Cloud-based Practice Management Systems (PMS) roll on as an increasingly alluring option for law firms. Packages such as CLIO and Rocket Matter have attracted serious investment this year, while adding features standard in their more mature desktop rivals, such as document merge. Other PMS available in the marketplace are also surprisingly powerful. ActionStep, for example, started life as a workflow engine, but has grown into a full-feature PMS.

For those in smaller firms who are reluctant to let “strangers” manage their server, I remind them that I would certainly prefer to occasionally lose access to my data, than to . . . [more]

A perennial challenge for lawyers is managing client communication. E-mail remains a cornerstone of lawyer interaction with clients and colleagues but it requires constant tending. You can use cloud-based tools to help you to automate some of your e-mail management. When a new e-mail hits your inbox, slap a label on it and archive a copy of the e-mail to your online file storage service.

One way this is possible is with a service that has already been mentioned on Slaw called If That Then This (IFTTT). In the Year of Coding, it seems a fitting name for a . . . [more]

An almost overwhelming amount of information is generated and stored in disparate places in our digital world. Email, documents, tweets, posts, status updates, reports, and other data flow through our computers, tablets and smartphones. Cataloging and retrieving this information is a challenge. Fortunately there are a variety of tools that make simultaneously searching through these data mines a little easier.

At Your Command

Operating system search tools, including MS Window 7 and Apple’s OS X Lion Spotlight, allow users to search files and emails locally and on external drives. They both can also be extended to search Web sources, . . . [more]

It was just about 50 years ago that Arthur C. Clarke wrote Profiles of the future: an inquiry into the limits of the possible (New York: Harper & Row, 1962) [Amicus No. 10912514]. On page 19, he wrote:

Suppose you went to any scientist up to the late nineteenth century and told him: "Here are two pieces of a substance called uranium 235. If you hold them apart, nothing will happen. But if you bring them together suddenly, you will liberate as much energy as you could obtain from burning ten thousand tons of coal." No matter how

(Also by Jesse M. Lindmar)

With an average of 193.1 billion text messages sent every month in the United States, the importance and use of text messages in litigation is ever-increasing. As a consequence, the importance of text message preservation for e-discovery is also growing. Understanding how text messages can be preserved and the pitfalls to avoid is essential. While we recommend engaging the services of a digital forensics service provider who is familiar with the complexities of mobile phone forensics, there are certain situations in which the end-user can at least create a preserved, forensically sound copy that a . . . [more]

One thing that became obvious at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago this year was that lawyers are embracing tablet devices like the iPad in great numbers. Some people claimed that iPads even outnumbered laptops at the event. I’m not sure if that claim would have stood up to a head count but it was certainly plausible. The little tablets were everywhere.

So, fine, if you’re thinking about bringing a tablet device into your practice I have some advice for you.

Connectivity

There’s no getting around it – most tablet devices are barely useful without some kind of Internet connectivity. You can’t . . . [more]

Any Smartphone in a Storm

There is no perfect smartphone for lawyers. In fact, the most important part of the smart phone is probably the phone part, since it enables you to keep in contact with your clients, your office, and other parts of your life. Once you’ve established that baseline – your phone is a phone – then it becomes a matter of very personal choices. It’s not about who has market share, it’s all about you. This has always been true for solos and smaller firms, but choice is even emerging at larger law firms. Most of . . . [more]

Legal Project Management (LPM) has received a major boost downunder with the leading Australian/Asian firm King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) launching a program with the assistance of Edge International. Tony O’Malley, Managing Partner Australia, King & Wood Mallesons and Pam Woldow, Edge International give a convincing 5 minute of why it is such a good idea.

If it is true as Shaun Plant says in that “much of the practice of law is not about technical legal detail, but managing projects”, and, as Tony O’Malley has said that “Clients have been telling us this for a while”, why has it . . . [more]

Attentive readers of this blog know that the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) has a working group actively considering online dispute resolution (ODR). The working group has met three times and meets again at the end of May. Slaw.ca has had progress reports from time to time, notably here a year ago, and more recently here . It is time for another. I expect that the Canadian delegation, and possibly others, would be interested in your views on the texts that the working group will have before it in May. Comments on this article will come to . . . [more]

This column is already dated. Why? Because privacy – or the lack thereof – is daily news. Facebook just announced their privacy policy would be called a “data use policy”. Before that it was Google’s announcement that they would be combining all the data collected by their individual web properties (YouTube, Gmail, Blogger, Google, etc.) about you into one single place, covered by one single “privacy” policy. Security has always been in opposition with ease of use. The conflict between wanting the convenience and interaction of the free web and trading privacy for the privilege is . . . [more]

Machine-Assisted Review

Let’s start with a very hot if not very sexy topic. You may have heard of new technology called predictive coding or technology-assisted review. Recently, we’ve seen the phrase “machine-assisted” review a lot. They are all the same thing. A rose is a rose is a rose, but we have not yet settled on a name for this nascent technology.

The way most lawyers engage in traditional keyword searches is, as others have suggested, the equivalent of “Go Fish.” The requesting lawyer makes his best guess about which keywords might produce relevant evidence without having much knowledge of . . . [more]

I was relating to a BigLaw colleague how I had recently spent a weekend at a CLE event in rural Australia where it was a 53 year tradition. Again I learnt a lot from my audience some of whom had probably attended each year.

A striking fact was that 85% of the 134 attendees were male. This was to be contrasted with a colleagues recent experience where her legal team and their client met with the other side. It was an all female event. She suggested that the reason there are so few female practising lawyers outside large cities was . . . [more]