BLTF2020 talk – part 2 : Climate Crisis!

One area though where technology is still finding its way and hasn’t settled is in the office. I expect in the next few years this is going to accelerate even more due to a number of factors,

First Climate Change, whether you like it or not (or even whether you believe it or not) this is going to have an impact on the amount and the distance we are likely to commute in the next 10-20 years. Whether it’s through government commitments to achieving carbon neutral by 2050 (and some councils, like mine in Wakefield, are pushing for 2030).

Or whether it is through the disruption of activists blocking city centres and places of work.

Another impact that is very relevant right now is the rise of something like the Corona virus that is shutting offices and travel down right across the world.

Then there is the push for firms to best use their office space. Whether this is to maximise occupancy levels, to reduce costs or to meet their own carbon zero targets, the result will be a requirement for technology to step in and help the remote worker feel, well less remote.

This could start with pure open plan workspaces,

but I think there will be a bit of a backlash against this form in the coming years. There are already many articles and studies showing they can impact productivity.

And as one article nicely put it “The most obvious coping mechanisms – headphones, phone booths, hiding in conference rooms – rely on closing up that openness”.

But regardless of the form of the office layout, open plan or a mix of open plan and office, there will be a shift to hot desking. Software is already out there to help this by monitoring desk and meeting space usage, banks have been using this for a number of years using tools like Occupeye.

Not to be confused with the tracking software that Barclays has been forced to scrap recently, an altogether different form of employee tracking!

As a recent adoptee (not yet convert) one thing I will say is that care needs to be taken when setting up hotdesking. So I thought I’d list a few tips:

  1. You need docks for your laptops, these have to be set up the same on every desk. Every cable in the same ports. Nothing is more irritating than plugging into docks with two screens and it switching the left to right and vice versa.
  2. Desk kit consistency. You need to rock up to the desk and have the same kit. Keyboard, mouse, chargers etc.
  3. Lockers. You’ll not want to lug everything around in your laptop bag all the time, somewhere to lock your non-standard desk kit away.
  4. A booking system or a way of telling which desks are free, who’s away etc. A spreadsheet or a whiteboard will suffice if you’re only managing a few desks but this is where software can help for full office hot-desking.

Working away from office is much easier now, whether from home or from hotel or coffee shop. Most places have good WiFi to connect from, but just remember to use VPN when on a public hotspot to ensure your connection is secured.

And this should become even easier over the next few years as the 5G network starts to rollout, I know we thought as much with 4G and I’m wary of hyping up a new technology. But there is one specific that makes me think this time (particularly in cities) things should improve. The fact 5G can support significantly more devices per square kilometre than 4G.

Key to the success though of all of this hotdesking and remote working is communication and collaboration tools. Most will have used Skype for work I imagine, some will now be working in Teams or Slack. This will only increase. But something needs to change to improve online meetings. Take a shot of this slide on your phone and play Conference Call Bingo on your next call, I bet you get a line within 10 minutes!

There are additions to Teams to make video conferencing better using things like background blur.

But really who uses video on conference calls?

For me in conference calls the key is not new technology, it’s better technology. And specifically better audio. Ditch using the bandwidth for video, use it to provide very high quality audio and then ensure that everyone has the best microphones possible. Perhaps meeting rooms should bin the in ceiling mics and get everyone a lapel mic. But if someone can create something like Apple Face ID that checks when you’re speaking and only then unmutes the mic they’ll make a fortune!

For those with touchscreen PC’s with a pen or iPads with a pencil I’d suggest looking at the whiteboard application from Microsoft, it is fantastic for those collaborative meetings.

This is now integrated into Teams which when combined with technology like the Surface Hub can really bring remote workers into a collaborative meeting.

Which brings us back to the point where part one finished, the requirement for all these devices to enable us to have ubiquitous access to data, documents and services. Picking up from one device to another with ease.

And to do that we need the power of platforms….

Click here to read part 3

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BLTF2020 talk – part 1 : Détente – the device war is over

Since the advent of the PC there has been a push for mobility, the first portable PC’s though were essentially full size PCs with a mini monitor built into the case.

But then came the laptop and notebook PC’s and so started the PC war, which form factor was going to win, did you need a desktop anymore? My first mobile device was a Mitac laptop that I had for university, it have a monochrome monitor, huge 40Mb harddrive and a powerpack that was almost as big as the device itself!

But everything heated up with the launch, in 2010, of the iPad. Since then we’ve had ongoing predictions of the end of the PC.

This war has forced (or encouraged) manufacturers to create many kinds of form factors. Some successful, some not.

