Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Why You Should Go To ABA TechShow

In a post here six years ago entitled The two tech trade shows to attend, I wrote:
Having attended way too many legal-technology trade shows over the course of my career, I can state with certainty that there are only two each year you really should attend if you care about keeping current with the field -- LegalTech New York in January and ABA TechShow in April. Sure, there are probably hundreds of technology trade shows put on by local, state and national bars and private companies. But companies that know anything about the legal market save their most important announcements of new product launches and major upgrades for these shows.
My opinion has not changed. With this year's LegalTech now history, it is time to gear up for ABA TechShow 2009. It takes place April 2-4 at the Hilton Chicago.

You may notice a number of legal bloggers talking about TechShow today and tomorrow. The show's organizers are encouraging bloggers to spread the word about TechShow in a two-day "Blawger Blitz." They even sent out a list of talking points.

But no blitzes or bullet points are needed to get me to urge you attend. I've blogged about TechShow dozens of times over the years. I attend as often as I'm able, I've had the honor to speak there several times, and I've even podcast live from TechShow. It is generally a very different show than LegalTech. The most notable difference is that it skews more towards lawyers in solo and small firms than does LegalTech. In fact, the second day of the show, Friday, is Solo and Small Firm Day, with a special one-day admission price and two special tracks of programming.

The TechShow Web site has everything you need to know about speakers, programs and registration. Updates and related information are posted at the TechShow Blog. Hope to see you in Chicago in April.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 1:28 PM, , links to this post

Thursday, February 05, 2009
Audio and Video from LegalTech NY

Even if you were not able to attend the just-concluded LegalTech 2009 show in New York, you can sample the sights and sounds thanks to various sources:

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 4:43 PM, , links to this post

Monday, December 01, 2008
Two Awards from ABA Blawg 100

Two projects of mine, a blog and a podcast, are included on the ABA Journal's second annual listing of The Blawg 100, the editors' picks of the best legal blogs. Legal Blog Watch, the Law.com-sponsored blog I cowrite with Carolyn Elefant, won recognition in the News category, and Lawyer2Lawyer, the podcast I cohost with J. Craig Williams, won a place in the Podcast category.

Still to come are the readers' choice awards. The winner in each category wins admission to the ABA's annual Techshow. Head on over and cast your ballot before voting ends Jan. 2.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 9:11 PM, , links to this post

Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Nominations Open for eLawyering Award

I pass along this noteworthy notice:
The James I. Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in eLawyering is awarded once a year by the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association at the Annual ABA Techshow in Chicago. The award is named for James I. Keane, the founding chair of the ABA eLawyering Task Force. The Task Force was created in 2000, when ABA President William G. Paul, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, took the unusual and creative step of asking a section to assume responsibility for one of his presidential initiatives, namely an examination of ways that lawyers could use the Internet and other electronic resources to deliver legal services to people of moderate means more efficiently and effectively. Last year's recipient was the law firm of Cowell Taradash, P.C., based in Chicago, for the web site at Illinoisdivorce.com. The ABA eLawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section will review the nominations and select the recipient. The award guidelines and nomination forms can be found here. Law firms can nominate themselves. The deadline for submission is Jan. 15, 2009.
If you know of anyone who might be interested in applying for this award, please encourage them to apply. And feel free to repost.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 7:52 PM, , links to this post

Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The David Lat Fitness Quest

By way of Debra Cassens Weiss at the ABA Journal, I learned of David Lat's Project Truman Show. Lat is known among legal bloggers as author of the legal gossip blog Above the Law, where he often delves into other people's private moments. But via his personal blog, he is now promising to expose his own weighty matters and belly up to the privacy bar -- and I mean that literally. As he undertakes a regimen to shed pounds, he promises to track his progress every evening on his blog, complete with daily shirtless photos of his (shrinking?) belly.

But Lat is by no means the first to post daily belly pix on the Web. One of the "offbeat" sites I showed at the 2004 60 Sites in 60 Minutes presentation at ABA TechShow was John Stone Fitness, the Web site of a man who, like Lat, decided to get in shape and post daily photos of his progress, from pot-bellied slouch to lean, mean fitness machine.

