Law Bulletin Publishing Company’s JuraLaw® and DM2000® Expand Coverage into Winnebago County

•April 22, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Law Bulletin Publishing Company’s JuraLaw® and DM2000® Expand Coverage into Winnebago County, Illinois; Law Firms with Cases in Winnebago County Gain a Powerful Case, Calendar & Docket Management Tool.

Chicago. Law Bulletin Publishing Company announces the expansion of its JuraLaw® and DM2000® court call coverage into Winnebago County, effective today.  Winnebago County court calls will also be published each day in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin and available online via name and case number searches at both AccessPlus and at http://www.ChicagoLawBulletin.com.

JuraLaw® is a web-based case, calendar and docket management product that includes court call-based calendaring software that enables law firms to connect their cases to the courts by matching their case numbers with the Northern Illinois court calls and “Black Line” assignments.  Cook County Court Calls have been available since 1984 in DM2000®.  DM2000® has continued to expand its court call coverage over the years to include the Circuit Courts of DuPage, Lake, McHenry, Kane and Will Counties, the U.S. District Court and U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division as well as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, the Illinois Supreme Court,  the Illinois Appellate Court and the Illinois Industrial Commission.  As customers migrate to JuraLaw®, both the retiring DM2000® system and the JuraLaw® system will include the above mentioned courts calls and now, Winnebago court calls.

“We are very pleased to expand our court call coverage with the addition of Winnebago County Circuit Court information.  No other provider offers such extensive coverage.  Law Bulletin’s court call-based legal calendaring systems go beyond matching a firm’s docket calendar with the court’s scheduled calendar,” said Dave Glynn, Vice President of Product Development. “Our court calls provide unparalleled coverage and accuracy.  The court calls are proofed, verified, formatted and corrected daily by a Law Bulletin court call team with over 120 years of combined experience.  Our emphasis is on the timely delivery of the most accurate court information available, so that we can enable our clients to improve their law firms’ workflow, effectively manage their caseloads and ultimately keep a firm’s lawyers on track for important deadlines and on time for court appearances.”

Managing the entire lifecycle of the litigation process, JuraLaw® is a single integrated system that offers unmatched coverage and accuracy in tracking Illinois court calls, and also provides court rules from across the nation.   96 of the top 100 Chicago law firms have relied upon Law Bulletin’s docket management products to mitigate the risk of “dismissed for want of prosecution” and other malpractice claims.  JuraLaw® easily integrates with Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Exchange, Google calendar/Gmail, Yahoo Calendar/yahoo mail and Lotus Notes.  It enables population of calendar events to attorneys’ calendars.  JuraLaw® offers the most extensive Illinois court call coverage, the most flexible calendar options, the most comprehensive reports, the most experienced and extensive support and the most secure technology available.  See www.JuraLaw.com for more information.

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Shopping Chicago-style at the ABA TechShow 2013

•April 2, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Folks come from all over the world to shop in Chicago.  You can’t beat the incredible variety of stores in one fine and beautiful city. Whether it’s the chi-chi of Michigan Avenue or the quirky boutiques of Wicker Park, you can literally shop til you drop. So why not come to Chicago, home of the American Bar Association, to shop for legal technology?  And not only can you shop for it, but you can learn all about it at the same time.

The ABA TechShow takes place this coming Thursday through Saturday, April 3rd, 4th & 5th at the Hilton Chicago | 720 S. Michigan Avenue | Chicago, IL 60605 | 312.922.4400.  Exhibits are open on Thursday and Friday and the educational conference continues through Saturday.

This year’s keynote presenter will be Renaissance man, David Pogue, NY Times Columnist, musical conductor, author and Emmy Award winner. David is also host of Nova ScienceNow. David will shed some light on the future and promises to provide a little humor and entertainment in the process.

The conference kicks off on Wednesday with a LexThink session, an interactive and mind-sharing event that allows presenters (chosen by the community) six minutes to speak with slides automatically forwarded every 18 seconds. LexThink.1 2013 has a theme of “market disruption”. LexThink.1 is named to reflect the way lawyers bill, in 1/10 hour increments. The LexThink event will take place the eve of ABA TECHSHOW, April 3rd, at the Chicago Hilton starting at 8pm.

You won’t want to miss the education session – Text Me, Sext Me, Prove I Said it: Device CSI, Friday, April 5, 2013, 3:45pm-4:45pm, Cellphones and other mobile devices have become the target du jour for discovery. This program looks at what data is out there, who ‘owns’ it, and the tools and processes for managing its forensically-sound acquisition. Tom O’Connor (our resident eDiscovery expert) and John Simek are providing a little humor during this program that covers a very serious topic.