We’ve had tablets from Android, tablets in different sizes from 7″ to almost 13″, this had led to touch screen laptops, with Windows 8 failed OS attempts to merge these form factors, then came the more successful Surface Pro that brought a pen and a detachable keyboard. Others have tried fold around screens, Apple tried a pencil. And so it goes on and on.

But hands up who uses only one device, whether it’s a PC, a laptop or a tablet. Just the one and none of the others? Personally I went from that Mitac notebook, to a desktop, added and iPad 3 and now have replaced the desktop with a Surface Pro and the iPad 3 with an iPad Pro and Pencil.

So no I would put forward it’s not going to be about a single device, we pretty much all use different form factors for different scenarios. Whether it’s the type of work or the location we’re in, it can make one form factor more convenient than the other.

If I’m doing work, then I prefer a PC with two large monitors. But for browsing the internet or some shopping, I’ll use either the PC or iPad, taking notes I prefer the pencil and an iPad over the pen and my Surface Pro. But it’s all personal preference.

We’ve reached device détente.

But as in the cold war just as things seemed to be calming down and we were all settled on having a laptop and an iPad things are starting to escalate again. With the Surface Duo, the Surface Neo and the Samsung Galaxy Fold another new form factor is emerging.

I personally like the Surface Neo concept,

the ability to have a two screen set up with laptop functionality could work well for those who like the separation of two screens. Apple filed a patent a couple of years ago for something similar so we could see a MacBook or iPad device like this soon too.

However in reality I think this will be a blip in the story and just be another option and probably more a curiosity than anything substantial. Fundamentally the thing that has driven the success of multiple devices over having just one device is the software and more importantly the cloud platform behind the scenes, whether it’s Google’s, Apple’s or Microsoft’s it’s the same concept of being able to pick up where you left off on a totally different device with ease.

More on how these concepts are arriving in law firms in the next parts.

Click here to read part 2

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Dangers of email – is this what’s to come?

We’re in a world where what you say on social media can suddenly have a big impact on your career. Maybe not so much for the average worker, but certainly for anyone in the public eye.

But a recent story on the BBC News site surrounding the Boeing 737 Max debacle could be bringing that level of scrutiny to work email, the release of emails from Boeing has thrown up an email from an employee indicating the plane was “designed by clowns”.

Now this on it’s own probably nothing for you to worry about, but then throw in this story by The Guardian about the development of AI bots being used to detect harassment in emails, to help in flagging bullying and sexual harassment in the workplace and all of a sudden you could be in danger of being the firm equivalent of Alistair Stewart.

I have a an old PST file from many many years ago and as they were not related to my current role or firm I thought I’d share what a simple search for “idiots” brought up, it was an email from a colleague that I’ve deliberately taken one line out of full context for effect.

“if only the people in charge of this firm had a clue as to how much time (and thus money) they’re wasting being bloody stubborn idiots”

I would hope there are laws in place to protect employees from the level of snooping (any technology lawyer like to clarify?) but if not it’s a worrying trend or maybe looking at it another way, the trigger to releasing us all from being slaves to email as we go back to non-electronic communication!

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Let’s try again, maybe this time it’ll stick

I think I started 2019 and probably the two or three years before with a similar aim for the blog, a new year resolution to try and get into a regular cadence again. It was easier in the early days of this blog (11 years ago, eleven!!) as it seemed that there was plenty to discuss in Legal and IT.

So it’s 2020, new decade and I’m giving it another stab. It will still be a legal tech blog but I suspect it will fall into general tech much more, basically because as an industry we are having many of the same challenges technology wise as many other firms nowadays. We can do (or are doing) much more with standard technology than in the past. 

I’m going to start at a steady pace and that includes this post. Today is just pointing out a couple of articles I’ve read recently. And the second is simply a response to the first.

The main post is from Thomson Reuters – “2020 Report on the State of the Legal Market”, sorry it’s behind a “pass us your details” page but it is free to download.  

The second, as mentioned a comment on the above can be found here : https://prismlegal.com/law-firms-disrupted-disputing-the-tr-view/ 

My message is not “act now or dissolve within X years.” What I can say and what seems reasonable is “now is the time to act and remember, it’s more fun to be the acquiring firm than the one that’s acquired”. Perhaps that will motivate some more incremental change. 

I liked this final conclusion, it feels less pessimistic somehow and more in tune with reality and yet it is still advocating the same need to bring about change. 

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What now for Workshare?

Litera systems are in the documents space in Legal Tech, they have developed their own software and also acquired some good products on the way (DocXTools being a favourite of many a housestyle champion!)

Workshare have been in law firms for years, legal veterans will probably have used Deltaview in the early days. And Workshare expanded into other areas as that merged into Workshare 3 and brought meta data stripping and the review process.

