Technology

Solutions That Are Being Discussed At ILTACON To Make Law Firms Better

What are the hot topics at ILTAcon this year?

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ILTACON is not just a networking event and a place to get free drinks from vendors. The educational events were organized based on user demand and the top categories of questions were organized into events to better help law firms, CIOs, and vendors understand how we can work together to answer these questions and overcome hurdles that are preventing us from running an efficient killing machine of a law office.

Here is a brief summary of some of the solutions that are being addressed. I will try to cover some of these in more detail in later articles.

A-Z Solutions

A few years ago, I was working on a large project involving 5 or 6 law firms. One vendor was handling the data storage. One firm was handling the managing of some of the doc reviewers. Three other firms also had doc reviewers. A vendor was hired for the forensic extraction of data. As with many large projects, there were a lot of moving pieces and there were some hiccups along the way. Whenever you have that many organizations working together to coordinate efforts, there are going to be two main problems: 1) communication problems, and 2) accountability problems. When something goes wrong, it’s difficult to pinpoint where the problem started in the chain and then it’s easy to point fingers.

A lot of the vendors I spoke to and the law firms discussed solutions involving outsourcing to third-party vendors that offer A-Z solutions. That offers its own set of challenges. In the age of rapid innovation, it’s hard for one company to be the best at everything. They are defending their company on ten fronts instead of two. I’ll be discussing later in more detail how law firms are handling this dilemma.

Moving to the Cloud

The cloud is not new, but ethics opinions and problems that are popping up with moving to the cloud are becoming more common. The question that many law firms are asking is not “whether we should move to the cloud,” but “how to move to the cloud effectively and securely.” Just as banks moved to online banking, law firms who previously resisted are starting to reevaluate their position on the cloud. Increased security measures, enterprise-level control, and better policies are helping firms transition into the future and avoid costly mistakes while doing so.

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How to Change Our Workflows to Incorporate Technology

In Big Law, the problem is usually not that the IT department is not aware that a better DMS or a better case management system exists. The problem is how to we steer the barge in a different direction by moving hundreds of attorneys and staff at the same time and get everyone, who operates with different levels of tech competency, to incorporate new procedures into their workflow.

How to Change Our Business Model to Deliver What the Client Needs

Fifteen years ago, Sam Goody was in every mall. In the last 15 years, there has probably been more music purchased than in the previous 30 years. The problem is that brick and mortar music shops failed to adapt. Customers wanted to buy music and they still want to buy music. Technologies came into play that changed the way that consumers can get what they want. Stores sold pieces of round plastic with music on it. Customers bought it because they wanted to listen to music. The medium of getting what they want dies not matter as long as it is the most efficient way to get what they want. Attorneys sell their time. Clients buy it because they want results and they will keep buying it as long as that is the most efficient way to get what they want. There have been a number of solutions to change the way legal answers are delivered to consumers. I’ll be going into more detail later on the solutions that were discussed on this issue.

Security

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Everyone knows about firewalls and strong passwords and the other one thousand security protocols that we obey. But, what about spear fishing attacks where a hacker goes to your firm’s website to find out who the managing partner is, goes to his LinkedIn to find out who his friends are and where they went to school, and sends an innocuous looking e-mail (not one of those that looks like mass spam with a long link that is obviously not real), and attaches a PDF with a harmful macro embedded. Or when the same hacker sends a link in an e-mail to a site the hacker controls and keeping the site friendly for a few hours as it works through the IT anti-fishing software algorithms, but then change it to something harmful later, hoping that the target clicks on the link later in the day. Just as attacks are getting more complicated, our solutions for preventing such attacks needs to keep up.

Other topics include preventative solutions, new software, new hardware, HR issues, and many more. Stay tuned for more in depth coverage drilling down on how your peers have put their heads together this week to solve these problems.

Jeff Bennion is Of Counsel at Estey & Bomberger LLP, a plaintiffs’ law firm specializing in mass torts and catastrophic injuries. Although he serves on the Executive Committee for the State Bar of California’s Law Practice Management and Technology section, the thoughts and opinions in this column are his own and are not made on behalf of the State Bar of California. Follow him on Twitter here or on Facebook here, or contact him by email at [email protected].

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