TechnoLawyer: Law Office Management

Coming today to Fat Friday: Robert Rice reviews Casemaker for legal research, Damian Christianson continues the build your own PC debate, Michael Jones discusses RAID 1 and his preferred online backup provider, Jonathan Jackel explains how to make a phone call using the Verizon MiFi and an iPod Touch, and Richard Ure shares his thoughts on the iPad. Don't miss this issue.

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Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 76 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:

One Very Small Law Firm; One Extremely Large Computer Virus

Playing It Cool With a Jawbone in Your Ear

The Noose Just Tightened on Selling Your Law Practice

The State of the AmLaw Blogosphere 2010

Don't miss this issue or future issues.

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Coming today to Fat Friday: Bill Hodes revisits his opinion about AVVO, John Hall discusses document assembly versus search and replace, Ben Schorr raises another SaaS concern and also provides some password wisdom, Arthur Ray explains why he's buying an iPad, and Gordon Greta tells us why a lawyer profiled in a recent BigLaw column needs to get a grip — on reality that is. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive Fat Friday
Our most serendipitous offering, Fat Friday consists of unsolicited contributions by TechnoLawyer members. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The Fat Friday newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to Answers to Questions: Douglas Thomas shares his thoughts on fee retainers and billing, Thomas Hutto reviews AudioWav MobileMic for BlackBerry, NCH for transcription equipment, and JMDictate (now Dictamus) for iPhone, Tom Raftery reviews Garmin GPS for BlackBerry, Alan Press discusses his Mac/PC office setup, and Simon Laurent reviews Amicus Attorney 2009 Premium Edition and Amicus Accounting. Don't miss this issue.

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Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In Answers to Questions, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The Answers to Questions newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 70 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:

Is Acrobat Really Necessary?

Hit the Road, Jack: Secure Mobile Computing

Why Lawyers Struggle With Psychotherapy

Why Some Crappy Lawyers Have Happy Clients

This issue also contains links to every article in the March/April 20010 issue of Law Practice Magazine and the March issue of Law Practice Today. Don't miss this issue or future issues.

How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. To stay on top of all the noteworthy articles published in blogs and other online publications you could either hire a research assistant or simply subscribe to BlawgWorld. The BlawgWorld newsletter has received rave reviews and is free. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on March 8, 2010 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.

Warning — a rant is headed your way. A well-reasoned and situationally warranted one I believe, but definitely a rant. If I hear one more debate about whether lawyers should use software as a service (SaaS) (aka cloud computing systems), my head might explode. This debate is perpetually mired in concerns about accessibility, ethics, and security. It's time to move past these nonissues and focus on more relevant issues that will enable SaaS products to mature into mainstream small firm products.

The Two Most Hotly Debated SaaS Issues Are Nonissues

Like many others, I've consistently sounded the dual alarms of SaaS: caution about newer technology, and of professional responsibility. These cautionary points do not revolve around functionality, necessarily, because there is much to be said about the "less is more" design approach embodied by SaaS products (especially practice management systems).

Rather, reasonable prudence from a best practices perspective focuses in part on continuity — availability of practice-critical data such as docketing and deadline information, documents, and core matter information. Small firms still need to reckon with access issues such as a data outage or slowdown anywhere in the digital pipeline, or vendor insolvency complicated by a predictably recalcitrant bankruptcy trustee.

It is relatively easy to address potential continuity issues. Eventually, legal SaaS system providers will build the local system mirroring/syncing/replication tools to ensure the same offline accessibility that enterprise corporate products have had for years. Why haven't the small-firm oriented legal SaaS providers built workable, immediately usable offline capability yet? Beats me — they know it's an issue and they must be tired of the constant pundit criticism.

The reality, however, is that continuity issues need to be balanced against the possibility of internally-maintained software becoming inaccessible because of a panoply of technology troubles. Digital bad days blacken all doorsteps — both externally and internally hosted applications fall prey to disrupted access.

Other concerns continue to swirl, especially vague ethical rules regarding surrender of control of confidential client information to third parties. The confidentiality issue ties into data transmission and encryption issues as well as the disposition of confidential information in the event of vendor insolvency and dissolution.

The reality, in the absence of inevitable ethical opinions and updated rules of professional responsibility, is that the ethics issues are largely a red herring. There is a long tradition of permitting third party data access and control to confidential client information. The obvious example is using third parties to retrieve and maintain archived client files, or to process electronic discovery files. Even online data backup, with multiple state bar associations having vetted and endorsed various services, has become informally accepted.

So let's just all get over it — SaaS makes sense. The above issues will be resolved, likely sooner rather than later. If the world's largest corporations can place their trust in wildly successful and field-proven SaaS products such as Salesforce.com, legal SaaS systems will become just as trustworthy. Outside of the small firm sphere, we already see very successful examples of SaaS legal applications, including mission critical systems such as financial management products. Rippe & Kingston's LMS+ is a sound example.

