Lextek – Chicago Lawyer’s Tek Talk

The BIG news here at the International Legal Technology Association Conference has been the acquisition by Aderant of CompuLaw and Client Profiles including CRM4Legal.  Aderant’s CEO, Chris Giglio told LexTekReport that, “These acquisitions bring together best-in-class products that not only complement each other extremely well, but also give law and professional services firms a single provider for a large portion of their mission critical business applications.” Aderant is on the move to become the largest software and services provider in the legal market giving both Thomson-Reuters-West and LexisNexis a run for the money.

According to ILTA’s 2010 survey of 464 law firms, Aderant accounted for 19% of the law firm time & billing market behind Elite’s (Thomson-Reuters-West) 40% of market share. However it’s important to note that in firms of attorneys of 700 or more, Aderant at 46% leads Elite at 42%. Elite is more dominant in the 350 to 699 lawyer firm range with 61% over Aderant’s 34% and Elite beats Aderant in every category of size below that range.

This announcement follows on the heels of HP’s acquisition of Autonomy for $10 billion.  Are we heading for a another six-headed monster of legal vendors similar to the dominance by large vendors in the legal research market?

Not to let the announcements above overshadow other business at the conference, here are some items of interest:

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), and InsideLegal, an insider’s guide to doing business in legal technology, released the findings of the 6^th annual ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey (Survey). The 2011 Survey, focused on feedback from ILTA member law firms with 50 or more attorneys, covers more detailed legal technology budget questions; updated information on firms’ social media preferences; an in-depth analysis of cloud computing; and sections on technology outsourcing and IT challenges. Survey findings and analysis will be presented as part of InsideLegal’s vendor education program in conjunction with ILTA’s Annual Conference.

2011 Survey highlights include:

• Overall firm technology spending, as a percentage of firm revenue and based on per attorney spend, is still down from pre-2009 economic downturn figures
• 57% of all responding firms spend between 2-4% of total firm revenue on technology
• 46% of survey participants indicated spending $8K-$17K per attorney on technology purchases, the same response rate as in 2010
• While budget slashing has been curtailed, keeping budgets balanced has taken priority with 35% indicating their budgets remained the same
• The top five technology implementations within the last 12 months included desktop hardware; laptops/notebooks; network/server upgrades; storage area networks and virtualization
• While ILTA’s Peer to Peer Magazine and ILTA whitepapers remain ‘favorite’ reads, 5 of the top 10 favorite publications mentioned by respondents are non-legal, general technology publications
• Of the 52% who indicated using Twitter, many of them (27%) have an account but don’t actively use it
• 44% of this year’s respondents reported they use outside technology consultants to aid in making purchasing decisions
• Internet research was cited as the 2nd most popular influence in terms of aiding IT purchasing decisions (next to peer recommendations)
• 33% indicated they are implementing a cloud strategy, up from 17% in 2010 and 9% in 2009
• 55% of surveyed firms provide IT support for employees that purchase and use their personal tablet devices

Worldox has two announcements, the first being that their Worldox Web Mobile 2.0  is ready to launch.  Worldox Web 2.0 will enable integration with Microsoft Office on both Open and Save commands, so users can access Worldox’s profiling system and search tools while working remotely.  The other announcement comes from Thomson/Reuters, that West Case Notebook, West’s case analysis software and part of the Westlaw Litigator Suite, now integrates with Worldox® Document Management System (DMS) software, providing attorneys and other litigation team members with more efficient, streamlined workflows for effectively managing key case information.

Informative Graphics Corporation (IGC), a leader in content viewing, collaboration, publishing and redaction technology, officially releases the latest version of Redact-It^® Desktop, its electronic redaction software. Most notably, the new version includes new redaction log capabilities designed to make creating the privilege log, an essential part of a defensible eDiscovery process, more efficient. The latest Redact-It offers the ability to create a customizable redaction log for each document. Users can choose which fields to include in the redaction log—like Document Name, Custodian Name, Recipient Name, and Redaction Reason—to ensure they match that of the case privilege log. Then, using the new Redact-It Reports tool, they can aggregate the individual document logs into a single table that is ready to cut and paste into the case privilege log. Redact-It now offers the ability to export log information to EDRM XML load file format, making importing the information into a case management system more efficient.