Several legal technology vendors will be represented in the exhibit hall.   Exhibits are open Thursday and Friday throughout the day.  Here are some highlights of the vendors who are exhibiting:

Orion 4.5 Releases at ABA TECHSHOW

Atlanta-based Orion Law Management (www.orionlaw.com) releases Orion 4.5 at ABA TECHSHOW. Version 4.5 contains hundreds of enhancements, including enhancements to the widely popular A/R Collection Manager, the addition of payments by Working Timekeeper to the Payment Calendar, Orion’s improved Calendar Manager designed for the front office professional to better manage their Appointments and Tasks while adding a new Advanced Event Manager for Docket Administrators.  These updates and add-ons enhance the Orion experience and are available free of charge to customers enrolled in their maintenance plan.  Orion has also announced the launch of new products including the iOrion® Mobile App, Expense Reimbursement Manager, integration with PayPros® credit card processing, and the Orion Productivity Pack designed to better manage billable time, Appointments and Tasks from Microsoft® Office applications .  Visit Orion at TECHSHOW booth #604.

WordRake – Legal Editing is Hot!

Seattle-based WordRake Holdings, LLC, founded in 2011 by lawyer and New York Times best-selling author Gary Kinder, will be demonstrating its popular WordRake legal editing software at ABA TECHSHOW booth#815. WordRake “rakes” Microsoft Word documents to suggest edits for tighter writing.  WordRake has tripled its sales in the past several months as lawyers and other professionals have discovered how easily WordRake helps them write better, more concise documents.  WordRake recently established an alliance with the Washington State Bar Association whereby the software is being used in-house by the Bar’s staff and is available to its 35,000 members for a discounted price.

JuraLaw – Case, Calendar & Docket Management

Law Bulletin Publishing Company will be exhibiting JuraLaw in Booth 108. The case, calendar & docket management product was launched at last year’s ABA TechShow.  Several new advancements will be demonstrated at the conference including its robust iCalendar, MS Outlook and email capabilities, New York court data, new functionality including copying the same event to multiple cases, relating multiple diary events to a single docket and deep court rules features that allow you to customize and remember your specific rules selections.  Visit Law Bulletin in Booth 108.

Worldox Previews Mac Version at ABA TECHSHOW

World Software Corporation® is previewing Worldox for Mac, a software-as-a-service Mac-enabled version of the popular Document Management System which it will demonstrate at booth#316-8 at TECHSHOW.  Worldox for Mac contains a subset of Worldox features, including much of the product’s core functionality. The Mac version, which requires a Worldox back-end including indexer and file server (unless the site is using Worldox in the Cloud), integrates with Microsoft Office Suite applications and Adobe Acrobat.  It also includes full text searching, version control, copy/move/delete functions, check-in and upload, and select email management features.  The Mac version is scheduled for a summer release.  The company is also demonstrating its Worldox GX3 Cloud offering, which was launched at LegalTech New York in January.

Levit & James Releases Best Authority Light 3.0 at ABA TECHSHOW

Levit & James, the Virginia-based legal software provider founded by Ian Levit and Fletcher James, announces the release of their newest development at ABA TECHSHOW—Best Authority Light 3.0.  Containing much of the core functionality of Best Authority Premium Edition, this latest version of the lighter-features product line offers less expensive Table of Authorities generation software, designed to meet the needs of small firms and solo practitioners.  Some highlights include Citation Revision Tracking, a preview of the TOA, and powerful search functions.   Best Authority Light 3.0 provides a faster, flexible and accurate Table of Authorities and can be learned by video in 30 minutes.  Levit & James will be attending the show but not exhibiting – if you would like to see the software at the show, email Ian Levit at ilevit@levitjames.com.

Attorney Timekeeper – Competitive Timekeeping for the Highly Motivated Biller

Launching at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago, Attorney Timekeeper (www.attorneytimekeeper.com) is a new real-time timekeeping application developed by Bill Doran of Morning Waves, LLC.  The cloud-based software-as-a-service has comprehensive features for contemporaneous timekeepers, including one-touch timekeeping and automatic capture of time spent on cell phone calls.  Time segments are integrated regardless of whether they are captured on cell phone, tablet or PC.

A twist that sets Attorney Timekeeper (ATK) apart from other products is that it allows lawyers to set time goals for themselves, and attorneys can challenge colleagues to friendly or fierce contests of who can bill the greatest percentage of time in the office daily, weekly, etc.  The objective of these contests it not to bill the most hours – it is to be billable the greatest percentage of time while at work.  Attorney Timekeeper reports your results to those in your network and theirs to you.  Attorneys can also track non-work activities (such as family and exercise time) so lawyers can account for their entire day, including both professional and personal activities.  Offered for a monthly subscription price, Attorney Timekeeper is secure and easy to set up in about 15 minutes and is free for the first 30 days.  ATK is attending the show but is not exhibiting; those interested in a demo can email Bill Doran at bdoran@morningwaves.com.

