Janders Dean's Law Firm Management Leadership

Interesting Electronic Discovery Session

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:04:00 +0000

Jim Vint (Managing Director at FTI), Nick Childs (also with FTI in London), and Vivian Tero (Program Manager of IDC's Compliance Infrastructure Service) will be speaking at an upcoming webinar on the 19th of November regarding the use of financial, transaction and operational databases in e-disclosure.

This is a relatively new topic and one that is rapidly gaining momentum in the UK and Europe - FTI share that "while email has grabbed most of the headlines, structured data comprises the majority of information required for e-disclosure in legal and regulatory matters".

Further details and registration can be completed here. From previous discussions and case studies, this may indeed be worth a listen.

ESI Trends Report

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:09:00 +0000

Kroll Ontrack Inc have released their 3rd Annual ESI Trends Report which makes for interesting reading.

Based on surveys undertaken across in-house counsel from both the US and UK, the major highlight of this year's report is the large chasm between the existence of corporate document retention and ESI discovery readiness policies.

Within the report, Kroll states that "While most organisations have a document retention policy, a much smaller number have an ESI discovery readiness strategy. This disparity suggests a failure to appreciate the difference between the two procedures as well as a false sense of security that the existence of a document
retention policy is comprehensive enough to protect an organization when litigation and/or regulation strikes."

The report has 15 high level findings (and yes, also contains some product and services sales talk from Kroll) which should cause alarm - even if the "fear, uncertainty and doubt" method of sales is stripped out of the equation.

In relation to document retention, the survey findings includes statistics such as 87% of US companies have a document retention policy, compared to 80% in the UK. In the US, IT professionals are most aware of their policy (88%); in the UK it is in-house legal advisers (83%).

Perhaps more frightening, when discussing ESI discovery approaches, the survey statistics are as follows. Only 46% of US and 41% of UK companies have a policy specific to ESI discovery readiness. A further 24% of companies in the US and 30% of companies in the UK do not know whether they have an ESI discovery readiness strategy or not.

Awareness of ESI discovery readiness policies is higher among IT professionals (51% in the US, 45% in the UK) than in-house legal advisers (39% in the US, 37% in the UK).

When it comes to Legal Hold, the statistics are even more alarming. Only 57% of US companies and 39% of UK companies report they have a mechanism in place to suspend their document retention policy. 21% of US companies and 24% of UK companies do not have a policy in place to suspend their document retention policy, and a further 22% of US companies and 37% of UK companies do not even know whether or not they have a policy in place! Ouch....

The full report can be accessed here.

Time Recording - "There's an app for that"

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:29:00 +0000

For those who are looking for basic web based time recording without the heavy lifting or advance features that come with purpose built practice or matter management applications, check out this tool from United Planet

Although not specifically designed with MS SharePoint in mind, it seems perfect for the small firm, the in-house counsel team, or those experimenting with MS SharePoint's future use.

Add this to what comes out of the box with MS SharePoint, the Colligo integration with MS Outlook, and other features in 2010 and you have an interesting little sandpit to play in...

Microsoft In Autonomy Takeover Rumour

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:07:00 +0000

This piece came out around four days ago here concerning rumours that Microsoft could be ready to make a bid for Autonomy at around 2,800p a share. This would value Autonomy at approximately £6.7 billion (75% above its current share price of 1,513p a share and with a market capitalisation of £3.9 billion). Autonomy's share price jumped between 3.5% and 5% in value on Friday morning trading after Reuters reported the news here.

Reuters also reported that both Microsoft and Autonomy were not immediately available for comment. Further analysis here from the Guardian.

The impact of such a move would be massive not just for Microsoft and Autonomy, but also obviously for the iManage product's future and the law firm Document Management space?

Stand by for more.

Friday Cocktail Leadership - Monkeys & Squirrels

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:49:00 +0000

Yep...it has been a long long time. Have you missed the Friday Cocktail Leadership postings from your dear old pals at JD? You have? You really have? Awww, that is swell....well we've missed posting them too!

With prompting from Simon and others, we're back to give you an escape from work on Friday with mindless drivel. Speaking of Simon, did you know that the flying monkey's name in the Wizard of Oz (Pricey's favourite film...) is Nikko?

