General Legal IT, Legal

Legal Tech question: Is the abundance of lawyers stifling innovation?

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Like at many other legal technology conferences, I’m sure that at ILTA last week in the US there was lots of questions about the billable hour, questions on when law firms are going to change and a good use of the good old buzzword “innovation”.

In fact a quick twitter search and I can find a few quotes from sessions:

But what if the big thing that is really holding everything back isn’t a lack of desire or an inability to do so? Maybe it’s much more simple than that. This thought crossed my mind when I came across this article on UK productivity over the summer break, in particular this part:

“if you provide an economy with an almost endless supply of cheap labour as the UK government has, employers will use it instead of investing in any kind of productivity raising automation?”

I thought maybe this is it for law firms. There is certainly not a shortfall of the number of people entering law, in fact there are probably more than is needed. So are we simply seeing this over supply play through firms? Yes I know there are some exciting ventures into automation and machine learning, but I wonder whether they are mainly driven by marketing the firm than real productivity drivers in the firm?

I would be interested in hearing comments and thoughts, to me it doesn’t yet feel like we’ve hit the tipping point as we did in personal injury and insurance work. A point that really accelerated the use of case management technology in the late 90’s and led to boosted productivity and huge competition in that sector.

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General Legal IT, Mobility, Office365

The power of the pen or the pencil?

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This post first appeared in the April 2018 edition (issue 312) of the Legal IT Insider (click here to get a PDF copy) and then subsequently on their website. If you’d like to read in situ then click here.

 

Pens for PCs, they’ve been around for some time now. But with the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil and Microsoft’s Surface line with their Pens, there has been a big resurgence in pen based input. But really how useful are they with a PC or tablet? Is this just a tech fad with no real long term use, simply something to get gadget fans to buy more stuff, ie a bit 3D TV, or is this a genuine change in how we use PCs/tablets in the workplace?

In this post I take a look at the Apple pencil with an iPad Pro (traditional size) and a Surface Pro 4 & HP Elitebook 360 laptop with pen. For an initial test of the hardware I am using OneNote on both devices for consistency.

Design of the hardware

First up the pencil. As you’d expect from Apple the build and feel of it is really good, the weight makes it very comfortable to use. But it only does one thing, there are no buttons to add extra functionality. Not a show stopper and for some the simplicity may be a plus. To charge the pencil is a bit fiddly, you can plug it into the iPad lightning connector, but for me it is preferable to use the provided additional adaptor to use the iPad charger as I don’t want additional drain on the iPad battery. You’ve therefore got two bits to lose (which I have once already!), a cap off the top of the pencil and a small adapter.

The pen by comparison feels a bit cheaper and a bit lightweight on both the HP and the Surface, somewhat like a bic biro when compared to the quality feel of the pencil. It’s not rechargeable either, so although the charging of the pencil is fiddly at least you’re not going to need to shop for tiny batteries like you will with the pen. The pen though does make up for that in functionality through the addition of configurable buttons. This allows functions like erase to be managed from the pen rather than from the toolbar of the software.

Writing

So what are each like to write with? Well both are surprisingly good, the difference is really in the tablet being written on. The iPad is a better shape, especially when making notes in portrait, the HP and Surface’s 16:9 form work OK but don’t feel quite as “normal”. However when it comes to ‘feel’ when writing the PC’s win as the screen and pen tip have a little bit of give in them. This makes writing feel a little bit more comfortable than the iPad in my opinion.

Both devices though make note taking in meetings and at conferences so much easier than typing. When typing I find I have to switch concentration between what’s going on in the meeting to making notes. So, in free flowing meetings or conferences where the notes are coming thick and fast, I tend to revert to pen and paper to keep up. With the pen/pencil and the iPad/PC I find you can scribble notes down just as easy as with a paper pad. You also get the benefit using OneNote that your typed and hand written notes can be stored in one place electronically. Paperless office at last?

What about Word?

OneNote is a great way for making notes, but what about Microsoft Word? In theory the pen/pencil should be great for document review in Word, the ability to take a document and make notes with a pen (electronic) rather than printing out and marking up with a pen (ink). So from a process point of view nothing changes other than the printing out reams of paper to mark up (saving money!).