We hope to see you at the show.  Yours-truly will be in booth 108 with the Law Bulletin, please stop by and say ‘hi’.  Stay tuned for the 6th Annual eDiscovery Survey Results!

DG

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Law Still Has to Be Practiced – More About Products at LegalTech New York 2013

•February 11, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Despite the over saturation of eDiscovery applications at LegalTech NYC 2013, some real work by lawyers still has to be done as it relates to their day-to-day law practice.  So lawyers and law firms still require software/web applications to get their work accomplished, right?  Here’s a few folks I talked to at the show that offer law practice products – some were exhibiting or sponsoring, some were just hanging out:

Roberta Gelb – Chelsea Office Systems

One such application is the ability to create templates for documents that require redundant information.  I spoke with Roberta Gelb of Chelsea Office Systems, who for 29 years has championed efficient document creation in workflow in law firms.

Roberta and her team can evaluate and identify document workflow, drilling down to how templates can be developed around standard language and what variable information can be handled in dialogue interfaces.  For instance, her team can take a trademark infringement process that originally took seventy-five minutes; and through the use of document workflow automation, can slim that process down to seven minutes.

Chelsea Office Systems handles a variety of legal document workflow, whether it’s letters of engagement, a criminal case, civil ligation, or pro bono work, Chelsea can provide some serious production improvements.  Ms. Gelb points out that in firms where they have increased productivity, staff have been refocused to expand business opportunities for the firms, i.e. branching out into different practices.

It is important to note that Chelsea Office Systems sponsored the CIO track at LegalTech.

Lori Page Hall – Levit & James

I spoke with Lori Page Hall who proudly works for Levit & James, the single best automation software for creating Tables of Authority.  Lori tells us that the much anticipated Version 3 is now released.  L & J had a very successful beta where they received tremendous feedback that led to some additions and enhancements.  The best of the enhancements is the ability to track citation revisions.  A user can see what’s new, what’s been changed and updated and makes it that much faster.

Through each software build of the beta L & J increased efficiency.  So much so that four hundred pages with thousands of citations will scan in just under two minutes.

Several clients are adopting the new version – many who participated the beta.  Updating training tutorials are available online and L & J is holding Web training classes.  L & J have always provided free Web training and video tutorials on demand.

Stay tuned as Version 3.1 is under consideration and development will begin soon based on the feedback from Version 3.

Kevin Harris – Orion Law Management

So if you’re practicing law and you want to get paid for it, you still have to bill your client, right?  But who’s sitting down in front of their PC these days?  Lawyers and staff on-the-go can now take advantage of iOrion, the IOS application interface that works on the iPhone, iPad and iPad mini.  Kevin Harris of Orion Law Management told me that the new apps have more than doubled in use.  Lawyers and staff can get right to their Orion contacts, client/matters and bill their time. And when their making phone calls or initiating emails, they can run a ticker that will keep track of time spent. All of this will create a billing record automatically.

Orion 4.5, coming down the pike, will have expense reimbursement management, adding practice management and event (task) management among other great features.

Ray Zwiefelhofer – Worldox

One of my favorite guys to sit down with is Ray Zwiefelhofer of Worldox, mainly because he gets so darn excited about his company’s next product development venture.  Being a product development geek myself, I follow him, tail wagging.  Ray’s latest project is the Worldox for Mac.  Ray sees a significant trend in lawyers and staff moving toward iPads and Macs.  Ray is pretty good at figuring out what’s valuable to invest in, so Worldox is considering this strongly.  The question he poses is, “What would the tipping point be to adopt the Mac if a true Mac-based DMS was available?”  Now in development is a Mac version on the Cloud – Where Worldox will make the Isis indexer and Oracle viewer available.  Ray cautions that all of this is in the test phase and its success will determine whether Worldox will make it available to the marketplace.

Ray also reminded me of the new Worldox GX3 Cloud, which I covered in my LegalTech NYC 2013 preview post.

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Legal Futurists Project Consumer Styled Apps at LegalTech NYC 2013

•January 29, 2013 • Leave a Comment

It is not a coincidence when two different companies in entirely different sectors of the legal technology product market make the same prediction and put hard dollars behind it.  Throw another great mind with the same concept – and you have kismet.

Consumer apps are changing the face of legal technology.  This is not entirely new – we witnessed this at last year’s LegalTech NYC with the MyCase guys.  And I’ve seen glimpses in products before.  But two products just rolling out into the market now – HighQ and Cicayda‘s Fermata have the look and feel of social media, i.e. Facebook.  Both products serve different purposes.  The UK-based HighQ provides deal rooms for collaboration, Fermeta is a legal hold product for eDiscovery that is just the beginning of a suite of eDiscovery products.