It's the Functionality, Stupid

In a world where universal access across multiple devices is rapidly becoming a necessity — PCs, Macs, iPhones, BlackBerrys, and now iPads — the browser interface is inevitable. The faster traditional software vendors realize that users prefer simpler, consistent browser-centric interfaces, the more likely they'll survive and thrive in the long run.

So what should we focus on when it comes to SaaS? How about functionality? How about shifting the debate to what really matters to users. Whether financial, document, litigation, or practice management, how well do the various products perform? Does this shift in focus mean that SaaS providers should be given a free pass when it comes to continuity and ethical issues? Of course not. Law firms must do their homework in this regard, but they must also evaluate the features.

Only by focusing on the needs of small law firms can we improve existing SaaS products and encourage new entrants into the marketplace. For example, there's no reason that Rippe & Kingston can produce a fully-featured, hosted financial system, but not produce a functional equivalent for smaller firms, scaled down to a lower hosted price point. The point is that the models are there for SaaS success. Further, Rippe & Kingston offers a particularly intelligent choice for its customers — hosted or self-hosted (so-called "iSaaS" or "internal software as a service"). I expect similar offerings from the providers of traditional software if and when they enter the SaaS market.

The small firm legal SaaS world can most certainly succeed. SaaS vendors should focus on promoting functionality first, while methodically shoring up their services' perceived and/or real weaknesses in the two fundamental areas of platform criticism. Address and end the current stalemate and grow up SaaS — the small firm market is ready for and needs you.

Lawyer Ross L. Kodner is the founder and principal of MicroLaw, a legal technology and law practice management consultancy renowned for its work with small law firms (as well as larger firms and corporate/government legal departments of all sizes). Though based in Milwaukee, MicroLaw serves small firms and other clients around the world. The recipient of many industry awards (including five Technolawyer Awards), Ross speaks at many events and blogs at Ross Ipsa Loquitur, finalist in the ABA's 2008 Blawg 100. If your firm is ready to practice smart and seeks to thrive in spite of these tough times, we suggest you contact Ross.

Written by Ross Kodner of MicroLaw.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to TechnoFeature: Many reasons exist for creating a "green" law office even if you could care less about global warming, climate change, nuclear power, wind, coal, CAFE auto mileage standards, wind farms, blah, blah, blah. In this article, Edward Zohn explains why a "green" law office presents special challenges yet offers significant financial advantages. Edward offers strategies for using no more of the Earth's resources than you must — and saving money in the process.

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Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 75 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:

What Will Legal Technology Do to the Cravath System?

Security Issues Causing Some Law Firms to Ban iPhone Use

The Office Coffee Is More Important Than it Seems

Link Building vs. Link Marketing: What's The Difference?

This issue also contains links to every article in the March 2010 issue of Law Technology News. Don't miss this issue or future issues.

How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. To stay on top of all the noteworthy articles published in blogs and other online publications you could either hire a research assistant or simply subscribe to BlawgWorld. The BlawgWorld newsletter has received rave reviews and is free. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on March 8, 2010 in our free BigLaw newsletter.

Hailed by law firms and cursed by their clients, the billable hour remains the lifeblood of the legal profession. With primacy comes the risk of abuse. Risk? Actually, fact. Padding hours is a dirty little secret of the large firm world. How does it occur? Can it be stopped? Let's take a look.

Falsifying billable time occurs in several ways. On a micro level, attorneys can work slowly on assignments to rack up time or they can pad their time entries with extra hours. And on a macro level, while no law firms pad their attorneys' hours outright (or at least have been caught), most have fee arrangements and attorney compensation and advancement policies that don't exactly discourage their associates from overbilling. Addressing this problem requires more than just eliminating the billable hour fee arrangement.

Bill Padding Under the Traditional BigLaw Model

In the traditional model, the billable hour fee arrangement works in tandem with firm's compensation practices to create the perfect storm of perverse incentives to overbill. Take, for example, a typical law firm that pays its lawyers bonuses based on billable hours. The promise of bigger bonuses entices attorneys to inflate their hours, and the lure of higher revenue motives the firm to accept the bloated time records at face value and pass them onto clients unchecked.

Paying lockstep compensation doesn't thwart overbilling either since attorney evaluations, class advancement, raises, and job security remain tied to billables. Internal rankings for possible future partners also use this metric. Yet worst of all, neither the firm nor its attorneys have any incentive to tackle the hour-padding problem since the client is the only that pays for it — both literally and figuratively.

Merit Based Compensation Won't Solve the Problem

Though the traditional model still dominates, fixed-fee arrangements and merit-based compensation for attorneys have grown increasingly popular over the past few years. Unfortunately, these new models in their current incarnations have had little impact on the bill-padding phenomenon.

For example, firms that have migrated to merit-based compensation such as Howrey and Foley & Lardner continue to consider billable hours when determining associate compensation, which means that associates still have incentive to inflate their hours.

