The editors of LPT review their technology predictions from  last December, discuss what they hope to see in 2007 and predict what might be just beyond the horizon.

Questions

JT: Let's start by looking backwards. For those of us who regularly make predictions each year, take a look at what you thought would be big in 2006 and tell us whether you were right, wrong or just a bit ahead of the game.

SC: Last year, I predicted that this would be the breakthrough year for Voice Over Internet Protocol telephony or VOIP which a few firms had been using to replace outdated aging and expensive phone systems. Well the benefits and savings are still there but so far few firms have bitten. I don't know whether they're waiting for something faster, better and cheaper - or whether systems personnel are worried about network vulnerabilities but this has surprised me in its delay. 

TG: Luckily, I made no public predictions and thus have avoided looking foolish.  I will reveal my thoughts at the time, though.  Last year at this time I assumed that the traditional practice in document intensive litigation

DK: I predicted that 2006 would be a bit of a "lull" as firms waited on new versions of Windows and Microsoft Office. I didn't expect the lull to be so big. I also expected electronic discovery issues to drive a lot of other technology decisions. To a certain extent, that happened, but in a more limited way than I expected. As Simon suggests in reference to VOIP, the legal profession consistently surprises those who analyze it with the slow pace, with some important exceptions, that it adopts new technology.

JK: I "recall" suggesting that 2006 would be the year that the majority of law firms would embrace the digital law office metaphor and start retiring paper-based files in favor of imaging and Adobe Acrobat.  I think that this suggestion was on the mark.

JT: OK, putting aside predictions, what actually happened in 2006 that stands out as important on the legal technology front? In the old days we used to talk about a new upgrade to Word or WordPerfect. That isn't relevant anymore. So what is and why?

DK: Vendor consolidation, especially among electronic discovery and litigation technology firms. On a more immediate level, it's the continuing incremental changes in speed, power, broadband and digital convergence that has now reached a point where many things we used to wish for are really here - speech recognition, video, VOIP, carrying all your files with you - all are easily possible on even the most inexpensive machines.   

JK: Adoption of mandatory electronic filing in federal court along with adoption of the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that shift the focus to electronic files and electronic practice for anyone involved with the federal system, which means basically everyone who is anyone.   That sea change will filter down to nearly every practitioner relatively soon.

Okay Word and WordPerfect are both fine for individual work but lawyers in firms larger than solos work collaboratively. And even solos collaborate with clients. And neither of the standard products are much use for collaboration.

Enter two products that fill the niche. Adobe Professional's collaboration features just go from strength to strength. November we had a new release with additional features designed for the legal market. And the ability to have anyone with access to the free Adobe Reader work on comments or edits.  You do breed a fill version of Adobe to kick off but this is a powerful tool.

If the need to buy Adobe turns you off then try out Google Docs which used to be Writely. Secure shared editing of a common document.  It is easy to use and powerful. And the price - free - is right.

Those were the key steps of 2006. Not Microsoft Vista which will be a force to reckon with but is just too new.

JT: What about litigation support technology? Electronic discovery has blossomed into a multi-billion dollar business in the past couple of years. How do you see litigation support technology evolving and where do you see the industry going?

DK: The yin/yang trends of consolidation within the industry and movement of players from records management and other areas into this space will continue to be a key trend. I also see a big movement toward programs and tools that communicate well with each other, hosted applications, and litigation technology appliances. The trend to watch, though, is a people trend. The growth and trend towards the transformation of the role of the litigation support manager into one that is considered a part of the professional team has been profound in 2006. I expect the importance of these people to continue to increase dramatically.

JK: I think that we will see the same tiered structure that we see in law firms:  national and international scope mega firms servicing comparable law firms, regional litigation support firms, and solo/small firm suppliers.   In a sense, litigation support/electronic discovery is basically just another aspect of litigation and due diligence and will differentiate in the same manner as the law firms that they support.  Litigation support and electronic data discovery must be specific to each case; unlike legal research, one size does not fit all and hence there will be a variety of market niches for litigation and EDD firms of all sizes.

SC: Given this crowd of experts I'm not going to stick my nose too far out on litigation support predictions. Instead let me turn this around to the users. I suspect that the lit support industry is going to be turned upside down by what I'll call the Googlization of lawyer expectations. 

If you remember trying to explain field codes and pre-set abbreviations to the partner on a file, I used to wonder whether they would ever really understand the process and the logical strategy of searching. Now that same partner is comfortable using Google 10 times a day to find everything.
That carries into what they will expect from litigation support software. Smart searching. Easy interfaces. Power pinpointing. Access anywhere. It adds up to massive servers maintaining data remotely. Power tools for access sitting on the desktop. Tools that can learn enough about a matter to assist you and prompt you.