So while David Lat will not be the first to expose his body-fat ratio for the world to see online, he probably will be the first lawyer to do so.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 12:38 PM, , links to this post

Thursday, January 31, 2008
Law.com to Highlight Legal Tech Bloggers

With LegalTech New York ready to go next week, affiliates Law.com and Law Technology News today announced a special platform to showcase those who will blogging from or about the Feb. 5-7 event. As many of you know, I coauthor Law.com's Legal Blog Watch together with Carolyn Elefant. During LegalTech, Law.com will turn over Legal Blog Watch and its daily e-mail alert to all bloggers covering the show. Law.com Executive Editor David Snow explained the plan in an e-mail he sent today to a number of bloggers:
"If you're planning to attend LTNY and blog about it, please drop us a line now at legalblogwatch@alm.com with the name of the blog and the bloggers. That way we'll know who to expect to hear from next week, and we'll be able to post a note about our blogger-participants.

"After you post on your blog, send us the URL (permalink) with an intro sentence about the post to legalblogwatch@alm.com. Our Legal Blog Watch editor will post them — in a style similar to that of the EDD Update Blog. Be sure to include your name, the blog name, your phone number and email address in case we need to contact you.

"We’ll highlight this LTNY Special Edition of Legal Blog Watch on Law.com, the Law Technology News website, Law.com Legal Technology and our associated blogs: EDD Update, Sean Doherty's Law.com Legal Technology and Monica Bay's The Common Scold."
Two other important notes.
I will be at LegalTech Tuesday and Wednesday and look forward to meeting many, many bloggers while I'm there.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 8:35 PM, , links to this post

Tuesday, January 29, 2008
LegalTech New York

If you have not signed up for next week's LegalTech New York, whaddya waiting for? The conference -- Feb. 5 to 7 at the New York Hilton -- continues year after year to be one of the two top annual legal technology events (along with ABA Techshow). The line-up of programs and speakers is impressive. Even if you'd rather not pay the registration fee, you can attend the exhibit hall for free -- usually the single largest collection of legal-tech vendors of any show. If you're not sold by either the programs or the exhibitors, then at least go for the schmoozing. If you do go, say hello; I'll be there Tuesday and Wednesday.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 3:44 PM, , links to this post

Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Column: Legal Technology Buying Guides

[The following column originally appeared in print in March 2007. I am republishing it as part of my continuing effort to maintain an archive of my published columns. Important note: I have not updated this since its original publication. While most of the sites remain as described, some may have changed. All information was current as of the date of original publication.]

Is your firm in the market for a technology upgrade but uncertain what to buy? For consumer-technology products, a shopper can find any number of buying guides. But what about legal-technology shoppers?

As it turns out, guidance is available, provided you know where to look. Here is a quick tour of sites to check if you are in the market for legal technology.
Various law-related blogs report on new software and hardware products for lawyers. Check their current postings and their archives for products that interest you. Among the technology blogs worth checking:
With this list of sites and some virtual shoe leather, you should be able to find guidance on just about any legal technology product.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 3:44 PM, , links to this post

Friday, December 07, 2007
SearchSystems Wins $780K Against Competitor

The popular public-records search site SearchSystems.net has won a federal court judgment of $780,000 against the competing site CourtsOnline, according to this press release. A federal judge in San Francisco entered the order against the site's creator, Mark Musselman, for stealing content from SearchSystems.net, the release says. The order also bars Musselman and his associates from operating any Web business relating to public records access.

I wrote about SearchSystems in a 2004 column, Useful Search Tools You May Not Know About, and as part of my 60 Sites in 60 Minutes presentation at the 2004 ABA Techshow.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 2:32 PM, , links to this post

Monday, July 02, 2007
Practice Management Pros Launch Podcast

Two well-known practice-management professionals have launched what they plan to be a monthly podcast. Called "The Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology," it is produced as part of the Law Technology Today e-zine of the ABA's Law Practice Management Section. The first 30-minute episode is up, on the topic Electronic Marketing: Harnessing the Web's Whizbang.

