The head of litigation at a pharmaceutical company, facing scores of lawsuits, asked on a LinkedIn forum about software that would allow his firms to enter their litigation data. “I need several outside firms to input/upload confidential data [about lawsuits] securely.” Of the nine replies through yesterday, several mentioned less well-known software.
According to Jere Wilson, practice support manager at the law firm Shipman & Goodwin, “In the SaaS space is a really excellent litigation project management tool called iFramework.”
Also in the ASP space, Ray Jassin of Law Library Management “successfully implemented a reasonably priced litigation management tool for the legal department of a major corporation utilizing QuickBase, a hosted SaaS by INTUIT.”
Alan Robinson, a discovery consultant for LexisNexis Applied Discovery, wrote that “the most robust solution and best value for money is [Case Anywhere] - the best part of the service is the docket management capabilities.”
Paul Zengilowski added a comment “an interesting new application targeted at just the problem you're describing called LegalPM, released by a company called FifthRail.”
This information serves as an excellent illustration of the power of online professional networks.
Most of the metaposts on Law Department Management Blog look at specific categories of software, including the following seven:
Contract management (See my post of Nov. 22, 2008: contract management software with 11 references.).
Decision trees (See my post of June 17, 2009: decision tree software with 6 references.)
Document assembly (See my post of Feb. 26, 2008: document assembly with 16 references.).
Document management (See my post of Dec. 6, 2007: document management with 15 references.).
Idea visualization (See my post of May 15, 2009: idea relationship software with 6 references.).
Matter management (See my post of Aug. 5, 2008: matter management systems with 35 references.).
Portals (See my post of June 27, 2006: portals with 4 references; and Aug. 16, 2006: portals.)
Several metaposts focus on broader aspects of software usage in legal departments, including the entire genre (See my post of Feb. 9, 2008: law department software with 59 references.).
Then there are complementary topics, such as ASP or Software as a Service (SaaS), customized software, and support by internal IT staff (See my post of Feb. 25, 2009: Application Specific Programs with 6 references; June 3, 2009: bespoke, customized software written for legal departments with 12 references; and support by IT staff; and June 16, 2009: Information Technology staff group with 23 references.).
One collection is about a single application, Microsoft’s SharePoint (See my post of June 9, 2009: SharePoint with 6 references.).
Other metaposts I have not included in this hyperpost even though they depend heavily on software. My comments regarding those applications go not so much to the software qua software as to the management uses of it or consequences of use of the software. These related metaposts include dashboards, dictation, e-billing, email, e-discovery, extranets, intranets, LEDES, litigation support, social networks, Twitter, and wikis.
A new blog dedicated to legal holds cited one of my posts, so I wanted to thank them and list their blog. The site is by a New York attorney, John Jablonski.
Second, I found that I have accumulated four posts on litigation hold notices since my last metapost (See my post of Aug. 27, 2008: litigation hold notices with 6 references.). The new ones cover many topics (See my post of Dec. 7, 2008: some data on hold notices; Feb. 7, 2009: practice maturity and spend on hold orders; Feb. 7, 2009: online tool that estimates costs; and Feb. 7, 2009: best practices with hold orders.).
“As a large company, we use three systems for tracking and managing matters. There is a [commercial] legal software system, a Lotus-based system, and a homegrown system. We also overlay the use of Excel for tracking spending by division, by matter and by other indicators.” This eyebrow-raising admisssion comes from the LexisNexis CounselLink study, entitled “Effects of the Current Economic Downturn on U.S. Law Departments” 2009 at 12.
Surveyors usually presume a single matter management system per department, but as the example shows, it is quite possible to have more. Legacy systems still online, overlapping systems in acquired business units, and specialized applications can swell the number (See my post of Aug. 5, 2008: matter management systems with 35 references.).
After my recent post (See my post of June 1, 2009: SharePoint as an option for legal departments.), Adam Davidson of National Grid, a UK company, wrote me.
“The in-house team I work in has been using SharePoint for document management, time recording and general collaboration for over three years, and it is a very flexible system. True, it's not as fully featured as some proprietary DM/PM [document management/project management] systems, but it cost less and is much easier for us to administer.”
“We had one of our IT development partners (Wipro) do some customisation for us, principally around matter creation, archiving and email integration. The rest of the solution is out of the box. The solution won us the "In-house Legal Department Initiative of the Year" prize at the Legal Technology Awards 2006. Microsoft did a case study on the solution, which can be found online.”
”We are still running on SharePoint 2003 but are migrating to 2007 in the next month or two, which will provide us with much greater flexibility. In addition, we are looking at a pilot of Office 2007 in the near-term to give us even more integration between Office and SharePoint. We are also about to start deploying (after a successful pilot) the Colligo Outlook Add-in to give us an even better tool to upload emails into SharePoint, as well as allowing lawyers offline access to their matter files within SharePoint.