And it does work well. It probably will take some adjustment as neither device is true A4 in size, but I think (and we’ve tested this with a few lawyers) that the smaller lightweight device outweighs a larger screen size for most people. However personal preference will come in here so it’s worth trying various devices to find out that suits. But overall the pen/pencil based input is great.

The screenshots show Office 365 on an iPad and Office 2010 on the Elitebook 360, clearly the former version of Word is slightly better being the latest version, but this type of electronic mark-up is possible in 2010. The killer challenge here for law firms is not the version of office but the huge benefits the Office 365 platform potentially brings. In this demo to get the mark-up from my iPad to the laptop I have had to use email from the iPad, save locally on the PC and then edit. To get the seamless access I have in my consumer world there will need to be a few changes in most law firms, either embracing 365 or cloud based document management systems or both.

Other software of note

It is worth noting one other specific piece of software I have used regularly on the PC’s and that is the in-built Sketchpad of Windows 10. This is like a plain piece of paper or if you’re using in a Skype conference call a meeting whiteboard. You can quickly sketch diagrams or illustrations or make notes for the attendees. It sounds so simple and yet it adds so much in that I rarely feel the need to use a paper notebook anymore, I can sketch my thoughts and email them out or talk them through on a call. There are equivalent apps for the iPad, from the in-built Notes app to more sophisticated apps like Goodnotes 4 or Notability.

Summary

This wasn’t an iPad or PC review, but more a look at the pen/pencil concept. And I do think tablets with pens/pencils are more than tech gimmicks and offer a viable alternative to paper notebooks. The software makes a huge difference and this is where changes may be required in law firms. The challenge is with security and protection of data. To get the best out of a lot of these apps you may need access to cloud drives, this will require some analysis of the risk and an understanding of client requirements when it comes to data (assuming the material is client related). However will the Office 365 there are genuine business ready platforms available that will enable a lot of this functionality. But regardless steps can be made right now in most firms, simply with the right hybrid laptop/tablet, a pen and your current office suite.

 

This post first appeared in the April 2018 edition (issue 312) of the Legal IT Insider (click here to get a PDF copy) and then subsequently on their website. If you’d like to read in situ then click here.

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General Legal IT

Return to the Future part 1

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A friend of mine commenting on their work situation last year used a phrase that chimed with me at little, they said referring to their job that they’d “lost their mojo”. For me it was a feeling that Legal IT had lost that something that it had, the reason I really liked working in this sector as opposed to say the utilities industry I’d started in, what was it? Was it the endless talk of AI, big data, blockchain…..how many years have we been talking about these now? Was the legal industry of the late 90’s just more exciting?

Well I knew a place to start looking, I’d revisit the classic “The Future of Law” by Richard Susskind (revised 1998 edition) a book that every IT person in the industry back then had on the bookshelf.

In this first post I’m going to look at ten of the “likely developments in IT over the next ten years” according to Mr Susskind in 1998.

  1. Global telecommunications – great start with the predictions here and a big tick, this was pretty much spot on. Richard predicted a global telecoms infrastructure that would “enable the instantaneous transmission of seemingly limitless amounts of digital information at negligible cost”. Given I’m typing this directly into the cloud whilst listening to music streamed from somewhere other than my PC, I’d say conclusive evidence.
  2. Information industries – basically this was the idea that we’d have systems that led us through complex issues on a question and answer basis, domestic examples he gave were online booking! So another tick then. I mean this can anyone imagine not conducting a transaction this way anymore?
  3. Virtual private networks – not VPN’s as we know now, but walled off restricted parts of the internet. The concept has been achieved with specific communities and sites, but perhaps not in the way thought at the time with walled off networks. So yes think this is a tick as the concept has come to fruition.
  4. Computing power – “holographic memory”, maybe not specifically but the promise of capacity way beyond DVD’s certainly achieved. Also “such that credit card sized machines more powerful than any PC of today with detachable, slim-line screens are entirely conceivable within the next ten years or so”, iPhone anyone?
  5. Convergence of computers and television – need I say anymore on this one!
  6. Smarter Technology – now I’m going to come back to this one in a later post, but let’s just pluck two words from the section “artificial intelligence” and think Hmmm.
  7. Multi-media – this section was on the move from print to digital. Another big tick, from Kindles to online newspapers and magazines, we’re definitely digital first nowadays.
  8. Usability – “continuous speech systems will be widely used within five years” so 2003. The concepts of voice, augmented reality and customised interfaces are mentioned. The latter has changed with the advent of the app and the touchscreen, but we’re still nowhere near in the others if we’re honest!
  9. Interpersonal and interorganisational computing – “groupware – a category of system and software specifically designed to encourage and enable collaborative, interpersonal and interorganisational activity”. So like Facebook, Microsoft Teams, Slack etc? Tick.
  10. The Web as the “first port of call” – “will become as commonplace as the telephone and the television”, well given it’s supplanted them both you can’t argue with that!

