Thanks to all for a warm welcome at ILTA 2009 at the Gaylord National Resort just south of Washington, DC! Attendance was down this year, to be sure, but perhaps because of the more intimate atmosphere, I think there was generally congenial attitude focused on learning and peer collaboration. I met with many great law firm technology leaders and vendors, and was generally impressed with the level of discourse. Though my experience at the conference may not echo everyone’s, I offer my thoughts on the prevailing themes of the week:
1. Social Networking. Blogs and Wikis and Forums, oh my! I saw lots of attention paid to “new media” technologies, but perhaps not enough emphasis on evolving paradigms. There were many questions raised and discussed regarding the use and application of collaborative technologies, and the transition to social networking technologies as facilitators of said collaboration. But I found little information as to what business value Twittering actually had. For the record, I’m of the school of thought that Twitter disconnects us more than it connects as a society and particularly as colleagues and business partners (but that’s another topic altogether!) I think there's so much more to this, and will write about this topic more in the coming weeks.
2. Workflow. I was pleasantly surprised to witness a heightened discourse on the value of automating routine tasks and leveraging technology to facilitate more productive and effective work product. I’ve been heralding this manifesto for many years! I was also pleasantly surprised to meet with many vendors who are working on addressing specific business challenges with directed technology solutions. Most impressive were the ideas presented by
IntApp,
Metastorm, and
American Legal Net. But it’s time to put finger to keyboard, as it were, and start “shrink-wrapping” real solutions.
3. Alternative Fee Arrangements. Though this exact phrase was rarely used, the theme was pervasive – how do we get beyond the billable hour. This was an interesting topic for me. Perhaps because it was conducted among technologists, but it really seems to me that this discussion is all wrong. At the conference, the issue of AFA’s focused primarily on leveraging technologies to automate and essentially commoditize existing work and business models – more efficient practices mean higher margins on fixed-bid projects. But I think we can collectively think more creatively about this issue. In my opinion, AFA’s are simply business constructs. They irritate lawyers because a.) lawyers are not business-people, and b.) they don’t know how to think outside the billable hour (see a.). But technology, used effectively, can be positioned as a competitive advantage, especially when it leverages the two themes above: what about cross-platform workflows (integrating law firm and client internal processes) that are pushed by, or at least informed by, social networks?
4. Business Continuity Planning. H1N1 is on everyone’s mind. On the Tuesday of the conference, the front page of the USA Today delivered to my room ran a front page story on the impending doom: 90,000 deaths expected this fall, 2 million hospitalized and HALF the US population exposed. Pandemic planning was a strong theme, whether it focused on HR issues, productivity concerns, or availability of technology to facilitate a potentially vast remote workforce. My colleague Pam Hill participated on two panels specific to pandemic and disaster planning, and blogs regularly on the topic
here.
5. E-Discovery. What’s there to say here that one of the 800 E-Discovery vendors didn’t already cover??
