Are Collaboration Tools Overrated Or Just Misdirected?
Just because the technology is there doesn’t mean it’s the most efficient way to accomplish a task, according to tech columnist Sean Doherty.
Opus 2 International published the results of its survey in “Case Team Collaboration in the 21st Century: A Report on Litigation Work Product Workflow and Technology.” Of 650 litigation-oriented subjects polled, a majority of the 100 respondents indicated the collaboration software they used may not be helpful. A large majority of respondents said they employ methods to access case documents and transcripts out of the office but the methods used are likely to hinder not help collaboration, which is highly valued in trial teams. The majority of respondents said the primary benefits of team collaboration were building on ideas and collective insights to position cases for positive outcomes. Only four percent of respondents cited efficiency as a primary benefit of collaboration.
Is collaboration to accomplish work overrated? Or are collaboration tools overrated or perhaps misdirected? Opus has scheduled a follow-up survey for winter 2015 but they will focus on why mobile technology for law-related work is on the decline, what are the obstacles and enables to paperless depositions, and why litigation professionals continue with old-school methods. I will continue with a rant.
Colleagues continue to send me documents to comment, mark-up and return. That is older than email, fax technology, and the U.S. Postal Service—perhaps altogether. But it works for me. Real-time, online collaborative document editing is clumsy and laborious. Are there any editors who like to co-edit documents live, online with other editors? If so, I would like to hear from you and what you use to accomplish such a feat.
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To change the solitary confinement of editing, perhaps we need to blow up the document and start over from scratch. This may be best left to Millies (Millennials) who have no preconceived notions of what documents look, feel or taste like, with ink.
Regarding online, collaborative chat rooms for brainstorming, it is far more efficient for any organization to physically bring stakeholders together in the same space to brainstorm or bring them altogether in an audio or video conference. And please, don’t start me on Twitter Takeovers. Just because the technology is there doesn’t mean it’s the most efficient way to accomplish a multi-party dialogue in real-time. Hoot.
LEXISNEXIS, OPUS GLOBAL, CLOUD SECURITY ALLIANCE AND CLUTTER
LexisNexis Legal & Professional on September 29 launched CaseMap version 12. The newest release of the case analysis software reaches back to the e-discovery process for small cases, adding new features to assist document review and production.
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CaseMap needs little introduction. The software helps litigation teams marshal case facts, documents, people and issues for trial and manage research and litigation workflow. Features new to version 12 include the ability to redact text in a light review platform made for up to 50,000 documents, code document metadata in a sidebar tool alongside DocManager, and use a production wizard to select documents, apply Bates numbers, and choose other options to standardize the format of a document production.
Besides CaseMap, LexisNexis Legal & Professional recently launched the third of three new law journals from the A.S. Pratt Journals collection: “Pratt’s Privacy & Cybersecurity Law Report.” The new journal’s scope will include local and global developments in privacy and cybersecurity law, including legislative developments, litigation, case law, data breach prevention and response, dispute resolution and industry developments. The journal is published nine times a year for a $499 subscription. At approximately $55 per issue, the new journal appears pricey, but like other A.S. Pratt Journals, such as “Pratt’s Energy Law Report” and “Pratt’s Government Contracting Law Report,” Editor-in-Chief Steven A. Meyerowitz, Harvard Law school graduate and founder of Meyerowitz Communications Inc., obtains content from leading practitioners.
Highlights in the inaugural issue of the privacy and cybersecurity report include forensic history, case analysis and commentary. In “Day One: The Origin Story of Computer Forensics,” David Kalat, a computer forensic investigator and e-discovery project manager at Berkeley Research Group, describes how principles of forensic evidence applicable today — “Is it admissible?,” “Is it authentic?,” “Is it reproducible?,” and “Is it reliable?” — played out in one of the first instances of computer theft in the 1970s. Partners Paul C. Besozzi and Monica S. Desai, and associate Koyulyn K. Miller, of Squire Patton Boggs, discuss the Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Advisory, providing initial guidance regarding protecting personal and proprietary information by retail broadband Internet access providers and forecast the commission’s tendency, if not alacrity, for aggressively protecting consumers’ privacy on the Internet. And partners Michael J. Cooney and Christopher D. Thomas, counsel Steven M. Richard, and associate Kacey Houston Walker, of Nixon Peabody, look at how Ohio courts are reconciling public records laws and records at private institutions.
Pratt’s Privacy & Cybersecurity Law Report was launched in print and digital formats on September 18. The journal’s official debut on Lexis Advance is scheduled for late October.
Opus Global (not to be confused with Opus International), a provider of compliance software as services, acquired Alacra, Inc., the publisher of who’s who in listed entities. Alacra serves up Know Your Customer (KYC), which maintains lists of rated, regulated and listed entities; anti-money laundering (AML) research and data; and Reference Data, a global data entity identifier. The acquisition extends Opus Global’s Hiperos Third-Party Network, which was acquired by the New York-based company in June 2014. Hiperos collects, validates and manages information about thousands of third parties for corporate compliance and due diligence.
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The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a member organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices for secure cloud computing, announced that its Internet of Things (IoT) Working Group (WG) released new summary guidance entitled “Identity and Access Management (IAM) for the Internet of Things.” A take-away from the guidance includes looking into Identity Relationship Management (IRM) as a replacement for IAM. “IRM is more suitable to IoT than traditional IAM,” stated the guidance. IRM is led by the Kantara Initiative and focuses on consumers and things vis-à-vis employees in enterprise settings.
There you go. I spared you from reading another guidance report. You can comment on this story with your newfound time or check out the new “Iron Mountain” for clutter coming to New York from L.A.: Clutter.io.
Attorney Sean Doherty has been following enterprise and legal technology for more than 15 years as a former senior technology editor for UBM Tech (formerly CMP Media) and former technology editor for Law.com and ALM Media. Sean analyzes and reviews technology products and services for lawyers, law firms, and corporate legal departments. Contact him via email at sean@laroque-doherty.net and follow him on Twitter: @SeanD0herty.