Both of these products are SaaS, and both have flexible development teams behind them – who are willing to take a U-turn in their product roadmaps, if necessary to meet a market need.  Both companies involve their customers heavily in the development cycle and both promise to have success.  HighQ already has most of the large firms in the UK and Cicayda’s founders built CaseLogistix from the bottom up.

I had the pleasure of meeting with representatives from both companies today at the NYC LegalTech 2013 at the New York Hilton.  Roe Frazer, Managing Executive and partner with Jason Cox for Cicayda believes that there suite of eDiscovery products will be extremely price disruptive. They are offering an entirely different model that does away with pricy storage costs associated with eDiscovery.  Roe believes that through his experience with social media (he boast several important clients – Keith Urban, Stax Studios) that lawyers will be more comfortable with consumer-styled applications. They are focusing most on iPad development and Web apps.

High-Q is also focused on providing an interface that will work in any framework ,it’s Version 3 due out next quarter will fit to an iPad, iPhone, Android and web. It’s easy to spin up a deal room and provide a secure and collaborative area to share work with a client or clients.  The number of users appears to be nearly unlimited.  Law firms can skin the product with their own branding. The mobile version will be 100% as fully functional as their current version.

I met with a young futurist by the name of Eric Hunter who has helped his law firm of Bradford & Barthel to rethink collaboration through the use of Google Docs and Google+.  Eric talked about building spherical models of collaboration where traditional billing goes away, unstructured data is searchable, and where there can’t be a difference between strategic thinking and technology.  Are you scared yet?  Remember the earth was flat theory – well, there you go.  Business and collaboration is round, Silly! It appears that our friends mentioned above (HighQ and Cicayda) are grasping Eric’s theories – like all great minds, they got there at about the same time.

Eric is presenting at LegalTech NYC on Thursday in the Track 6: Information Governance in a Big Data World at 10:30 a.m. and at 12:15 p.m. Check out these new theories that will reshape the practice of law or possibly the technology will fit better to the practice and the strategies will drive the technology.  That might be nice for a change.

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LegalTech East Coast 2013 Preview

•January 28, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Once again legal product vendors will swarm the New York Hilton for LegalTech New York ’13 to show their wares and demonstrate their latest products.  This year’s show will provide the next generation of SaaS and mobile applications from a variety of vendors.  There will be a thinning herd of eDiscovery vendors, a new crop of SaaS start-ups, and a group of compliance and IT security companies to keep you on the up and up!

Here’s a preview of some of the products/vendors you will see on display in the exhibit hall:

This week at LegalTech New York ’13, World Software Corporation® (www.worldox.com), launches Worldox GX3 Cloud, a cloud-based delivery of its award-winning document management system (DMS).  This software-as-a-service contains the full functionality of Worldox GX3 Professional with a patent-pending delivery architecture that allows for anytime anywhere document access.  GX3 Cloud supports all existing Worldox partner and application integrations.

Worldox GX3 Cloud allows firms and organizations to access and upload their documents remotely, allowing greater mobility and flexibility.  Cloud data is hosted in secure, best-in-class SSAE 16 and ISAE 3402 compliant data centers, so Worldox customers can eliminate on-site servers and still use the proven Worldox technology.

Worldox GX3 Cloud will be demonstrated at LegalTech New York at booth #328-330

Levit & James, Inc. Releases Best Authority Version 3, Official Debut at Legaltech New York Next Week

Levit & James, Inc. (www.levitjames.com) announced that it has officially released Best Authority 3.0, a top-to-bottom rebuild of its industry-leading Table of Authorities (TOA) software. The company will demonstrate this breakthrough software at LegalTech New York s at booth #518.

Fletcher James, President of Levit & James, remarked, “Best Authority 3.0 is a total transformation of the software – a huge leap forward.  The software can scan and find all the citations in a 50-page brief in seconds.  With Best Authority 3.0, legal professionals who previously spent hours creating a TOA can now dispatch one in minutes.  The unparalleled accuracy and reliability of Version 2 have been carried forward, while every other aspect of performance and ease-of-use has been improved.”

Cloud-based eDiscovery Newcomer cicayda Launches fermata Legal Hold Management Offering

cicayda, a software company delivering 100% cloud-based e-discovery applications, today introduced fermata, the company’s new legal hold management product, and the first of a series of easy to use and ‘pay-as-you-need’ e-discovery tools including processing, review, search, and text analytics. The Nashville-based cicayda team is led by veteran trial lawyer and former CaseLogistix CEO Roe Frazer and CaseLogistix software architect Jason Cox.

fermata is secure, cloud-based legal hold management software that fits easily into existing legal hold compliance workflows, allowing in-house counsel and legal IT departments to manage the entire legal hold communications process. With fermata, legal hold administrators can do much more than just create and track legal hold notifications.

