By and large, mega law firms are applying standard business principles to their legal technology efforts. Methods and standards such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), Six Sigma, PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) and others. This year this trend is showing up in mid-sized firms.

I think this is a natural progression as lawyers realize that technology needs to become part of the woodwork operations of the law firm, like Human Resources or Office Services. Technology needs to be viewed as an investment portfolio where decisions are made by assessing risks and working for return. No, I do not believe all returns on technology investments are tangible, but while an intangible benefit cannot be easily measured, it is worth the effort. The keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ method of technology purchasing and management needs to be put to rest.

He believes that as Enterprise Search technology matures it will likely become embedded in everything we do and become part of the background. Such improvements in search technology may also make it possible that a person will attract information.

Imagine if relevant information could actually find you and suggest itself to you when you need it, like a reminder in a calendar. Such systems would provide pertinent and germane information without any user interaction. Search could then be woven into everything we do.

John believes that in a future such as this, doing a manual search for something would be regarded as a failure of this system. For example, imagine driving a car down the road and think about how frustrating it would be to have to search the speedometer for how fast you are going.

Enterprise search engines can now reach deep into law firm data stores and easily pull data out. As these engines become part of the foundation of the infrastructure, firm’s will be able to meet the demands of electronic discovery. Such technology can conceivably give a firm a big advantage when searching for and archiving data for electronic or work product discovery.

They interviewed corporate executives and recruiting firms and found that although CIOs are in growing demand, the pool of qualified candidates is not growing. Their report, “Grooming the 2010 CIO,” was written for the Society for Information Management Advanced Practices Council and reviews how companies can address this CIO shortage by grooming future leaders from within.

Their research, detailed in article today on CIO Insight says that the CIO of 2010 will be more of a leader than a manager and more of a business expert than technical expert. Active learning, formal training, coaching and mentoring are important steps in the development of CIO candidates.
One executive search firm indicated that new CIO candidates are emerging from the middle ranks of the IT consulting firms.
Good news for those of us in the consulting business!

Sure, I know you can turn a search engine loose on internal data and do keyword searches. This next wave of search technology actually learns from the data it searches and creates complex almost human-like relationships in the data. The best example of this is if an attorney is researching a poison pill defense. It is likely that none of the firms documents have include the phrase “poison pill”. These new search technologies CAN make this connection and relate this data. Veryimpressive.

I have tried various methods to keep track of my daily tasks, meeting notes, project work and, well, my life, but everything has come up short. FranklinCovey, Palm, Outlook, Excel, Notepad, Project and a myriad of others.  So far OneNote 2007 has all of these products beat.  Why?  Two simple reasons:

1. It integrates information from everywhere… my laptop, the Internet, my documents, spreadsheets, Outlook (email, contacts, calendar).
2. It allows me to flexiblly organize everything and then REORGANIZE it whenever I feel the need. 
3. I can SHARE it.  I have three OneNote notebooks stored on a desktop: Personal (for personal information), WIP (for client work) and Research (for my technology research).  My laptop has a “shared” copy of these three notebooks. This shared copy can be edited offline when I’m away from my network.  When I hook backup to my network and open OneNote these three notebooks automatically “synchronize” with the desktop copy.  I don’t have to worry about a backup copy AND I can share my notebooks with co-workers on my network .

I am currently tracking important emails, contact logs, receipts, client work, time entry, research, serial numbers, important attachments.  All in a neat tidy organized and PAPERLESS package. It is the perfect matchup for my fast little Canon duplex scanner.  I have never believed a paperless computer workstyle was possible. If anything computers cause even more paper to be used. OneNote may change that.  Its organizational capability is on the cusp of an exciting personal revolution.  So far, knock wood, I haven’t had any application glitches that have shaken my confidence.