So pretty good to be fair, given the difficulty in predictions within IT it’s actually very good. Sets things up nicely for me to start to pick at some of the sections later in the book that look at some specific Legal IT areas, areas that I think Richard Susskind got right (similar to above) it’s just, well you’ll see!

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General Legal IT, Mobility, Office365

Back from ConnectLive 2018 with some thoughts on the two days

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So yesterday I got back from ConnectLive 2018. The iManage event for their customers. Held again this year just across for the Millennium Dome…sorry O2 arena. The event consists of two days packed full of sessions that suit the engineer through to the CIO and many roles in between, whether in IT or other functions, within law firms or corporates. The day is geared around iManage’s suite of products as you’d expect. It kicks off with keynotes from the senior team before breaking into four tracks that run through the day, there is also a full vendor hall for partners.

 

Thankfully unlike last years ConnectLive event on June 27th 2017, this one was relatively uneventful for me 🙂

So what were my personal thoughts on key things to look for?

  1. The RAVN indexer. Not the most exciting thing on the face of it. But there are a couple of things that I really liked. First off the architecture, it’s old school iManage, simple, well thought out components (not like IDOL, though shall I publish that blog post on initial thoughts of IDOL now from the early days of the Autonomy merger?). It’s also been designed to scale. But overall seems it will require less hardware and storage than IDOL. Second and more important it will fulfil a promise that I was looking for at the time of the Autonomy/Interwoven merger that never materialised, this being one index to fulfil many solutions, so once you’ve indexed your DMS you can use this index to get all the good stuff from Extract , Insight and the excellent idea that is Classification (using machine learning to auto classify/profile those documents!). No need for an index for this, another one (of the same document set!) for something else.
  2. New cloud. Sorry I’m not sure what the actual name for this is, but it’s the new architecture that is designed from the ground up for the cloud. It uses all the latest tech that is used to scale all those platforms that are MUCH bigger than any law firm data set, twitter and the like. Rafiq’s keynote on the tech on the second day was one for the tech geeks, great! Be good to see this platform in the wild.
  3. Security Policy Manager. Now this product has been around for a while, but it was a couple of things on the horizon that made me think that this is becoming more than a replacement for “the other product”. First off was the ability to use it to manage policies of other legal products, for example the policies for Workshare Protect, very interesting concept and could be great to reduce admin in stretched IT depts. Second was talk of DLP (data loss prevention) and DRM (digital rights management), imagine one place to manage the rights to client/matter information that then manages where that data can go and if it goes outside the perimeter it can be managed and controlled or blocked! This could be really exciting and the DRM aspect is one I’ve suggested before.

There were a couple of other areas that I need to think on a bit more:

  1. Go drive. This is a product I think I can buy into, but think I would want to use it myself for a bit and maybe try it with a few lawyers first. There are a few parts to mention.
    1. First there is the functionality that is essentially like OneDrive is for cloud files on Windows 10 but looking after the documents from your DMS (wherever that is). I can see plenty of use cases for this.
    2. Then there is the tech underneath to manage the file transfer better that allows for improved experience over links with high latency. Again can get this.
    3. Lastly is the ability to display the DMS in file explorer, now this I can sort of see but think I would need to use a bit I think to make a final view.
  2. Auto update feature. I get this, it’s the move Microsoft and others are making to ensure we’re all on the latest versions. But with MS we’re using their tooling to manage all of the updates in the new Windows 10 Office and 365 evergreen world, another set of tooling to manage the iManage updates? Will it scale to organisations with thousands of machines to update from Seattle to Brisbane? Need to look some more at this.

Overall another great conference, one that other large legal vendors should do in Europe. In fact it’s a great template for other legal events which for me are aimed more at the manager. ConnectLive is a bit more ILTA that caters for all and ends up being so much better for it!

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General IT

01/01/2000 to 29/05/2018 – are you ready this time?

