Over the past two weeks, I was fortunate enough to attend two of my favorite legal technology conferences, in person and back to back: ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago and Legalweek in New York City. Normally these conferences occur two months apart, but due to the spread of the omicron variant, Legalweek was postponed this year and occurred one week after ABA TECHSHOW. This date change resulted in a whirlwind of what felt like nonstop networking and parties — with very few facemasks in sight.
A Jarring, But Fun, Transition
After two long years of pandemic-related social distancing measures, it was absolutely wonderful — albeit a bit jarring — to connect with close friends and colleagues face-to-face. On the heels of years of isolation, it felt incredibly surreal to socialize in large crowds of mostly maskless people. The culture shock was real, but overall the many benefits of connecting in person far outweighed any reservations that I had about socializing face to face.
I wasn’t the only one who struggled to reconcile my conflicting feelings about the conferences. A few of my fellow legaltech colleagues shared their perspectives on the wonderment and weirdness of finally meeting up in person at the conferences, including Bob Ambrogi, Stephen Embry, and Kevin O’Keefe. Their posts are well worth a read.
Let’s Talk Legaltech
This year, I attended ABA TECHSHOW with my “MyCase hat” on, and it was great to connect with the MyCase team. What made this year special was that my work colleagues from three companies recently acquired by MyCase — CASEpeer, Soluno, and Woodpecker — were in the booth as well.
In comparison, at Legalweek, I was wearing my “press hat” and had the opportunity to connect with folks from a number of companies for purposes of this column and another that I write for the ABA Journal. A few companies caught my attention this year because they had one thing in common: an innovative approach to streamlining business operations in law firms.
Notable LexisNexis Updates
First, there’s LexisNexis. At Legalweek, I met with representatives from LexisNexis, including Jeff Pfeifer, chief product officer, Canada, UK, USA; Karl Harris, CEO of LexMachina; Mark Koussa — principal product manager, new product development and litigation solutions; and Dave DiCicco, senior director, product management and API strategy. I’m always interested in learning what LexisNexis is up to since they own so much proprietary content and have significantly invested in the AI tools needed to make the data truly useful for law firms.
There were two announcements from LexisNexis at the show that stood out to me. The first was the launch of their “Global API Developer’s Portal.” The newly released LexisNexis APIs cover 99% of their content, and the goal is to make all insights in LexisNexis available to their customers through a suite of API tools. Using the Global API Developer Portal, organizations will be able to create customized workflows or new applications by leveraging content from LexisNexis.
I found the Lex Machina API to be particularly notable since it provides access to analytics data and insights, including case resolutions, damages, remedies, findings, and up-to-date information on attorneys, law firms, and parties. The analytics can be integrated into an organization’s client relationship management (CRM) system, matter management platform, or other internal applications in order to provide insights on both internal law firm data and external data obtained from other sources within LexisNexis.
I also learned about the planned April release of “Fact and Issue Finder,” a tool that offers another way to avoid context switching between the various applications used by law firms. Instead, it will create a home base for all relevant litigation data by displaying legal and nonlegal content in one location. It will also provide advanced search capabilities so that data can be easily accessed. A visualization and analytics dashboard will include relevant information specific to a matter and will make it easy to locate settlement and verdict amounts by injury or jurisdiction, and will also provide data on expert witnesses used in similar cases. “Fact and Issue Finder” is launching to personal injury users in April and will be expanded to five other practice areas in July: real estate, intellectual property, labor and employment, business and corporate, and insurance.
Billseye: Easily Capture Billable Phone Calls
I also learned about Billseye, a unique time-tracking tool. We all know that billable time is the bane of existence for many lawyers, but it’s nevertheless of great importance since the failure to accurately track and capture billable time can result in lost revenue.
Unfortunately, capturing billable time can be a challenge if your firm isn’t using the right technology. In fact, according to the MyCase 2021 Legal Industry Report, the majority of legal professionals surveyed (61%) reported that capturing billable time is a challenge at their firm.
Notably, the survey results also show the vast majority of law firms use some type of time-tracking software (81%) and that doing so pays off: 9% reported that their firms captured more than 15 hours each month with time-tracking tools. Another 8% captured 11 to 15 hours, 17% tracked an additional six to 10 hours, and 21% added one to five hours.
However, sometimes not all billable time is easily captured, even when your firm uses robust law practice management or legal billing software, especially when you’re in the middle of a billable activity and it’s interrupted, often by a phone call. Sometimes you remember to capture the time spent on the phone call; sometimes you don’t. That’s where Billseye software comes in — it fills that time-tracking gap.
I learned about Billseye when I participated on a panel at Legalweek, “Accelerating Diversity in Legaltech Funding.” One of my co-panelists, Alcide Honoré, is the co-founder of Billseye and he shared how it works. Billseye is an Android app that interfaces with your mobile phone and when a call from a client comes in, you answer the call using the Billseye client button. From there, the app tracks the length of your call, and once you hang up you can add a note before logging the call. Later, you can export the call log from your device so that you can then enter the time into your firm’s legal billing or case management software, thus ensuring that you never lose track of time spent on billable phone calls.
Until Next Year
So there you have it! From a time-keeping app for mobile phones to the latest offerings from legal technology behemoth LexisNexis. It’s a big jump in one column, but that’s what these conferences are all about: finding out what’s new and innovative in legaltech, whether it’s being delivered by a small startup or a large software company.
Innovation in the legal space can be found in many places, but these two conferences are great places to start. If you weren’t able to attend this year, here’s to seeing you at one of the conferences next year in 2023!
Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Director of Business and Community Relations at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached at [email protected].