Exterro, the legal industry’s most trusted provider of e-discovery software solutions, introduced Fusion LawFirm^™, a complete, end-to-end e-discovery software suite designed to meet the growing needs of law firms. Being showcased this week at the annual ILTA 2011 Conference in Nashville, Fusion LawFirm enables legal teams to deliver enhanced project management services to their corporate clients across the entire EDRM spectrum, efficiently and predictably. Fusion LawFirm is offered via Exterro’s flexible, flat-fee pricing model, becoming the industry’s most cost-effective, comprehensive e-discovery suite for law firms.

kCura, the developers of the e-discovery platform Relativity, will be showcasing new products, including Relativity Assisted Review and Fact Manager, and offering hands-on exercises for their software.  At the conference, kCura will be at booth #704, and will offer demos and hands-on labs in Belle Meade A from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday. One kCura lab will feature Relativity Assisted Review, the faster, more accurate way to review large volumes of electronic documents. Visitors can also participate in a hands-on lab for Fact Manager, the first application built by kCura’s on-demand workflow advice team, advice@kCura.

Cypress Communications announced the addition of the Cisco® Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) and the expansion of its flagship C4 Product Suite. Cisco HCS will be integrated into the Cypress cloud and backbone infrastructure, marketed as C4 UC™ and delivered as an enterprise, hosted Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) solution. Backed by Cisco technology, Cypress will provide hosted UCaaS with innovative capabilities, such as seamless call transfers from fixed to mobile phones, the use of presence technology, web conferencing, desktop video and a state-of-the art mobile client that extends UCaaS functionality to Apple iOS and Android based devices, including Cisco Cius™. C4 UC will be generally available for sale in September 2011. Cypress is unveiling its UCaaS solution at the International Legal Technology Association’s (ILTA) annual conference in Nashville, TN at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, booth #722.

RPost, the inventor of Registered Email® services, and Esquire Innovations, the leader in document metadata management, announced collaboration to extend Esquire’s iScrub product with RPost advanced messaging, security and collaboration services.  Now, after iScrub prepares attached documents for sending to external parties, it automates options to transmit the message and attachments via the RPost Cloud processing platform, for best in class email proof, compliant and secure encryption, and electronic signature services.

PowerSearch Software, the leading developer of affordable and accessible search technologies, announced the general availability of the latest release of its software, version 3.0. With this latest release, PowerSearch brings increased breadth and depth to the original product which was introduced to the market in May of this year. PowerSearch can be seen at the ILTA Conference at Booth 806, or can be downloaded from the PowerSearch website.

Stay tuned for more news from ILTA.

DG

Posted in Lextek
Tags: Aderant, C4 UC, Client Profiles, CompuLaw, CRM4Legal, Cypress Communications, Elite, exterro, Informative Graphics Corporation, InsideLegal, kCura, LexisNexis, PowerSearch, Redact-It, Relativity, Thomson Reuters West, Worldox

This year’s International Legal Technology Association’s annual conference vows to move away from the doom and gloom permeating IT in law firms.  If that isn’t reason enough to sign up for the conference, an impressive syllabus of educational sessions will.  Grappling with Cloud computing, digital information lifecycles, future-proofing and the high-cost of IT?  Then this conference is for you. Sessions are also promised on supporting mobile lawyers, ipad apps, Sharepoint as a DMS, and how to talk technology to lawyers.

LexTekReport.com will be attending the conference set for August 22 to August 25th at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville and reporting on the comings and goings.  Here’s a preview of what you’ll find in this year’s exhibit hall:

Informative Graphics Corporation (IGC) – Booth 424

Informative Graphics Corporation has developed enhancements to its Redact-It Desktop electronic redaction software.  Redact-It is an easy-to-use desktop application that helps you quickly remove sensitive content and privacy information from documents–including PDFs, office documents and scanned images. It creates a new PDF rendition of their redacted file, leaving the source file untouched.

The newest Redact-It Desktop version, which will be demonstrated at ILTA, offers a customizable redaction log that is easily imported into a privilege log. Choose which fields you wish to include in the redaction log to ensure they match the privilege table, then simply cut and paste. Redact-It also now offers the ability to export log information to the EDRM XML format to make importing the information into the case management system easier.  For more information, visit www.redact-it.com.

