Technology good...Knowing what to do with your data...Priceless

It may seem odd to give a shout out to a competitor, but my hat is off to Jim Tallman, CEO of Datacert. Tallman joined the company a couple years back and has done some things that his predecessors failed to do. Way back in early 2003 there was a clear shift in our market, clients were demanding a single, integrated solution for matter management and e-billing. Their budgets no longer could cover buying and supporting both systems separately nor did people want to deal with the challenges of integrating the two. At that time TyMetrix and some of our competitors made the move to build new platforms to support this market shift or added new capabilities into their existing products. For whatever reason at that time DataCert failed to see or ignored the shift. A few years into the change and in an attempt to catch up to the market they acquired Corprasoft and made a run at creating a “unified” product, Corporate Legal Desktop (CLD) 10. Based on my knowledge, despite heavy marketing their new “unified” product never took off or was accepted by the market.

While I can’t say for certain, it seems that when Tallman joined DC he was able to analyze the landscape and recognized their solutions were not at parity with competitors and to his credit he focused attention on building a new product line that based on what he describes should bring Datacert into some level of parity with the market. Seven years of TyMetrix experience in building, implementing, innovating and improving our platform proves it will still take some time for Datacert’s products to get up to speed, work out the typical kinks in new products and ultimately catch up to where the capabilities and stability of existing platforms are today. But, so far their heading in the right direction by finally getting into the game. My only bone of contention with Mr. Tallman and Datacert is their marketing assertions that they are the first or only e-billing and matter management platform designed to support the needs of the law department from the ground up. Back in 2003 TyMetrix saw the trend and developed the CT TyMetrix360° platform from the ground up for just that purpose. With more than 6 years in the market TyMetrix360° has nearly 400,000 members operating in the collaborative platform and nearly 2 million matters, associated with over $35B in legal spend. I welcome Datacert to the market, the key now will be in successfully transitioning from a landscape of ideation and marketing into one of execution and delivery.

Having delivered a patented, integrated platform over 6 years ago, TyMetrix has found that at this point in time that General Counsel and law department leadership teams are less interested in the bells and whistles of technology for technology’s sake. High performing legal departments are making unprecedented and growing demands for the actionable information and insights technology can bring…if structured and implemented strategically. And, they want this information and insight at their fingertips when they need it most. The demand for reliable benchmarks, meaningful KPIs, and detailed invoice and matter data, combined with data sources beyond what e-Billing and matter management systems can provide (i.e., H.R. data, accounts payable data, document management data, etc.) is growing rapidly. A recent example was the successful launch of the Real Rate Report by CT TyMetrix and General Counsel Roundtable. Providing industry wide insights into the drivers of law firm hourly rates.

It will be interesting to see how the market addresses this new trend. Who will lead and who will follow?

Wouldn't it be better if law firms were investing in "Web Tools that Help Clients?"

Last week, The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled, "Using Web Tools to Control Legal Bills." The gist was that large law firms are finally embracing the project-budget and cost-tracking mechanisms that have long been used by their clients.

Frankly, my reaction to this piece is mixed.

On a positive note, the article cites several examples of how law firm innovation has led to new and improved means of serving corporate clients both quantitatively and qualitatively. For example, John Alber, partner at Bryan Cave LLP, created an electronic database for lawyers to efficiently and cost-effectively handle radio-spectrum licensing transactions and a Web-based service to help clients better understand international trade agreement laws. It is this type of expertise that most large law firms are equipped to provide. By creating self-service and virtual legal practice tools that can be easily consumed by both client and firm lawyers, they leverage their domain expertise in a way that scales efficiently across numerous clients.

Another takeaway from the article is that the large law firms are clearly trying to change. Creating meaningful case plans, designing and managing to time and staff budgets are all steps in the right direction -- even if they are a full decade or two behind most law departments' efforts in this regard. Unfortunately, for practical and structural reasons that I discuss below, I am afraid these undertakings, even the noble ones, are unlikely to succeed.

One practical reason that many of these initiatives will fail is that the vast majority are opaque to the client. Most of the tools described in the article are for the firm, not the client. Even when firms do invest in extranets, it is completely unrealistic to expect that law department lawyers who are handling scores or hundreds of matters will endeavor to access cases or financial information on a case-by-case basis. The single-firm extranet model ignores the fact that corporate counsel retain a diversity of firms for different matters, and that many large cases and transactions are handled by multiple firms.

So, if the law firms' intent is well-meaning but the model is flawed, what is the alternative?

Quite simply, law firms and their lawyers should ask to participate directly in their clients' matter-centric management platforms. These platforms, including TyMetrix 360, leverage the Saas (Software as a Service) model to provide unified matter, document and financial management to both in-house and outside counsel.

By using clients' chosen platforms, firms can streamline communications and create a single artifact of all the activities and financials on a given matter. At a minimum, the matter will then have a common plan, budget, progress and resolution. Advanced systems will also enable configurable workflows, embedded business intelligence, document libraries, and the ability to create and track alternatives to the billable hour.

