Legal Commentary

Adobe Acrobat: Addition by Subtraction

Posted on October 20, 2010
Less is More: Adobe Acrobat X (aka 10) has been launched, with a significant revamp of the menu bar, cutting choices in half to five. Ernest Svenson, in his PDF for Lawyers blog, explains that the upgrade now offers "File, Edit, View, Window, and Help" options, jettisoning "Document, Comments, Forms, Tools, and Advanced" buttons...

Darwin Watch: Lou A New CEO of Bloomberg Law

Posted on October 18, 2010
Bloomberg Law has wooed two former LexisNexis leaders to help push its competing legal research system. Lou Andreozzi (right) the former CEO of LexisNexis North American, has joined as its CEO, Larry Thompson as chief operating officer. Thompson, who will be responsible for day-to-day operations, is a former senior vice president at LexisNexis...

NoLa's Green Matters: Not Perfect, But Very Good.

Posted on October 15, 2010
New Orleans -- Consultant/attorney Theodore Banks (right), who spent the bulk of his career as a leader in Kraft Food's legal department, set the tone at the Green Matters conference as he reminded the audience that to successfully promote environment-friendly programs, everyone must remember that "the perfect is the enemy of the good...

Fios' Mack Moves to ZyLab

Posted on October 15, 2010
Mary Mack, considered by many to be the "face" of Fios, has defected to join ZyLab as its enterprise technology counsel. She starts her new post on November 7, based in California, after a decade with the Oregon e-discovery provider as its corporate technology counsel...

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Green Matters Conference: Susan Dorn

Posted on October 14, 2010
New Orleans -- Susan Dorn, general of the U.S. Green Building Council and its affiliated Green Building Certification Institute, was this morning's keynote speaker at the Green Matters Conference in New Orleans. The conference (which previously was Green Legal Matters) is taking place through Friday in New Orleans, rescheduled (and with an expanded agenda, to address government, legal, and architecture issues) from its original April calendar slot...

No Surprises

Posted on October 14, 2010
Fulbright & Jaworski has released its seventh "Litigation Trends Survey," with the not-unexpected results that the 403 corporate counsel respondents predict another "litigious, cost-conscious" year. Just about everyone (93% U.S. and 97% U.K.) expects that legal disputes will either increase or remain the same next year...

DLA Piper Live Webcast of Tech Summit Today

Posted on October 12, 2010
Technology Summit: DLA Piper convenes its second "DLA Piper Global Technology Leaders Summit" today, featuring keynote speeches from Cisco's chair/CEO John Chambers (morning) and Hewlett Packard's Shane Robison, executive vice president chief strategy and technology officer (lunch)...

Let's Make a Deal?

Posted on October 11, 2010
The New York Times' DealBook (edited by Andrew Ross Sorkin) had an absolutely intriguing post on Oct. 7, "What a Microsoft-Adobe Merger Might Look Like." Nick Bilton reports that "the chiefs of Microsoft and Adobe Systems met recently to discuss, among other possibilities, a merger of the two to better combat Apple...

War of Words

Posted on October 11, 2010
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday in a closely watched case, Synder v. Phelps, where the family of soldier Matthew Snyder, killed in Iraq, has sued members of a church who picketed his funeral with signs reading, "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "Thank God for IEDs...

TR Buys Serengeti Law, Launches GRC unit

Posted on October 11, 2010
More evidence that compliance is moving front-and-center in the legal technology world: Thomson Reuters has acquired Serengeti Law, and has launched a new governance, risk, and compliance business unit. The new GRC unit is housed within the Thomson Reuters Legal division, and led by David Craig, who assumes the title of president...

Thomson Reuters has acquired Serengeti

Posted on October 08, 2010
Thomson Reuters has acquired Serengeti Law, and has launched a new governance, risk, and compliance business unit. The new GRC unit is housed within the Thomson Reuters Legal division, and led by David Craig, who assumes the title of president. (He previously served as TR's chief strategy officer...

FTC Green Guides Revisions

Posted on October 06, 2010
I turn the microphone over to Minneapolis' (where I wish I was today) Melissa Krasnow, of Dorsey & Whitney: "Today, the Federal Trade Commission proposed revisions to the ?Green Guides,? the guidance that it gives marketers to help them avoid making misleading environmental claims, including marketers? use of product certifications and seals of approval, ?renewable energy? claims, ?renewable materials? claims, and ?carbon offset? claims...

Mirror, Mirror

Posted on October 06, 2010
Kim Walker, senior litigation paralegal with Berger & Montague, is a veteran of complex class action lawsuits and serves on the board of the Philadelphia Association of Paralegals. For an article in The Legal Intelligencer, Walker posed this question to lawyers at three Philly law firm: "What do you wish your paralegal knew?" The answers provide a virtual Rorschach test of both lawyer and paralegal psyches and frustrations -- but also provide a road map of opportunity for savvy paralegals: Among the responses: ? I wish my paralegal knew, or at least had a basic understanding of, all the new software and technology used in law offices now...

Bully Pulpit

Posted on October 05, 2010
U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Paul Grimm, of the district of Maryland, wasn't shy about his distaste for the defendant in a nasty piece of recent litigation, Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe et al. In his 89-page opinion, Grimm describes defendant Mark Pappas' data destruction and dissembling as "the single most egregious example of spoliation that I have encountered in any case that I have handled, or in any case described, in the legion of spoliation cases I have read in nearly 14 years on the bench...

Third Time's the Charm?

