Comment, Opinion & Guest Articles

“The typical manual billing process is a nightmare!” That’s the statement that kicked off our recent webinar with Wilson Allen and Bevan Brittan, looking at the roadmap to paperless billing, particularly now that COVID-19 means there is more urgency and impetus to digitise the billing process.

Ari Kaplan speaks with Chris Ende, the chief value officer at Goulston & Storrs, and Michael Byrd, the global process owner at Baker McKenzie. Both professionals are board members for the Legal Value Network, a new organization dedicated to the business of law.

The legal sector has widely welcomed a new initiative between Tech Nation, the Lawtech Delivery Panel and the Ministry of Justice, to support digital transformation, including the launch of a LawTech Sandbox. We bring you industry reaction.

Today (8 May) I’m on a panel of leading legal tech journalists to hash out the week’s news in a live recording of the podcast Legaltech Week. Sign up here.

It’s a truism to say that COVID-19 is one of the biggest challenges that the legal sector has ever experienced both professionally and personally, with those two subsets of our lives more blurred than ever before. But I’d argue that what is required right now are honest and unembarrassed conversations about the fact that in the legal and legal tech profession primary carers – and that is typically women – are likely to be hardest hit unless we take steps to prevent that.

Practice management vendor Clio has commited $1m to a disaster relief program to help law firms navigate the difficulties that lie ahead in light of the global COVID-19 shut down.

We speak to slicedbread project manager Jennie Strickland-Grogan (pictured above), who came down with COVID-19 while in the middle of a major client project. She is now recovering from the virus and wants to spread a message of hope.

The Lord Chancellor’s statement yesterday (18 March) suggesting that the majority of criminal court cases will go ahead during the Coronavirus pandemic reminded me of the conversations I’m having with my own children about our rigorous timetable of activities now that UK schools are shut. It’s extremely unlikely to happen and for everyone’s wellbeing, we’d be better off working out what the new normal really does look like.

In February we saw the announcement that signature and closing management tool SimplyAgree is now available through Reynen Court’s solution store, enabling law firms to deploy it as a pre-vetted app.

We ask co-founders Will Norton (CEO) and Sam Beutler for the low down on the Nashville-headquartered company.

This in from cloud eDiscovery vendor Everlaw, which in June 2018 raised $25m, bringing its total funding to $96.6m. This round is notably led by new investor CapitalG, a growth equity fund backed by Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

Linklaters today (10 March) formally launched a heavyweight combined legal operations function and graduate recruitment scheme, having first announced the legal ops function in June last year.

At Legal IT Insider we try hard to promote women every day, not just on International Women’s Day, and we are publishing a series of interviews with senior and inspiring women in the legal profession that will come out every month in 2020. But who better to mark #IWD20 than Dana Denis-Smith, CEO of Obelisk, who is a fierce champion of women in law and whose First 100 Years sets out to celebrate a centenary of women being able to practise.

Legal IT Insider is leveraging our pretty uniquely global and unbiased reach to help you share, understand and disseminate information relating to the coronavirus. Here is a statement from Litera, to help customers understand the steps it is taking to reduce risk and how that will impact, or not impact, customers and staff. It is reducing international movement and reviewing its attendance at events and conferences.

Epiq’s cybersecurity attack started with a TrickBot infection that led to it being hit by the Ryuk ransomware, computer help Bleeping Computer has reported, citing a source in the cybersecurity industry. It’s a timely reminder that just because data is in the cloud doesn’t guarantee its safety.

LexisNexis this week announced an integration between Visualfiles and iManage Work; a significant development for firms considering the future of their workflow and case management solutions, with Womble Bond Dickinson planning to rollout the CMS to new teams to drive efficiency.

LexisNexis this week announced an integration between Visualfiles and iManage Work; a significant development for firms considering the future of their workflow and case management solutions, with Womble Bond Dickinson planning to rollout the CMS to new teams to drive efficiency.

Kennedys has launched a technology company called Kennedys IQ to house and deliver its tech-led client products, which it refers to as ‘Kennedys, without the lawyers.” We spoke to former IT director and now tech co head Mike Gilpin.

Kennedys has launched a technology company called Kennedys IQ to house and deliver its tech-led client products, which it refers to as ‘Kennedys, without the lawyers.” We spoke to former IT director and now tech co head Mike Gilpin.

Dentons has selected Thomson Reuters Elite 3E as its practice management system as it delivers on a mammoth five-year IT strategy or ‘master plan’ that, global CIO Marcel Henri tells us, is coming together.

Dentons has selected Thomson Reuters Elite 3E as its practice management system as it delivers on a mammoth five-year IT strategy or ‘master plan’ that, global CIO Marcel Henri tells us, is coming together.

This post was originally published on this siteMicrosoft has confirmed…

Microsoft has confirmed that, as of 13 October 2020, users of Microsoft Office 2010 will no longer be able to connect to its Office 365 service, and there are also implications for Office 2013 users. Stephen Brown from Lights-On Consulting talks us through the impact.

In a move that promises to tie up domain expertise with venture science, Deloitte Legal has become the exclusive legal and professional services partner of technology entrepreneurship programme Conception X, a venture builder that trains PhD students to create deep tech startups.