No option for Law Firm

Anyone use Spotify? For those that don’t it is a service that allows you to play thousands of music tracks for free (with adverts) or for a small monthly cost (without adverts).

It recently launched a new version of its application that integrates a range on new social features.

So what’s this got to do with Legal IT? Well Spotify has done what a whole host of legal IT vendors have done for years, they’ve gone and over complicated what was a very simple application!

Software vendors (and I suspect this can be levelled at Legal IT depts too!) tend to feel the need to add functionality on release of a new version. Which is fair enough, but if you do your key task extremely well (like Spotify previously) why add to it?

There is a lot to be said for just keeping applications to the functions they do well, if you want to deliver a new version maybe think ”what can we take away?”. As I quoted in a previous post : “Perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”, Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

We’ve been away this Easter weekend to visit my wife’s family and whilst out yesterday I happened to get into a conversation with an ex-trainee of a Big Law firm. As I got on to explaining that I worked in the IT dept of a rival firm it was interesting to hear his questions and thoughts on Legal IT.

It left me thinking that anyone waiting for the current tech savvy trainees to give us Legal IT professionals an easier time ought to stop reading this post now as I’m about to depress you!

In fact if this trainee was typical of those joining law firms then the demands on Legal IT are going to get worse (or better if you’re up for the challenge). A couple of points stood out:

1. Frustration at the pace of change in corporate IT. The bemusement at why law firms can’t keep up with software like he could at home. “We were still on Office 2003!” he commented as though this was a ridiculous situation. My comments on the difficulties of upgrading thousands of PC’s got a kind of “So what?” reaction.
2. They do understand the IT dept but only the roles of those at the coal face. The service desks and IT support staff. They are unaware of the size and roles in the rest of IT.

Now this may have just been the situation in that particular law firm, but I doubt it. The challenge that stands out to me from this is twofold:

1. The struggle of getting the old lawyers to use computers is going to change rapidly into a demand from new lawyers to use the latest computers and software. This I’m sure is starting to happen already, but it will only increase. Why shouldn’t a lawyer be able to do with his work kit what I’m doing now with my own kit (writing a blog post on my laptop travelling up the M5 whilst connected to the internet via my windows phone which is acting as a wireless hotspot! **).
2. There needs to be better engagement at the trainee stage with IT. Get the trainees involved in the IT strategy early in their careers may reap benefits later.

Things are not going to get any easier for Legal IT, the demands on the corporate IT dept won’t drop off they’ll just be different.

Oh and the challenges for Law Firms generally won’t get easier either. This guy got disillusioned with the long hours, no life culture of city law and quit to pursue other interests. Generation Y is going to shake things up in law in more ways than one!

** to the iPhone users out there. That windows phone is not only acting as a wireless hotspot, it’s also playing MP3’s through the car stereo and scrobbling to tracks to last.fm. That’s multitasking!

Happy New Year to you all!

Hope you had a good 2009 and I wish you all a great 2010. For me what better way for me to start the blog this year than conforming with a blogger tradition and compiling a list.

I thought I’d try a prediction of the technology areas that I will be big for Legal It in 2010, so here it is my top 5 list of legal IT technologies for 2010.

#5 Mobile Applications

The Smartphone is well and truly main stream now (thanks mainly to the iPhone, but also Windows Phone, BlackBerry’s and Android phones). And 2010 will be the year it moves from just being an email device in the hands of fee earners. It’ll be the year of an explosion of business applications on mobile devices.

#4 – Search

I think this will be a big year for search technology, in particular IDOL. This will initially be driven by the numbers of firms on Autonomy’s iManage WorkSite product moving to the latest 8.5 version with IDOL. But once it’s in I think search will start to grow as a key technology in 2010.

#3 – Office 2010/Windows 7

After 18 months of “make do” most firms will start to look at these two products together. After all I suspect almost all law firms are on Windows XP still and Office 2003, right? I also think there will be a fair few mid-sized firms who go down an alternative route and go to OpenOffice in 2010 (like Ford & Warren Solicitors in the UK. A Law Firm in Leeds with 200 desktops are using Openoffice 3.0 now).

#2 Instant Messaging

MSN Messenger comes to Legal IT! After years of being the #1 consumer product for Generations Y & Z this will be the year Instant Messaging breaks into the corporate world in a big way (including Legal IT). There will be lots of arguments against, but 2010 will be the year for IM starts becoming a standard business tool.

And Finally……

#1 Speech Recognition

I remember this being touted as the killer technology back when I started in Legal IT in the mid to late 90′s. But the technology has advanced sufficiently to warrant a return in a big way in 2010 (Nuance have been working on the technology and have acquired all those names of old, IBM ViaVoice, Dragon Dictation etc – just this week they bought SpinVox).

I think also the general shift in secretarial/fee earner ratios will mean fee earners will do more of their own document production (also I think younger lawyers are more comfortable doing this anyway). Speech recognition is perfect for addressing this, giving you a quick start on your document. 

So that’s my list, one for a review at the end of the year. What do you think? A accurate list or a sure fire way to get myself on a list of infamous quotes on 31st December 2010?

It’ll take a lot to beat this quote, my favourite from a list circulated this week on twitter:

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” 1977 — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) 

Although when you think about it now, he’s probably right. Do we really want a computer or just an internet device in our home?