Posted on October 04, 2010
"In the beginning, there was brute force linear review of electronic data," where lawyers would start at one end of a collection and march right through it to make document-by-document decisions about relevance, privilege, etc., explain Anne Kershaw and Joseph Howie, in "Crash or Soar?," the October cover story in Law Technology News...

Datacert Launches Passport

Posted on October 01, 2010
Datacert says its new Passport legal business management system for corporate counsel serves as a centralized work space, helping general counsel teams access relevant company data and collaborate with colleagues. Passport features Datacert?s legal matter management and spending tools, which support risk and compliance management, and help companies manage and reduce legal costs...

Manage Change

Posted on September 30, 2010
Author/professor/futurist/techie Richard Susskind was the headline act at today's "Generals of the Revolution" road show, touting his campaign that the profession must recognize that lawyers -- whether they are in private or corporate practice -- must embrace new work models and technology to meet the demands of their clients for better, faster, and cheaper legal services...

SoloCorps Launch

Posted on September 28, 2010
Solo lawyers Carolyn Elefant and Lisa Solomon have created SoloCorps, a website with 50 videos that chronicle the "the stories, experiences, and wisdom of solo and small firm lawyers." It currently features attorneys from Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Pennsylvania; more are scheduled...

Sticks & Stones

Posted on September 24, 2010
A New York court has rejected a suit alleging online harassment, holding that the state's laws "do not recognize cyber or internet bullying as a cognizable tort action." Finkel v. Dauber was decided in July, in the Supreme Court of Nassau County; plaintiff Denise Finkel was allegedly the subject of "extremely unpleasant" Facebook messages...

Virtual LegalTech

Posted on September 23, 2010
Virtual LegalTech Starts Today: seven live sessions, with all but one earning CLE credit in Calif., New York, and Ill. (Credit is pending for Florida.) Here are two of the six panels that can generate those important CLE credits: 9:15 a.m. Eastern time: "Legal Project Management" features Rocket Matters' Larry Port (chief software architect) and Mike Moore, the company's CFO/VP of business affairs...

Thomson Reuters Celebrates TrustLaw

Posted on September 23, 2010
I turn the microphone over to LTN news editor Daniel Howley: Thomson Reuters celebrated its new TrustLaw service Tuesday, with a luncheon and a panel discussion at its New York City headquarters. President and CEO Peter Warwick presided over the program; the panel was moderated by the iconic Arthur Miller, professor at New York University's law school...

Perils & Pitfalls

Posted on September 22, 2010
We write a lot about computer virtualization in Law Technology News, because it is an effective way to not only save money, but also to go "green" and reduce energy consumption. Benefits include fully exploiting computer resources, easing administration, improving fault tolerance, and saving costs for electricity, cooling, and floor space...

Mining for Gold

Posted on September 20, 2010
What's that old expression, we only use 10% of any of our technology features? Seattle-based consultant (and former head of Microsoft's legal technology team) Steven Levy helps you better exploit your existing software in "Dig(ital) Gold," in the September issue of Law Technology News...

Darwin Watch: DTI Acquires Daticon EED

Posted on September 20, 2010
Document Technologies Inc. has acquired Daticon EED, a Seattle-area e-discovery company. The company will now be known as "EED, a DTI company," based in Atlanta. Effective immediately, it will act as the operating unit supporting current Daticon EED clients...

Colorado eDiscovery Summit

Posted on September 17, 2010
Jeff Staal, litigation technology support manager at Davis Graham & Stubbs, wants to remind you that the Colorado Association of Litigation Support Professionals will hold its eDiscovery Summit in Denver on October 1. Speakers include retired United States District Court Senior Judge James Rosenbaum, who now is affiliated with JAMS, and also serves on the Sedona Conference Advisory Board and Rosenbaum, left, who hails from Minnesota, will offer a federal judge's perspective on e-discovery...

Cloudy Forecast?

Posted on September 16, 2010
In Law Technology News' September cover story, "Safe Sky," Patrick Oot, general counsel of the Electronic Discovery Institute, details how corporate law departments can be at odds with the business side of their organizations over cloud computing. As online repositories become dirt cheap, they are more tempting to companies, especially for e-mail and messaging...

President's Corner: John Willcutts

Posted on September 16, 2010
President's Corner: Nexidia's president and CEO, John Willcutts, reports that the latest upgrade of the company's audio review software, AudioFinder 3, is a desktop-based program that allows you to search by example to locate individual words or phrases within an audio file...

Cloudy Forecast?

Posted on September 15, 2010
In Law Technology News' September cover story, "Safe Sky," Patrick Oot, general counsel of the Electronic Discovery Institute, details how corporate law departments can be at odds with the business side of their organizations over cloud computing. As online repositories become dirt cheap, they are more tempting to companies, especially for e-mail and messaging...

More! More!

Posted on September 13, 2010
Bob Ambrogi's September LTN Web Watch column, "Are Legal Blogs Dead?," drew quite a reaction from the blawgosphere. Critics fell into two contingents, reports Ambrogi on his LawSites blog (which recently underwent a gorgeous remodel). "In one camp were those who were unhappy with the blogs I chose to highlight...

Mark Your Calendar: 9/23 for Virtual LegalTech

Posted on September 10, 2010
On Sept. 23, ALM will host the next "live" session of Virtual LegalTech. It is free, and all but one of the four hour-long panels will offer continuing legal education credit for California, New York, and Illinois attorneys (Florida credit is pending)...

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