TechnoLawyer Blog: Transactional Practice Areas

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers an online resource for employment law needs (see article below), a desktop search utility, software for making image-only documents searchable, an extranet add-on for Time Matters, and an iOS reading app. Don't miss the next issue.

Add a Team of Employment Lawyers to Your Firm With One Click

If your law firm represents businesses, you probably field lots of questions about employment law even if that's not your primary specialty. In the old days, a client would call you up, ask about an employment law issue, and gladly pay to have your firm research the answer. Or draft an agreement. Etc. Nowadays, they still ask such questions, but don't want to pay for time spent on ramp-up research or drafting a document from scratch. Small firms have it especially tough as they don't have the resources to write off research and lack a large library of "routine" model documents.

^PLCLabor & Employment … in One Sentence
Practical Law Company's ^PLCLabor & Employment is an online service that provides employment law practice guides, model documents, state surveys, and more.

The Killer Feature
No request makes lawyers feel as conflicted as the multi-state survey. They're lucrative but involve a lot of mind-numbing research. And as noted above, clients no longer want to pay law firms to invent a wheel that they feel must already exist.

And in this case the wheel does indeed exist in the form of ^PLCLabor & Employment's State Q&A Tool. This database summarizes state laws on various topics such as anti-discrimination laws, background check laws, drug testing laws, hiring requirements, leave laws, non-compete laws, wage and hour laws, etc.

"PLC's State Q&A Tool, like all of our other resources, helps lawyers work efficiently so that they can focus more time on the higher-level advising that clients value most," Practical Law Company CEO Jeroen Plink told us.

Other Notable Features
^PLCLabor & Employment also includes downloadable model documents in Microsoft Word format. You'll also find Practice Notes, which are how-to guides written in plain English. Think of them as roadmaps for practice. Topics include corporate transactions and bankruptcy, cross-border and immigration and employee data, and monitoring and privacy among others.

The service also saves you time on executive employment agreements with its What's Market tool that consists of data culled from agreements filed with the SEC. You can create custom trend reports using filters such as industry, market capitalization, and governing law. You can also browse agreements and compare provisions within agreements (280G, clawback, base salary, etc.).

What Else Should You Know?
A team of lawyers who previously worked at employment law powerhouses such as Jackson Lewis and Littler Mendelson create these materials. They also serve as your reference librarians. Tell them what you're working on and they will email you links to the applicable resources. You can try ^PLCLabor & Employment for free. The annual subscription provides unlimited use. Learn more about ^PLCLabor & Employment.

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Originally published on May 17, 2011 in our free BigLaw newsletter. Instead of reading BigLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

While Exterro's April Fool's spoof on robots replacing lawyers by "eliminating up to 99.9 percent of all inefficient cerebral functions currently performed by highly paid attorneys, paralegals and technologists" proved humorous, those of you who work in litigation may have found it hit too close to home.

The buzz surrounding Predictive Coding has steadily increased. This eDiscovery technology, which essentially uses machine learning to automate part of the review process, is causing a lot of head-scratching in large law firms. I remember pitching an article to a legal technology editor ten years ago themed "auto-coding is here." The first question that came back to me was, "Is it really here?" I feel like many of you are about to ask same question about predictive coding.

My former colleague John Corey who is now Regional Manager at Recommind told me about how large law firms are responding to their predictive coding product.

"We are seeing the early law firm adopters put predictive coding through its paces and validate the time and expense savings," said Corey. "They also found, sometimes to their surprise, more accurate results. Once litigation departments realize that predictive coding optimizes rather than completely replaces human review, any concerns about defensibility evaporate. We're now seeing a broader adoption as firms realize that they'd rather benefit from predictive coding than compete with it."

Corey also told me that after working directly with large firm lawyers for many years, he has a very strong hunch that the early adopters most likely ran data through the traditional review process as well as the predictive coding process. Once they realized that predictive coding could be trusted, they converted 100 percent.

If you missed the link last year in BlawgWorld, Monica Bay interviewed two eDiscovery experts about predictive coding on her October 2010 Law Technology Now podcast entitled Crash or Soar? Predictive Coding.

A Court Docketing David Challenges the Goliaths

While the "big boys" are battling it out in eDiscovery, let's not forget about the small and nimble players in the legal technology industry. I've noticed a recent trend in which the "little guys" are landing the big deals. Why? Are law firms finally realizing they can get a better product, better customer service, and a better price by going with a less known company? Maybe so.