Moreover, by collaborating in a corporation's chosen platform, firms give law departments a gift -- the ability to aggregate, index and analyze matter and financial information across the entire enterprise. It is only by capturing all corporate data in a single data repository that law department leadership can accurately assess the legal and financial risks to the corporation. Unfortunately, none of these benefits can be attained with individual firm extranets.

Accordingly, as much as I would like to, I can't celebrate firms for continuing to expend scarce resources on tools that are more psychological salve than client solution. Rather, I urge firms to consider engaging clients in ways that most benefit the client. It is in this way that firms can truly demonstrate their willingness and aptitude with respect to the financial and budgetary discipline expected of their clients -- and corporate law departments can derive the benefits of aggregated data to help drive results.

Law Department Operations - Plato and Socrates Wrestle with Legal Technology

I just finished Anathem, the latest novel by Neal Stephenson. Even by Stephenson’s wildly creative standards, the book itself is pretty “out there”. Set in the future, Stephenson speculates about religion, war, technology, and believe it or not, multiple universe theory.

To me, one of the most interesting parts of the book was Stephenson’s attempts to disguise a discussion of classical philosophy in the clothes of a sci-fi novel. He does this by creating a battle between two monastic sects: one clearly adherent to Platonic idealism, the other to the dialectics of Socrates. Although he never mentions either philosopher by name, Stephenson runs through their dialogues in a way that highlights the differences –- and points of intersection -– between the two. Moreover, by couching classical philosophy in unfamiliar garb, Stephenson gives himself free reign to expand on the ideas -- and warp them -- as he sees fit.

But what the heck does this have to do with law department management and legal spend management? In short, Anathem got me to thinking about how Socratic dialectic could help solve what I view as one of the biggest impediments to the future of legal technology. Essentially, the problem is this: we have two different, and seemingly incompatible, types of legal systems. One on hand, you have the structured, “backbone” systems like ERP systems that are essential to the efficient operations of an enterprise and have the clear benefit of demonstrable ROI. In legal tech, both basic matter management and spend management fall into this category. These solutions are platonic in that they assume perfect input will result in perfect output. In other words, if you create a perfect matter, you can attain a perfect understanding of that matter. If each of the matters in a portfolio were equally perfect, the combination would also be perfect, or to Plato, ideal.

Unfortunately, as Socrates tells us, you can't really know anything except through semantics and context. The same goes for systems. I do not need to tell anyone who has worked with data that neither the data that goes into a system, nor the data that comes out, is ever perfect. For this reason, we need context. In Socratic terms, we need semantics to create meaning from an insoluble problem. In my terms, we need metadata, both structured and unstructured, to add context to a matter. Currently, T360 enables users to use collaboration tools to supplement matter and financial data with a variety of critical meta-data. In addition, there are other excellent point solutions that can be used to supplement basic matter information. A couple of the best examples include data hosting providers like CT Summation’s CaseVault and sites that rely on Web 2.0 tools like Legal OnRamp.

Fortunately, it looks like we may have reached an historic moment where structured and unstructured data can be correlated in ways that optimize law department and claims operations. Much in the same way CT TyMetrix 360° was first to integrate the point solutions of matter management, e-billing, and document management into a single platform for the management of law department operations, we are on the cusp of integrating T360 with the industry leaders in document hosting and Web 2.0 for the legal profession. By complementing our enterprise legal management platform with on-demand solutions for handling unstructured data, we will synthesize the formerly incompatible systems to optimize law department productivity. The combination will result in a more perfect understanding of all aspects of law department operations.

There’s no way to know but I’m guessing that that's an outcome that even classical philosophers would consider “ideal”.

CT TyMetrix at LegalTech NY

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by the New York Law Journal's Beth Bianculli yesterday at the Incisive Media Legaltech Video Booth (their site provides the full list of Q&As with conference participants and exhibitors). We spoke briefly about the advantages CT TyMetrix can provide to the in-house law department, particularly in a business environment where costs are under ever-increasing scrutiny. Unfortunately, it would seem that my microphone hadn't been turned all the way up, so you may need to listen closely. In any case, we're happy to have been a part of their video conversations (and to be among the company of notable legal bloggers: Rees Morrison also features his Legaltech video today on his Law Department Management blog).

If you're at Legaltech today or tomorrow, please feel free to stop by our booth (#217). And don't forget to mark your schedule to join CT TyMetrix's own Matt Den Ouden for this afternoon's panel discussion on matter management systems, moderated by Scott Rosenberg of Huron Consulting (click here for a preview).

Law Department 2.0

I just heard an excellent presentation by John Barker, Wolters Kluwer’s guru of all things Web 2.0. In it, John refers frequently to Marc Prensky, a futurist who posits a fundamental difference between “digital natives” and “digital immigrants”. According to Mr. Prensky, a “digital native” is anyone born in or after 1981. In essence, digital natives have evolved past email to Web 2.0. They have grown up instant messaging, texting, and tweeting. They rely on social networks, blogs, and wikis to communicate. They require video game excellence in user interfaces and Google-like performance. Importantly, they rely heavily on the “meta” in the digital world, in which the ratings from their community on a particular product or piece of content are as important, or more important, than anything else. According to Mr. Prensky, the digital native not just demands all things Web 2.0, their neurons require it. Studies have shown that digital immigrant’s nervous system is hard-wired differently than digital immigrants.