Don't know how it happened, but this week's posting is all about monkeys and squirrels (not the secret kind though).

This week we say a Drunken Monkey hello to Barr, Jabba, Correll, Alpha Bob and Pricey for last week's catch up. We also say a great big Art Club hello to Daffyd, the Swede and Peggy, and "budem zdorovy" to the Russian Princess. Also thanks for breakfast to Jerome, Jim, Don and Rajitha - too much coffee for Janders for a Friday morning. Thanks to Mel for the G+T, and to CC for the hilarity of this week's ranting....and it is Bleasdale's birthday. Happy Birthday Champ.

The word for today is 'grangerize'....why not. Our book of the day is "Monkey Business", although we're not reading it, we're just watching "sparkles" read it.

That's it for today kids - nothing much else to leave you with except to say "riddle me ree" and what a cheeky squirrel this is!

Oh...by the way...we hope that you are aware that the Innocent Big Knit is back on for 2009.

We're getting our needles clicking - are you?

Janders Dean Personas - ouRSpace Portal Press Roundup

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:06:00 +0000

Many thanks to the team at ReedSmith and XMLaw for the mention of Janders Dean and our leading user behaviour and persona development work on the recent ouRSpace project which helped the team land the prestigious SharePoint Innovator of the Year Award. Caselines also has a roundup of the ILTA session with the mention of the user itnerviews and personas. Full press release here with more on the official ReedSmith website here.

Partner Says to CIO "I want one of those..."

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:42:00 +0000

Here is one for the geeks and show offs.

After our posting on Microsoft's Surface Touchscreen Technology, another piece has just surfaced after a leak from within Microsoft regarding their tablet technology which is officially within the "late prototype" stage of development. See the full story and leaked photos here.

SharePoint 2010 - Three Wise Men

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:37:00 +0000

A few sneak peeks at Microsoft SharePoint 2010 enhancements have been doing the rounds since July, with this site showing three videos from the perspective of the three wise men at Microsoft.

The majority of new information on 2010 will be held back by the team at Microsoft until the SharePoint Conference which is to be held in Las Vegas in October (19th-22nd).

Those currently playing with MOSS 2007 should expect (and be warned) about new terminology which will come with the 2010 stack. Those who get sent the sales materials should expect an updated version of the 2007 SharePoint Wheel.

Let's get excited by the fact that terms such as Sites, Communities, Content, Insights, and Composites will replace the existing 2007 wheel's terms of Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Portal, Search, Content Management, and Business Forms - with "Search" being the only area on the 2010 wheel that remains from the 2007 version.

Craig Roth has a great review of the videos and his take on the best enhancements here which is well worth a read.

Information Risk Management (IRM) Software

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:25:00 +0000

For those who are looking into Information Risk Management (IRM) software, Recommind have just had their Axcelerate eDiscovery tool named one of the Trend Setting Products of the year by KMWorld Magazine.

For those of you who are not looking into Information Risk Management (IRM) software...why not?

Adding Value to iManage - SmartSpace

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:35:00 +0000

There are obviously still some old school innovation juices flowing somewhere under the covers at Baker Robbins.

Once early pioneers and innovators in the iManage/Interwoven add-on space (particularly when the Interwoven application was taking the market by storm) the team at BRCo have been relatively quiet on the DMS differentiation front since the migration of DocsOpen firms slowed down, and since joining the Thomson Reuters stables.

However, there is still some smarts in their space.

Ladies and gentlemen....meet SmartSpace.

From the demo and information available, SmartSpace appears to be a nice add-on which has been quietly played with by some early adopters since June of this year and dipping its toe just ever so slightly into the wider Legal Technology world via demonstrations to a selected few at the recent ILTA conference.

SmartSpace provides a unique solution to a classic "white space" problem by adding an integrated matter centric collaboration area automatically on matter inception to the top level of the matter workspace folder tree.

...let's use the term "collaboration area" rather than "wiki" so as to not scare too many people off. Even we've been convinced that "wiki" is just soooo "Steve Jobs Pre-Liver Transplant"...

We say bravo to the old BRCo crew for SmartSpace, and encourage existing iManage users with responsibility for IT and/or KM to at least take a look at the way in which this works - particularly if you have practice areas or matter teams who are looking for specific ways to improve their collaboration and knowledge sharing, and/or those who have yet to build a fully integrated knowledge repository or collaboration application.

