I got the chance to read through Roger Bonine’s IT Manager.Net blog, subtitled “Making the practice of law a little geekier.” In addition to starting to put together a list of .Net questions for Roger, I found quite a few great posts.
“What’s in it for Me?” is a great summary of the areas of “friction” you will find when trying to implement a major software project at a law firm. It is especially interesting because it takes into account the IT department’s point of view on these issues.
He says:
“[Attorneys] aren’t, however, so excited about the new system that they’re anxious to sacrifice their billable time to help design it. We will be expected to do the best that we can with minimal attorney input. Then, after rollout, the (mostly) negative feedback that we receive will help shape the system to the attorneys’ individual needs. This isn’t the most efficient methodology from the IT manager’s point of view, and it isn’t always the best thing for IT morale. But it’s an almost Darwinian method of continuous improvement that gets the job done.”
The money quote:
“(Our job is to make the tools available, not to enforce usage.)”
If lawyers and IT departments spent some time deconstructing that comment and its implications, you’d see more successful projects. Roger, by the way, makes this comment wistfully and obviously appreciates the difficulties of environments where this comment is so often accurate.
From tips on finding the meaning of Microsoft error message numbers to discussion of lawyers’ fears about moving to Lexis or WestLaw web interfaces, there’s a lot of useful information from an experienced IT person who lives in the legal industry.

I’m fascinated by innovation and read everything I can get my hands on about innovation and innovation strategy. A new article in Strategy+Business called “Raising Your Return on Innovation Investment” by Alexander Kandybin and Martin Kihn of Booz Allen Hamilton, has definitely gotten my attention.
In the article, the authors put together a very useful analytical approach that identifies four steps of innovation (and innovation investment) complete with the expected matrices and charts, which are quite helpful. Of special value is the author’s approach to the “innovation value chain,” which consists of “four pillars” – ideation, project selection, development and commercialization.
The authors go on to discuss whether each of the four pillars needs to be done within the organization or whether it can be done outside the organization. I highly recommend this discussion to you as a way to think about innovation and new projects.
The money quote (one of many possibles):
“The first link in the chain, idea generation, is clearly ripe for outsourcing; a company should cast as wide a net as possible for ideas. By contrast, the second link, project selection, cannot be outsourced. This critical step speaks to the heart of a firm?s strategy and its vision for its business ? its corporate soul, if you will. There are few conceivable means by which a company can outsource its selection of investment opportunities and still remain an entity in any but the vaguest sense of the word. ”
This analysis seems exactly right to me. I can bring you ideas, information, methods and even analytical or evaluative tools as an outsider, but there comes a point where the decision has to be made by no one but you. It’s like the old saying, you can bring a lawyer to [name any technology here], but you can’t make the lawyer use it.
Speaking of innovation and return on innovation investment, I’ve just received the beta version of CaseMap 5 , about which I’ll be writing an article. There is a major new feature that I think will make this great program even more essential for litigators and, more importantly, for clients who are involved in litigation.

Marcus Evan’s Legal Technology Summit will be on May 16 – 18. It is described as a unique forum where “CIOs, CTOs, CKOs and other top-level technology decision makers from major Law Firms will join senior executives from leading Solution Provider companies to explore strategies for maximizing the effective use of technology in today’s Legal industry.”
I like the emphasis of this conference on facilitating the sharing of real world experiences and lessons among the top-notch audience. I played a minor role in helping set the program’s agenda and am struck, looking at the agenda again today, of what a thourough job the program does of hitting so many big issues.
I’m delighted to have the opportunity to speak/lead a discussion with Toby Brown on “The Pros & Cons of Expanding Outsourcing Beyond Litigation Support,” a favorite topic of mine. I’m excited to get to meet the stellar group of speakers and the probably even more stellar group of attendees. I’m going to learn a lot.
I believe that there is still time to register for this summit. If you will be there, please let me know and we can get meet in person and chat.

Altman Weil’s email newsletter is a great monthly resource on the business of the practice of law. The one I received today is no exception.
Perhaps the most interesting article in this issue is Marci Krufka’s “Managing Partners Lack Leadership Training (PDF)” which definitely deserves a wide distribution. Krufka notes:
“According to Altman Weil, Inc.?s 2004 Managing Partner and Executive Director Survey, approximately forty-two percent (42%) of managing partners have not participated in any management skill-building seminars or training courses in the last three years. In what other market would you find Chief Executive Officers with little or no formal business education and no continuing professional education on the topic? [emphasis added by DK]”
And the money quote:
“Compare lawyer-managers to their counterparts in large accounting and consulting firms. In these other professional services firms, most professionals have had at least 300 hours in leadership and managing training before beginning even their first management position (let alone management of the firm). [emphasis added by DK]”
It should be obvious that this training deficit has consequences in many contexts, not the least of which is IT planning and implementation. I would expect to find that stats on training for IT decision-making to be even bleaker. How, then, will law firms consider, make and implement initiatives in areas like client-driven technologies amd Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, let alone keep up with basic software, hardware and security issues?
While I do consulting and executive coaching in precisely these areas and want to do quite a bit more, there seems to be a need for coaching and training at any number of levels, based on the numbers shown in this article. I’m curious if others who consult and coach in these areas are seeing more demand, or is there still an ostrich-with-head-in-sand approach at 42% or more of law firms.

“Muddling Through the Metadata Morass” is the title of the newest electronic discovery column George Socha and I have written for the DiscoveryResources.org website.
Many lawyers have difficulty in understanding what metadata is. George offers a simple method for seeing a good example of metadata:
” For a quick look at basic metadata associated with a file, open any Microsoft Office application, such as Word or Excel. If you are in Word, select ” File” from the menu bar. From the drop-down menu, choose “Properties” (if you do not see “Properties” then select the two downward-pointing arrows to see the full slate of choices). This should bring up a separate box on your screen with five tabs: “General,” “Summary,” “Statistics,” “Contents” and “Custom.” Each of these tabs shows metadata associated with the file.”
As I say:
“There are many open questions. Given the lack of awareness of many lawyers, simply turning off the “track changes” on Word documents, which does not remove the metadata, does in fact make it invisible to unsophisticated readers. How would a court treat that approach? Is it possible to educate a judge about metadata and obtain a protective order that effectively permits the scrubbing of metadata? Should discovery requests routinely refer to production of documents in a format where metadata has not been scrubbed or altered?”
George ends with a useful question that any lawyer involved in electronic discovery should keep in mind – “What would I do with paper?”