Hosting the podcast are Sharon D. Nelson and Jim Calloway. Sharon is president of Sensei Enterprises, a Fairfax, Va., computer forensics and legal technology company, and co-author of two ABA books, The Electronic Evidence and Discovery Handbook: Forms, Checklists and Guidelines and Information Security for Lawyers and Law Firms. She is a regular speaker at legal technology shows and was 2006 chair of ABA Techshow. Jim is author of Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog and director of the Oklahoma Bar Association's Management Assistance Program. Also a frequent author and speaker on legal technology and practice management, he was the 2005 Techshow chair.

Jim has more about the podcast on his blog.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 10:14 PM, , links to this post

Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Lawyer2Lawyer: The Internet Bar

The world is shrinking, thanks to the Internet, and that includes the legal world. More and more, the practice of law is global. One legal organization that seeks to harness this global network of lawyers in furtherance of promoting online justice is InternetBar.org and its educational arm, the InternetBar.org Institute. This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we discuss the work of InternetBar.org with three of its key members:

Download or listen to the program from this page.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 3:10 PM, , links to this post

Thursday, March 22, 2007
Lawyer2Lawyer: ABA TechShow Preview

ABA TechShow kicked off today, and on our weekly legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we have a preview of the show and of what's hot in legal technology. We recorded the program yesterday with guests Dan Pinnington, director of practicePRO and chair of the 2007 TechShow planning board, and Adriana Linares, founder of LawTech Partners, author of the blog I ? Tech and a member of the TechShow planning board. Another planning board member, Tom Mighell, was scheduled to participate, but his airline decided otherwise.

Download or listen to the program at this page.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 7:26 PM, , links to this post

Thursday, March 01, 2007
Slide Show: All-time Worst Tech Bills

eWeek writer Jim Rapoza has assembled a slide-show commentary on the worst tech-related bills of all time.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 9:41 AM, , links to this post

Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Why You Should Join InternetBar.org

I have had several occasions recently to speak with Jeff Aresty, the Boston lawyer who is the founder and president of InternetBar.org. Although I had known about the organization, hearing what Jeff had to say has convinced me that InternetBar.org could come to serve a central role in shaping the future of law and justice worldwide. This morning, I joined. I encourage others to do the same if you are interested in how technology can transform the practice of law.

Some key points about InternetBar.org:
Consider joining. Take a look around the Web sites of the organization and its institute, read Aresty's blog and the blog of the organization's executive director, Susan Waters, and decide for yourself.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 8:36 AM, , links to this post

Friday, May 26, 2006
'60 Sites' now posted on Techshow site

Along with Jim Calloway and Natalie Kelly, I presented the "60 Sites in 60 Minutes" program at ABA Techshow last month. Now, the complete list of sites is posted. As always, we include some serious sites and some offbeat sites. This year we added a special category for Web 2.0.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 10:55 PM, , links to this post

Monday, May 01, 2006
A podcast about podcasting

I had the good fortune at ABA Techshow to sit in on a presentation by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighill on podcasting for lawyers. Now they've made a recording of the session available as a podcast in Episode 2 of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. If you are interested in learning more about podcasting, here is an opportunity to learn from two leaders in legal tech.

(Thanks to them for their kinds words in their presentation about our podcast, Coast to Coast.)

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 6:37 PM, , links to this post


Techshow photos

Whether or not you attended ABA Techshow, you are likely to find some familiar blogger faces from these three Techshow photo sets:
I managed to make it into one of Neil's shots.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 5:53 PM, , links to this post

Thursday, April 27, 2006
An essential site for real estate lawyers

At ABA TechShow, Carole Levitt and Mark Rosch of Internet for Lawyers pointed me to Zillow.com, a real estate site launched in February that provides free valuations and other information on more than 40 million homes in the United States. It includes most U.S. homes, not just those for sale.