All this is excellent background material. A few posts on this blog have shared space with SharePoint (See my post of Dec. 26, 2007: blog potential; June 20, 2007: National Grid, SharePoint and WorkShare; Jan. 21, 2009: JDS Uniphase legal department; Feb. 13, 2009: market share in the document management space; and Feb. 22, 2009: appropriateness as a knowledge management system.).
Davidson offered a couple of other points: ”On the other technologies we are working with, we are large users of Workshare Professional and have taken on Business Integrity's DealBuilder system for document automation, which is an exciting development for us.”
I had not realized that so many search tools are available for those who want to find patents. If you want to find out more about them, Intellogist can make your research and decision process easier. Intellogist is a free service from Landon IP with more than 30 reviews of popular patent search systems. You can also share your knowledge and expertise on these systems.
Here are the patent search offerings mentioned on Intellogist: Delphion; EAST; Esp@cenet; FreePatentsOnline; Google Patent Search; MicroPatent; PatentWeb; PatAnalyst; PatBase; PatBase Express; Patent Analysis Search System; Patent Lens; QPAT; Qweb; SumoBrain; SureChem; Surf-IP; Thomson Innovation; TotalPatent; and WIPS Global (See my post of Jan. 3, 2009: law departments and patents for management systems and software.).
SharePoint must have a huge following, since the post I wrote a few days back attracted many readers (See my post of June 1, 2009: SharePoint as an option for legal departments.). Yet the post was quite generic.
What is the name of even one legal department that uses SharePoint as its matter management system?
Second, if it takes consultants or IT to customize the system – create it almost from scratch – how can that be cost-effective? I have written before about hand-crafted systems in legal departments (See my post of May 8, 2008: difference between customized and configured software; June 15, 2008: GM’s patents for legal department software; April 13, 2008: law department customized data mapping software; March 26, 2008: Cisco’s customized contract management system; March 29, 2009: ACCESS database application; June 4, 2007: Wal-Mart customized its I-9 software; May 23, 2007: GE’s programming group for customized software; Jan. 30, 2006: customized patent software; Sept. 18, 2006: advantages of user groups; Feb. 12, 2006: US Army Claims Services’ bespoke package; Sept. 5, 2005: a Lotus Notes application; and Dec. 5, 2005 on Thomas Miller & Co. and its OASIS customized software.)?
Third, is the software closer to open source than the other dozen or so matter management packages out there (See my post of Aug. 5, 2008: matter management systems with 35 references.)? Is it really a programming language with lots of pre-built modules?
I welcome clarification from readers.
A long article in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, May 2009 at 47, mentions (at 50) that matter management systems can absorb data electronically from service-of-process (SOP) agents. Registered agents, as they are also called, enter information about complaints, subpoenas and other records served on them as the official agents for your company. Sometimes they scan the documents and can provide them to you.
You might want your matter management system to be able to incorporate that initial information and thereby save your staff the trouble of re-entering it. Other functions let the SOP data be routed to a responsible person and keep track of information such as dates of receipt and response dates (See my post of Oct. 1, 2006: CT Corporation integrates data with matter management system.).
Law departments ought to consider Microsoft’s SharePoint for some of their automation needs, according to an article by a consulting firm in ACC Docket, Vol. 27, May 2009 at 18. The article describes it as having the potential to serve as a matter management system, a document management system, an integrator of information from other applications, a corporate governance suite, plus much else. More a platform or toolbox than a finished application, SharePoint has many fans.
The article suggests three configuration options. First, there is the do-it-yourself approach if you have few lawyers, modest ambitions, and IT support both capable and available. Second, you can build what you need with the assistance of consultants, some of whom already have SharePoint templates or partial solutions. Third, you can license a third-party product (none referenced) built on a SharePoint platform. As to licensing a package, the author adds a spin: “As with any product, you will be reliant on the vendor for support, maintenance, customization and upgrades.”
Accustomed behaviors waste electricity; changed behaviors can save it. For three examples of what is easy to change, I commend Joe Howie’s article in Legal Tech. News, May 2009 at 40.
The first tool is the Smart Strip Power Strip, from Bits Ltd., which “turns off peripheral devices when the strip senses that a computer is turned off.” Thus, each individual office that has its own printer, speakers, second monitor, or external hard drive could power them down when the occupant turns off the computer. You do power down your computer when you go home, don’t you?
The second tool of Howie is solar battery chargers. He lists Solio Classic Universal Hybrid Chargers from Better Energy Systems, as well as the Solar ePower Battery Charger from Wagan Tech, both of which can charge cell phones and the latter of which can recharge AA and AAA batteries. General counsel should consider equipping their cell phone users with power sources from renewable energy.
Did you know that a coal plant will burn about 900 pounds of coal and release almost five tons of CO2 into the atmosphere to keep a single 100-watt light bulb burning all year, at an average cost to the consumer of $93.29 (See my post of March 11, 2009: conservation for law departments with 7 references.). You do turn off lights, don’t you?