We're not sure of the pricing structure for the add-on, or the implementation effort, but it is worth the review just to see how innovation should still be expected in our industry - and to see how some people are still embracing the approach of seeking ways to "squeeze more out of what we already have".

A posting of possible improvement ideas for SmartSpace is covered here in Caselines.

It will be interesting to see if and when the Autonomy iManage team offer such functionality as standard out of the box, and/or if and when the internal IT teams develop and share an easy way to integrate their own MS SharePoint pages in this manner. Irrespective, at least someone is still thinking...

LawTech Summit Awards

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:30:00 +0000

Further to the previous posting, the full list of major awards from the recent APAC LawTech Summit are as follows:

* Best Practice in Knowledge Management - Gilbert & Tobin
* Security & Risk Management - Arnold Bloch Liebler
* Legal IT Team of the Year (Small/Medium Firm) - Minter Ellison SA/NT
* Legal IT Team of the Year (Large Firm) - Corrs Chambers Westgarth
* Most Innovative In-House Technology Project - Sparke Helmore

Janders Dean says a big congratulations to all the winning teams and also to those who were short listed and nominated in each category. Thanks also should go to the Chilli Marketing team for their continued support of the industry.

LawTech Summit Awards

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:37:00 +0000

We say a great big congratulations to our client firms Gilbert+Tobin and Sparke Helmore for their team wins at this evening's annual Lawtech Summit Awards in Coolum Australia. More information on their specific categories, projects, and other award winners when the hangovers fade...

Drag & Drop Emails Into MS SharePoint

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:43:00 +0000

We've been asked time and time again for advice and recommendations around technology which allows for easy and intuitive drag and drop of emails directly from a user's Outlook Inbox to a SharePoint Intranet or Document Management environment.

Ta da!

This is one of the best add ins to SharePoint we've seen in a while, and the seamless integration of the application with Outlook will make developers, designers, users and adoption/change management project personnel all very happy.

Colligo synchronises SharePoint document libraries to a user's email folders and content can be made available online only or cached for offline access. Emails and attachments can be moved or copied by the user with a simple and intuitive drag and drop or by setting Outlook rules. The add in captures standard message fields, synchronizing them to SharePoint and custom metadata can be instantly applied.

We think that this is groovy stuff peoples and we say 'bravo' to them - and bravo to James from the Detica team for also finding this and chatting through some of the possibilities of it. It certainly makes for an easy win - just beware that it may be temporary if SharePoint 2010 features and functionality provide this eventually out of the box - but for the Colligo price, we're recommending that it is a sensible approach, even if temporary.

If you're developing your document management related applications or Intranet sites using SharePoint, then you'll want to look at something like this to keep your users happy and increase general adoption.

You're welcome.

Stuart Barr Joins HighQ

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:54:00 +0000

Congratulations go to Ajay and the HighQ Solutions team (innovation leaders in law firm dealroom and extranet solutions) in London for their recent appointment of Stuart Barr as a director.

Those who know Stuart know that this is an excellent appointment, and that it is also evidence that HighQ is continuing its focus and commitment to the law firm space.

HighQ gain a new star given that Stuart has over 12 years of experience in web and e-business development, strategy and management and was previously head of operations at Headshift during their golden years. Prior to this, Barr was the Online Services Manager at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where he was responsible for the firm's various online activities.

The HighQ team celebrated their continued growth and success recently with the BLT (Banking Legal Technology) Portal client event, with Barr's appointment being toasted by industry friends and family. Read about the BLT Portal here.

Read about HighQ's work with Clifford Chance, Freshfields and others here.

Headshift Shifts New Heads

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:21:00 +0000

Early decade social media visionaries to the law firm knowledge management and collaboration space - Headshift - have been acquired by the Dachis Group.

Founded in 2008 by Jeffrey Dachis, Dachis Group was created to unlock the value of social technologies for large corporate enterprises through its Social Business Design global advisory practice, and technology implementation program. The company’s strategy is backed by a commitment from Austin Ventures to build and grow organically and through acquisitions.