The site's valuations, or "Zestimates," is an estimated market value computed using comparable sales and other data points. In addition to valuations, the site offers a variety of useful information, including historical value changes charted over the past year, five years or 10 years; historical value changes as compared to surrounding zip code, city, state or the entire U.S.; all comparable home sales in an area; satellite, aerial and parcel views of many homes; and individual home data, such as number of bedrooms/bathrooms, square footage, lot size, stories and year built. The site's My Zestimator tool allows users to refine the listed value of a home, based on changes or additions to the home.

In addition to standard satellite images, Zillow uses the Bird's Eye View images of Microsoft Virtual Earth, providing multiple perspectives and amazing detail.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 10:33 PM, , links to this post

Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Listening to Kennedy and Mighell

Rob Robinson caught this scary photo of me as I listened to Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell discuss podcasting at ABA Techshow.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 10:18 PM, , links to this post

Monday, April 24, 2006
Coast to Coast, live from Techshow

This week's Coast to Coast podcast comes live from ABA Techshow. We interview Tom Mighell, blogger and member of the Techshow planning board, and David Snow, legal technology editor for Law.com.

Coast to Coast is the weekly legal affairs podcast cohosted by J. Craig Williams and me and produced by the Legal Talk Network. An archive of all past shows is available here. All shows are available to listen to in Windows Media format or to download in MP3 format. The show's RSS feed is available here.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 10:25 PM, , links to this post


Quick Techshow comments

Before I launch into a hectically busy day, I wanted to comment quickly on ABA Techshow, because I think, substantively, it was exceptionally well planned, organized and presented. Techshow chair Sharon D. Nelson and the planning board (Dan Pinnington, Laura Calloway, Blair Janis, David Masters, Tom Mighell, David Ries, John Simek and Ron Staudt) deserve kudos for this conference. The faculty was top-rate as well. Given my predilections, I was of course happy to see programs on blogging, podcasting, research and marketing, as well as a number of substantive programs on e-discovery, practice management, collaboration and networking. But I was also impressed to see programs that explored how lawyers can better use technology to serve clients and, in particular, low-income clients.

Anyone who came to my presentation Saturday, "60 Sites in 60 Minutes," will understand why I say this: Techshow needs to move out of the Sheraton. Our Internet connection Saturday failed almost completely, but this was no anomoly. This is a hotel in which I could not get soap in my room without multiple calls, could not get hot water in my shower, and was forced to pay $13 a day for a crappy Internet connection. Techshow's free wireless connection was weak and slow throughout the conference. The Sheraton should be a good hotel -- it has the location and the facilities -- but it isn't and hasn't been for years.

So, well-earned halos to the Techshow planning board and to the Techshow faculty. As for the Sheraton, pitchforks.

Note: On Friday I had three posts at Legal Blog Watch about Techshow:

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 9:00 AM, , links to this post

Friday, April 14, 2006
Phew!

Apologies for sporadic posting here during a whirlwind couple of work weeks. Next week won't be much better, as I finish up various matters and then head to ABA Techshow, where I expect and hope to see each and every one of you. I am on a panel Friday and presenting 60 Sites in 60 Minutes Saturday at 11 a.m. Meanwhile, I've managed to squeeze in regular posts to Legal Blog Watch and yesterday recorded a Coast to Coast program on law firm Web sites with really great guests that should be ready to release soon. Is it Friday yet? Hey, it is!

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Sunday, February 12, 2006
Blog Law: Great seminar, bad timing

Via Dennis Crouch comes word of what looks to be a seminar well worth attending, Blog Law & Blogging for Lawyers, which Dennis is co-chairing with Cathy Kirkman. Unfortunately, the seminar is April 20 and 21 in San Francisco, the very same days much of the legal blogosphere will be gathered in Chicago for ABA Techshow.

As Nick Danger might have asked: How can you be in two places at once ... ?