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Remember the Y2K bug? The months of news stories, the panic that no one was prepared, the number of consultants and companies offering help/services and the number of conferences on the subject.

Fast forward 18 years and we’re facing another acronym that companies are now realising is pretty close, GDPR.

I hope a reminder of what GDPR is comes as little surprise to anyone.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will take effect in the UK from 25 May 2018. It replaces the existing law on data protection (the Data Protection Act 1998) and gives individuals more rights and protection in how their personal data is used by organisations.

I can’t say I am personally an expert in the law, but I’ve found myself involved to varying degrees in a number of organisations from work in a law firm to being on a school governing body. It’s something that will affect pretty much every organisation. There are plenty of guides out there on the web, some that are specifically targeted to certain areas (for example schools, churches etc) and simply the more data you have and process the more complex things will become.

But though a reminder is worthwhile my worry with GDPR is not that we won’t all be ready, but that we don’t understand it enough. I can see GDPR becoming the new “Health and Safety”, we understand it enough to be worried but not enough to argue why something can/can’t be done in it’s name. We’ve already seen stories recently on records being deleted in the name of “data protection” in the windrush scandal in the UK, with GDPR in place how many organisations are going to err on the side of caution and erase data? There was an article written in this weeks The Spectator on this very subject, so it’s not just me! I mean if you don’t legally need to keep the info won’t it be easier to respond in the time limit for data requests by being able to say “we have nothing” or worry about breaches by having nothing to breach?

I’m not necessarily suggesting the law is over the top. I think what it aims to address is valid, especially give some companies lack of care of other peoples data. But equally we all need to ensure we understand the law enough to not be over zealous. Some recommendations I’ve seen suggested have been totally over the top, suggesting dedicated email services for volunteers, totally moving data to private emails into controlled cloud storage or mandated email encryption (this is regardless of the content).

So if we all take a bit of time to understand it a bit more, explain it to our friends and family then maybe we can just arm everyone with enough information to avoid “health and safety regulations gone mad” stories becoming “Data protection gone mad” (though I’m going to predict the Daily Mail with such a story by the end of the year!!)

UPDATE

I saw this letter posted today (14th May 2018) and thought it was worth adding to this post. There’s going to be a whole lot of “misunderstanding” soon!

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General Legal IT, Legal

Lawyers coding – are we belittling the IT developers skills?

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There have been a few articles in the legal press about lawyers training in coding and I’ve been meaning to write a blog about it for a while, I’ve just had a voice in the back of my head saying “Surely this isn’t the solution to the alleged problem with legal and technology”, one professional doesn’t solve a problem by retraining as another surely? I mean Tesco and Sainsbury’s didn’t retrain their checkout staff as coders when they decided they needed to move into online selling did they? OK I know that is a little beyond what is happening in legal, but it crudely highlights the point.

Reason I have taken time to write this is that I don’t want to sound like a Luddite and a dismisser of change, but equally I really dislike the notion that you can simply train to be a coder and develop secure, scalable applications. It belittles those that have spent years learning, developing their skill and gaining a huge amount of experience building applications. A whole profession of developers and other IT professionals.

I think there are huge benefits of gaining a knowledge of technology in any profession and wholeheartedly welcome developing this knowledge in lawyers. I equally think law firms could do a huge amount to develop the knowledge of IT professionals in the practice of law, something that doesn’t get the airtime in the legal press. Innovation will come by looking at the problems and utilising the whole workforce to solve them in new ways, not by simply retraining those that frankly are the core to any law firm, the lawyers.

I think this quote for me shows where the right balance is (full article here):

“If you want to be a lawyer who knows what technology can do then you should learn to code – or at least have an understanding of coding. Which is different to learning to code. As a Spanish-speaker I can read a book in Italian but I couldn’t write a book in Italian.”

It’s understanding the language, but trusting the native speakers when you need to write the book. At the moment for me (at least in the legal press narrative) the current trend seems to dismiss the natives. Get the balance right though and there could be some great solutions to the challenges ahead!

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Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to make something simple.