This month the two companies merged.

But I don’t have a definitive answer to the question posed in the title, in fact I can see two reasons for this merger. First it’s purely a market share grab, take out a competitor and move your product into those firms.

Second and I hope this is the actual answer. Litera have seen some IP in Workshare products that they wanted and will blend the best of the Workshare technology into their own products making something better in the process.

With the improvements in core Microsoft tools and the rapid ongoing deployment of these in the Office 365 ProPlus world and given competitor DocsCorp have just had their best sales results in its 15-year history, it’s certainly a merger that actually makes sense whichever outcome.

From a law firm perspective I would make the call to all these vendors though, follow the Microsoft Office path! Help us exploit all the Office offerings (desktop, mobile and online), make it easy to patch/update your products in this world and help us rid or at least minimise the number of old style office addins we need!

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To float or not to float that is the question

First off a plug, if you have an interest in the financial markets then MoneyWeek podcast is well worth a listen (link here or search your podcast app). But on their site today is a great post on law firm listings highlighting that while the access to capital is great for the firms, for the investor “At the very least, you should proceed only with due care and attention”.

It shouldn’t be news to most in the industry as it highlights the challenge we’ve heard for years and for the most part understand and have started to rise to the challenge :

First, the business model of the law firm has worked perfectly well for a long time, but it might be about to change. Law is one of the industries most vulnerable to the rise of artificial intelligence.

Matthew Lynn, MoneyWeek, 28/07/2019

But the second part is something I’ve only heard from a few commentators, the “superstar problem”. I posted about this a few years back as it seemed to mirror what was happening in the Premier League (Balotelli or Giggs? you can tell from the title how long ago!!).

I suspect inside the floated firms the capital has allowed investments that couldn’t have been done without the IPO, but from the investment side the article points out “The record of the firms that have listed so far is not very encouraging.”. Time will tell I guess.

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Innovation – overused conference topic or something valid to strive for?

I looked at blockchain in my last post, I’m looking at another conference favourite in this one (it’ll be AI next I hear you say!)

The tweet above made me smile this week. And then I saw an article by Rory Sutherland in The Spectator that pretty much summed up my feeling about Legal IT at the moment. The article was entitled “We don’t need more technology, we need better technology” which is a nice summary and I could leave it there. But it was this next line that got me and links back to the title of this post:

Innovation is a two-stage process. First you discover something; then over time people discover how best to use it.

That was it for me. Think about it the technology and data in law firms is pretty much there. Yes we might need to swap it for better and new versions in some cases, but fundamentally we need to work out how better to use it. Not just the individual systems but the technology as a whole, how to get consistency so that the data in one system means the same as in another. Then we can leverage real meaning out of it. Structure the documents with actual data (no more DOC as the type, identify the final documents etc) and then be able to match that consistently with the time recorded and matter types. Keeping a consistent data model (as a slight aside I liked this initiative I saw the other day to try and get an industry standard for matter categories). All of a sudden you can get huge benefit from your firms systems. Let’s look at what we’ve got and use it better to improve how we do things rather than buy yet another product because we’re convinced that’s the one that will make all the difference!

Finally if you have read the whole article, doesn’t this ring true with every Lync implementation (I use Lync as I think this is more pertinent to where we all were, rather than now).

Then it occurred to me: the reason home video-conferencing is such a game changer is only partly about the video. Much of the magic is in the quality of the sound.

Didn’t we all trumpet the desktop video conferencing and then realise that ensuring the voice and call quality was the killer!!

 

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Should we stop chasing blockchain?

At the back end of last year I saw an excellent presentation on blockchain, a technology I have tried to keep an open mind on. But this talk kind of confirmed all my fears. Let me take you through the key parts of the talk and then I’ll leave the comments open to see whether you all come to the same conclusion or can point out what I’m missing.

Blockchain is  a distributed ledger technology.

A ledger is a essentially a list of transactions.

A hash is created for each transaction, a value that is unfeasible to reverse. So it verifies the transaction hasn’t been changed. If you then hash a “block” of these transactions with a hash record together you get a block hash. Then if you add each block hash to the next you get a ….. chain.


Then distribute these ensuring the chain is agreed between them all, the more copies the harder it is to change or fake the ledger.

That’s blockchain and so far seems pretty useful as a way of protecting data?

But if the ledger cannot change and isn’t regulated then errors cannot change either right?

But it’s good for smart contracts right? The blockchain tech makes the contract unalterable. But a bug in the code and, well back to the point that the block chain makes the contract virtually unalterable ie impossible to unpick! (something that has happened)

All technology has issues, so I get this is not a reason to dismiss the concept. But unless you have zero trust in other parties and require unalterable data and where regulation or law doesn’t help, I can’t help think a standard secure database can do the job you’re after?!