It seems to be true for American LegalNet (disclosure — a client of Edge Legal Marketing). The company has landed some noticeably big deals for its eDockets rules-based docketing and calendar system from McKenna Long & Aldridge, Baker & Daniels, and Fenwick & West — and these are just the firms willing to talk. Why have firms such as these spurned giants such as CompuLaw and Elite Calendar Manager for American LegalNet?

I caught up with Connie Moser, senior marketing director of American LegalNet (she previously worked at Elite), to get her perspective. "Having a cost-effective product in place to help with critical date management is essential for law firms that want to enhance workflow and minimize malpractice risk," she told me.

ALM Media Switches Teams

ALM Media, the parent company of American Lawyer, National Law Journal, and many other legal publications, announced last month that it has "reunited" with LexisNexis. ALM Media will shift its exclusive legal news content licensing from Westlaw to rival Lexis.com. ALM Media CEO Bill Pollak has the best take on the deal — not surprising since he's the ultimate insider. "West has been a solid partner for the past five years and this decision was not one that was made lightly," writes Bill.

Where will Thomson Reuters' West obtain its legal news for Westlaw going forward? Publisher Neil Squillante got the scoop and reported that Reuters and West have teamed up to deliver their own legal news and analysis.

In the Meantime, Plug in Your BioPorts

With corporate clients pressuring law firms to cut costs, the only path for doing so increasingly lies in technology. Exterro's "easy-to-install and hard to remove BioPorts (certified to be 85 percent pain-free)" might sound silly, but don't laugh too hard. Yesterday's technology pipe dream sometimes becomes tomorrow's reality (smartphones anyone?). As Michael Lewis once wrote, the future just happened.

Written by Amy Juers of Edge Legal Marketing.

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Originally published in our free TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter. Instead of reading TechnoLawyer NewsWire here, sign up now to receive future issues via email.

Practice Management That Perfectly Fits Your Practice

A doctor and a lawyer (that's you) walk into a bar. When asked about their profession, the doctor says "doctor" and you say "lawyer." The questioner asks the doctor "What kind of doctor?" but the questioner probably won't ask you "What kind of lawyer?" However, as we all know, legal practice is every bit as specialized as medical practice. Just as no one hires a podiatrist for heart surgery, no one hires a 1940 Act lawyer for a divorce. A company that develops a popular practice management system has taken note of this specialization with some specialized technology.

Needles Case Type Library for Needles 4.8.2 … in One Sentence
The Needles Case Type Library is a growing collection of practice area-specific setups for the Needles 4.8.2 practice management system.

The Killer Feature
The Needles Case Type Library eliminates the need to create your own workflows within Needles from scratch. They include everything you need for a given practice area such as forms and reports. Once imported, you can customize a Case Type further.

Currently, you can choose from 19 Case Types — Bankruptcy Chapter 7, Construction Civil Litigation, Criminal-Misdemeanor, Divorce, Custody, Property Division, Dog Bite, Estate Planning, Estate Probate, Immigration, Insurance Defense, Mass Tort Pharmaceutical-DEVICE, Medical Malpractice, Motor Vehicle Accident, Premise Liability, Product Liability, Real Estate Closing, Social Security, Third Party Collection, Workers Compensation, and Wrongful Death.

Needles created the Case Types in conjunction with its clients who over the years honed their use of Needles for activities ranging from client intake to billing to collections to closing matters. Needles expects the number of Case Types to grow both in number and in features as its community of clients shares more and more details about their best practices.

"In our more 25 years of business, we have strived to maintain a sense of community among our clients," Needles Director of Training Liz Teixeira told us. "There are few companies that can boast of a clientele so willing to share their wealth of knowledge. Client contributions have shaped and defined the case type setups that we offer as part of our new library."

Other Notable Features
The Case Types in the Needles Case Type Library take advantage of the latest features of Needles 4.8.2, which include a number of integrations with popular programs such as Outlook and QuickBooks, enhancements to the time capture tools, calendar, message system, and reports, and a phone dialer that works with traditional and VoIP telephone systems.

What Else Should You Know?
Needles 4.8.2 includes free access to the Needles Case Type Library. Just download the case types that best fit your firm. Learn more about Needles Case Type Library for Needles 4.8.2.

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So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to TechnoFeature: A file server can cost upwards of $22,000 plus another $7,000 per year to maintain. Should you instead keep that money in your bank account? But can your law firm conduct business without a server? In this TechnoFeature, legal technology consultant Seth Rowland explains how you can cut the cord by using "the cloud" — online applications for backups, practice management, and document management. But everything has a downside, which Seth also explores. What's his verdict on moving the cloud? Read the article to find out.