InOutsource – Booth 525

InOutsource experts provide client intake and records management consulting services to help law firms and corporate legal departments ensure valuable client information is properly managed and protected to mitigate risk and preserve client confidentiality. InOutsource is the renowned leader in the legal community for their in-depth knowledge of the issues law firms face with managing client information. At ILTA 2011, InOutsource will be showcasing their records retention policy development offering. For more information, visit www.inoutsource.com.

Index Engines – Booth 815

At ILTA, Index Engines announces traction and results for its cloud-based backup tape load services, which have been integral to the success of many large-scope electronic discovery projects, including one recently executed by Innovative Discovery.  Index Engines’ cloud-based services provide full identification and access to tape data for eDiscovery.

Innovative Discovery, an Index Engines partner, had been faced with an eDiscovery challenge.  The dataset consisted of 464 DLT backup tapes with 21 terabytes of information, including 350 million total files (of which 223.9 million alone were email) from 2400 custodians.  The dataset comprised nearly 10 years of corporate electronically-stored information.  Using Index Engines’ cloud services, Innovative Discovery reduced the haystack down to 7 custodians; indexed, culled and tagged the data; and extracted the 1% relevant data, all in 25 days.  For more information, visit: http://www.indexengines.com/service_cloud.html.

Keno Kozie – Booth 111

Keno Kozie (www.kenokozie.com) will be in booth #111 to showcase why law firms across America are making them their IT partner of choice. There will be experts at their booth to talk about managing the information and IT infrastructure at a firm and what can make it easier. Also, Barry Keno, President of Keno Kozie, will be speaking on the topic of “HelpDesks: In-house and Outsourced Options” on Wednesday from 1:30-2:30 p.m. In this presentation, Barry will examine the many helpdesk options available to firms today, the costs involved with each, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of in-house vs. outsourced models.

Intelliteach – Booth 404/406

Intelliteach Releases 2^nd edition of Guru’s Guide for Service Desk Support Focused on Legal Helpdesk Metrics and Statistics

Intelliteach, the only law firm-specific outsourced service desk company, today announced the availability of  the 2^nd edition of the ‘Guru Guide’, a complimentary published report aggregating independent law firm user support and service desk statistics and metrics. The  updated Guru Guide provides unique benchmark data relating to the most supported legal applications as well as service desk staffing and service quality ratios pre and post software conversions, among others. The data presented in the updated Guru Guide is based on 1.2 million service desk tickets collected and analyzed from January 2010 through June 2011 across a variety of law firm sizes, locations and hardware/software configurations.  2^nd edition Guru Guide findings include:

• Top ticket categories: Over 42% of 1.2 million service desk tickets logged are specific to various versions of Microsoft Office, 20% of those are specific to Microsoft Outlook. 14% of all helpdesk calls, pertained to various firm document management systems;
• Increase in Microsoft Office 2007 tickets: Microsoft Office 2007 calls currently account for 51% of all Microsoft Office calls, compared to 22% for the same period 12 months earlier;
• Conversion & upgrade impact on the service/helpdesk: Conversions cause a significant increase in volume and add additional strain to existing resources, systems, and service quality. Based on Guru data, ticket volumes increased by 42% during firm-wide upgrades (average tickets per user per month increased from 2 to 2.85 during rollouts) and took an average of 90 days to return to pre-conversion levels;
• Live rates: Pre-conversion, the overall live rate is 93%. If staffing is kept the same during conversions, live rate drop by 25%. On a related note, “average wait time in the queue” jumps from 10 seconds to 81 seconds;
• Tickets by origin: How are users reaching out to the service desk? 70% used the phone and 27% sent an email describing their technology issues however it seems email is far less efficient for both the user and the service desk: 86% of live (phoned-in) service desk tickets are resolved in that first contact whereas only 7% of email tickets can be resolved in one single contact. Data indicates that, on average, tickets created via Email have a lifespan 6 times longer than those originated by telephone;
• Tickets by weekday: Based on 1.2 million analyzed tickets, Tuesday sees the highest call volume (20.52%) and Friday (16.81%) the lowest.

Intelliteach will be providing an executive summary of all the Guru guide findings at their ILTA Conference booth 404/406.