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 12:07 PM, , links to this post

Thursday, November 03, 2005
New blog paves way for ABA Techshow 2006

To whet our appetites for one of the major legal technology events of the year, the official blog is now up for ABA Techshow 2006. The blog will provide updates on planning for the 20th anniversary Techshow, which takes place April 20-22 at the Chicago Sheraton Hotel and Towers. Also, Techshow speakers (myself among them) will contribute a steady stream of legal technology tips to the blog. So check out the blog -- and see you in Chicago in April.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 9:11 PM, , links to this post

Thursday, May 26, 2005
Prisoner legal aid goes high-tech

A new Web site aims to use the power of the Internet to deliver post-conviction legal services to prisoners throughout the United States. Called Prison Services Project, its purpose is to provide a brief and case management service for incarcerated pro se litigants and to serve as an intake, case management and referral service for licensed attorneys who provide pro bono brief representation to incarcerated individuals. It was developed by the Ann Arbor, Mich., company Litigation Data Services and its owner, Regina Mullen, a civil rights attorney. The site is currently in beta testing, says Mullen, who adds, "It's an ambitious project designed to show how open-source can be used by lawyers to make a positive contribution on a grand scale."

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 8:55 AM, , links to this post

Friday, May 06, 2005
Photos from ABA Techshow

Dale Tincher, president of Consultwebs, has posted photos from ABA TECHSHOW 2005, including shots of speakers, exhibitors and the Chicago skyline. Lots of blawgers in the mix, including me.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 9:09 AM, , links to this post

Wednesday, April 27, 2005
From ABA TECHSHOW: '60 Sites in 60 Minutes'

At ABA TECHSHOW 2005, Jim Calloway, Jeff Flax and I presented our annual wrap-up of practical and not-so-practical Web sites for legal professionals. In case you missed it, the complete list is now available: 60 Sites in 60 Mintues. The list as posted actually includes more sites than we had time to show, so consider it the value-added version. While you're there, see also the 60 Sites Hall of Fame.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 1:04 PM, , links to this post

Sunday, April 03, 2005
Photos from BlawgConnect

Among the highlights of this year's ABA Techshow was BlawgConnect.2005, which co-organizer Tom Mighell called the "largest collection of law bloggers under one roof." Here are some photos:
For the event's play-by-play, see Larry Bodine's report.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 5:08 PM, , links to this post

Friday, March 25, 2005
Heads up for Techshow

Next Thursday is the start of ABA TECHSHOW 2005, so if you have not yet made plans to attend, you'd better get started, because I expect to see you there.

And kicking things off Wednesday night is BlawgConnect.2005 -- the largest assembly of law bloggers ever (35, by my count).

I'll be at Techshow, speaking Thursday as part of a panel on "Cost-Effective Sleuthing on the Internet" and Friday (April Fool's Day) as part of the always-entertaining "60 Sites in 60 Minutes."

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 4:38 PM, , links to this post

Thursday, March 10, 2005
Come one, come all: Chicago blawger meet

On March 30, the eve of ABA TechShow, legal bloggers are gathering to eat, drink and make merry, thanks to the organizing efforts of blawgers Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy. The evening promises, Dennis says, to be the largest gathering of legal bloggers ever brought together under one roof. (The question is, will they interact with one another, or sit at their laptops blogging the event.) Both legal and illegal bloggers are invited, but space is limited. Dennis has all the details.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 2:58 PM, , links to this post

Thursday, January 13, 2005
ABA TechShow launches a blog

If you are thinking of attending ABA TechShow March 31 to April 2, you can keep up with conference announcements and planning via the newly launched ABA TechShow.blog. ABA TECHSHOW.blog. Better yet, it has an RSS feed.

