In today's hyper-competitive legal industry, staying ahead of the competition is becoming ever more difficult. Law firms are feeling more competitive pressure and are facing higher customer expectations than ever before. Providing mobile attorneys with fast, secure, real-time access to vital information will give them the crucial edge they need to be winners in the legal market. Recent advances in wireless solutions offer law firm professionals the perfect opportunity to keep vital information at their fingertips and the power to act on that information. A wide range of wireless solutions offering e-mail and Internet access from cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and other wireless devices have cropped up with the goal of capitalizing on this need for instant access to information.

Advances in mobile computing are promising to not only improve processes, but also serve to change the law firm business model itself. Wireless technology promises to revolutionize the way law firms work, and represents a paradigm shift in business computing. The challenge is to develop appropriate applications to optimize the impact of wireless technology on law firms and the mobile attorneys who are an integral part of many modern law firms.

Mobility: The Challenges and Possibilities
Today's legal professional is no longer chained to a desk. We have entered "Generation ASAP," which transforms the way lawyers function at work and at home. Wireless solutions free mobile attorneys from their reliance on phone jacks to stay in touch with coworkers, team members and clients. Wireless solutions allow access to essential information and mission-critical data.

Users of mobile devices are not out there browsing aimlessly. What the busy lawyer needs is the ability to communicate intelligently via a wireless device. It is not enough to have a vast fount of information at one's fingertips - the information must be relevant to the lawyer, the matter at hand, and must be available when needed. It must be in the context that the attorney requires. This is key to the utility of any wireless solution that hopes to gain acceptance in the market.

Mobile attorneys have a variety of devices that they use to connect with the business world: Laptops, PDAs, Pagers, 2-Way Pagers or RIM Devices, Cellular Phones or Web Phones. A successful solution must deliver information that is based on relevance. But is there a better way to do wireless? Yes.

The trend in mobile messaging is Short Message Service (SMS). SMS allows short messages, with a single message maximum of 160 characters, to be sent to a text messaging-enabled wireless device. Currently, the use of mobile text messaging is limited to the services that carriers offer. Imagine getting notifications about upcoming meetings, or changes to those meetings, instant notification of items of interest, a near real-time account of relevant case developments, etc. You could check on any last minute changes to meetings or travel schedules, or you could confirm that your office faxed out revised, time- sensitive contract documents to the client. Imagine if your mobile device intelligently pulled all of this relevant information to your fingertips without the need for navigating the Web or calling your office.

Many firm's most valuable individuals are not in the office when carrying out mission-critical tasks. They are on location in clients' offices, litigating or working while in transit. By investing in mobile and wireless solutions, progressive firms can give their attorneys and other key personnel the freedom and luxury to remain in touch with their key information.

Market Overview
The next generation of wireless technologies will fuel the growth of Internet, new media, and wireless companies. Forecasters have commonly agreed that the wireless industry is growing at an exponential rate. Today, there are an estimated 300 million wireless users, with 1 billion projected users by 2003 (Logica).

According to some industry analysts, the US mobile data market will reach $22 billion by 2003, while the European market will hit $15.6 billion by 2005. Significant numbers of mobile Internet users in the United States should start appearing around 2002, according to Mark Zohar of Forrester Research.

SMS in particular has shown exceptional promise in recent years. As of August 2000, 9 billion SMS messages were being sent each month, including 6 billion in Europe alone (Mobile Lifestreams). This is expected to exceed 100 billion messages per month by December 2002 (Logica). Individual mobile subscribers will send more than 100 messages by SMS a month worldwide by 2002. Global SMS volume will increase by 170% yearly; with the average user receiving 3 daily SMS messages (Logica).

According to the Strategis Group, wireless portal users will grow to almost 25 million in the next five years. There has been much interest generated by wireless users in using a wireless portal service. In line with forecasts by Analysys, more than half of the predicted 1.1 billion mobile subscribers will be accessing Internet services from their handsets by 2005. Furthermore, both established and start-up companies are moving rapidly to take advantage of this growth.

The Ingredients of a Killer Solution
In this busy world, there is a premium on convenience. Busy attorneys are swamped with a wide range of tasks and have neither the time nor the inclination to wade through the sea of Internet solutions available to them. Managing the information can become a daunting task. The solution that will end up being adopted by the bulk of the market will need to offer a number of key features that differentiate the product from the current crop of wireless devices. Among the necessary features are:

Relevance. The device must deliver a combination of useful and relevant information from personal information managers (PIM), database servers, the Internet, e-mail, calendar etc. The device must be able to intelligently associate information you've gathered and enhance it with external data. For example, when you look up a client's address, the device may tie in recent news releases about that client or an article dealing with the industry in which the client operates.

Convenience. Any successful solution must prove to be more convenient for the lawyer than whatever method they currently use to stay in touch. The value added must be sufficient to convince attorneys that they are using their time more efficiently than with other means of communication and information gathering.

Minimized interaction. Essentially, the closer one comes to a one-click solution, the better. With the small size of most wireless devices, the correct solution needs to minimize the amount of typing that is required by the lawyer. A combination of voice activation and one touch initialization saves time and frustration for the attorney, eliminating most of the hassles of using tiny keyboards.

Minimized session length. Short sessions result both in maximized efficiency of time usage and minimized airtime usage. The more quickly a lawyer can get at the relevant information, the more likely the solution is to be adopted.

One stop solution. The solution must provide one point of entry to all relevant information so that there is no need for the lawyer to remember many user IDs and passwords.

Decreased cost. Intelligent wireless devices decrease costs by providing relevant information in a timely fashion to attorneys, when they need it and how they need it. By learning about the lawyer's requirements, the device can intuitively seek out the correct information, saving the lawyer precious time by minimizing the amount of time used to surf for information.

Personalization. Personalization is the ability of the solution's design to meet the needs of a specific lawyer and provide access to relevant information. Personalization includes the ability to filter information and data automatically for the lawyer. Intelligent devices pull and push information deemed relevant to a specific attorney or matter. The attorney also has the ability to define how the information is presented.

Device independence. The optimal solution will work on a wide range of devices giving mobile attorneys the flexibility to choose how they wish to access their information.

All of these ingredients are vital to providing legal professionals with the utility, relevance, flexibility, ease of use and efficiency that they require.

Conclusions
Wireless messaging provides fast, easy, and efficient communication, regardless of an attorney's geographic location or number of mobile devices. Many legal professionals have more than one line of communication, such as cellular phone, home e-mail, business e-mail, pager, or facsimile number. With all these lines of communication, it is difficult to determine the best or most efficient way to communicate with someone. Law firms need to ensure they are using the latest technologies to stay ahead of the competition. They must provide their workforces with all of the tools required, the greatest tool being relevant, timely information. A wireless solution that is quick, intelligent and easy to use, that eliminates the frustration of not having the right information at one's fingertips, will make a firm more competitive.

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Jason Weir, Product Marketing Manager at Hummingbird, is responsible for all product marketing initiatives for Hummingbird's portal, collaboration and knowledge management solutions. You can contact Jason via e-mail at jason.weir@hummingbird.com or at (416) 496-2200.