Information Filled Under 'LPO Trends' Category
The Return of Legal Rebels Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
The ABA Journal started their Legal Rebel’s project last fall, with a manifesto announcing their commitment to innovation in the legal profession, questioning the status quo, and using technology to serve clients and society.After an eight month hiatus, the Legal Rebels site looks to be back in the saddle, with profiles featuring a slew of innovative and off-the-beaten-path approaches to the
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The Return of Legal Rebels
With a wink and a nod to the classic movie “Blues Brothers”, Carolyn Elefant and Lisa Solomon kick off their road trip with: “It’s 529 miles to Omaha, we’ve got two fully-charged laptop batteries, a Kodak Zi8, it’s hot and we’re wearing sunglasses.”This is SoloCorps, a multi-armed social media project organized by two East Coast entrepreneurial solo practitioners who set out to explore the “the
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SoloCorps
Much of what we’ve been discussing on this blog for the past year went mainstream last week, with Slate profiling the evolving Big Law model as a field “rife with upheaval”.Listed as one of Slate’s five most read articles, the piece touched on many of the hot buttons that insiders have been watching, including:The assault on the billable hour, via The Economist.The wide range of alternative
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Leaving Big Law Behind
Here we have the inevitable collision of two massive movements. The first is e-discovery, which over the last decade has moved from a subset of discovery to its own umbrella, covering email, IM chats, databases, CAD files, web sites, and any other electronically-stored information that could be relevant evidence in a law suit.The second is social networking
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E-Discovery and Social Networking
The New York Times ran an article this week on the continued growth in the legal services outsourcing sector.Highlights from the piece include:”India’s legal outsourcing industry has grown in recent years… to a small but mainstream part of the global business of law.
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The New York Times Spotlights Legal Services Outsourcing
In a testament to the degree that technology is changing the day-to-day practice of law, the New Jersey State Bar Association is proposing to amend a finding issued last March by a state Supreme Court Committee that seemed rooted in a pre-internet mindset.As reported in the New Jersey Law Journal:”Recognizing that technology has fundamentally changed the way lawyers conduct business and
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New Jersey Bar Updates Bona Fide Office Requirements
Law.com reports an interesting change in the way contract attorneys are being used.”In the old model, firms would call a staffing agency and request 20 or so contract attorneys to come to the firms’ offices and handle document review for a client. The law firms would then mark up the bill for housing the contract attorneys and having them use their computer systems, and then bill the client.
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Outsourced and Off-Site
Technology continues to tear down the walls of the traditional “office”, extending the workplace beyond the horizon.A recent ABA survey documenting the rise of telecommuting polled more than 850 attorneys and reports:71% of ABA members surveyed telecommuteOf those, 88% perform remote work from home32% in hotels21% in others’ offices14% in public places such as libraries or courthouses12 % in
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The Mobile Lawyer
A group of citizens in Chicago challenged the Chicago gun control ordinance stating that the ordinance violates the constitutional rights of the citizens. The ordinance bans gun shops in Chicago and prohibits gun owners from stepping outside their homes, including porches and garages, with a handgun. The ordinance was passed unanimously by the Chicago city council.
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Chicago Gun Control Ordinance Challenged
A bill permitting same-sex civil unions in Hawaii was vetoed by the governor stating that it is an issue of societal importance which has to be voted on in a public referendum. The governor indicated that this is an issue that requires the reflection, collective wisdom and consent of the people and the right to directly decide the matter is to be given to them. The state of Hawaii is one of the
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Same-Sex Civil Unions Bill of Hawaii Vetoed by Governor
Legal consulting firm Altman Weil’s annual survey is appropriately titled “Law Firms in Transition 2010″.The survey reports that law firms are in the process of determining how to institutionalize large scale changes to both how firms are staffed and how work is delivered.In terms of staffing, the survey found that:In 2009, 44 % percent of the firms laid off associates53% reduced or discontinued
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Law Firms In Transition
Law.com recently ran a piece by Frank D’Amore, founder of legal recruiting and consulting firm Attorney Career Catalysts, discussing one of the questions he is asked most: “Alternative fee arrangements, the decline of hourly billing and rates are being written about frequently. Is a lot of this more hype than substance, and how do you think things may shake out when the market stabilizes?”
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The Under-Reported Story
The Vanishing American Lawyer is an interesting new book weighing in on the future of the profession.Authored by George Washington University Law Professor Thomas Morgan, the book discusses — amongst many topics — two items that have been frequent fodder in this blog: The the lag time that American law firms are exhibiting in adapting to the changing global legal climate, as well as the
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The Vanishing American Lawyer?