Jeffrey Dachis has been a major player in the digital services industry as the co-founder of Razorfish which grew into one of the world's largest digital solutions providers with 2,500 employees in 15 offices across 9 countries with annual revenue of over USD$280 million prior to being acquired by Microsoft.

The news was broken by the original Headshift founders in an email to friends, family, prospects and clients late last night UK time and also in a nice spin blog posting today.

Lee and Livio stated in their email that "We are ready to move beyond the experimental phase to create real business transformation. Leaving behind the niche world of enterprise 2.0, we want to work with businesses at a senior level to run change programmes aimed at bringing their processes, internal IT and communications into the Twenty-First Century".

We wish the remaining team all the very best on this next phase, and our fingers are crossed that this injection will keep the brand pushing through barriers.

Continued Success for LexisNexis Visualfiles Australia

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:05:00 +0000

LexisNexis Visualfiles today announced a massive win for their case management solution with news that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) in Queensland Australia has successfully launched the product suite across 250 decentralised users.

The Australian market has proved very successful for LexisNexis over the past two years in the area of case and matter management (both for government and corporate), and we believe that continued successes will follow with the team that is now in place there.

The ODPP has an annual case load of over 12,000, and selected the Visualfiles solution based on a number of factors which significantly included a review of the product's ongoing success at the Queensland Crown Law Department.

TJ Viljoen (the new CEO of LexisNexis Australia) states in the press release that, "In today’s financial climate, automation is vital to ensure agility in a fast paced, and constantly evolving business environment. Lexis Visualfiles is designed to streamline working practices by providing access to all of your file management tools within an easy-to-use interface.”

Note the use of the word "streamline" and watch this space for the upcoming formal launch of the next generation in Visualfiles' evolution.

Full press release can be found here.

Litigation Readiness and Legal Hold

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:58:00 +0000

Janders Dean have featured in an article released today in CDR News Magazine (Commercial Dispute Resolution) discussing critical risk management issues around litigation readiness, legal hold process management for global in-house counsel groups, and the use of enabling technologies.

The full article can be found here.

ILTA Awards - SharePoint Innovator of the Year 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:48:00 +0000

Congratulations to the team at ReedSmith who last night won the "SharePoint Innovator of the Year 2009" for their ouRSpace Intranet design and implementation project.

Using an innovative blend of leading edge SharePoint integrated technologies including XMLaw and Recommind to realise their unique Intranet design, Tom Baldwin and the entire project team (including Lisa Gianakos from ReedSmith, Don Martinis and Amy Oster and the team from XMLaw) have produced an intuitive application which has become an essential and invaluable daily interface across the 3,200 global user community at ReedSmith.

Janders Dean was fortunate and privileged to be asked to be involved with the ouRSpace project, assisting with the initial global user behaviour analysis and design phases - however it is the vision and leadership of the ReedSmith team during the full project, combined with the innovation and collaboration of the technology vendors, which has taken the team to this well deserved win.

ReedSmith Recommind Implementation Article

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:50:00 +0000

For those considering their Enterprise Search positioning, this recent article around ReedSmith's selection and implementation of their solution is useful reading, as is a direct conversation with those stakeholders from within the firm.

Full article here.

Law Firm Knowledge Management Conference - Sydney

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 08:41:00 +0000

Lawyers Weekly Magazine last week published a summary of the recent Janders Dean Law Firm Management Conference in Sydney.

The feature report discusses the content and analysis of presentations given by Janet Young (COO of Freehills), Matthew Parsons (author and former global Chief Knowledge Officer at Linklaters), Justin Harness (associate Director of Macquarie Bank) and Simon Price (European Director of Recommind).

The conference was a useful and timely forum within which leaders from the Knowledge Management community in the APAC region discussed both the maturity of the knowledge discipline within law firms, and potential impacts on the future evolution of KM via the economic downturn.

"This year a study by the Korn/Ferry Institute asked senior partners of the Global 100 law firms to rank in order the importance of their support functions. Of the six options available - including business development, finance, HR, IT and sales and marketing - knowledge management came in last.

Janet Young, chief operating officer at Freehills, told the conference that she finds those results concerning. "You've got the top 100 firms in the world saying, '[KM] does not offer much value'."

Editor of Lawyers Weekly Angela Priestley asks: "will the downturn leave its own mark on the current state of the legal sector - and leave knowledge vulnerable to the axe? (Janet) Young thinks not. "It's helping our lawyers deliver what they need to do," she said."