AccessData – Booth 500/502A

Access Data (booth #500/502a) will be showcasing their early case assessment tool. The company will be demoing the tool during a Hands-on Lab on Wednesday from 10:30-11:30 am and 2:30-3:30 pm in Hermitage E. In addition, the company will be teaching a “Forensics 101 for Legal Professionals” session on Tuesday from 9:15-12:30 pm and debuting AccessData Case Vantage 7 during a sneak peak session where attendees will get to be the very first to debut the Access Data built Summation release. www.accessdata.com

Levit & James – Booth 120

Legal software company Levit & James will be previewing Best Authority Version 3.0 at ILTA 2011, which is the next major release of the company’s Table of Authorities production software.  Slated for official release in early 2012, Best Authority 3.0 is a breakthrough product.  The company’s development team has entirely reworked the underlying technology, and the impact of this will be immediately apparent.

According to Levit & James President Fletcher James, “In Version 3.0, each step in the TOA-production process will be faster – four to twenty times faster – than Version 2.7, and processing of even the largest documents with thousands of citations will be effortless.  The user interface will feature many innovative ease-of-use features, such as drag-and-drop, and a “final version preview” mode.  And, because so many of the steps will be entirely intuitive, end-user training time will be greatly reduced.”  Best Authority is the leading tool for producing a Table of Authorities (TOA).  By the end of 2010, projections indicate that Best Authority will be used by more than half of the National Law Journal’s NLJ 250 law firms.  For more information, visit: www.levitjames.com.

Margill – Booth 226

Margill (www.margill.com) will be showcasing their simple-to-use, intuitive and powerful tool designed to make interest calculations easy in their booth (#226). Whether doing interest calculations for pre and post judgment interest, arrears, collection – receivables and judgments, structured settlements, or loans & mortgages you will see how well this software works on multiple areas of the law and does calculations based on specific state requirements.

Wave Software – Booth 831

Award-winning Wave Software (Booth #831) launches Trident Expert at ILTA! Wave Software, a leading provider of early case assessment, legal hold, electronic data discovery, and litigation project management technology for global corporations, is known for its family of products such as Trident Lite, Trident Preview, and Trident Pro. Trident Expert offers the next level of technology because it is a Unified Module that allows users to manage all data sources and processes in a single, seamless interface. It allows users to De-Duplicate, interactively search and export the selected results into many review formats including iCONECT, Concordance, Summation and Relativity.

Trial Solutions – Booth#129

eDiscovery leader Trial Solutions will officially announce at ILTA 2011 that the company will now be known as CloudNine Discovery.  President Brad Jenkins explains that this major rebranding and name change was necessary due to a gradual expansion of the company’s scope of product and service offerings in recent years, particularly in the areas of online data and document review hosting platforms like OnDemand^® online hosted review and FirstPass^® early case assessment online hosted technology.  Therefore, the name Trial Solutions was no longer a sufficient or accurate representation of the company.

The name “CloudNine Discovery” was selected for two primary reasons: 1) to reflect the company’s dedication to client service which puts their customers “on cloud nine”; and 2) to also represent that the company is the world’s leader in combining self-service access with managed hosting and “cloud” storage.  Jenkins says, “CloudNine Discovery’s mission will continue to be to simplify the discovery process through innovative technology, transforming data hosting into a world-class experience that is easy and affordable to anyone.  CloudNine Discovery will offer the same products and services provided by Trial Solutions, and our core leadership will remain intact.”  For more information about CloudNine Discovery, OnDemand or FirstPass, visit www.CloudNineDiscovery.com.

In addition, the company will be previewing OnDemand® Release 10.5 and its new features and enhancements in advance of its official release, slated for September 10.  The biggest enhancement here is behind-the- scenes as OnDemand’s online review tool has been migrated to a new virtual environment, providing a much more robust system architecture, increasing speed, flexibility and capacity for users.  OnDemand will also unveil several application enhancements, including enhanced password reset and strong password functionality, synching of images in the grid view display, support for quick search on metadata fields, support for Internet Explorer 9, and a streamlined document viewer installation module. Read more about OnDemand at: http://www.trialsolutions.net/online.htm

nQueue Billback – Booth 809

nQueue Billback provides software-based cost recovery, information accountability and expense management solutions to the legal market and others. Their tools capture data to enhance the automation and processing of any operational and administrative expenses, which can be deployed to recover costs, improve decision-making, implement better workflows and more.