Fixed-fee arrangements provide the proper incentives for law firms to work efficiently and control client cost. But as long as attorney compensation and evaluations remain tied to billable hours, individual attorneys still have reason to embellish their diaries. As a result, flat fees simply shift the hour-padding burden from clients (who no longer receive bloated bills) to the firms themselves, which lose man-hours because of inefficient lawyers while paying them higher bonuses for their fabricated time.

The Solution to Bill Padding Has Its Own Perils

It's tough to imagine a world in which law firms don't use the billable hour either as a fee structure or a yardstick for evaluating and paying associates. But a legal world free of the billable hour is precisely what we need to eradicate the hour-padding problem and all of its moral and financial hazards.

If firms adopt both flat fees (or similar alternative fee arrangements) and true merit-based compensation systems that emphasize work product quality, client service, and other factors long used in the corporate world instead of relying on billable hours, attorneys will have virtually no incentive to overstate their time and firms will work efficiently on projects and send clients predictable invoices.

However, law firms that adopt such a system must resist directly pegging compensation to "efficiency," as emphasizing fast work may create the reverse incentive among attorneys — "underbilling" by cutting corners, which could result in loss of clients for reasons having nothing to do with sticker shock not to mention greater risk of malpractice claims and bad publicity.

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Originally published on March 1, 2010 in our free BigLaw newsletter.

When disasters like the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile strike, many lawyers want to offer assistance, but don't know how to put their skills to use. Given the complex problems that exist in the developing world, writing a mean summary judgment motion may not seem like a particularly transferable skill. Since 2001, the New York City Bar Association's Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice has offered lawyers in New York and around the country an opportunity to get involved in pro bono work on international legal issues.

The Vance Center, which is named for former United States Secretary of State (and New York City Bar president) Cyrus R. Vance, seeks to "give continuing substance to [Vance's] conviction that lawyers have an ethical obligation to play an active role in the promotion of peace, democracy, and social justice." Explains Elise Colomer Grimaldi, an Associate Director at the Center and the Director of its Latin America Program and Clearinghouse, the Vance Center "tries to engage lawyers, in the U.S. and abroad, in human rights work," in order to expand access to justice in young democracies and developing economies. Law firms, Colomer Grimaldi says, are an essential part of the Center's work.

The Center's efforts focus on human rights issues in Latin America and Africa. But, while the Center's partners in the private bar include law firms with practices in these regions, a foreign presence is not prerequisite to any firm's involvement. Rather, Colomer Grimaldi explains, one of the primary assets that law firms bring to the table is knowledge.

"Law firms have a lot to offer in the form of 'know-how' — in terms of legal issues, but perhaps more importantly, with respect to the variety of technical issues involved in implementing a pro bono program, and the nuts and bolts of getting pro bono work done," says Colomer Grimaldi. "Law firms and practitioners here in the U.S. may not have experience working on the actual legal problems that affect Latin America and Africa, but they have a great deal of experience running pro bono cases and programs — from knowing how to use FOIA requests effectively in certain kinds of litigation to understanding how to create groups of lawyers who can work with non-governmental organizations or other human rights advocates."

"The 'transfer of knowledge,' from law firms is invaluable," she adds. "The ability of U.S. lawyers to share that knowledge — about how pro bono programs are structured, how to create opportunities for pro bono work outside of typical business relationships, and how to get young lawyers engaged in pro bono work — is tremendously important to the lawyers we work with in Latin America and Africa." In 2008, the Center and its partners (in the private bar and in Latin America) introduced the Pro Bono Declaration for the Americas, which represented the "first collaborative effort in the Americas to articulate the professional responsibility of lawyers to promote access to justice and provide pro bono legal assistance to those in need."

Law firms bring another important asset to the table: reputation. "U.S. law firms bring clout and credibility to projects and pro bono efforts elsewhere," Colomer Grimaldi explains. "Because U.S. firms are seen as the 'law firm of the 21st century,' they confer legitimacy on their foreign counterparts, which want to be perceived as having the same best practices, and the same value to contribute to social justice efforts."

Some may wonder whether pro bono work and helping to build pro bono networks in other countries is a luxury limited to large firms with ample resources? Not at all, according to Colomer Grimaldi. The Center relies on firms of all sizes for research, "knowledge transfer," and for the assistance they can offer in the virtual realm, through VanceNet, its "Web-facilitated network of lawyers, scholars and advocates working to enhance access to justice and public interest law in their countries and regions."

Through VanceNet, she says, lawyers from small to midsize firms can contribute in a variety of ways, from providing "specific expertise to talking to their foreign counterparts about how to balance the need to make a profit with their legal and social responsibilities to the community." In other words, the Vance Center helps even the most local practitioners find a way to act globally.

How to Receive BigLaw
Many large firms have good reputations for their work and bad reputations as places to work. Why? Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, BigLaw goes deep undercover inside some of the country's biggest law firms. But we don't just dish up the dirt. We also mine it for best and worst practices and other nuggets of knowledge. The BigLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.