ILTA 2007

The International Legal Technology Association annual conference was held in Orlando, Fla.in August. The theme was collaboration and communication to solve IT problems. A variety of new product offerings were on display in the vendor hall and there were several legal technology and collaboration and other educational tracks offered at the conference.

Wiki

There is an article on law.com (http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1178269484628) describing how some legal professionals are using a new technology (the same one used for on-line encyclopedias) in the legal profession.

Client Change Practice Groups

There are more and more client change practice groups being created at law firms in response to these emering issues. Firms are doing everything from creating practice group websites, to creating databases of articles and publications and we even found a law firm with a client change blog.

Building a Law Firm Practice Area Portal for Business Development Purposes

Please feel free to join this webinar if interested:

The Litigation Support and Practice Management Peer Groups of ILTA are pleased to announce a free webinar titled, “Building a Law Firm Practice Area Portal for Business Development Purposes.”Be sure to join us for this webinar on Wednesday, May 2, 2007 at 12:00 PM Eastern / 11:00 AM Central / 10:00 AM Mountain / 9:00 AM PacificTo register: https://sdma.webex.com/sdma/j.php?ED=92676442&RG=1Building a Law Firm Practice Area Portal for Business Development PurposesThis session discusses and shows how a hosted, Web-based collaboration system can be used to build a repository of information using technologies to support marketing efforts and demonstrate experience in virtually any area of law (IP, insurance, products liability, etc.). This application of collaboration technology is somewhat different than the "traditional" or "typical" use of collaboration technologies in the litigation support theater which provide services like calendaring, document management or case tracking/management.During the session, the Sedgwick, Detert, Moran & Arnold E-Discovery Portal will be used as a case study to illustrate these concepts.Presenter:Ken Jones, Sedgwick, Detert, Moran & Arnold LLP/XERDICT GROUP LLC Ken leads Xerdict Group LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sedgwick that provides litigation support extranets to clients. Xerdict offers Web-based collaboration products that help clients manage complex litigation data, such as litigation calendars, case management data, litigation costs, discovery materials and litigation documents in a secure and efficient online portal. Ken’s professional history includes information management and applications development positions in Fortune 500 companies, at which he led efforts to build innovative website content management systems, to construct worldwide Internet-based financial collection and reporting systems and to implement SAP modules in functional areas such as order processing, manufacturing and logistics.

Blog Journalists

The Libby trial in Washington has a pretty interesting twist to it -- Blog journalists are receiving press credentials just as "traditional" media individuals are.

New Legal Extranet Reporting Capability

Xerdict recently developed a new reporting capability within the CaseEnsemble Collaboration System for use in all collaboration systems.

The new reporting capability allows CaseEnsemble to produce any report generated by the system " Query Builder" in a configurable PDF format. To help properly format the reports, CaseEnsemble allows the system users and clients to define the report characteristics such as the report font, font size, and page size and orientation in the PDF file (prior to printing/saving/emailing the PDF file). This new feature, which adds to the existing CaseEnsemble functionality allowing clients to either view the report on the screen or export report contents to an Excel file, greatly improves CaseEnsemble clients's ability to save Case Management and other types of system reports in a useful and attractive format appropriate for printing or emailing to clients. This capability is particularily useful for those case management applications that require periodic reports (weekly, monthly, quarterly) to be sent to clients.

The making of an e-discovery practice

The new Federal Rules on Electronic Discovery, which went into effect December 1, 2006, were considered by some to be an administrative compliance burden for companies, organizations and law firms alike. However, at Sedgwick, a small team of attorneys saw these new regulations as an opportunity to develop a unique set of legal services for the firm. This new practice expanded, beyond the practice of compliance counseling, into new frontiers that include technology-based capabilities assisting companies in the implementation of the policies, procedures and best practices often recommended to corporate and institutional clients.
So, how did this all begin? In early 2006, two Sedgwick partners, Keith Casto and Kenneth Rashbaum, identified the need to counsel companies with respect to changes in business practices driven by the new Federal Rules. These needs included the requirements that organizations track and manage electronic information, implement appropriate and reasonable records retention policies for electronic records, execute litigation holds on electronic information as needed, and comply with new regulations, timing and benchmarks related to the identification and exchange of such data during the litigation discovery process.Further complicating these issues was the fact that case law varies in federal and state courts, and also differs considerably from state to state. For example, some states have many regulations, statutes and precedents in this area, while other states have incomplete and limited prior materials in this area.

Mr. Casto and Mr. Rashbaum quickly developed the concept of gathering materials (e.g., statutes, rules, prior case law and articles) as collateral to assist them in counseling clients in this changing area of law. They developed a vision of storing this set of collected works and data in a secure, Web-based collaboration system. Using this type of technology, the work product could not only be shared within their own law firm, but also could, after appropriate review and refinement of the information, be shared with existing and prospective clients as a representation of their knowledge of e-discovery.

Transforming this vision into reality became Mr. Rashbaum and Mr. Casto’s next aspiration. First, they approached Sedgwick’s Management Committee with a thumbnail sketch of their business plan and vision. Upon learning about the new Federal Rules and the potential business opportunities they presented, Sedgwick’s Management Committee decided to establish a new practice group focusing on electronic discovery, and appointed Mr. Rashbaum and Casto co-chairs of this new unit.

With the support and backing of the firm in place, Mr. Casto and Rashbaum began assembling the key components of the practice. First, they recruited and assigned specific resources within the firm, both attorneys and paralegals, to collect, vet, organize and summarize e-discovery material. This included case law, rules, statutes, articles, forms, templates and other types of information. Sedgwick quickly compiled and assembled an impressive set of materials in this area spanning many jurisdictions, states and points of view.

