

Streamlining Document Creation and Assembly

By nature, lawyers create content. And any software that helps us generate and distribute content is good for the business and, ultimately, clients. That's why my ears perk up when I get wind of new or revised tools to automate and streamline document assembly and creation; especially tools that are compatible with a staple in the legal industry: Microsoft Office.

Recently, the Sackett Group rebuilt (.NET/C#) their MacPac production and automation software from the ground up, enabling lawyers to automate content generation. MacPac version 10 combines content management and document assembly functionality and includes new macros and templates (MS-Office 2003 and 2007) as well as an SQL-server database for shared content and global author perferences. It utilizes XML-based content to use with Microsoft Office.

The Sackett Group is not alone in creating automation stations for document production. Esquire Innovations has also announced the release of their version 5.0, compatiable with Microsoft's Office 2007 and Windows Vista. Like MacPac, Esquire boasts a comprehensive and integrated template and macro creation and automation tools that are compatible with Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista.

If you do not presently use automation tools to streamline document creation, both The Sackett Group and Esquire Innovations are good places to start your research. And if you do have them, make a note that there's something new to check out.

Next Step for NextPage

I had a conversation today with NextPage and my memory was refreshed on a product that has been in the making for years. NextPage started out in the document manage space, leveraging P2P technology. They sold off that portion of the business to FAST, which in turn was bought by Microsoft. But they kept a part of their business that focuses on document retention, litigation readiness, and legal hold management. Some companies see the writing on the wall. Some companies, like NextPage, put it there.

NextPage technology focuses on the client to classify and track content, whether created on a network share, laptop, or USB device. Indeed, that's where the action is. Once documents are classified using metadata, NextPage can apply policies, including litigation holds, to the content and monitor and report on compliance. Policy management can be conducted by a managed service through NextPage or software located on the customer's site.

Today, NextPage has integration with Microsoft Office 2003 products: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. In its next revision, NextPage will support Office 2007 products.

Workshare Gets Industrial Strength Encryption

Data in the legal world is no less secure or insecure as data in other industry verticals. Like other verticals, the legal field contains a large installation base of operating systems and office suites from Microsoft Corp. So, security by obscurity does not really work here. And as we all know, the layers of security from the firewall to the data center are necessary, but not always sufficient to protect data. Especially when you have lawyers running to courts with laptops in hand. That's why Workshare has come out with a new encryption service.

Workshare develops and distributes content-protection, content-control, and workflow software for law firms. As part of their Unified Content Protection Suite, Workshare announced the availability of encryption capabilities for its Protect Premium client. Combining policy creation and enforcment capabilities to prevent data leaks with a mechanism, AKA encryption, to protect mobile data is going to be appealing for law firms with lawyers on the run with laptops. After all, lawyers have ethical duties to protect and preserve client information.

The new Workshare service uses EAS in CBC (cypher block chaining) mode with 256-bit keys. With this, the Workshare Protect Crypto client, by itself, can encrypt data on local disks, network volumes, removable media, individual files and folders. It can also engage password encryption and integrate with some e-mail security services from the likes of Secure Computing, CryptZone, Voltage, and Utimaco. The new product integrates with Windows login and includes support for Active Directory integration. And of course, it works with Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2000.

Now, if you want to add central control to install, configure, and maintain the encryption on client systems, Workshare also provides a Management System Protect Crypto server.

If Workshare can enable IT management to install, configure, and manage encryption on client systems as easily as anti-virus services and allow end users to use encyrption with little to no interaction, it will have a successful run as a product and a good chance for longevity in this market.

The Case for Practice Management Systems

The piece de resistance of law firm software is practice management system software to manage your entire practice. With components of time and billing, accounting, and case/matter and document management, lawyers need to go to only one place to find specific information. But do your homework before making a purchase, says Andrew Adkins III, director of the Legal Technology Institute at the Levin College of Law. Adkins lists the items to consider before acquiring an all-in-one system for your firm.

Catalyst CR 7.0 in the Wild

Catalyst Repository Systems released Catalyst CR 7.0 today and continued to differentiate itself in the e-discovery market with foreign language translation. Among the new features:

1. On-screen translation of foreign documents into English. The feature works for e-mail, text files, and for most MS-Office files, which are converted to HTML in the conversion process;
2. A translation tool that allows a reviewer to snip content from one document, translate it, and search for that text in a document repository; works with up to 15 foreign languages;
3. A review module allowing administrators to batch documents and create customizable work flow for a distributed review; and
4. Workflow reporting features that allow users to view results by concept or by the descriptive content extracted from a document set, such as an e-mail address.

Practice Management in a Box

The piéce de résistance of law firm software is a practice management system that manages your entire practice. With components of time and billing, accounting, and case/matter and document management, you only need to go to one place to find specific information -- and vendors will not be pointing the finger at each other if you report a problem. But do your homework before making a purchase, says Andrew Adkins III, director of the Legal Technology Institute at the Levin College of Law. Adkins lists the items to consider before acquiring an all-in-one system for your firm.

Virtualize IT

A new Web site popped up on virtualization: VirtualizationReview.com. This site aims to cover all aspects of virtualization from servers and desktops to applications and storage. It does happen to be a bit Windows-centric, but then aren't we all to some extent.

Microsoft at work ...

Microsoft has been busy in Las Vegas, and it hasn't been with the slot machines. At MIX08, Microsoft announced the availability of a new beta version 8 of Internet Exporer, a new Silverlight 2 beta, and a new beta version of Expression Studio 2.

