aLawyer Reviews iPaper
February 21, 2008 | Filed Under Unplugged - Audio, Technology
There’s a new and potentially game-changing technology for viewing files on the web. It’s called iPaper, from the people at the document-sharing website Scribd. The image below is a copy of my 2008 preview that was provided to subscribers of Wired GC - Select.
The technology is free, and I bet a few document-sharing application providers are gnashing their teeth right about now.
An audio explanation is located below this image (it’s multimedia Thursday at the Wired GC). The slider at the far right of this document allows you to scroll throught the four pages.
Just click on the red arrow to hear a short overview of iPaper and Scribd.
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And you can click here for a full-page version.
Tyco + Eversheds = Sea Change
January 22, 2008 | Filed Under Law Firm Trends, Technology, New Services
An innovation is by definition notable. Revisiting it one year on can be very instructive.
Thelawyer.com has just such a review of Eversheds’ landmark deal last year with Tyco. I covered the initial announcement here, calling it “Convergence Like a Laser Beam.”
You’ll recall the jaw-dropping nature of the deal: Tyco replaced 175-200 law firms with one, Eversheds. Other clients such as Samsung and Azko Nobel have climbed aboard the E-train.
Fiona Smith, the GC of Severn Trent, another new all-in client of Eversheds, goes on the record:
“Eversheds impressed significantly in the selection process as a firm that would invest time and energy in getting to know our business and as a firm that would be committed to helping us all get the very best advice at a reasonable and transparent cost,” says Smith.
Part of Eversheds’ approach is using something most law firms talk about but few use well: technology applied smartly:
So what is the secret weapon that Eversheds uses to get general counsel salivating with its reasonable and transparent costs? According to Eversheds, it is that cornerstone of business - a computer software package.
The program, dubbed the ‘Global Account Management System’, or Gams as it is known affectionately at Eversheds, is the centrepiece of the firm’s tenders.
Gams (not the most gender-neutral moniker, by the way…) allows clients like Tyco to approve work on a case or transaction before work begins. And that is sweet music to any GC or managing counsel who opens a monthly statement and sees a new matter, running into five figures, that is news to them.
Explains Eversheds energy chief Stephen Hopkins:
“No work on any case or transaction for Tyco can start without its approval,” says Hopkins. “If Tyco hasn’t approved it and we just go ahead anyway, we will not get paid.”
Some firms are no doubt looking at 2008 with trepidation. A few may think that the answer is raising rates or pushing fee-earner utilization (i.e., hours billed) higher.
What Tyco-Eversheds shows is that such firms are not facing squarely what is going on in the global corporate legal services market.
Wake up and take a deep breath…
Google Docs Roils Legal Tech - II
September 21, 2007 | Filed Under Law 2.0, Technology
After thinking about why Google Docs may matter for the law, a few thoughts.
One key is to foster working together with a simple interface (compatible with Word, Excel and PowerPoint) at a near-zero price point. That doesn’t mean other application providers are SOL, it just means that the expectations of users have gone up. Many people have Gmail as their personal webmail app, and may start to wonder why this makes it easier to move things forward than some high-priced custom software that requires extensive training and expensive support.
It also makes more people comfortable with software-as-service, which is popularized by salesforce.com.
Getting back to the law, note what is happening here. When you make working together easier, you don’t just do things better. You also do fewer things faster and therefore much cheaper. Much of the business model of the legal industry is based upon doing too many things slower.
This is really all about collaboration, and I’ll give mention to a prime mover (along with a legal example) to subscribers of the monthly newsletter, Wired GC -Select next week.
But in the meantime, the regal legal ship of state sails on with confidence…
Google Docs Roils Legal Tech - I
September 18, 2007 | Filed Under Law 2.0, Technology
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a short video is probably worth a few more:
Here’s the link if you’re reading this off a feed.
So this use of Google Docs involves documents, but it may not even be the best part. Note the video mentioned that you can share presentations (i.e., PowerPoint). Here’s a view of one that someone already figured out how to embed in a web page, with chat enabled.
Think about this for a moment or two, and the legal applications that it “presents.” I have a few ideas already, and I’ll roll out at least one of them Thursday.
Microsoft is probably still reeling from yesterday’s EU antitrust ruling. Google putting a few major chunks of Office in the cloud may be more important in the long run.
I love the low-tech way this idea is presented (designed by commoncraft). It’s about time there’s more substance and less glitzy form to how ideas are expressed on the Internet.
Barbarians Behind the Publisher’s Gate?
September 11, 2007 | Filed Under Law 2.0, Technology
Publishers targeting professional markets have long relied upon high-ticket subscriptions to hard-copy publications to produce good returns for their investors. The times have been a-changin’ and may now be doing so even faster.
The New York Times has a story about Reed Elsevier (they of Lexis/Nexis), and its plans to place various premium medical journals behind the gatewall of a “free” website called OncologySTAT.com. If it sounds like a play for online ads, it is:
Elsevier hopes to sign up 150,000 professional users within the next 12 months and to attract advertising and sponsorships, especially from pharmaceutical companies with cancer drugs to sell. The publisher also hopes to cash in on the site’s list of registered professionals, which it can sell to advertisers.
The good doctors would be well advised to read the site’s privacy policy.
The story goes on to confirm the plight of many publishers:
Although Elsevier’s medical and scientific journal business is profitable, revenue is flat and online readership is growing faster than print subscriptions.
If successful, Reed Elsevier reportedly plans to roll this model out to other medical medical specialties. Can a legal application be far behind?
With no offense intended to the ad at the right (it’s now a bit more svelte, by the way), I think the attempt to monetize eyeballs with online ads is a difficult thing to do well (or profitably). Some experts talk in terms of “banner blindness” and others are even figuring out ways to block ads entirely.
Delivering information digitally is not only seductive as a business model, it’s also demonstrably cheaper for the publisher (no costs of printing and mailing, for starters). Many users like it as well, unless they prefer installing new bookshelves to handle the paper-bound influx. Digital also facilitates better search.
Ideas like OncologySTAT.com may be trying to buck the long-term trend that most information will be free, and only insight and interpretation will gain a premium. If you have the leading website in a market or on an issue, maybe the ad thing works. But only for a while, since new sites sprout up all the time.
The recent sales of professional publishing assets (like ALM to Incisive Media) show that some think it is time to take money off the table. It will be interesting to see who got the better part of these deals.
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