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Coming today to Fat Friday: David Hudgens reviews CaseMap, TimeMap, and TextMap, Lewis Kinard lists tips and pitfalls with regard to blogging for marketing purposes, David Moskowitz shares his company's secret to success during a recession, William Anderson reviews Best Case Bankruptcy, and James Atkins discusses the number one benefit of challenge response software (and we explain why we disagree). Don't miss this issue.

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Originally published on September 21, 2009 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

In 1993 Best Case Bankruptcy represented the vanguard of practice automation. Best Case promised users would make fewer mistakes, save time, and prepare complex bankruptcy documents without having to become "specialists." Then Best Case upped the ante and introduced a knockout punch — as courts across the nation began mandating electronic practice in about 2003, the company rolled out its "one-touch electronic filing" feature. For a time Best Case had the e-filing field to itself. Good times.

Meeting (But Not Exceeding) Market Expectations

To give credit where credit is due, Best Case Bankruptcy enabled a generation of software-savvy lawyers and their staffs to serve more clients than ever, and to do so without breaking the bank. That made Best Case a pioneer and the sales leader. With a huge installed-base, the company enjoyed Microsoft-like market dominance among bankruptcy practitioners even as competitors mimicked everything from its menus, prompts, calculators, and user-interface to its once-exclusive e-filing features.

But that was then. Over the past 5-6 years, the competition has become more adept at keeping up with the leader, many even exceeding the Best Case Bankruptcy feature set. Several offer bankruptcy preparation products that have fewer features, but at a lower price, hoping users upgrade to a more robust version of that product later.

Interestingly, Best Case does not appear to see other products as a threat. Take for example the fact that Best Case charges more than others for licenses and annual "support" (according to my unscientific survey). Best Case maintains that its product is more feature-laden (including I suppose features that not every user needs). And there's no disputing that it remains the market leader.

However, thanks to the Great Recession, small firms considering bankruptcy preparation software may wonder why they should pay more than they would for a competitive product to do virtually the same thing. At the end of the day, we're all working with the same bankruptcy courts right? So what makes Best Case Solutions the "best"?

With these questions in mind I took a close look at Best Case Bankruptcy V. 18.

New and Improved? Yes and No

By way of full disclosure, I've been using a bankruptcy automation solution other than Best Case Bankruptcy for about five years. But after many, many solicitations in the mail, by phone, by email, and at various seminars and events, I decided to try the market leader.

I used Best Case Bankruptcy to prepare and "file" a demo case. The product worked well, but as a practitioner who has enjoyed the benefits of automation since 2003, I was not all that impressed either. It's not that Best Case doesn't live up to its claims. It boasts a fairly intuitive menu-driven interface, an online intake interview that prospects fill out before they even step into your office, and the crucial ability to import and cross-check user-inputs against third-party information such as credit reports and credit counseling certification, among others.

So if you'd never used a piece of bankruptcy automation software I believe you would jump at the chance to fork over the roughly $1,050 for the Chapter 7 & 13 package, and an additional $700 or so in annual support fees. No doubt the product would pay for itself within a few uses. (The Chapter 7 package costs $850, and the Chapters 7, 11, and 13 package costs $1,250.)

But I wasn't a newbie and what I saw and experienced did not represent a quantum leap. Instead I saw a Buick being spruced up for the new buying season with whitewalls and a pair of tasty tail-fins. So while Best Case improved on its last version by enhancing compatibility with the latest browsers (IE 8), word-processing software (WordPerfect X4), and Federal Case-Management and Electronic Case Filing (CM/ECF) systems, as well as by updating the ability of the software to handle some of the more exotic forms such as the Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization or Disclosure Statement in a "Small Business" case, the backbone of the software remains largely untouched. Even the interface says "1998."

My Best Advice

If your practice is national (or at least covers multiple states) and consists of both consumer (Chapters 7 and 13) and business bankruptcy (Chapter 11), Best Case Bankruptcy is the way to go. But other small law firms should look for slimmer, less pricey solutions.

Oh, and one last thing — would someone please develop a Clio-like Web-based bankruptcy solution priced on a monthly subscription basis. The day I find that solution my checkbook will open up faster than you can say best case scenario.

Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.

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Coming today to TechnoFeature: Hollywood loves mentor movies. But don't count on seeing "Westlaw Practitioner" at a theater near you. Westlaw Practitioner is an online service that collects primary and secondary resources by practice area, essentially eliminating the need to create or use a law library. How well does it work? To find out, we asked Houston business and patent lawyer Al Harrison to dive into the practice areas in which he works every day as well as those in which he doesn't and report back to us. Before you take the plunge, read Al's review.