IE is infamous and needs no introduction. But for those who have not seen Silverlight yet, it is a cross dresser. That is, a cross-browser, cross-platform (yes, that means there's a Mac OS version), and cross-device plug-in to deliver rich media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Yes, it has support for mobile devices. Because that's where everyone is going. Or, I should say because everyone is going somewhere.

Expression Studio includes Visual Studio 2005 and PHP support and promises to deliver a richer development experience for Web sites and Web 2.0 projects.

The 'network is the computer' for Verdical

Verdict Systems, makers of award-winning Sanction and Verdical software, announced the release of the full network version of Verdical litigation support software. Following a sneak peek at LegalTech show in New York, last month, Verdical has made the product available for download at www.verdical.com.

Boys will be boys ... girls will be girls ...

Some people are still at the Mac vs. PC wars, more aptly named Mac vs. Windows. Rich Georges of the Futurelawyer and Ben Stevens of Maclawyer square off in the ABA Journal and take their respective sides. Ernest Svenson of Ernie the Attorney and Cheryl Sisk Schelin of The Inspired Solo also kick up some dust. But really, ladies and gentlemen, what's the point?

Application support is a non-issue, since you can run Microsoft Windows inside MacOS with Parallels. And since MacOS now supports Intel processors, hardware components will become interchangeable. Hence, a discussion about component hardware support is better left to the experts. So what's left: personal preference and ease of use in your compute platforms.

Use the platform that is easy for you to process, store, and retrieve information and exchange it with all your devices. Because soon, your refrigerator will come into the mix along with your motorcycle. And when you choose that platform, note that there are plenty of places to try out a Mac. And if you choose a side and make a purchase that disappoints you, return it to sender and try another -- the process is not much different than buying a new pair of shoes.

Bringing in the new drive, from the old ...

Arco, a manufacturer of drive-to-drive backup technology, announced a software solution for hard drive migration. EzMigration is designed to simplify the process of copying one drive to another, e.g., a boot drive to a new drive when you upgrade your PC.

EzMigration works under Windows (2000, 2003, XP, and Vista) and performs a bit-by-bit drive copy of an existing drive to a new drive. If the new drive is bigger than the old, EzMigration includes a partition expander tool that allows you to quickly and easily expand that 80 GB partition to the full 200 GB capacity of the bigger drive.

And if you can beat the low price of $39.99 or the time it takes EzMigration to work as opposed to your time in copying all the necessary programs and data to your new drive, let me know.

Put Delaware in your BlackBerry

Granted, it is a small state and it most likely would not fit in your BlackBerry. But if you have a client who is incorporated in the state, you can put eDelware, a digital version of the Delaware corporate law statute, on it from the Delaware law firm Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP, gratis.

eDelaware is free mobile software that supplies the full text of key Delaware statutes, with case summaries, via a BlackBerry device. This is the first free software application developed by a law firm that I have seen that allows mobile access to statutes and case summaries with updates.

If there are more out there, send them my way. 

Microsoft hypervisor in Server 2008 ...

The buzz about virtualization is not going away any time soon. Especially since we're getting more and more cores on a chip. An easy way to check it out is with Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate Evaluation Software, where you can download a trial version of Microsoft's hypervisor and try it for 30 days. But note that an x64 server is required. If you try this, try Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager as well. One of the differentiators to virtualization will be managing, as well as running, a virtualized environment.

Mac Envy

I don't deny Mac users their love of their hardware. And I especially don't deny them their love for their software, especially since the underlying code is near and dear to my heart: BSD. And I do listen when family and friends tell me I should get a Mac. But I don't listen when they say that the Mac is safe and virus-free. Now that it's running a main-stream OS, it is subject to reported bugs and vulnerabilities. And that is also true now that the Mac is also running serious business applications. So Mac people need to be vigilant. Check out the latest round of vulnerabilities and see Apple's page on how to update your software.

Culling for Code

Are you on the hunt for some code on the Internet? There's a free tool out there from Krugle, Inc. called Krugle. Yes, that rhymes with Google. Krugle searches and indexes code from public software repositories from the likes of Apache, Debian, Mozilla and SourceForge.net.

Krugle has parsers for more than 40 languages allowing syntax-specific searches. So you can use code features like function calls, class definition, even comments in search queries. Queries support broad or exact matches and allow code tokenizing. Filters are available to hone in on specific projects and sites. And if you register, there are collaboration tools that allow you save your search to a "code space" where you can comment on a code file or project and share it with others.

Last but not least, Krugle has IDE plug-ins for Eclipse or Visual Studio and browser plug-ins for Firefox (version 1.5, 2) and IE (version 6 and 7).

In Memory of ... Memory

When our own memory gets filled up, we tend to write more things down then we used to. I have notes and lists about notes and lists for important things to remember. But what happens when our PDA, iPod, or cell phone memory hits a wall. In the usual case, we buy a new one and attempt to transfer applications and data from one device to another. But computer engineers at Northwestern University and NEC Laboratories America, Inc. give us some options. They developed technology that doubles the usable memory on cell phones and other embedded systems without any changes to hardware or applications.

Dudes, software ...

If your search is always on for useful software, bookmark the Software Dudes site. It's a new Web site that offers a wide variety of hard-to-find software applications in one spot. The Dudes' collection includes freeware and shareware. And of course, it will accept most major pay cards as well as PayPal for software.

Software-Dudes.com categorizes software into 10 channels. All products are sorted for easy navigation, so you can find what you want quickly. So dudes, check it out. But if you are looking for Solaris software, forget the Software Dudes and head for the Solaris Freeware Project.