No option for Law Firm

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!

This is not really a Legal IT post just a general post to mark today’s passing of GeoCities.

GeoCities : July 1995 – 26th October 2009

GeoCities was to budding web developers what the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum etc were to budding developers ten years earlier. Starting in the mid 90’s it was a place to host web pages, enabling millions of people to upload their “under construction” images and dancing babies animated gifs!

RIP GeoCities!

I was reading an article yesterday, from an interview with Steve Balmer. It was about Microsoft’s direction and its competitors (in particular FireFox, Google and Linux). One comment stood out:

Yeah, we’re right now about 74 percent overall with the browser market, roughly speaking. But we’re having to compete like heck with IE 8, with great new features.

This to me showed how “off the ball” Microsoft are!

Now before I go on let me say the following. I hate seeing Micro$oft. I am not an Apple or Linux fanboy, in fact I would go as far to say I really don’t care of MacOS that much. Yes I really like the iPhone interface, but would never buy one thanks to having to have iTunes to activate the thing. So I use a Windows Mobile device. I’ve used Ubuntu and think it’s alright, but actually I honestly prefer Windows. I love the xbox. So I’m not Microsoft bashing here.

There now I’ve said that, back to the quote. In particular this sentence “But we’re having to compete like heck with IE 8, with great new features.”

My response as per the title, no, no, no, who asked for that? I don’t want more features, in fact I want less. I want my browser to be small and very fast and just let me browse. If IE8 had come out and was barebones fast as you like, I would probably have switched back from FireFox!

This got me thinking about lawyers and legal software and the same applies. Just give them the features they require. Make the next release of the Document Management System, the CRM system, the finance system, the template management system, the digital dictation system leaner.

Take Word or any Word Processor. How much functionality does the average lawyer need? Most law firms will also have multiple add ins to provide more functionality. The integration with the add ins should be slicker and removing of the unnecessary proprietary options easier.

Most people want to get on with the task in hand, the software should help that both quickly and easily. So with the browser, it should help me browse, end of! The DMS should help be file and retrieve my documents. Outlook should let me manage my email. etc etc 

So no more new features please unless it’s going to make the task I’m using the software for easier and faster!

Sorry, I know that’s a terrible pun!

A warning, this is a bit of a techie post. So for the non-IT readers of the blog, a summary of the post:  “if more vendors/suppliers did what bigHand do in their software design your IT department could upgrade software or change the settings for you much faster!”

On with the post…

As firms grow in size there are a number of IT challenges that can become more and more difficult due to the additional numbers. One of these challenges is those “small” upgrades to get to the latest version that seem to lengthen exponentially with the number of extra desktop PC’s supported. This also goes for changing the configuration or settings of those software applications. Especially when you want to alter a setting that is located locally on the PC (for example, iManage FileSite holds a lot of it’s client settings/configuration in the local PC registry, whereas with Workshare it’s in an XML file on the PC).

bigHand though seem to have a different approach.

At the moment we’re looking at an upgrade of our bigHand digital dictation installation to v3.2.3 and because of this I spent Tuesday on a technical training course for the new version. During the course we went through the client configuration.

And in bigHand for the most part these can be set using roles in the central database. This means they’re very simple to change instantly and also means you can simply manage different configurations for different people. All this can be done without the need to deploy patches, upgrades or do any amendments on the desktop PC.

Other settings for things like drivers to use for microphones can be managed using group policy using the bigHand provided administrative template file (.adm files). Again no mucking about on the desktop PC.

Simple and brilliant!

So if you need to disable a menu option for all the users? Simple! Just amend the role and apply once centrally! This makes upgrades easier as well as your client deployment can be a simple default install without the need to heavily customise for all those specific settings (especially if you have one configuration for fee earners, one for secretaries, one for support staff etc etc).

I read my copy of Computing magazine today and the comment section caught my eye. It was an article entitled “Focus Resources on what really matters” by Martin Butler, the basic premise is that IT has become caught up in a drive for efficiency at the expense of business success. In the current “economic climate” there is of course a natural tendency for cutting costs, corporate IT departments are usually large cost centres and thus are prime targets for cost savings. 

It reminded me though of an article I read some years ago about the shift of IT to a utility function akin to the railways or electricity companies (IT Doesn’t Matter by Nicholas G. Carr published in the Harvard Business Review). The premise being that these businesses “open opportunities for forward-looking companies to gain strong competitive advantages. But as their availability increases and their cost decreases – as they become ubiquitous – they become commodity input”.

These are opposite views of IT, one as a continuing driver for business growth and one as a driver for business efficiency and cost savings.

Now, I’ve started reading Richard Susskind’s “The End of Lawyers?” and I’m currently at the point where he talks about “technology lag”. This is the lag between two forms of technology: data processing and knowledge processing. The former (data processing) he puts as the “use of technology to capture, distribute, reproduce and disseminate information.”, the later (knowledge processing) a “set of technologies that help us analyse, sift through and sort out the mountains of data that we have created and helps make them more manageable.”

Richard Susskind points out that we are between these two forms of technology, in law firms I agree. And I think Martin Butler’s view of the IT function is the one that will facilitate this move and be able to supply the “Knowledge Processing” in law firms. I’m afraid that Nicolas Carr’s IT function will give us very efficient and cost effective departments that are stuck in “Data Processing”! It’ll be interesting as we climb out of the recession which law firm IT departments become.