For more information on fermata, please go to http://fermata.cicayda.com and sign up for a free 30 day trial or visit the cicayda booth #133 at LegalTech New York.

RenewData
Booth 310
www.renewdata.com

RenewData, a full-service eDiscovery provider that offers the industry’s broadest spectrum of review acceleration solutions, will be sharing two new offerings at LegalTech New York: Language-Based Review Acceleration and Language-Based Content Filtering.

Language-Based Review Acceleration is the next generation of technology-assisted review. A key feature of this offering is Cross-Document Knowledge Extraction. The output of other review solutions is simply a subset of documents from the collection that might be relevant, but which requires additional analysis in order to learn more about each document’s content. Cross-Document Knowledge Extraction adds deeper insight into these results, yielding a better categorization of results that can lead to strategic advantages and additional cost savings.

Language-Based Content Filtering revolutionizes the way keywords are selected and applied in discovery by turning the process around. Instead of the traditional approach of making guesses in a vacuum on what keywords might be applicable to a matter, this approach ingests all words in a document collection and then provides a methodical framework for choosing the keywords from a pre-populated list. In short, it turns a fill-in-the-blank exercise into a multiple-choice exercise — thereby delivering more comprehensive results with less cost and risk.

Both new solutions are part of the Language-Based Analytics family of offerings, which is a language-based approach to methodically narrow down any size of document collection to identify potentially relevant information in the early phases of eDiscovery. With a series of interrelated processes and technologies, organizations are able to quickly and cost-effectively analyze a document collection, understand what each document is about, and make important decisions based on this understanding.

Biscom
Booth 1615
www.biscom.com/legal

Biscom Bolsters BYOD and Mobile Security with iPad App Enhancements

As the bring-your -own -device (BYOD) movement gathers stronger acceptance in the legal community, Biscom has launched enhancements to its iPad application that further secure mobile document exchange and collaboration.  The new additions to Biscom’s iPad app extend secure transfer capabilities to all files on an iPad, including documents, photographs and videos. Legal professionals can now create secure mobile deliveries of documents, files and multimedia that were downloaded from other iPad apps such as email or document management systems. This advanced feature augments the initial iPad functionality that allowed users to receive secure Biscom deliveries and securely send documents initially downloaded by the Biscom app. Biscom secure document exchange solutions – including its iPad application – are in use in three of the top-10 AmLaw firms and a growing number of the AmLaw 200 and include more than 10,000 users worldwide.

Synaptec Software
Booth #311

Synaptec Software’s LawBase (www.lawbase.com) will be available for viewing in both the company’s booth (#311) as well as in the company’s hospitality suite. Visitors to the hospitality suite will receive one-on-one time to see firsthand how the product works and how it can increase productivity. In addition, all visitors will be entered into a drawing to win an Apple® iPad.

Legal Suite
Booth #1712

Legal Suite (www.legal-suite.com) will be at booth #1712 showcasing its signature product and demonstrating its new functionality: a Microsoft® Office Plugin that allows users to search, edit, or add documents stored within the Legal Suite matter management applications directly from Word or Excel.

C2C
Booth #329

C2C (http://www.c2c.com) will be at booth 329 sharing how their policy-driven information management and archiving solution, ArchiveOne, can better prepare companies for litigation by managing burgeoning email growth. This is information management for the cost of archiving. C2C is leading the way with innovative tools for email management, combining ease-of-use with affordability and extensibility to make ArchiveOne the ideal solution for mid-market sized organizations.

AccessData
Booth #1401

AccessData (www.accessdata.com) will be at booth #1401 showcasing AD eDiscovery, MPE+ and Summation 4.2, which features predictive coding, data visualization and an automated Concordance migration tool.

DTI
Booth #220

DTI increases e-discovery capabilities with the acquisition of Fios; gains experienced team and further solidifies its position as the largest Relativity e-discovery services provider in the nation.

This winter DTI, the nation’s largest independent provider of discovery services, facilities management, and knowledge process outsourcing, acquired Fios, a highly recognizable brand in e-discovery. At LegalTech, the DTI team will showcase how it employs best-in-breed technologies, such as those offered by kCura, Venio, Equivio, and Content Analyst, as well as explain to booth visitors the power of its national data center infrastructure. The team will also happily explain how the Fios acquisition will provide DTI clients with expanded product development resources and proprietary workflow applications, such as the Fios Redaction Assistant. Fios, A DTI Company, is one of only a handful of Relativity Orange Best-in-Service companies out of 140 total Premium Hosting Providers worldwide. To earn this designation, it passed evaluations and audits for technical expertise, customer service, product knowledge, and scale of operations, while maintaining an established installed base exceeding 1,000 active Relativity users! Visit the DTI booth at LegalTech to learn how their leading technology and services can quickly result in cost-savings for firms and corporate legal departments every time!