The Eversheds report we discussed last week is worth a continued look.The British international law firm commissioned a study that included 130 General Counsel and 80 law firm partners, and one of their primary findings was this:The legal sector is entering the modern world where, like every other industry other than health care and auto repair, the balance of power favors the client.”76% of
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The Clients’ Revolution, Part II
Evershed’s report on the post recession legal sector for 2010 confirms and expands upon the observation we posted two weeks ago: The recession itself was not the cause of current changes in the business of law as much as it was an accelerator.The London-based international firm commissioned a study that included 130 General Counsel and 80 law firm partners, and one idea the study explores is:”
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The Clients’ Revolution
Comes now, the author of this article who, pursuant to said article, for the reasons set forth herein, prays inter alia, for relief from the antiquated expressions, needless Latinisms, and convoluted legalese that plagues most legal writing. Stubbornly clinging to language that they would never use in any other context, many legal writers have an irrational aversion to expressing themselves in
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Turning Legalese Into LegalEase
The Chicago Tribune recently ran an article discussing the “growing skepticism about the value of a law degree.”According to the article:”Much of the ire is aimed at less prestigious law schools that charge nearly as much of some of the top-ranked schools – where a three-year program costs nearly $150,000, not including room, board or even books. Top schools say they can justify their expensive
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The Backlash
Since this blog’s overarching interest is in the trends that are surfacing and shaping the business of law, on occasion it’s helpful to step back and see how some of the individual topics we’ve been tracking are coalescing as a whole.Law.com ran a piece the other day by Ari Kaplan which hits on two of the trends we’ve been watching, and the article not only confirms our observations, but it
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The New Practicality
Forbes reported recently on a key executive migration that speaks to the evolutionary advancement of Legal Process Outsourcing on a couple levels.David Hickey recently left Winston & Strawn, where he was a partner and Vice-Chair of the firm’s E-Discovery Practice Group, to join legal outsourcing company American Discovery.David Steiger of The Globalized Lawyer says of Hickey:“I have been
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Another Step Forward for Legal Process Outsourcing
After a request from a member of their bar association, The North Carolina Bar studied the ethics of using cloud computing — also known as Software-as-a-Service or SaaS — in a law firm, and they’ve finished drafting a proposed Formal Ethics Opinion on the matter.The American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center describes SaaS computing as the following:”SaaS is distinguished from
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Ethics Opinion on Cloud Computing
A few months ago we discussed the return on investment for law school tuition. Now, according to U.S. News and World Report, those numbers are looking even worse.To put it simply, both sets of numbers are going in the wrong direction: Tuitions are increasing to unprecedented heights, while job prospects are both diminishing and paying less.More money spent for less return can’t be a good
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ROI for Law School Downgraded
The recent trends in the legal world (e.g., an emphasis on project management, a bottle neck for new associates, growing demand for alternative pricing models) all involve not the practice of law, but the business of law.Responding to those shifts, New York Law School and Harvard Law recently teamed to spearhead an initiative to reevaluate the way future lawyers are educated.The American Lawyer
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New Models for Legal Education
Project Management for attorneys seems to be on everybody’s mind right now.We posted last week about Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe creating a career track for legal project management.This past week, Legal Intelligencer reported on a firm-wide initiative undertaken by Dechert LLP in conjunction with legal consultants Altman Weil to train their attorneys in project management.The article quotes
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Teaching Project Management
Following up on last week’s post discussing LegalBizDev’s survey of AmLaw200 decision makers, Legal Technology News highlights a crucial component in the evolution of alternative billing:Project Management in the legal profession.No one would argue that attorneys currently manage projects every single day.
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Project Management for Attorneys
As far as buzz words go, ‘alternative billing’ is a phrase that is close to the point where the words themselves start to lose real meaning.Because ‘alternative billing’ as a concept in the abstract is pointless without acknowledging the vast history of the billable hour, from which any ‘alternative’ billing must emerge.Which is why LegalBizDev’s recent survey may be an important tool.
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The LegalBizDev Survey
Many in the blogosphere have latched onto a survey released last week by Robert Half Legal stating that 26% of attorneys polled indicated that their firms expect to increase legal professional headcount in the coming year.While we hate to rain on anyone’s parade, a closer look at the numbers doesn’t support a whole lot of optimism.First, let’s look at the flip-side of the survey. While 26% said
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Survery predicts increased hiring. Or does it?
Legal process outsourcing is one of the more flexible, adaptable trends in the business of law, as it can be applied to tasks as small as individual contract review or as large in scope as all-encompassing departmental or litigation support.Well, this one is large.Microsoft recently announced that they are outsourcing multi-jurisdictional legal support work, including legal research.Why is this
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Microsoft Expands Legal Process Outsourcing Initiatives