At ILTA, nQueue Billback will be highlighting iA Expense Manager, which easily captures data from all expenses, even those incurred outside an organization’s devices such as travel, research, overnight and courier charges, court fees and credit cards. Automating intake allows information to be collected as expenses are incurred—rather than asking attorneys and administrators to recreate it after the fact. iA Expense Manager captures data more accurately, allowing the firm to get a better handle on all expenses, resulting in less effort, increased accuracy, more knowledge, more efficient billing and more recoveries.  For more information, visit http://www.nqbillback.com.

World Software Corporation – Booth 224

At ILTA this year, World Software Corporation will be previewing its upcoming release of Worldox Web Mobile 2.0.  With Web Mobile, attorneys can access their documents via the web, a mobile device and a native iPad app.  Some of the new features in Version 2.0 include the integration with Microsoft Office applications to save and open documents from the native application and a newly designed user interface.  Worldox Web Mobile 2.0 will be available either for installation on your firm’s network, or as a hosted version with a monthly subscription.   Read more about Worldox Web Mobile here: http://www.worldox.com/products/worldox_webmobile.

Document Technologies, Inc. (DTI) – Booth 315

Document Technologies, Inc. (DTI) is the nation’s largest independent provider of discovery services and document outsourcing. Through sophisticated technology centers in key metro areas and in local facilities across the U.S., DTI provides an extensive suite of solutions integrating professional services and current technologies to meet law firm and corporate legal department clients’ most demanding e-discovery needs.

DTI’s end-to-end discovery services include:

• Discovery consulting (including litigation readiness, data mapping and workflow optimization)

• Data preservation, acquisition and early case assessment
• E-discovery processing
• Hosted document review (tools include Relativity, Discovery Partner and iCONECT)
• Paper-based discovery services
• LitWorks – litigation certification training

For more information, visit www.DTIGlobal.com.

DocSolid – Booth 626

DocSolid, a leader in enterprise document scanning solutions for law firms, will announce the integration of its cloud-based Airmail2 scan capture solution with the Autonomy iManage document management solution. With Airmail2, law firms can use every digital copier, MFP and scanner on the market without added hardware, software or device integration. Airmail2 provides an enterprise-class scanning utility with a secure, cloud-based deployment that is now tightly integrated to the user’s matter workspace in iManage.  DocSolid already has more than 80 large Autonomy iManage customers capturing their scans with KwikTag, its document imaging and workflow scanning solution. KwikTag integrates within the firm’s existing software packages, while Airmail2 provides enterprise scan capture as a technology service.

“We see most law firms at the pivot point of their advancing scanning needs,” said Dave Guilbault, vice president of DocSolid. “They’ve got various ways to get scanning done across the firm, using different procedures from different vendors on different devices. As scanning activity expands, they now recognize the need for uniform device interaction, consistent productivity and process integrity. They want a scanning platform that doesn’t complicate life at the Exchange Server and that is easy to administer for basic capture needs firm-wide. Airmail2 delivers against these enterprise needs in a surprisingly simple deployment. You can turn it on in a day, and pay for it only where it is used.”

Airmail2 for iManage is ideal for medium-sized law firms needing a firm-wide scan capture that integrates with their document management matter workspace. Airmail2 is also a strong solution for corporate legal departments and accounting firms that rely on iManage. Visit www.docsolid.com.

Biscom – Booth 113

Law firms of all sizes face the challenge of securely transferring large documents to external parties such as clients and counsel. One wrong keystroke or improperly erected FTP site could mean compromising client confidentiality and large fines from noncompliance with government regulations. Biscom offers secure file transfer with audited file transfer technology that integrates with popular legal technology software such as Autonomy iManage.

At ILTA, the company will be launching Biscom version 4.1, which includes anti-virus integration, enhanced reporting, IP address-restricted login, and proxy server support. The new version also integrates with PayPal, which allows senders to collect payment for files before the recipient is able to download them.

The company will also be featured in ILTA’s State of the Art Technology Demos conference track on August 23 at 1:30 p.m. CT in the Canal E Room.