The full feature article can be found here.

Global Managing Partners Conference - London

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:03:00 +0000

The groovy cats at Chilli Marketing have taken London by storm with the successful facilitation of the Global Managing Partners Conference - showing that their successful approach in Australia works well in other markets.

The event was held earlier in June in association with The Law Society - with a write up of the event contained here. One of the most interesting items in the above link speaks of David Childs (Global Managing Partner at Clifford Chance).

"Cost-cutting is also on the agenda. Childs said that Clifford Chance has managed to save £40m in costs between 2004 and 2007, in part by reducing spending on IT. Also, during this time, the ratio of fee-earners to secretaries has been doubled from two fee-earners per secretary to four.

‘I see no reason why fee-earners should not have a secretary based in India,’ he said.

A new cost-saving plan developed in 2004 aims to reduce costs by another £30m by 2011. ‘I have told all our offices to reduce costs by 5%. I wish I [had] said 7.5%.’"

Norton Rose Wins Law Firm of the Year - London

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:51:00 +0000

Norton Rose last night won the Law Firm of the Year award at The Lawyer Awards here in London at Grosvenor House. An interesting evening full of numerous (perhaps too many) awards for firms, in-house groups, practice groups and individuals across a number of categories.

Good news for Norton Rose, and good news also for Deacons.

All winners and short listed entries can be found here.

Legal Week Strategic Technology Forum - Spain

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:47:00 +0000

For those of you who could not make the event in Spain (which is pretty much everyone given that only about 80 people attended - of which half were suppliers), here is the video which was presented at the start of the event.

The video is a presentation from the managing partners of Freshfields, Linklaters and Clifford Chance and is an interesting discussion and demonstration of their take on technology and knowledge within their firms.

The link for the presentation is here.

Norton Rose & Deacons Merger

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:28:00 +0000

UK giant Norton Rose has announced today a merger with Australian firm Deacons to take effect from 1 January 2010.

After many years of speculation and failed talks between large Australian and UK firms (Clifford Chance and Mallesons, etc), we finally see a solid example of two leaders from their own markets fully merging to create a true global footprint.

The new Norton Rose Group will have a turnover of more than GBP420m (AUD864m) and in excess of 1800 fee earners in 29 offices worldwide. In the Asia Pacific region, it will bring together more than 700 fee earners operating from 12 offices in Bangkok, Beijing, Brisbane, Canberra, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Melbourne, Perth, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo.

From 1 January 2010, Norton Rose Group will be led by Group Chief Executive Peter Martyr, the current Norton Rose LLP Chief Executive, and Deputy Group Chief Executive Don Boyd. Full press here.

Laptop to Tabletop - Microsoft's Surface Touchscreen Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Janders Dean Leadership Blog) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:28:00 +0000

Bets are on to see which law firm is the first to trial or implement the new Microsoft Surface in their reception area, their conference rooms, their training rooms, or in that IT savvy partner's office.

Although the legal world may struggle to find a true value based application (i.e. more than simply the gimmick factor) in the next few months for this technology (and not through lack of trying by some early adopters), we do see some small possibilities around using Surface in client meetings for live document reviews, and also using it to demonstrate matter workflows to clients. There perhaps may even be ways to use it in the areas of court preparation (but again, it is a stretch).

There are also some real possibility around knowledge sharing, story telling and demonstrations for KM training purposes which shouldn't go untested, and also lawyer/trainee professional training and moots (and other lecture forums) which should be thrown into the mix of possibilities.

All this is based on getting the technology at a reasonable price however - they are currently priced at around $US12,500 for the 30 inch touchscreen panel, and convincing the powers that be that this is more than simply a gimmick.

Australia's Lonely Planet has been an early adopter of the technology for their stores. Full article here. Is there scope for using it within the non-retail/professional services market?

As above, it is a stretch to think that in today's economy a law firm will be running to embrace this, but we will no doubt see one or two firms work with Microsoft to find a way.

Move forward ten years and take a stab at guessing what the application will be used for - perhaps all our desks will be embedded with the technology, allowing for (among many other things) mobile and BlackBerry synchronisation as soon as you walk into your office and put the device down on your table!