Category Archives: General Legal IT

General IT, General Legal IT

Everything is fine in social media, the sky is blue!

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I signed up to Twitter back in 2007 I think, can’t remember the exact date as my original account got wiped in some X cull or other. My current account started in 2009 and I’ve been a fairly regular user since. That is until August 17th 2023 when I made my last post on X.

My stopping didn’t have anything to do with anything other that Tweetdeck going behind the paywall, a paywall that for me was too high for a social media platform. I tried Threads but my experience with it wasn’t great, as you can read in a previous post. In the end I got fed up of waiting for that v1.1 to fix things! So that was it for a Twitter like experience….or it was until I got an invite to BlueSky!

BlueSky social media platform

What a breath of fresh air, it’s like taking a step back in time to the early days of Twitter when developers were encouraged and there was a wide variety of topics and conversation not just town crier politics. In fact in reality BlueSky is more an open protocol for a social media platform, the BlueSky app is billed as an example, the push is for others to build things using the protocol. Bit like the early days of email, there was a mail protocol but others built Outlook, Thunderbird etc

So is it just like early Twitter? Not exactly, here are some key things to understand that I think will help you get started.

The home or following feed is pretty much as you’d expect, these are posts from people you follow. In the settings you can choose whether this includes replies or not, reposts etc But key difference is that there are no algorithms pushing content, it’s simply what you follow.

The concept of feeds though is slightly different to Twitter lists. Custom feeds can be created by developers to collate content, so for example I’ve created a Legal Tech feed to look for key legal tech terms (subscribe here). I’ve not done any coding for years, so I took advantage of SkyFeed created by the developer community to help you create custom feeds, all you need to understand is a bit of regex which isn’t too hard to pick up.

But there are now lots of feeds to follow and in fact although I’ve done the usual follow/follow back to build up a community, it’s mostly through feeds that I find the most useful posts and conversations.

So what about Tweetdeck? Well thanks to an active developer community there’s a web app called Deck Blue which is absolutely fantastic, it’s pretty much tweetdeck but is getting developed all the time and is the one thing that’s kept me with BlueSky. It really is that good!

On mobile, again there is a BlueSky app but the developer community has built something better, GraySky is a fantastic mobile app and as good as any 3rd party twitter app that there used to be (before they were all killed off).

I joined BlueSky on August the 7th, have made 280+ posts and in my busiest month posted 106 times. I was user 520,272 and there are now over 2m and it’s still limited access. No I’ve not added all this up, another developer has created a great app to pull stats together – Twexit.nl

Did you ever use tweekly.fm? A bot for posting last.fm stats to twitter. Well that got killed by X’s API limits, but has now appeared over at BlueSky – lastfm.blue

I’ll finish with one final feature that hopefully will help the platform as it grows. The concept of subscribe-able mute lists. Anyone can create a mute list. So maybe you want to avoid people that post pictures of cats, you’d create one, add the users to it and subscribe. The cats pictures disappear. Others can also subscribe if they want to avoid cat pictures too. It may sound a bit harsh, but it doesn’t stop you posting cats, nor does it doesn’t stop people who like cats from seeing them, you just can choose a topic list to exclude if you want. You can find if you’re on a list (use Twexit.nl) if you really want to know.

The platform is developing all the time, so for example hashtags are just appearing, lists are evolving (from mute lists to also include lists in the twitter sense).

Anyway I’d love to build the legal IT / legal tech community over there, as well as any other topics (but please not polarising politics, leave that to X!!). I’ve a few invite codes available, so if you’re genuinely interested in moving across and adding to the BlueSky community then drop me a line and I’ll happily share a code.

Oh and then follow me @planty.bsky.social

Appendix
Here are some other resources for learning about BlueSky :-
How to Bluesky. This article explains how Bluesky works… | by Nico Mara-McKay | Medium
How I made the ‘Seattle Sport’ custom Bluesky feed | jacklorusso.com

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General Legal IT

Is the Legal Tech Bubble Bursting?

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This is the question a few legal news sites have been asking over the last couple of weeks based on the news of Reynen Court. (see here and here).

I’ve had a couple of thoughts after reading these, first a general answer that it’s probably less bursting, but more the general economy contracting and so the availability to finance those nice tech/low business value products is diminished. The valuable tech I’m sure will still survive and thrive still. The demand for tech solutions to drive efficiency and innovate in law firms continues to grow, whatever the conference circuit might say.

The second was more on Reynen Court. It’ll be interesting to see whether they manage their way through, I thought as a concept it was quite intriguing and would probably benefit firms if it succeeded. In particular those firms that were well on their way to cloud platforms (and by that I mean their own modern Azure/AWS application architectures rather than just SaaS or IaaS cloud).

The ability to manage purchase through to deployment all in one place and have the application deployed into your own cloud was quite a compelling technical solution.

I did wonder whether they would achieve the legal tech appstore as I was always a little sceptical whether the vendors themselves would play ball. Firstly whether they would want to hand off that 1-2-1 customer contact, especially the established players, and secondly whether technically the vendors were able to deliver in this container based architecture. Based on experience of simply getting vendors away from COM add-ins in Word made me think this was going to be a long road!!

