Law Department Management Blog
Cost savings in discovery from the use of translation software. If discovery produces documents that are not in a language you or your litigation lawyers can read, t can be dramatically cheaper to have software do the brunt of the translation before people review the documents that remain. This, according to a comment in InsideCounsel, Jan. 2009 at 38, could mean a difference like “$15 per page for human translation to 15 cents using translation software” (See my post of Feb. 9, 2006: translation software for non-English speaking lawyers; March 23, 2007: machine translation and its growing capabilities; Feb. 6, 2008: matter management system that translates; and June 4, 2008: IBM’s real-time translation software.).
Ethics/crisis hotline providers. For ethics/crisis hotline, the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) 2008 Law Department Survey at 11 lists Global Compliance Network Service – 11%; Ethics Point and the Network – 5%. Some other provider besides these three serve 14%, while “internal processes” are in place for 48% (See my post of Dec. 31, 2006: ethics hotlines and compliance officers at Raytheon; Dec. 19, 2005: BP hotline for employees and online ethics training; May 8, 2007: third parties who answer hotline calls; and July 5, 2006: the genre of software as a cottage industry.).
Two more advantages of offshore legal work. InsideCounsel, Jan. 2009 at 45, mentions that “the workers that offshoring companies employ … tend to be better educated and more dedicated than temporary employees in the U.S.” Offshore they are permanent employees and proud of their job; onshore temps might be biding their time while they search for another job. The second point is that time zone differences allow work to be done in India, for example, while lawyers in the U.S. are sleeping.
Blog by general counsel on settlement strategies. John DeGroote is the Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at BearingPoint, Inc., formerly known as KPMG Consulting, Inc., where he leads a team of over 40 lawyers in 10 countries. He has been blogging on settlement strategies and negotiation at “Settlement Perspectives“. It is an excellent blog, with both content and visual panache (See my post of Jan. 28, 2009: law department management blawgs with 11 references.).