The 64 presenters at this year’s ABA TechShow were overwhelmingly white and male. I count 15 women (23%) and just 2 people of color (3% — although it is difficult to tell who might consider themselves a person of color just from a photograph). All of the LexThink.1 presenters who showed up were white and male (LexThink.1 is not officially part of TechShow, but it has become a much-anticipated prelude to the conference).
Why is this? Is the planning board consciously or unconsciously excluding women and minorities? Are no women or minorities interested in presenting or qualified to talk about tech? Do women and minorities feel like their speaking proposals will not be taken seriously?
Keep Reading ⇒
At TechShow, I had a lot of great conversations with other geeks. It’s fun to share ideas, talk about tech and see what works (and what doesn’t) for lawyers in their practices. It just seems a shame that we really only get to do that once a year in Chicago.
Fortunately, Ernie (formerly the Attorney) Svenson and Adriana Linares gave me the idea for a weekly “coffee break” via Google+ Hangouts. I totally stole the idea and ran with it, and scheduled a Hangout for next Friday. If you’ve got a webcam, join us. (If you don’t, you can watch and comment, at least.)
Hope to see you in the Hangout next Friday!
Clio just announced two integrations that add robust backoffice accounting (Xero) and serious document management (NetDocuments) to its already-great practice management package.
Clio’s CEO, Jack Newton, also said his developers are putting together a mobile app that will be “worth the wait” (his words). I obviously don’t know exactly what he means by that, but Jack said his team did not want to just throw together an app; they wanted to build an experience optimized for both mobile and Clio. Sounds cool. I’m expecting something like long-awaited and really awesome Basecamp iOS app. So if you are a Clio user (or the client of a Clio user), look forward to the app.
Keep Reading ⇒
I use MyCase and its iPhone app daily, and I have for nearly a year. My partner and I use it for all of our invoicing, conflict checks, billing, and general matter management. So, how has it held up?
Overall, MyCase seems to have lagged behind Rocket Matter and Clio in development over the past year. And now that we have used it for so long, a lot of the shine has worn off. We are noticing flaws that did not bother us when we started with it.
Keep Reading ⇒
The theme of this year’s LexThink.1 was disruption. I suppose that is because, with all the disruptive innovation happening all around us, everyone wants to know when it will come to law practice. So all the speakers talked about what will disrupt law practice, whether it’s virtual offices or LegalZoom or gamification or Big Data.
Here’s the thing: disruptive innovation is not coming to the law. At least, not quickly.
Keep Reading ⇒
See our Law Technology Buyer's Guide for our top technology recommendations.
Ian O’Flahetry was a jury consultant long before he started Lit Software, LLC and brought us TrialPad and TranscriptPad. Apparently he got tired of watching lawyers struggle with legal pads and post-it notes to keep track of notes on jurors.
His response wasn’t an app. It was JuryNotes. JuryNotes is a simple structured paper pad system. In reality, it is simply a better legal pad and post-it note. Is this the holy grail of voir dire systems that trial attorneys have been searching for? No. But it is a solid, simple system for organizing simple data and short notes during voir dire.
Keep Reading ⇒
If you spend a lot of your time at your computer (or even within earshot of it), you probably get some sort of “you’ve got mail” notification, like Microsoft Outlook’s Desktop Alerts. And if you’re trying to work on something else besides email, that’s distracting.
But you don’t want to miss anything important, either. How can you strike an effective balance between being accessible and getting stuff done?
Keep Reading ⇒
Each six-minute LexThink.1 presentation (similar to Pecha Kucha) is just long enough to get out a single idea — if the presenter is any good. The idea is to be entertaining and clever, not comprehensive.
Actually, LexThink.1 may be entertaining for the audience, but since most of the presenters are seasoned speakers, it’s more like a dance battle. If doing polished, six-minute presentations were in any way like dancing.
Keep Reading ⇒
Today MyCase announced a new version of their iPhone app. The previous version was essentially just a mobile billing platform. You could not do much else with it. But I’ve had the beta version of the newest offering and it is head and shoulders above what they had before.
Keep Reading ⇒
Total Attorneys started out as a lead generation company, but every time I have talked to Ed or Kevin, it’s been obvious that what they are really working on is building a turnkey law practice. In other words, you sign up, and Total Attorneys generates leads, answers the phone, helps you manage your files — maybe even helps you do the work. It’s a law practice platform, not just services and software.
Whether you approve of this or not, I think it’s a pretty lofty goal. And Total Attorneys’ aggressive pace of development keeps it rocketing towards that goal.
Keep Reading ⇒
![Nominate the Best Law Firm Websites (2013 Edition) [UPDATED]](http://lawyerist.com/lawyerist/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-popular-posts/timthumb.php?src=http://lawyerist.com/lawyerist/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/best-law-firm-websites-nominations-2013.jpg&h=90&w=90)