I hope to see you in the exhibit hall – I’ll be wandering around learning all I can!

Dave Glynn for LexTekReport.com

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ILTA 2012 Redux – Wheeling and dealing has never been easier

•September 6, 2012 • Leave a Comment

As promised, I have more to report from the ILTA 2012 show. In fact, I could probably fill about six more blog entries, but in deference to time restraints, I’ll cover and cram as much as possible into this LexTekReport entry.

Each year I look forward to the results of the ILTA Purchasing Survey conducted in partnership with InsideLegal, the survey captures some good information about buying trends by law firms. 116 firms responded to the survey. It looks like purchasing overall is trending upward from 2009 and cloud products are being considered or already implemented by 32% of the respondents. 66% of respondents indicated they were buying iPads and 35% of the firms have some security in place to cover those iPads/tablets.  For more, you can download the survey as of the writing of this blog entry, the survey link was on the top left-hand side of the InsideLegal home page.

I spoke with several vendors – some exhibitors, some not – and here are the highlights from some of those conversations..

HighQ – I sat down with Michael Worth and Ajay Patel of High Q who told me all about their electronic deal room product called HighQ.  Not to be confused with Haiku, a poem consisting of seven/five/seven syllable lines (OK, I had too many English classes), HighQ has been adopted by 21 of the top 25 UK law firms and has been quickly adopted by ten major US firms. HighQ goes well beyond the capabilities of MS SharePoint when it comes to building and maintaining virtual deal rooms.  A complete SaaS product, HighQ offers fully functional document exchange with several levels of security and digital rights management.  HighQ also provides wikis, blogs, project management, and even social networking based on the “yammer” concept of social networking.

HighQ is positioned as a first solution for real estate, M & A and IP deals. A law firm can spin off several deal rooms, in fact, one Cleveland firm had 40 active sites running simultaneously.  You do not have to be technical to use HighQ and there is limited IT involvement required.  HighQ is ISO 27001-complaint.

As a bonus – here’s the HighQ haiku (and I’m not getting a kick-back for this – OK, Judge Alsup?):

leading provider

secure document exchange

equal to HighQ

I spoke with Kevin Jacobs a VP at DTI who tells me that DTI continues its mission of bringing managed review in-house and bundling reviews and services as a fixed-price offering.  DTI is combining assisted review technology and traditional review in-house.  Through first-pass, subsequent, privilege – law firms typically do it themselves.  DTI backs brute-force labor with technology and QC.

DTI recently acquired a small forensics company on the West coast – called Data Forte.  It was a talent-based acquisition in that Peter Garza, a renowned forensics expert came with the company.  DTI plans to continue growth in the area of forensics.

DTI has also seen growth in professional services and is getting more successful on selling services around eDiscovery, i.e.,  project management, consulting  and data analytics.  DTI is packaging pricing so it is reasonable as a full-service offering.

DTI focuses on the fact that eDiscovery is a process-based business – more important than the tools selected, and DTI pays close attention to workflow, processing and communication.

I sat down with Sue Pasield of Capensys who told me that Capensys has made some interesting breakthroughs in learning via mobile technologies.  Capensys teaches lawyers how to use computer applications, following attorneys’ work flow by offering training to match their daily practice.  Sue said that they cover tasks like, “This is how you want to work with your PDF before filing.  Here’s how to handle emailed attachments, etc.”  The training offered is a blend of elearning – videos and workshops.  Lawyers can learn on-demand.

The main breakthroughs that Capensys wanted to emphasize with me is that they have targeted how attorneys work and the training is available on a device.  Sue said that there is always a problem training lawyers in a law firm with the pressure of billing. Now with their use of iPads, iPhones & smartphones they can reach attorneys easily.  Capensys can cover most main applications used by lawyers – MS office, Acrobat, document management products, etc. and can customize the training.  Capensys began in the UK, has been in business for 4 years and is employee-owned.

I met with Dean Kuhlmann, VP, Business Develoment, of Lateral Data (a Xerox Company). Lateral Data was not exhibiting at ILTA 2012.  Dean told me about Viewpoint, an all-in-one eDiscovery product – major boxes in ERDM model, process and review, analytics and productions.  Product was built by Lateral data as a one-product solution. Dean said that, “Being in the business ourselves and trying to buy and combine several tools,  we decided to build own comprehensive product.  We have used the product for six years so it’s production-ready.  By building things into the product , there is no need to export or import to other products for the eDiscovery process.  It allows us to compete  with anyone in the process space.”  Dean goes on to say, ” We compete in the review space and we can stand side-by-side can stand up to Relativity in a ‘proof of concept’.  Every single time we’ve installed for a ‘proof of concept’ we have never lost.  Our product is more robust, attorneys like it better, and the anayltics are built-in.  We don’t nickle and dime – one license fee. “

Viewpoint offers reduced license fees and end users are unlimited.  Analytics are bundled at no extra cost.  There are no royalty fees back to other vendors and no extra fees making it a budgetable product. Lateral Data has 35 clients worldwide since the 2010 roll-out.