Visit Biscom at booth 113 to learn how you can receive complimentary sender licenses.

Thanks to contributors Carolyn Depko of Edge Legal, Christy Burke of Burke & Company and honorable mention to Jobst Elster at Envision.

DG

Posted in Lextek
Tags: AccessData, Biscom, DocSolid, Document Technologies, ILTA, Inc., Index Engines, Informative Graphics Corporation, InOutsource, Intelliteach, International Legal Technology Association, Keno Kozie, Levit & James, Margill, nQueue Billback, trial solutions, wave software, World Software Corporation

By Scott Baird and Dan Berlin of Software Technology Inc.

Reprinted by permission from the Chicago Lawyer magazine

No two law firms are identical, but when it comes to managing their practice, they have four basic needs. All law firms must organize a calendar, maintain a contact list, be able to check for conflicts and keep case information current and organized.

Whether your office is out of your home or in a high-rise, you should be using practice management software. Without it, you may still do a fine job of documenting everything that transpires for your client, but when documents, schedules and notes are crammed into a case file or in a pile on your desk, they can be difficult, if not impossible, to find.

All practice management programs vary on some features, but they all address the four C’s of practice management: calendaring, contacts, conflicts and case information.

Calendaring —You might already use a firm wide calendar so that everyone knows when his or her next meeting is. You may use calendars in Outlook that are connected via Microsoft Exchange so that an office manager can schedule appointments and meetings for multiple individuals. This kind of calendar is based on people; it is person-centric.

Calendars in practice management software are different. You can still see upcoming appointments for colleagues, but a practice management calendar can also display the meetings and deadlines for Mega Construction Corp., your firm’s newest corporate merger client. This is because the calendar allows you to link appointments and deadlines to firm employees and matters; it is matter-centric.

Many practice management calendars also include calendar plans that automatically add standard deadlines to the calendar for you, at the time intervals you have defined for this type of case. For example, when you open a personal-injury case, the calendar plan adds the deadlines for filing the claim, gathering medical records, notifying the client’s employer, contacting claims adjusters and anything else that automatically is added to your to-do list for a personal injury case.

Contacts — You could list 50 names of people who are involved with your work life. When you use practice management software, your contact list is centralized so that everyone at the firm can find any contact right away, instead of digging through multiple lists. After you import your contact lists into practice management software and start referencing them in your work, you will see how they are related to any case.

For example, a practice management contact record for Jon Smith lists all of his numbers and e-mail addresses and also shows you that he was an expert witness in a case and that he is a beneficiary in the will your firm created for his brother.

Conflicts —Conflict of interest searches in practice management software provide you the information you need right away. Firms that store more information in practice management software get the best conflict reports because a conflict search scans all of the firm’s records, including the contents of documents, e-mails and their attachments.

Efficient conflict of interest searches include all of your firm’s case records and eliminate the need to check with every person involved for potential conflicts.

Case Information—Practice management software holds a lot of the fourth C, case information, and it makes it all easy to find.

Not all practice management programs are created equally and the following functions are only found in the very best:

Area of Practice Information. You would not maintain the same type of information for a personal-injury client that you would for a divorce client. Neither should your software. When clients are added to practice management software, custom fields and files for their cases should be in one area so that your critical case information is in one place.

Findability. When a client calls with questions, you need to find the answers fast. Your practice management software should have a place where basic case information is organized in one easy-to-use window.

Outlook Integration.  Click a button in Outlook to turn e-mails into notes, billing entries or tasks for any client or contact.

Documents. Organize documents based on matter, contact, attorney or any other criteria you choose.

By adding documents to practice management software, you are able to find the document you are looking for fast while also adding their content to future conflict of interest searches.

By eliminating the wasted time and frustration of looking through unorganized case files for specific pieces of information, practice management software will help you panic less and enjoy your job even more.

Whether your law firm has two attorneys or 200, using practice management software is a clear advantage over attempting to stay organized with spreadsheets, e-mail programs and paper case files.

Scott Baird and Dan Berlin of Software Technology, Inc.

Dan Berlin is president of Software Technology Inc. He has been in the legal market technology industry for about 25 years and sits on advisory boards for LegalTech, ABA Techshow and ALA. He can be reached at dberlin@tabs3.com.

