No Option for Law Firm

I know this is another “mobile phone” blog post from me, but I make no apologies. I think mobile and BYOD (bring your own device) is one of the biggest changes that will happen in Legal IT in the next few years.

I also think this weeks announcement from Microsoft will be the start of a turning point for Legal IT mobile technology. The slow shift from BlackBerry to other platforms will start to gather pace with Windows Phone 8. There are a few features that have been announced in Windows Phone 8 that allow this platform to be considered as a real corporate alternative to the BlackBerry.

The first couple are already available on other platforms but they fill a hole that Windows Phone 7.5 had, which are on-device encryption and over the air updates. The former is critical to safeguard data in law firms. I’ve not seen the exact specs for this, but one can hope that the enterprise can manage this along side encryption provided in Windows 7 and 8 on the desktop (ie effectively will be the same Bitlocker technology). Over the air updates are a must for a large law firm, can you imagine the need to tether 1000+ devices to Zune to update??

A new feature which differentiates Windows Phone 8 is the OS integration with VoIP technology. By default Microsofts Skype will be integrated (although later reports indicate this may be allowed to be removed by carriers wanting to protect their phone call revenue!), but it is available for developers so you can pretty safety assume that Lync will get fully integrated! By integrating at the OS it’ll link with contacts and phone as if it was the native interface and will work with all Bluetooth attached devices etc.

Also the kernel of Windows Phone 8 is shared with Windows 8. Now it may be a while before law firms switch to desktop 8 but Legal IT firms that move their platforms to be Windows 8 compliant should find it much easier to leverage those apps in WP8 too. There will also be the ability to set up corporate app stores to manage the delivery of apps internally.

For consumers the Microsoft Phone Wallet sounds interesting, combining NFC technology (near field communication) and an account manager for credit cards, frequent flyer cards etc. Not sure of the benefits directly for Legal IT, but for a travelling lawyer maybe. Again these are available in the latest Android devices and rumoured to be in the next generation of Apple devices.

There is a “split” in the OS as you’re trusty “old” Lumia 800/900 look like they won’t get an 8 update, but MS will introduce a 7.8 release for older devices. There are few details yet, but it sounds like the kind of split iOS does with newer devices, ie you’ll get all the features that the old hardware can manage (ie you won’t get the higher res features as the older phones don’t have the display etc).

Whether we like it or not, in law firms Microsoft technology is king. And this won’t change anytime soon, much to the annoyance of those who still persist with the Microsoft is buggy/poor mantra. So if i was a betting man i would say the natural successor to RIM devices will be Windows Phone 8, but this will bring Android and iOS into the law firm more and more as the management of devices will be less linked to one device.

Last week I attended the Bighand user conference at the excellent Renaissance Hotel in St Pancras (take note certain legal IT company whose only user event I attended the previous week). Rather than write up a review of the whole day (there’s a good one here if you’re interested) I thought I’d comment on an item that was high on the days agenda.

Speech Recognition.

Now before I get accused of following certain people or the current trend generated by SIRI let me first point out item #1 on this blog post of mine from the 1st January 2010!

But the feeling I got from the conference is that finally the tech, that has been around in Legal ever since I’ve been in this vertical, is finally reaching a point that it is useable. The latest version of the Bighand product (4.2) uses the new Nuance 11 engine and from the demo shown on the day is impressive (demo online too). The workflow with transcribe and proofing seems ideal and the tools given to the secretary to control the dictation playback with the resulting document for amendment is well thought out. I seem to recall in a previous Bighand session that this correcting by the secretary would help with the teaching of the speech recognition software for that author (I could be wrong on this one so check with Bighand first!)

With a bit of work with the API that Bighand now provide you could create a great Fee Earner interface from the DMS (document management system) that would ensure the document being created is started on the correct template, filed in the right place and transcribed ready for a secretary to finish the document.