Next, the e-discovery team sought to identify a method of storing this material. Somehow, in today’s electronic age, storing the material on a shared network directory or in email folders did not seem adequate. So the team called upon Sedgwick’s technology-based subsidiary, Xerdict Group LLC, which is led by Michael Tanenbaum, the managing general partner of Sedgwick’s Newark, N.J., office, to construct a secure, Web-based depository for these materials. Xerdict, using its collaboration technology that in the past primarily was used for legal case management and document management purposes, added features to the system and then constructed a customized portal in about six weeks. This newly constructed collaboration system provided the ability to store all the aforementioned types of data, with an entity screen allowing the team to specifically code and organization each type of data in the precise manner dictated by the team, and also delivered a search engine allowing authorized system users to search for specific types of data (by court, jurisdiction, type of rule, state and many other searches).

The new system, named the “Sedgwick E-Discovery Portal,” also provided some additional features that were part of the Sedgwick’s standard client extranet. One such example was the litigation bulletin board feature, which was seen as a way for Sedgwick to provide clients with communication in a secure and privileged manner on sensitive issues (such as internal investigations).

With the building blocks of the information repository and the technology delivery mechanism in place, Sedgwick began promoting the new practice. The first step was to share this information with all other Sedgwick attorneys. This was done for many reasons. One was to share all this new e-discovery information within the firm so that each lawyer within the firm gained solid footing in the new Federal Rules and could counsel their clients accordingly. Furthermore, the sharing of this information within the firm served the valuable purpose of levering the collective wisdom of the Firm in addressing any questions, concerns or gaps in the collected data prior to sharing the information with clients.

Mr. Rashbaum and Mr. Casto then made the e-discovery portal available to selected clients. The feedback on this resource was that it was very helpful but the taste of this electronic discovery information resulted in clients asking for more assistance. Some clients wanted full service models, including not only the knowledge in the e-discovery portal but also the products needed to implement the recommendations of the e-discovery practice (e.g., how to identify and collect electronic data, the process of implementing litigation holds, the production of documents, the implementation of records retention policies, etc.).

In response to these needs, Mr. Rashbaum and Mr. Casto, working with members of the Sedgwick IT Department, assessed the capabilities of many of the leading technology providers in these areas. While Sedgwick maintains a vendor-agnostic outlook on technology vendors, the Electronic Discovery Team and IT Department strived to learn enough about each of the leading players to provide clients with ideas and information on companies providing services such as e-mail and electronic media collection, enterprise search engines, document review/assessment/production, and other areas.

Given that the Federal Rules on e-discovery were only recently adopted, Sedgwick believes this to be only the beginning of its journey assisting clients in this area. It is anticipated, by all the members of the e-discovery team and practice, that further innovation and creativity will be necessary in the coming months and years for firms wishing to be thought leaders in this new area of the law.

Xerdict / Method360 Alliance

The Xerdict Group LLC and Method360, Inc. announced today a strategic alliance that brings together Xerdict’s web based collaboration technology and professional services with Method360’s enterprise project management and IT management services.

The alliance serves several mutually beneficial strategic purposes. One such benefit is that this partnership will help to further broaden Method360's already impressive and broad set of technology consulting services into the additional vertical markets of hosted collaboration software products, focusing on the legal sector in areas such as litigation support, document management and law firm marketing. Furthermore, the union of Method360 and Xerdict will help provide additional delivery mechanisms into the marketplace for Xerdict's leading legal collaboration product, CaseEnsembleTM. And most importantly, for our present and future clients, this new alliance positions both Xerdict and Method360 to expand and grow the set and range of high quality services and products they provide.

"Developing an strong relationship with an elite consulting company such as Method360 illustrates the importance Xerdict places in identifying and partnering with best-in-breed firms as integartion partners for our hosted collaboration products" noted Kenneth Jones, Chief Information Officer of the Xerdict Group LLC. Furthermore, comments Jonathan Wong, a Managing Director at Method360, "The Xerdict-Method360 alliance will expand an established client base to provide legal and non-legal industry clients with a comprehensive range of technology consulting ."

Both Method360 and Xerdict are available to discuss collaboration or other technology consulting needs with current or prospective clients. Free demonstrations of the powerful and flexible CaseEnsembleTM are also available upon request.

About Xerdict

Xerdict Group LLC is a subsidiary of Sedgwick, Detert, Moran & Arnold LLP, one of America’s preeminent litigation and trial law firms. As part of Sedgwick’s focus on efficiency, productivity, and client service, Xerdict Group was founded in 2004 to offer outstanding litigation support technology including legal case management and practice management collaboration software products such as CaseEnsemble, ClientEnsemble and ProjectEnsemble and other technology-based litigation support services.

Contact :
Kenneth Jones, Chief Operating Officer
Phone: 973-286-4350
Electronic Mail: kenneth.jones@xerdict.com. (www.xerdict.com)


About Method360

Method360, Inc. has provided high-end consulting services including enterprise technology project management, data architecture, business workflow, SAP integration and IT management services since 1997. Client industries include legal, financial, healthcare/pharmaceutical, telecommunications, utilities, retail and insurance.

Contact:
Jonathan K. Wong, Managing Director,
Phone:
Electronic Mail : jwong@method360.com. (www.method360.com)

LegalTech 2006 West

This conference is scheduled for June 5-6, 2006 in Los Angeles. For more information please click here.

Courtroom Technology

Law.com has a very interesting article on courtroom technology. It is available by clicking here.