Scott Baird is vice president of Software Technology Inc. He has worked in the software industry for about 12 years. He can be reached at sbaird@tabs3.com.

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The Administrative Office of the Courts for the U.S. courts announced today the selected courts that will partake in the federal Judiciary’s digital video pilot program.  Among those selections is the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.  This district has been the recent home of the Blagojevich and the Mumbai terrorist trials.  Look for coverage in this afternoon’s (June 9, 2011) edition of the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin of the court’s new camera pilot and how they plan to implement it in the Northern District of Illinois.

More about the pilot from the AOC Web site here.

DG

Posted in Lextek

Several of our Law Bulletin friends were exhibiting at the show. We caught their smiling faces in their exhibit booths and thought we would share them with you. Please click on the photo to read the caption.

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We asked several visitors to the ABA TECHSHOW what they thought of the show. We also asked them what they thought about the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. Here’s what we found (please click on the picture to read the testimonial):

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The ABA Techshow 2011 wound down Wednesday at the Hilton Chicago with a couple of “shootouts” aimed at gadget geeks.

The “2011 Smartphone Shootout” was a redux of a session last year that ran down the features and capabilities of what essentially are handheld computers that also make telephone calls.

Across the hall, a trio of technology devotees drew much larger pieces for their own shootout: this one for tablet devices. While not a new technology by any stretch, tablets are fast gaining ground in legal circles, replacing the canary-yellow paper pads for some or playing the understudy for desktop PCs when the show goes on the road.

As much as “Slate Shootout” panelists Josh Barrett, Kathy Jacobs and Nerino Petro touted the flavor of tablet each served up at the session, they were all willing to concede any weaknesses.

Barrett, author of the TabletLegal.com blog, was packing an Apple iPad, which Petro likened to an Italian sports car: It looks really cool, but good luck carrying any passengers.

Jacobs, on the other hand, pulled out a Windows 7-based device: a Crown Victoria “with a two-body trunk.” She runs a technology training and consulting firm bearing her name and is vice president of the Association of PC User Groups.

For his part, Petro unholstered a Motorola Xoom, which runs on the Android platform and is new enough that peripherals, including an adapter for external displays, are not yet available. The author of blog Compujurist.com is the practice management adviser for the Law Office Management Assistance program at the State Bar of Wisconsin.

The presentation started with a show-and-tell for the basic workflow of pulling an attachment from email, editing it and sending it back. All three tablets could perform the basic tasks, of course, but since the exercise started with Microsoft Word file in the dock format, the Win7 device had a clear edge.

Tablets that run the Microsoft operating system likewise can run all the programs from the Office suite, and carrying out tasks on a mobile device of this sort is all but identical to working on a desktop.

The iPad and Xoom tablets, however, had to run third-party apps for editing the document. Both Barrett and Petro called on Quickoffice, which can open Word files but which struggles with the document formatting. In their example, numbering on paragraphs was out of order.

Barrett pointed out that when he downloaded the attachment, what he opened for editing was actually a copy: the original stays in what’s called a sandbox and the app manipulates a copy. This architecture is used across the board (or is that tablet?) when it comes to Apple’s iOS.

When it comes to manipulating or editing text, users may prefer using a stylus to an onscreen keyboard. Jacobs demonstrated how a Windows device can display a miniature keyboard for use with a stylus. The slicker function was the hand-writing recognition that lets a stylus become a pen.

Petro said he also likes using a stylus, but there’s no integrated cursive or print recognition, restricting users to circling words or sentences, for instance. On the iPad side, an app called PenUltimate gives users scrap sheets of a sort that can be attached to documents like a Post-It note, Barrett said. However, the notes are merely pictures and thus can’t be searched or converted to text.

In the end, the choice of which tablet to buy comes down to how you envision using it. If you’re comfortable with a Windows desktop and want close integration, then a Win7 makes sense. But if you plan on long plane trips and want to use your tablet for the duration, an iPad or Android-based tablet are better selections by giving as much as twice the battery life as a power-thirsty Windows gadget.

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When it comes to collaboration, the place to start these days is in the cloud, whether your law office wants basic file-sharing or a full-blown war room, according to two speakers Tuesday morning at the ABA Techshow 2011.

