At 9:40 am, the Conference moved forward with three simultaneous tracks:
- Utilisation des technologies dans un contexte de droit transfrontalier (Me Patrick Gingras et Me Philippe Lortie)
- Bridging the Gap: Collaborative Technologies that Bring Lawyers and Clients Together (M. Jordan Robert Furlong, M. Jason Mervyn and Me Dan Pinnington)
- Litigation Management and Support (Mme Luisa Dodaro, M. Joshua C. Gilliland and Me Patrice Morin)
Not being able to follow all tracks (!), I chose to stay in the same room and listen to “Bridging the Gap: Collaborative Technologies that Bring Lawyers and Clients Together”. Me Dan Pinnington opened this session by presenting the audience with a variety of tools now can improve communication and collaboration with clients, including:
- Virtual Meetings: CrossLoop [1] (free), gotomeeting [2] (about $50/mth and good for 2-20 people meetings), Adobe Acrobat Connect [3], WebEx [4]
- IM Chat: Messenger [5], Skype [6], GMail Chat [7], Trillian [8] (can communicate with several other IM clients)
- Collaboration: SharePoint [9], BaseCamp [10], WorkShare [11]
- Wikis: pbWiki [12], TiddlyWikis [13]
- Social Networking: Facebook [14], MySpace [15], LinkedIN [16], Plaxo [17]
Next, Mr Jason Mervyn discussed the business value of his law firm extranets (“Collaborative Technologies: The Experience at Gowlings”) and noted the following driving factors for using extranets:
- Support commodity work
- Handle requests from tech savvy clients
- Provide for self-serve clients
- Develop client loyalty
- Develop cross-selling opportunities
- Leverage IT investments
Finally, Mr Furlong gave an example of what would represent a highly valuable lawyer-client model: the automated online legal information and training programs, customized and exclusive to each client, being in effect a custom CLE package with content adapted to each client and updated/refined with each lawyer-client interaction. Although the business case for putting in place such a system might be difficult for law firms to accept at first, Mr Furlong strongly believes that firms that offer such a service will be well rewarded for their investment.
[Note: the health industry is ahead of the legal industry as they already offer, or plan to offer, patient-centric and custom-tailored CLE and post-op online information – see for example HeartCare [18] and Medem [19]]