The rest of us are “digital immigrants” (he says having been born a couple of decades before the cut off). We might be adept at the use of technology, even excited about it, but the vast majority of us will never have the wiring to fully understand the digital native.

What does this mean for the legal community?

By my calculations, the first digital natives are about half way to becoming partners in law firms and senior members of law departments. In other words, those individuals who expect video game excellence in graphics and all the bells and whistles of Web 2.0 are only a couple of years from making “buy” decisions on the technology that the profession will use to communicate among itself. Suffice it to say that application platforms that rely on the design metaphors satisfactory only to the digital immigrant (like Microsoft’s current UI metaphor) will likely face a tough audience in the natives.

More than just a usability issue, I believe that the ascendancy of Web 2.0 -- and its adoption by digital natives -- will help the legal community finally claim that Holy Grail called knowledge management. Why? Web 2.0, and its use by digital natives, solves the two main impediments to successful KM.

From my perspective, the first impediment to successful KM was difficulty of adding and extracting – in a timely meaningful way – the data that puts the “K” in KM. Correct input required slavish adherence to a onerous workflow, as well as strict discipline regarding the addition of structured metadata. These two tasks added so much overhead to the input process that it very quickly fell into the category of “more trouble than its worth.” Once in, the data was then lost in an imperfectly structured blob, forever lost to potential consumers of the info. Web 2.0, in its various flavors, creates so many channels to share the data that the “overhead” issue is resolved. Moreover, the combination of concept search and tools designed to lever the abundance of metadata available in today’s data stores enables users to easily retrieve contextually relevant content. This process if refined even further when used inside of “profile driven” networking sites like Legal OnRamp and LinkedIn.

The second primary obstacle to success in KM? Digital immigrants. There are mindsets and behaviors among most digital immigrants that do not easily adapt to the openness required for KM to attain its highest state. Personally, I don’t feel comfortable “publishing” my work until I have had a couple of chances to review it. Even then, I have some apprehension before I push the publish button. I do not see that type of self censorship with digital natives. A peek onto any Millenials’ Facebook page is an object lesson in my point. Therefore, as digital natives become the majority, the primary behavioral impediment to successful KM will disappear.

Finally, you may be asking yourself, why in the heck is a guy who sells the industry leading matter management and e-billing platform waxing on about Web 2.0, digital natives, and KM? Well, I certainly find it interesting. Also, I’m sufficiently paranoid that I work hard to anticipate what’s next. At the end of the day, however, the reason that I’m really interested in the topic is because I see it as the next stage in the evolution of law department technology. Currently, and at the risk of immodesty, our T360 platform is the best in the market and the core operating system for law departments that use it. Candidly, for as good as it is, I think that most digital natives would find it somewhat restrictive. In order to serve both our current clients – most of whom are digital immigrants -- and the next generation, we are going to have to incorporate the wisdom of digital natives into our thought process.

Matter Management 2.0

I've been invited to participate in a LegalTech panel on Tuesday, February 3.

Matter Management 2.0
If there was ever an offering that was in need of reality show make over, it is (at least as commonly conceived by the market) good old “matter management”. Like the Ford 150 that just got taken for granted as a necessity, it is time for a redo. And I think there is actually a lot to talk about if you compare what people think as to what is or should be included in or asked of matter management circa 2000 verses 2009 / 2010. This very subject will be put to a panel organized by Huron at Legal Tech Tuesday in NYC. Myself and two leaders from other legal software companies will all be asked to talk about how matter management has changed, what its ROI is or should be, and what is coming around the corner. In short, why should the law department market care and think about updating their old system.

At Huron’s request, the three leading vendors have agreed to “lay down their arms” for the session and talk openly about what is on the road map in the area of integrated platforms, EDD, legal holds, DM, spend management, reporting, and a host of other topics. I am looking forward to it and I do feel it is time to challenge the industry in tough economy to show how these platforms add value and how it is possible for a law department to not have to stop at every booth at Legal Tech to stitch together a solution that meets its needs. “Necessity is always the mother of invention”, but happily I think the market is ready to meet this challenge.

Join us for a webinar Dec 11 at 1pm ET

If you are a corporate legal professional responsible for managing e-discovery in your law department, a free webinar this week centers around corporate electronic discovery.

How Law Departments can Simplify their eDiscovery: From Matter to Production
Adhering to the eDiscovery Rules of Civil Procedure is a daunting task. As the amount of stored data continues to increase, a simplified process for identifying the right electronically stored information (ESI) and getting that data to the right people in a format they can use becomes critical. One of the biggest problems is there is no single solution that addresses the legal workflow from the Matter through the Production phase.

During this webinar, we will discuss tangible options for forward-thinking corporate legal departments to efficiently manage the discovery process involving ESI. By establishing efficient procedures relating to the management of ESI you can mitigate possible sanctions that can now be imposed through the new Fed Rules of Civil Procedure.

Thursday, December 11 - 1:00 p.m. ET

This one-hour webinar is presented by CT TyMetrix, CT Summation and Kazeon.

Register here.

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