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Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers an online tax research services (see article below), virtual PBX iPhone app, a store for BlackBerry apps, an online service to help you get agreements digitally signed by the parties, and an online Bluebook citation tool. Don't miss the next issue.

Tax Facts at Your Fingertips

The flat tax is a great idea, but law firms that handle tax-related issues need not worry. Too many special interests have their hand in the tax code for that too happen. In fact, the tax code will likely grow more complex, not less. As a result, you'll need better research tools.

IntelliConnect … in One Sentence
Wolters Kluwer's IntelliConnect is a tax-oriented online research service that combines the previously separate services, Tax Research NetWork and Internet Research NetWork.

The Killer Feature
When you consider that we all used tabs in our trapper keepers in grade school, why exactly did it take so long for Web browsers to have tabs? Who knows but we all use them now that we have them.

Wolters Kluwer understands the popularity of tabbed browsing and has taken it several steps further.

IntelliConnect enables you to maintain up to five searches at once using its search tabs. In addition, each search result has a checkbox. If you check it, IntelliConnect saves the accompanying document in the Document Tray. IntelliConnect also keeps track of your search history much as Web browsers keep track of the Web sites you visit.

Other Notable Features
You can conduct research by browsing or searching. If your searches pull up too much information, you can apply filters such as document type (explanations, laws, regulations, etc.), practice tools, jurisdiction, state tax type, and more. You can also search within a search and save searches.

IntelliConnect's tri-screen display enables you to view your search results and specific documents simultaneously. It works like an email preview pane with your search results on top and the specific document you've selected below. When you find a relevant document, you can print it or save it in PDF or text format. You can email documents too.

What Else Should You Know?
IntelliConnect also includes CCH's Tracker News, which enables you to receive alerts about important developments via email or RSS feed. Pricing depends on which libraries you need to access and other factors. Learn more about IntelliConnect.

How to Receive TechnoLawyer NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to TechnoFeature: Should you take on a new client? Where can you find new clients? How can you better serve existing clients? Charitable donation records can help you answer these questions. The NOZA database provides information on more than 40 million charitable gifts by individuals and companies. We asked Mike Schley, a business attorney and frequent TechnoLawyer contributor, to assess the usefulness of the NOZA database for the legal profession and rate it using our TechnoScore system. As usual, Mike delivered a comprehensive and useful review.

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Our flagship newsletter never disappoints thanks to its in-depth reporting by leading legal technology and practice management experts, many of whom have become "household names" in the legal profession. It's in TechnoFeature that you'll find our oft-quoted formal product reviews and accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The TechnoFeature newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers a contract management application (see article below), a CLE courseware program, a cost recovery system, anti-virus software, a voice recording application for iPhone, an online store for BlackBerrys, and a case management application for Windows Mobile. Don't miss the next issue.

Cut Through the Mumbo Jumbo
By Neil J. Squillante

Management. The most overused word in legal software? First came case management. Then knowledge management. Contact management. Client relationship management. Etc. Cliche or not, this word underscores the growing need of the legal profession to, yes, manage disparate types of electronic information. Well, it's time to add new one to the list — contract management.

Mumboe ... in One Sentence
Mumboe is an online application that enables you to manage existing agreements and also store and share templates from which to create new agreements.

The Killer Feature
Most contracts drone on for pages and pages. This level of detail is necessary, but some details are more important and more likely to be referenced than others. Also, some details exist in virtually all contracts regardless of subject matter.

When you upload contracts into Mumboe for storage, Mumboe extracts the most critical data so that you can review it at a glance and also compare it across other contracts. It even extracts this data if you upload a scanned contract thanks to its built-in OCR technology.

What does it extract? The parties, addresses, term, choice of law, etc. You can review the data extracted and make corrections and remove details you don't want to track before saving. Mumboe refers to this information as "contract intelligence."

Other Notable Features
Like most online applications, Mumboe provides a dashboard from which you can access all of Mumboe's functions. For example, you can search for an agreement, view all agreements, and create an agreement.

Mumboe offers simple and advanced search. You can search the full text of agreements or just extracted data. The advanced search mode provides you with Boolean operators, date ranges, and other tools to narrow the results.

Mumboe also enables you to create reminders for important milestones, create tasks and assign them to others, bookmark agreements for quick access, and import contacts so that you can more easily populate agreement templates.

What Else Should You Know?
Like most online applications, Mumboe offers a free "gateway" version, Mumboe Express, which provides you with storage for 10 agreements. Mumboe Pro costs $24/month for 250 agreements. You can purchase additional storage at a rate of $12/month per 100 agreements. Learn more about Mumboe.

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