Pretty much what the Australian Government said, this is a quote from Peter Alexander, Chief Digital Officer at Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency :Oh and one more reason blockchain technology like bitcoin may not be worth pursuing : “Bitcoin Mining Now Consuming More Electricity Than 159 Countries Including Ireland & Most Countries In Africa” source

To me the key question then is simply why do you need a distributed ledger, especially laws firms as it kind of removes the need for them in the transaction. If both parties agree a contract on a distributed ledger, you’re pretty much saying it doesn’t matter if we don’t trust the other we’ve an unalterable contract without the need for a middle man. Maybe it just shifts everything from transaction law to litigation? And if you actually still need the lawyer to create the contract then why not just put it in a secure database of the law firm?

Thoughts?

Oh and a big credit to Paul D Johnston who’s original presentation on what is blockchain was the jump off point of pretty much all of the above!

 

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Not more feature creep

It’s good to be reminded every so often how poor twitter can be at conveying ideas. Yes it can be great conversation for conversation, well when you’re dealing with people you genuinely interact with rather than shouting into the ether! But it did remind me how much better blogs are for this. More blogs and less twitter, maybe that should be my resolution for the new year!

This was the post I put out here today.

I can’t say exactly who the product was, but that doesn’t really matter as the issue certainly isn’t just unique to them. The problem isn’t that the extra feature isn’t useful or that it won’t actually add something a fair few people will use. But the issue is the “feature” itself being something stock or boiler plate, something that is not specific to the actual problem this product is solving and easily used elsewhere.

This example today was ‘chat’ or threaded conversation around a topic, something that appears in so many platforms. Whether it’s the document management system (thanks to a good friend for reminding me of that one!), an intranet platform, a Microsoft product (you can substitute any other big IT vendor here) with Yammer/Teams etc they get everywhere. BUT and here is my issue, they’re all proprietary. So chat about the document in one system but don’t expect to see that in your topics in Teams for example.

From the vendors case I get it (new feature, extra sales etc). But I don’t know of any firm that decides to buy everything from one supplier, in fact we’re all in a brexit type compromise (sorry!). An unsatisfactory compromise between not wanting the best of breed in everything & the lack of interoperability on one hand and the compromise in some services & risk that everything from one supplier brings.

The answer? Maybe vendors could look at the building blocks out there and if someone has done it well already then look to add the feature through integration and cooperation? Want a chat facility? Maybe integrate with Teams? If you’re a legal specific vendor and want to store a document, integrate with iManage or netdocuments? It’s not much to ask for 2019 right?

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“Outlook keeps crashing/is so slow” – Sound familiar?

It feels a really long time ago since I took time to look at new software that wasn’t in the Windows 10/Office 365/Work 10 stack I’ve been immersed in since last summer. But last week I spent the day with Riverbed (and yes I know what you’re thinking “Software? But Riverbed they’re the WAN people right?”) to do just that.

But before I talk about the software, let me put out a statement. The biggest challenge in law firms in my experience is getting the basics right and if you want to distill that down to a specific challenge, get Outlook, Word and the DMS (Document Management System) working fast and without crashing. I am convinced that this is not just our firm, in fact I know it isn’t based on the feedback from two firms at the same event (both large multinational law firms that you’ll know if I said their names) as well as others I speak to in other firms.

I also know there are other products in this space, but the one I saw today was Riverbed’s SteelCentral Aternity product. It’s a monitoring product that focuses on performance and status of applications across your firm. And the reason for the post if because from a law firm point of view you would immediately see how it could help with the above challenge as there was a dashboard that showed Outlook with various actions monitored for performance (check calendar, create email, view email etc), this gave an overall performance metric for Outlook on every PC in the firm. So straight away you could check what your performance baseline is, whether a particular office was seeing worse performance or more crashes etc etc

It sounds really simple, but that’s the beauty. How many times do you get anecdotal “Outlook always crashes” or “the DMS is always slow” from lawyers but don’t have the hard evidence to see if this is truly a problem, a one of event or a perception thing? This product could show whether those teams or offices are truly experiencing issues or not and even better allow you to be proactive about it. This isn’t just about the desktop as it integrates nicely to show an full picture (network, servers etc), so you can drill down and get more certainty as to where the problem lies.

I know products like these have been around for a while but with an IT shift from onprem to cloud and from windows 7/8 to 10 and Office to 365, having something that can help that transition would be really useful. A real evidence based answer to those “it’s been slow ever since…”

I’m definitely going to look a bit further at this area!

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