It’s always exciting to meet a young entrepeneur at ITLA, and Justin Blessing of Compiled Services (not an ILTA exhibitor) who told me about their premier product ReadySuite, a quality control tool for the eDiscovery process. Justin’s background was as a member of the  practice support department of McGuire Woods where he was managing day-to-day eDiscovery in the hot seat for cases going to trial.

ReadySuite enables lawyers to thoroughly check their content before providing it to opposing counsel for review. All content can be ingested from their native formats directly into ReadySuite for review.  The visualization of the data makes it easy to redact data and mark items as privileged. ReadySuite will also catch documents added later in the mix.

Justin was very excited about the ReadySuite and seemed very pleased to be able to apply his background to build a successful tool for his former colleagues in the eDiscovery trenches.

Todd  Horst from First Advantage Litigation Consulting introduced himself to me. Todd has been with First Advantage for eight months and he is working on the effort of reintroducing company. Acquired by Symphony Technology in January of 2011 and in Nov 2011 the company separated First Advantage and First Advantage Litigation Consulting.  First Advantage (not Litigation Consulting) is in Human Resources support business as a supplier of services like background checks and drug testing.  First Advantage Litigation Consulting is a full-service Ediscovery consultancy.

Todd tells me that complex global litigation is the advantage (pun intended) of First Advantage Litigation Consulting over the competition.  Todd said, ” We have a lot of experience overseas. The largest matter we worked on was the Siemans FCPA matter – that provided us with a lot of experience in China and Germany  and several other jurisdictions around the globe.  We were able to handle very sophisticated matters involving multiple law firms, multiple languages  several project managers it was over 100 terabyte project.

I never have enough time to spend at ILTA – too much information is provided over the course of five days – that’s not a complaint, just a fact.  But this is all the time we have for coverage today.

DG

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ILTA 2012 – Mature market dictates product enhancements

•August 30, 2012 • Leave a Comment

One thing that is clear at this year’s ILTA show is that the market has grown up quite a bit. The level of buyer is highly educated and has advanced and specialized product knowledge.  In other words, you’d have to get up pretty early in the morning to offer a lame product at ILTA.  So the pressure is on for companies to develop advanced products that can meet the demands of legal IT buyers.  I talked with several exhibitors at the show and asked them about their latest product lines.  Here’s a summary of my conversations:

Shaw Gaines of kCura/Relativity

cKura/Relativity – I spoke with Shawn Gaines of Relativity to learn the latest trends of a product line that has made a great name among eDiscovery vendors and is used by many eDiscovery vendors. Shawn discussed Relativity Assisted Review – which makes predictive coding workflow possible. Subject matter experts can train RAR to propagate decisions about content. RAR allows a user to get to documents quickly through a conceptual search based on issues.  The text analytics engine powers the assisted review – categorization of responsive, non-responsive goes quickly. According to Shawn, there has been some growth in use of the text analytics engine. You can select a passage of text and search based on that selection.

The Relativity Ecosystem is a platform to integrate and build apps on the system to extend capabilities. It’s an open development structure – litigation support professionals, third party developers, and kCura’s own team can build applications on top of the system.  No programming background is required, just experience with APIs.

There are some unique integrators  – like Fios in their development of the Fios redaction assistant.  - extending redaction capabilities of Relativity and speeding up the redaction process.  This is because it enables a user to redact a string across the board.

Fios proudly announced the Fios Redaction Assistant at ILTA 2012.  FRA is a significant time saver as it allows users to create a redaction pattern, or select from a library of predefined patterns, using the Relativity interface. A redaction pattern can be a string of text, a full page, or a pattern, such as a social security or phone number. These patterns can be grouped into reusable profiles.

FRA also provides a quality control (QC) automation features including a pass/fail status for all redacted documents, informing the user which documents should be inspected individually. Additionally, review managers have audit trail reports that reveal information such as the time of redaction, who performed the redaction and what was redacted.