Sound like a dream? Sure - but there's a smart programmer in Coimbatore or somewhere else in South India, who's itching to make it real.

The old models of litigation support won't cut it.

JT: Heard of Web 2.0 yet? Does it have any relevance to law practice management? How and why?

SC: Think of Web 2.0 as a set of power tools - or better yet empowering tools. The way that Web sites can be built and adapted on a dime. The ability of someone with a burning desire to communicate to have a blog operational within an hour means that end users - including even lawyers - will have a chance to build applications that would have tried the skills of programmers a few years ago. 

Plus real collaboration. For the last 15 months I've been enjoying the experience of being part of a collective blog focusing on the application of advanced technologies to legal information. What's been amazing is how cheap and easy this has been. It's a model that is waiting to be picked up by nimble and savvy law firms. It's now all about vision and imagination. 

DK: Web 2.0 rocks. I recommend that readers take a look at earlier articles in Law Practice Today on this topic. Tom Mighell and I also did a podcast that introduces this topic to lawyers in a friendly way. Many solo lawyers and small firms, especially start-up firms, are doing a lot of experimentation with Web 2.0 services, and you even can find the occasional mention of Law 2.0 in this context. However, Web 2.0 has met, and will continue to meet, a lot of resistance in the legal market because of concerns about hosted services, security, and data control issues. Ironically, data probably is safer in a Web 2.0 setting than it is in many law firms. The problem is that Web 2.0 is being used in a number of different ways and is often associated with a new "Internet bubble." Look deeper than that, and I think you'll understand my first sentence in this comment.

JK: Heard of it, seen it. I think that it may be a major aspect of legal marketing pretty soon.

JT: What about business practices? Have you seen any innovations that might be of interest to business lawyers? What do you see on that front?

JK: Electronic discovery techniques will probably transform due diligence practices for business lawyers.

DK: The overlap of electronic discovery and records management tools is an obvious area of interest for business lawyers. Although litigation technology gets the lion's share of the attention these days, there is a wealth of new tools for business lawyers. A few things to consider: the rebirth of document assembly tools, collaborative tools of all kinds, contract management tools, project and work flow management tools, and the document security and signing tools in Adobe Acrobat and other programs.

SC: I think tools like Adobe 8 have real potential for use by business lawyers as ways to improve collaboration with clients and particularly corporate counsel.  And if your firm can't manage secure extranets for content and document sharing, put that on your priority list.

JT: Outsourcing seems to have become a hot topic ever since Tom Friedman published his book entitled "The World is Flat." Is it affecting legal practices yet? If so, how?

SC: I've blogged extensively on how developments in India are going to challenge complacent North American law firms. When the team from the National Law School in Bangalore won the Jessup Mooting Competition against the top Ivy League teams it signaled to America what London and Sydney firms had recognized for a while. That there is a pool of highly trained bright sophisticated English speaking lawyers who now have advanced

DK: As has been said about the Internet: people greatly overestimate the impact of outsourcing in the short term, but greatly underestimate its impact in the long term. There tends to be more talk about outsourcing these days than action, but the infrastructure for significant outsourcing possibilities is being built as we speak and the pioneers are working out the bugs. This is a fascinating area, but I expect to see a slow evolution, unless some external event (such as a bird flu pandemic) gives it a hard push forward. Like Web 2.0, some small firms are innovators in this area. 

JK: I believe that some outsourcing, particularly drafting of motion practice documents and traditional paralegal work such as document review will become common even for solo practitioners.

JT: Well, we've look backward long enough. What do you see coming down the pipeline in 2007 and beyond that will impact law practices? What will we be talking about in next year's roundtable? What gets you excited?

JK: Transitioning litigation from a primarily linear, spoken and written word, approach to one which is much more visual and pattern-oriented.   Traditional Gestalt psychology could provide some very interesting ideas in this regard.

DK: The Internet technologies: RSS, web services, Ajax, web 2.0, mashups, the blogosphere, podcasting, delivery of video, and all of the collaboration tools. The Internet is an exciting place again. If you made me pick one thing, I'd say "collaboration tools." In fact, this article was written with one of the new collaboration tools. It's changed how we put Law Practice Today together. There are two pieces to collaboration tools - tools and people. I'm excited most by what the tools now allow people to do, from working together on small projects to creating communities of interest.