Along with Jim Calloway and Jeff Flax, I'll be putting on the 60 Sites in 60 Minutes program at TechShow. The TechShow folks just posted the complete list of sites we presented last year. If that isn't enough, there is always the 60 Sites Hall of Fame.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 10:29 PM, , links to this post

Sunday, January 02, 2005
Law practice management -- the Callo-way

I have a mental shortlist of people who should be blogging but who are not. That list just got one name shorter with today's launch of Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog. Jim is director of the Oklahoma Bar Association's Management Assistance Program and chair of the American Bar Association's TechShow 2005. I had the honor and pleasure of serving with Jim and Jeff Flax on the 60 Sites in 60 Minutes panel at last year's TechShow and will be doing the same this year. Jim is a nationally known speaker and writer on legal technology, Internet research, law office management and organization and legal ethics, so I have no doubt his blog will prove to be of value.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 10:17 PM, , links to this post

Monday, July 19, 2004
This year's '60 sites' now on Techshow site

Over at the ABA Techshow site, they have posted the complete list of sites from this year's 60 Sites in 60 Minutes, which Jim Calloway, Jeff Flex and I presented in March. The list includes many sites we did not have time to present during the actual program. Also available is the 60 Sites Hall of Fame, sites that are "incorporated by reference into every future session of 60 sites."

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 5:39 PM, , links to this post

Thursday, April 29, 2004
Instant messaging as a corporate tool

Ernie posts today on IM as a corporate tool, asking, "So what does this IM stuff, which is clearly the province of young people, have to do with corporate culture?" My company, Jaffe Associates, operates "virtually" -- our staff work out of home offices located throughout the world. All that connects us are telephones and the Internet. IM is a critical piece of our corporate backbone. When I first joined the company, I was skeptical about IM. Although I'd used it to a limited extent on internal corporate networks, I'd avoided it like the plague as an Internet tool, fearing constant disruption. Instead, I have found it to be invaluable. Got a quick question for a co-worker? IM is faster than e-mail or phone. Need to steer a conference call in another direction? An IM lets you discretely send a comment to one of the participants. Miss having an office watercooler? Use IM to chat about last night's American Idol. Best of all, there seems to be an unwritten code among the people in my company not to overuse IM. I am not bombarded by pop-up smiley faces all day. My coworkers use IM sparingly and respectfully.

Ernie refers to comments delivered by West CEO Mike Wilens at ABA Techshow about IM as a customer service tool. Although I have read of lawyers using IM with clients, I suspect we are a long, long way from IM becoming a common method of communication between professionals and clients.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 1:22 PM, , links to this post

Wednesday, April 07, 2004
My 60 sites in 60 minutes

Here is my list of 60 Sites in 60 Minutes. These were the sites I prepared for the 2004 ABA TechShow panel 60 Sites in 60 Minutes. Not all these sites were shown during the presentation. See also the 60 Sites in 60 Minutes Hall of Fame and the collection of prior years' 60 Sites maintained by Jeff Flax.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 9:01 AM, , links to this post

Thursday, April 01, 2004
Lexis, West announce merger

Jeff Beard has the exclusive. I thought Wilens and Andreozzi seemed a little too chummy at TechShow.

And let's hope this one's a joke: HHS announces program to implant RFID tags in homeless.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 5:08 PM, , links to this post

Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Color-coordinated bloggers


Buzz Bruggeman sent me this picture that he took of Ernie Svenson and me having dinner Friday night at Rosebud in Chicago. The three of us ate along with fellow blogger and TechShow attendee Matt Homan.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 2:08 PM, , links to this post

Monday, March 29, 2004
West, Lexis CEOs square off on the future

At ABA TechShow, the keynote had Louis Andreozzi, president and chief executive officer of LexisNexis North American Legal Markets, and Mike Wilens, president of West, square off in a joint presentation in which they were slated to share their visions of the future role of legal technology. I'd met both men before, but seeing them together was a study in contrasts -- contrasts reflective of the two companies. Andreozzi is a fast-talking former lawyer who boasts of his ability to bench press 385 pounds and readily admits that he is not a technologist or a visionary. He stepped down from the lectern and delivered a salesman-like spiel that appeared to be off the cuff, even though he admitted to having prepared in advance. The slower-paced, softer spoken Wilens is a technologist and a visionary. He stood at the lectern and delivered a PowerPoint presentation that he clearly had put some work into.