Ray Zwiefelhofer of Worldox

I sat down with Ray Zwiefelhofer of Worldox. It is always a treat to meet with Ray, because he is a true innovator and always delivers as promised! According to Ray, business is gang-busters, and the market is great right now. Worldox just announced GX3 Enterprise – designed for mid-sized to larger firms with centralized data stores.  Of the Worldox 5,000 clients – 500 have multiple office locations with 1,000 user firms.  Law firms are looking to have a centralized data set rather than storing in all the remote locations.  They are expecting the same speed and performance they can get locally to be served up through the new architecture.  According to Ray, GX3 delivers. Those using GX3 Enterprise include a mix of new customers and existing customers.  Large bank customers are testing in multiple country offices.  GX3 Enterprise responds to the need of clients to deliver more efficiently over the wire.

A quick hit for Worldox is the new ability to drag and drop documents to the cloud on the iPad using Dropbox and CloudOn.  This is intended for small firm users and the feature can be blocked at any firm that is concerned with BYOD security issues.

Slated for LegalTech NY – GX3 Cloud will be unveiled, an entirely hosted Worldox – at a large, name-brand center.  GX3 Cloud product will have huge advantages over typical cloud system – its ability to publish Adobe PDF editor tool in the cloud.  Allowing customers online without downloading the potentially large PDFs. Adobe X/Adobe Pro.  Ray demonstrated this capability to me – it was impressive – not having to download a cumbersome PDF to work on the document.

Another offering of Worldox is Legal Hold which is offered at no extra charge.  Ray said that it may not constitute a legal hold in all states, it is enables customers to move documents to the legal hold location and become read-only documents until the Judge in a case will order a release of the docs.  There is a full audit trail around the legal hold utilization.  This feature allows Worldox to venture into more eDiscovery areas.

I spoke with Lori Hall of Levit & James about Best Authority 3 their latest version of the super automated Table of Authorities product.  Lori told me that their first phase of Beta began in February and provided valuable feedback from their customers that led them to add “some fantastic features.”  Legal vendors pay attention: Levit & James always keep the clients in the mix .  Key features of the new product  include the fact that it works with MS Word ribbon, and their review mode provides a dockable review pane that offers a tree view, showing  groups, authorities and citations.  The user can make changes right at the tree view where they can move, cut & paste.  Best Authority 3 is four, to twenty times faster than the previous version.   For instance, a document with hundreds of citations in the previous version took eighteen minutes to run, in Best Authority 3, it takes a minute.  The new feature encourages lawyers to use it- the preview pane that will show what the final product is going to look like and you can make changes right there.  This is especially true for the next generation.

After Labor Day (2012), all clients will receive the Beta – and can test the new product in their Office 2007 and 2010 images.  It also works with 2003, but you can’t take advantage of the ribbon. Levit & James offers training videos and quick how-to’s videos embedded into the product.

I met with several folks from Workshare including Steve Yount ,  Matt Brown and CEO Scott Smull – Workshare has  80% of the AmLaw 200 using the product and they specialize in corporate legal and legal compliance.

At ILTA, Workshare is announcing the Cloud Collaboration Platform – located at Workshare.com – focusing on three main areas – secured file sharing, secure file synchronization – with a dropbox flavor – also built for iPad, iPhone and Droid.  Cloud Collaboration Platform allows secured access from anywhere with the ability to take documents away.  All around collaboration is possible in the cloud and they have also integrated comparison technology as well.  The concept is to bring attorneys together. According to the Workshare management, they feel they that no one else is addressing technologies as a whole and certainly no one for the legal market.

Cloud Collaboration Platform focuses on the consumerization of IT – (the issue of BYOD, a prominent them of ILTA 2012).

Workshare boasts that of its 1.8 million customers – half a million are using “protect client”, a meta data cleaner and seamless plug-in for MS Outlook. When they use MS Outlook they have a feature called Send Link.  Uses the same MS Outlook configuration, and rather than sending the entire document, it sends a link. You can set it up for a group of users.  Logical next step is introduce to the cloud platform.

Catalyst - John Tredennick a trial lawyer for 20 years and a legal technologist for many more, John was convinced early on that content was going to continue to grow and that lawyers, law firms and corporate counsel need trusted, central repositories for data. Catalyst has twelve  years of experience.

The new product, Catalyst Insight, is a completely hosted, grid based (not SQL-based) system that can handle large varieties of data including Asian language data.  Catalyst Insight is completely SaaS.

John says, “It’s faster than anything we’ve ever done.” Insight is the new product. They have built everything in an XML data store.  Insight automates the entire eDiscovery process from one end to the other. It allows the ability to load raw data into the system, run searches, do early case assessment, predictive coding and review.  Without the need of service behind the seeds.

Catalysts’ free form searching is very intelligent. Lots of assistants built into the search engine.  The redaction tools built in.  Sexy communication tracker, charts of results – nice visual representation, charts, there is a very visual communication report that shows the links between communicators. There is also a faceted search.  I was impressed by the visualization of this product and the ability to find a needle in the haystack.

More from ILTA to come…

DG

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