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I don’t like blogging about software that much, especially products I don’t use day in day out. In a small field like legal I don’t like to criticise companies online and so I tend to stick to the saying our mothers taught us “if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all”. However I got a demo of Bundledocs the other week and thought it worth a mention, mainly because it ticks a box I’ve blogged about previously. Simplicity. (see here and here and here)

The product demo took about 10 minutes, simply because the product does it’s one job easily. It’s designed to create document bundles or binders and the interface is designed to do just that. Upload your documents, adjust the order, group them how you want, redact any text you don’t want in the final bundle and that’s it. Then as it’s cloud based just fire off a link to who needs a copy (which also allows collaboration on the creation if you want).

There’s also DMS (document management system) integration to give law firms direct links to where the documents are, I saw the iManage integration but I notice on the site there is netdocuments too.

Even the pricing was simple, no complicated per user or enterprise size model.

This isn’t a recommendation, take a look yourself over at bundledocs.com where you can try it out for 30 days. I know of others in the legal industry that think Nikec’s product in this space looks really good too. This post was more about the simplicity of this software. Something I really admire in products.

My only worry is the comment on there website “Bundledocs is continually adding new features and enhancements”. A small plea, don’t overcomplicate it please.

 

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Legal

Are the agile workplaces law firms are creating the new advocado bathroom?

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I’m not there yet, I don’t work in an office full of bean bags or collaboration couches (isn’t it a settee?) nor do I have access to a juice bar. But in order to be a modern organisation we need all this to create a fun, happy place to work right?

Although I’ve not found evidence of a law firm with a slide or a ball pool, there are plenty that are embracing the “agile working” trend sweeping through corporates.

     

But are we doing this for the right reasons? There is a narrative that equates this new office style to fun and happiness, but a recent satisfaction survey by glassdoor shows a different story. The fun and happiness comes from the business itself, its culture, job security or work satisfaction. Much to my delight happy workplaces don’t need beanbags, barbecue stations and ball pits.

So let’s put back some traditional 1990’s wooden desks and plain black padded office chairs, keep the carpets a nice shade of grey or dark blue and put back those false ceilings with fluorescent lights?

No I’m not serious, but I think we need to look at why are we doing this and ensure it’s not just to try and make our people happy. And I actually think the law firms doing it are doing it for the right reasons. Create an office space that allows people to work how they want and how they need too, allow flexibility for the teams that want to move about and collaborate when they need to. Allow for quiet spaces and more traditional layouts for those that need to concentrate and support it with the right technology to facilitate all this.

For me I’d rather work in a law firms version of an agile workplace than a Google style office, after all I can’t help think that advocado bathrooms were once a huge trend!

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General Legal IT

How Cambridge Analytica and Facebook gave me a big data lightbulb moment

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I’ve always had a bit of scepticism regarding big data in law firms. Didn’t big data require vast quantities of data, like Los Angeles police department crime records or Google searches for flu symptoms. Even the largest law firm won’t have the volumes surely? Well you know now I’m not so sure, I think maybe I was limiting myself by what I envisaged it being used for. Huge amounts of data to spot big unseen trends.

However the recent news on Cambridge Analytica and Facebook made me think it’s more about understanding what you’re trying to do, rather than just dumping a lot of data and typing to shape it into something. Kind of make sense really, understand the problem first before throwing some tech at it!

So what was it that made me sit back and think?

Well it was reading this article in The Spectator on the use of data by Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge had a database of around 5,000 data points on 200 million Americans and combined it with the Republican Party’s own voter data to build dozens of these highly focused universes and model how ‘persuadable’ its members were. (For example, analysts discovered during the race that a preference for cars made in the US was a solid indication of a potential Trump voter). Creative types then designed specialised ads for these universes, based on the specific things they were thought to care about.

It wasn’t just Facebook it was various data sources that were available (legally), these were all combined into their universes. These universes were just groups of people, like “American moms worried about childcare who hadn’t voted before”. And it was this that was my light bulb moment, big data/data analytics in law firms could simply be groupings of clients that had specific requirements. The aim here wasn’t to understand some grand solution to predicting flu or crimes, it was simply to identify specifics and then use this data. So identify that clients that were in sector X that had contacts that also knew company Y were demanding of legal work Z, you could then target companies in this universe that had never dealt with your Z practice group. It’s a crude example but for me it made me think maybe there is something here for law firms.

I’m probably behind the curve here and you’re reading this thinking, “well duh!”. But then why’s no one filling the web with success stories? Maybe given the reaction to the use of data in the case of social media companies in the press, this targeted marketing is something to keep quiet about or maybe just nobody is doing it yet!

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