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June 6, 2006
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 David Snow, Law.com's Legal Technology editor, reports from LegalTech West Coast. With his daily e-mail, registered participants won't miss any of the show's highlights. Watch for it in your e-mail inbox!
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LegalTech West Coast: Day Two
The imposing, four-tower Westin Bonaventure hotel in downtown
Los Angeles buzzed again on the second and final day of ALM Media's LegalTech West Coast 2006 show. Tuesday saw action on
several tracks, including Practice and Litigation Support, Collaboration
Technology and Evidence Management, and Practice Management.
Most of the overall show's 34 sessions had sizable audiences,
and a few achieved standing-room-only status.
"This morning EDD-related sessions seemed especially
well-attended, said John Bringardner, longtime news editor for ALM's
Law Technology News magazine, who has moved on to become a
reporter for sister magazine IP Law & Business.
The crowds suggest EDD hasn't lost any of its urgency. The
sessions, including Monday's Electronic Discovery
Services and Pricing: Learn How to Be a Smart Shopper and Tuesday's
Surviving the ED Age
Together, nearly burst at the seams.
The scoop from some of the show's 140 exhibitors: The
show floor got a rush of browsers at midday, with a slightly lower flow
in the morning and late afternoon. That's a little different from
LegalTech New York's constant crowds, and another contrast between the
Big Apple and La-La Land.
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The Futurist's Keynote: 'See
Different'
Tuesday's keynote
presentation was thought-provoking, mainly because it enlightened us
on how people actually think. And it suggested improvements.
 Stuart A. Forsyth, a futurist as well as executive director of
the Los Angeles County Bar Association, called his presentation
"Building a Better Future Together." After Monica Bay, longtime ALM
editor and proud California Bar member, made introductions, Forsyth
launched into his critical theme: "See different."
Forsyth peppered his presentation with examples of how people
see what they expect to see, partly because they file away most
information without even thinking about it. Lawyers are no different.
Lawyers, Forsyth contends, have a hard time looking ahead. After
all, they tend to look backward for answers in precedents. They can even
have trouble focusing on clients' real needs.
"The reason we don't think about clients is that there are no
clients in law school," he said. In cases studied, he added, the people
involved usually don't even get names to identify them, just letters.
Forsyth pointed out that the acceptance curve for technology is
25 to 30 years. Example: The Internet came into being in 1969, but
didn't see skyrocketing use and development until the 1990s.
On to the futurist's questions about tomorrow's opportunities
for the legal industry:
* Middle class: When will we use technology to lower costs so
that the middle class hires more lawyers?
* Expert systems: When will lawyers and judges follow doctors and
use computer-assisted diagnoses of legal problems?
* Truth: Technology can already tell when a person believes he's
telling the truth. How and when will that be further integrated into the
legal system?
* Distance/virtual: Law firms are going to follow private industry's
outsourcing to places like India. When will firms understand the
irrelevance of place?
* Societal impacts: How will the law handle genetic programming of
children? How will patent law deal with computers being designed to
create inventions? What will become of our privacy laws?
Adventures in
Practice Management
I had the pleasure this year of moderating a fast-paced Practice
Management track panel. It was Tuesday morning's Assessing Your Firm's
Technology: Tips & Tricks. About 35 folks attended, many armed with
excellent questions for the group.
And the group was more than prepared to help. We had Ross
Kodner, founder and president of the MicroLaw consultancy, established
in 1985 in Milwaukee, Wis. He's a noted and vociferous expert on
practice management as well as an always-appreciated fixture at tech
shows. We had Kodner's frequent co-presenter, Andrew Z. Adkins III,
director of the Legal Technology Institute at the University of Florida
Levin College of Law. Adkins, a consultant and speaker since 1989, wrote
"Computerized Case Management Systems." As a last-minute entry, we had
Gilbert Wolverton, a project manager who often implements legal
applications for Fremont Investment and Loan in Brea, Calif. He added
extra hands-on experience, or "color commentary," as Adkins put it.
Bottom line: Don't let senior management derail your plans to
make your firm more efficient with a bonafide practice management system
-- one allowed to link all of your systems and deployed with the proper
training. Your firm's losing money without it. The whole PowerPoint
presentation should be available on Kodner's MicroLaw Web site
within two days, he said.
LexisNexis Grabs CaseSoft
It's not strictly new news to insiders, but LexisNexis has
acquired CaseSoft, and LN's folks wanted to discuss it with me at
LegalTech.
CaseSoft makes CaseMap, for case analysis; TimeMap, for timeline
graphing; TextMap, for transcript summary; NoteMap, for outlining; and
DepPrep, for witness preparation.
Pursuing litigators -- a third of all lawyers, according to
LexisNexis -- the company adds CaseSoft to its portfolio of services
associated with TotalLitigator 1.0. New versions of TotalLitigator are
due this summer and in December, said Sean M. Flynn, director of market
planning for the company. CaseSoft's offerings should be fully
integrated by the first quarter of 2007, he said.
Both Flynn and J. Timothy Payne, LN's vice president and general
manager, extolled the virtues of the company's "pillars," an internal
term for categories of integrated services also referred to as "Total
Solutions." Why has LexisNexis has been gobbling up other companies?
Pillar-building, presumably. A pillar would be litigation services or
practice management or client development, just to toss out three
examples.
"The strategy of Total Solutions ... is linking [them] together
to be more powerful than other products by themselves," said Payne.
I'd already joked early in the interview about needing a map to
keep track of LexisNexis' ambitions. After a brief stumble over his
company's product names, Flynn said: "It's not just you who has trouble
keeping it straight."
CaseSoft could not be reached for comment before press time.
Conference Coverage
* Monday notes
* Tuesday notes
* Looking back on LegalTech West Coast 2006
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