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.

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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.

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.

There are a number of very good articles out on disaster planning and contingency planning and the need to plan appropriately in this area. Once of the better articles on this topic is in this month's CIO (www.cio.com).