There were some good case studies from law firms who had started to use speech recognition. Stating that the transition wasn’t difficult for existing Bighand users, but the lawyer had to want to embrace the technology (due to the initial time taken to teach the system and perhaps having to adapt dictation style for better results). Also feedback was not that this led to reduction in secretaries (those lawyer-secretary ratios were high enough already!) but to enabling the secretaries to do other work for the lawyer.

The key point that stood out from the day though were some comments generally on the technology. For a while I’ve thought that maybe dictation was a dying technology, after all the “younger” lawyer is used to typing his/her own documents right? Well this generation maybe, but the next generation is growing up with the likes of SIRI. Maybe this generation is a blip before lawyers throw themselves back at dictation and with the advances in the technology maybe speech recognition is now a viable solution to both improve efficiencies and to make those straining lawyer-secretary ratios work!

Well it’s been a bad few days for RIM this week (and I dare say a difficult time for a fair few IT depts in law firms as a result). And it looks like it isn’t just contained to EMEA either, reports suggest a spread to the US now.

A few things spring to mind off this:

1) It’s going to be one heck of a case study for IT service failure. From the technology that failed, the (lack of) disaster recovery and what resilience was built into a critical system through to studies into how not to manage an incident (the failure in communicating to customers etc). No matter how much redundancy you put in place we know things like this do happen in IT. But for your core product, in RIM’s case, there seems to have been no contingency (although in the aftermath this may end up being something truly unavoidable) and worse still no method of communicating good up to date information to the customer in place. It’s even worse when you consider the mainstream 24hr news services have been carrying the story and would have surely loved to broadcast comment and updates direct from RIM.

2) It’s a real kick in the teeth for cloud computing. Another provider (Office 365 outage, Amazon outage, Google Apps/Mail outage, Apple MobileMe outage) suffering a major outage and thus clients seeing service outages for their own customers.

3) In the corporate email and smartphone arena it’s a big bonus for Apple, Google and Microsoft. The other three key competitors in the smartphone arena. Also for services like Good Technologies who provide app based email solutions for enterprise.

RIM were on the back foot as it was, their main benefit over their rivals was enterprise strength email solutions (although personally I don’t buy into the whole BlackBerry is less of a risk that ActiveSync type technologies argument, but there you go). This reputation though has been dealt a big blow with this incident and they’re going to need some excellent PR work and customer deals to stop a desertion of the enterprise to rivals.

There are plenty of lawyers that use Apple or Android devices already (more so outside the UK), and now Windows Phone has a release that puts it on a par with the others. So at the moment it seems like RIM’s days are numbered.

A lawyer sits in an airport lounge, pulls out the iPad and connects to the firms document management system (DMS) through the Autonomy iManage App in the AppStore. She flicks through the correspondence folder, checks her teams filed emails and reads up on the clients comments to the agreement draft. She then decides to dictate some amendments to her secretary using the built-in microphone. Launching the agreement from the DMS, she highlights the paragraph needing amendment and also launches the BigHand dictation app ……

<Fail> No multitasking on the iPad!

There have been plenty of posts why the iPad falls short some I agree with some I don’t. But as a device for lawyers or other business usage I think it’s a case of “not there yet”.

As well as lack of multitasking, I think for a tablet to be a great tool for a lawyer it would need to replace the touch keyboard with a stylus/pen and good handwriting recognition. Marking up a document on a tablet with a pen surely is the “revolutionary” vision Mr Jobs?

It’s not far off and to be fair to Apple I never thought it would be a business tool, it’s a consumer device. But as a consumer I’m personally not convinced there is a gap between the smartphone and the netbook. I prefer the former on the move and if I wanted something a little more the later would be more convenient (and less tied into the Apple eco system!)

So after all the hype, the multitude of blog responses (including this one) I’m left with the feeling that with the iPad Apple have maybe left us with another :-

The Apple Newton

“magical truly revolutionary product” – Steve Jobs on the iPad

Perhaps it’s just too early for the technology that will make the tablet a real killer device. I think there is a gap (especially in business) for tablet PC’s, but the revolution will only come when it’s as convenient as a pad of paper or a paper magazine!