No one really knows how this next year will play out, but I’ll continue to keep an eye on this tech and in answer to the post title question. No not yet.

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General Legal IT

Competition, what competition? The rise and rise of the LegalTech conglomerates

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Every so often I get an really interesting one pager in my inbox titled “Aggregators in the Legal Technology Market”, it shows all the individual software that fits under about ten or eleven suppliers. So for example, Kira, Clocktimizer, Workshare, Prosperoware, DocsCorp – all owned by the same supplier. Sort of like Proctor & Gamble and Unilever own pretty much all the washing powders brands you can think of!

I’ve blogged about this kind of thing a few times in the distant past, sometimes getting under the skin of one or two companies who insisted their merger or purchase was for the benefit of the customer (rather than for the £’s, $’s or €’s) but then many years later said products were still separate or in some cases the “magic” technology jettisoned completely.

The difference this time is a lot of the companies seem to be running more as a conglomerate, no aim to integrate all the technologies and for some nor to present a user journey through all their individual technologies. Is this a good thing or not? I’m not sure, but I would love to see some kind of capability map across the various applications under each supplier so I could see who covers what. Something I may attempt in a future blog (unless anyone else has done so already, if so let me know in the comments).

I recently had a twitter back and forth with a good friend on the topic of platforms and tight integration vs loosely coupled tools doing specific functions (a topic I also talked about at BLTF 2020 and blogged about here).

To me this has to be a priority for these “conglomerates”, it’s alright having loads of separate apps for separate functions as long as they integrate nicely and have a consistent data model (oh for there to be a nice legal data reference model available in the public domain that vendors could broadly align to). I know some do, but please opt for an open integration rather than a proprietary method/tool to do so. If your applications are great we will buy them from you we don’t need tying into your ecosystem so we have to (Don’t be a facebook, or AOL for those of my generation).

Anyway if you’re interested in the document I mentioned it’s produced by Hyperscale Group and I think you can sign up to receive it on their website.

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General Legal IT

charles christian rip

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It came as a huge shock this morning reading the news of the death of Charles Christian. For me it felt that the sad news warranted a little more than just a short twitter post to pay tribute to the man who became as synonymous to the UK Legal Tech scene as anyone (Richard Susskind included).

I came across Charles back in 1996 when I started in the legal industry, well more specifically I came across the Orange Rag. Sat in an old office in the centre of Bradford waiting for in reception for my interview I picked up this strange “magazine” printed on bright orange paper and was introduced to the strange and wonderful world of legal technology.

I was lucky enough to meet Charles on a number of occasions through the years, whether as an attendee at various supplier conferences or at events that he helped run. It was through his involvement in LawTech Futures in the early 2010’s that he encouraged me to get involved and to talk at the event at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre, from there I have enjoyed a number of speaking gigs in London and across Europe.

Along with a few other legal tech stalwarts, Charles was involved in the early days of twitter and was a fountain of knowledge on legal tech. So, if you needed a bit of tech history or information about conferences, he was a font of knowledge and was always willing to engage in conversation.

I am sure there are many who have a huge sense of loss today, mine will likely be just a fraction of theirs, but to me it shows how much he touched and influenced so many people. After all he and the Orange Rag are one of the reasons this blog was started.

You will be missed Charles. RIP.

Other lovely tributes I’ve read: here and here

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General Legal IT, Legal

The Metaverse – Is it simply the latest conference topic or are we at the start of the next big thing?

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For those old enough to remember the 1990’s you may remember bold predictions like this

proving it is very hard to predict the future, if you gamble correctly on the big ticket things you’ve an opportunity of a career as a futurologist, but you’ve as much chance of being a quotable example of a luddite forever!

This was a topic of a twitter conversation the other week after a post during ILTACON22

So here goes, in print my thoughts. I think we are possibly on the cusp of the next wave of an interface into a virtual world, I also think we’re at the Netscape Navigator 1.0 stage of the journey and will have a few bumps along the way before a) the technology improves and b) the majority start to get it and embrace it. I’m not sure the “Amazon” of this new world has emerged yet, but if anyone has any share tips on that one this time round let me know in the comments 🙂

There are a few early adopters and firms looking to try things out and kudos too them, as collectively I’m sure we’ll all learn a lot about what works and doesn’t. Examples:

Artificial Law – law firms in the metaverse

German law firm opens office in the metaverse

Major law firm buys property in the metaverse and opens virtual office

Some will go for the AOL model (facebook metaverse), others will go their own way. But I’m quite fascinated by the metaverse, it’s early day but I think there is something in this one!

You may ask, what are my credentials as a futurologist? Well I did spot the potential of Amazon shortly after launch in the UK in October 1998, with my first order in November

Then I did have a web2.0 idea before web2,.0 became a thing, I just was too limited as a developer to realise the idea, the only language I knew at the time was ASP (see book order above!). My idea was essentially a Foursquare/TripAdvisor type platform for nights out. I even registered a domain name at the time:

So on this one as the saying goes “trust me I’m a Doctor”😉

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General IT, General Legal IT

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

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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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General Legal IT

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

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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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General IT, General Legal IT, Legal

Should we stop chasing blockchain?

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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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General IT, General Legal IT

Not more feature creep

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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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General IT, General Legal IT

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

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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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