As to the future, the more compelling comments came from Wilens. He predicted that certain "disruptive technologies" will play ever more central roles in law practice over the next few years. He expressly mentioned blogs and instant messaging as two of the most important. Ironically, when I asked him just before his presentation which blogs he follows, he said that he does not really follow any, although he had looked at some to become more acquainted with the phenomenon.

Turning to the current emphasis on CRM -- client relationship management -- in law firms, Wilens predicted that it will fail. CRM goes against the grain of lawyers' personalities, requiring them to share client information that they prefer to hold close to the chest and requiring them to enter detailed notes on matters where just getting them to log time is difficult.

Instead, he predicted, firms will come to make greater use of personalized pages for clients on their Web sites. Ever since West gave customers the ability to manage their accounts through personal "my account" pages, customer satisfaction has soared, Wilens said. He suggested that law firms will follow suit, creating pages for clients where they will be able to log in and check on the status of their legal matters and their accounts. "People want to do things for themselves, without going through an intermediary," Wilens said.

Andreozzi somewhat provocatively suggested that the future of legal technology may lie somewhere in the middle between his self-described non-visionary focus on law practice and Wilens' more academic focus on technology. Is there a merger in the making? I doubt it.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 10:22 PM, , links to this post

Wednesday, March 24, 2004
See you at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago

Hope to see you at ABA TECHSHOW, where I will be Thursday, Friday and Saturday. If you are attending, please stop by Friday's plenary sessionl, 60 Sites in 60 Minutes, which I am putting on along with Jim Calloway and Jeff Flax.

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posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 5:20 PM, , links to this post

Wednesday, September 17, 2003
ABA releases results of annual tech survey

The American Bar Association today released the results of its 2002 Legal Technology Survey, finding that U.S. lawyers' use of technology is now nearly universal, with more than 98 percent of respondents saying that they use a computer for work-related tasks. The annual survey questioned more than 3,000 ABA members in private practice about law office computing, litigation and courtroom technology, and Web and communications. Among the findings:
  • More than 40 percent use PDAs.
  • Nearly 20 percent use a laptop as their primary computer.
  • Six percent of solos use WiFi.
  • Fewer than 2 percent of lawyers use Macintosh computers, and a similar number use Linux and Unix.
  • Fewer than half of the law firms responding to the survey had policies regarding acceptable use of internal e-mail of computers.
  • Just over 40 percent had disaster recovery or business continuity plans.
  • The leading word processor in law firms is Microsoft Word, used by 7.25 percent of respondents. WordPerfect is used by 43.5 percent.
    If you'd rather not purchase the full survey, you can review the executive summary or these highlights presented at this year's ABA Techshow.

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    posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 9:19 PM, , links to this post

    Wednesday, January 29, 2003
    The two tech trade shows to attend

    Having attended way too many legal-technology trade shows over the course of my career, I can state with certainty that there are only two each year you really should attend if you care about keeping current with the field -- LegalTech New York in January and ABA TechShow in April. Sure, there are probably hundreds of technology trade shows put on by local, state and national bars and private companies. But companies that know anything about the legal market save their most important announcements of new product launches and major upgrades for these shows.

    I just returned from LegalTech, and, true to form, it was a major legal technology event, brimming with exhibitors and attendees. While all the usual suspects were there, this show was significant for having attracted several non-legal vendors for the first time, signaling their enhanced recognition of the legal market's importance. These included Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM.

    But for all the activity, this year's LegalTech lacked any buzz factor. In the wake of Enron and Anderson, electronic discovery has clearly come into its own, as was attested to by the number of companies displaying their expertise in this area. But ... we knew that. As between the big two usual suspects, West and Lexis, the former drew the greater attention for its booth just inside the entrance door where eager attendees stood in Disney-like lines waiting to don virtual-reality goggles and make spectacles of themselves. Beyond the booth, West's West KM drew interest and praise for its extension of KeyCite and Westlaw technology to knowledge management. Overall, however, little jumped out as new or different or innovative, especially among the Web-based offerings. But more on that later.

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    posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 11:05 PM, , links to this post