Well, I did it. Sort of. At the beginning of 2021, I set a goal of posting once a week on this blog. I didn’t hit a post every week, but I ended up posting 52 times for an average of once per week. I hit my goal despite a lengthy hospital stay of someone close in early 2021, a…
Continue Reading Four Things I (Re)Learned About Blogging 2021

“It’s like déjà vu all over again…The future ain’t what it used to be.” Yogi Berra
 
2021. A year that started with such hope. Vaccines had arrived. Hope and joy as it looked like we might come out of Covid darkness and resume life as we knew it. In-person conferences and meetings slowly returning. There were serious conversations about…
Continue Reading Déjà Vu…All Over Again

Surveys, surveys, surveys. We seem to be awash these days in surveys. It’s hard to keep track of them all, much less vouch for their validation.
 
But the results from a recent one from Law360 Pulse caught my eye. Law360 is generally pretty reliable because of the number of subscribers and customers to which it has access and the…
Continue Reading Want to Measure a Law Firm’s Reputation? Law360 Gives It a Shot

As commentators, we often focus on those who can’t afford lawyers and are thus deprived in a tangible way to access to justice. We often focus on the very sophisticated purchasers of legal services. Large companies, for example, with full in-house legal departments. We often don’t talk about those in the middle: individuals and small businesses who, from time to…
Continue Reading Lawyers Are An Alien Herd

You’re gonna have to serve somebody.
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Bob Dylan: Gotta Serve Somebody
 
State Bar Associations need to decide who they serve and then develop regulations that actually serve that group. Too frequently, Bar Association try to serve their lawyer members and…
Continue Reading State Bar Associations and Regulatory Capture: Who Do You Serve?

It’s Thanksgiving again. A time to stuff ourselves, watch some serious football (well, some football anyway), and be thankful. It got me thinking: what do I, as a blogger on legal technology and innovation, have to be thankful for this year (beyond, of course, my tech toys lol).
 
So, here are my top 10 things I’m thankful for this…
Continue Reading 10 Things This Legal Tech Blogger Is Thankful For

 
Despite a lot of talk, law firms continue to make little progress down on the diversity path. Law firms set billing rates of ethnically and gender diverse lawyers, particularly at more experienced levels, lower than white males.
 
Kris Satkunas,
Director of Strategic Counseling of LexisNexis’ CounselLink had a problem. She was tasked with giving a webinar on benchmarks…
Continue Reading Law Firm Diversity: Follow the Money

Exterro, a provider of Legal GRC software for in-house legal teams, recently named legal discovery expert and technologist Jenny Hamilton as General Counsel. It’s an interesting hire since Hamilton was the former head of the e-discovery team at John Deere (“nothing runs like a Deere”), a Fortune 100 company. John Deere is a longtime customer of Exterro.
 
It’s…
Continue Reading Exterro Names New General Counsel With Customer Focus

I used to have a partner who was fond of saying a lawyer spends half their life worrying about having too much to do. And the other half worrying about not having enough.
 
If true, then most lawyers are in the first half right now: more and more demand for legal work and fewer and fewer people around to…
Continue Reading Supply and Demand Brings Lawyers to Tech

While we may not yet know the long-term viability of remote work in legal, a new MyCase Survey confirms that remote work has accelerated legal’s use of the cloud. And remote work tools and the use of the cloud have led legal professionals to the greater use of technology and an appreciation for what it can do.
 
At its…
Continue Reading Remote Work & Cloud Computing: Driving Lawyers to Like Tech

Law 360 on Monday of this week announced the results of its inaugural Social Impact Study of law firms. The study was designed to rank firms based on socially responsible business practices. In particular, the study attempted to evaluate firms across four pillars: racial and ethnic diversity, gender equality, employee engagement, and pro bono service. Law 360 only released the…
Continue Reading Law360 Announces Results of First Social Impact Law Firm Study

“I’m so tired of being tired. Sure as night will follow day, Most things I worry about Never happen anyway.” Tom Petty Crawling Back To You Lyrics, Wildflowers (1994)
 
So last week was a hard week for me. Or at least I made it so. A couple of issues surfaced the resolution of which could have had some significant impacts.…
Continue Reading Lawyers & Stress: Three Ways to Beat the Devil

LexisNexis today announced its latest enhancement to its Lexis+ platform, Judicial Brief Analysis. Besides the bells and whistles, there are three noteworthy things.
 
 
LexisNexis today announced its latest enhancement to its Lexis+ platform, Judicial Brief Analysis. According to the LexisNexis Press Release, Judicial Brief Analysis is designed to quickly identify similarities and differences in opposing filings…
Continue Reading 3 Things About LexisNexis’ New Judicial Brief Analysis Tool That Aren’t Bells & Whistles