Practice management consultant David J. Bilinsky of The Law Society of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and Barron Henley, a founder of Columbus, Ohio-based HMU Consulting Inc., gave snapshots of a number of collaborative services and a host of tips for how to use everyday programs like Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word.

The best part is that many services are free or cost very little, the two said during “Developing Documents Using Collaboration Tools” at the Hilton Chicago. Among their favorites is Dropbox, an online storage service that offers up to 2GB of space for free and as much as 100GB for $19.99 per month. The storage is secure, and Dropbox has several backup features, including an “undo” history in case you need to refer to an earlier version of a document.

Sharing folders can be configured for individuals and groups, and the service can sync files across a number of devices so the file you worked on at the office is matched to the version you may call up on your laptop when you hit the road. There’s also a feature to access Dropbox from a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.

Another free service that offers a fair amount of storage as well as applications to create, modify and integrate material is Google Docs. You can upload files in a range of formats and export them in an equally wide range.

While Google Docs has the household name attached, not to be overlooked is Zoho Docs. There’s free storage for individuals as well as premium accounts that offer more storage and more work spaces. In addition, Zoho has mobile access, but mostly for viewing files, not editing or manipulating them.

If your office or clients need greater sophistication, say for a war room that’s updated in real time, then Microsoft’s SharePoint can to the trick. But a drawback, Bilinsky noted, is that SharePoint requires a server, setup and support. An online option featuring many of the same capabilities is PBWorks.

Shifting from the services to the software, Henley covered numerous features in Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat, two mainstays of the practice. He also dispelled a couple of myths about the programs, such as the mistaken beliefs that Acrobat PDFs don’t have metadata and require the paid Standard or Pro editions.

If you create a PDF in Standard and send it to someone who has the free Reader version of Acrobat, you can attach the editing tools for the recipient to make changes. The tools won’t appear again in Reader until the recipient opens another PDF with them attached, Henley said.

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Tags: aba techshow, Acrobat, collaboration, Dropbox, google docs, PBWorks, SharePoint, Word, Zoho Docs

If you can’t make it to the ABA Techshow 2011 taking place in Chicago at the historic Hilton Chicago from April 11-13, be sure to check out what you’re missing by watching this 3 minute video.

Click this link if you are unable to view the video below: http://bcove.me/c70qy5r8

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Lawrence Lessig may fancy himself a mixologist, at least so far as You Tube mashups, Washington politics and regulating all things technology are concerned.

In his latest remix of “Code is Law,” the Harvard law professor took a fresh look at the four modalities — law, norms, market and architecture — in the era of revolution by Twitter and of revelation by Wikileaks.

And along the way during the keynote address ABA Techshow 2011, he dusted off congressional testimony by bandleader and composer John Philip Sousa, who lamented in 1906 that the “talking machine,” as phonographs were once called, would squelch creativity.

“These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy … in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs,” Lessig quoted Sousa as saying.

But if Sousa’s quote is familiar to Lessig’s fans, so too was the staccato delivery of his hourlong talk, punctuated by graphically savvy slides, plenty of stock photography, a copyright matrix (of course) and a few clips from YouTube (yes, remixes).

He retraced his views on copyright, saying that the laws as well as the enforcers still must come to terms with the nature of the Web and the fact that its social media aspect is all about sharing, particularly “young people singing the songs of the day” or, in the case of YouTube, young people doing mashups of popular music videos.

This aspect of the World Wide Web has been a boon for what Lessig calls “read-write creativity,” borrowing a computer term for open access to files, as opposed to read-only permission. Indeed, the explosive growth of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the like has spawned “a read-write community.”

Even so, the 2011 remix of “Code is Law” remains in flux, Lessig said, declaring that it’s not the deployment of law or market forces or social mores or architecture that matters as much as the mix itself. He conceded that he’s still working on the recipe.

While he’s using the same ingredients, though, he said his premise is built on reason, which he now concludes is absent from policymaking.

Which brought him to this conclusion (and sparked his latest cause): Money in politics has corrupted the republic and elbowed out reason from democracy.

Lessig’s response is a movement that takes its name from a Henry David Thoreau quote: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

And you learn more — on the Web, of course — at www.rootstrikers.org.

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