Blogs

KM and Innovation: Better Together?

By Sachin Gupta posted 07-16-2024
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Please enjoy this blog post co-authored by Sachin Gupta, Practice Innovation Attorney, Paul Weiss Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and Virginia Ong, Legal Innovation Manager, Greenberg Traurig. Every firm structures its knowledge management and innovation (KM&I) departments differently. The degree of variation in their methods can range from minor to major across different organizations. KM&I departments need to ensure that their KM and innovation teams collaborate closely, not only with each other but also with other departments such as research and technology. There is an inherent tension in structuring departments as combining roles such as KM ...
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How to Start Using ChatGPT

By Daniel Wood posted 01-05-2024
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Please enjoy this blog authored by Alina Antonov, Senior Information Technology Project Manager, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and Daniel Wood, Director of Counsel Assistance, Womble Bond Dickinson. ChatGPT ChatGPT 1 stands for Chat Generative Pre-training Transformer. It is a language model developed by OpenAI that started in 2018. The “GPT” part refers to the “Generative Pre-training Transformer” architecture on which the model is based. This architecture generates human-like responses based on the user’s inputs. The “Chat” part indicates that this model is designed for generating conversational responses. It is trained on ...
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The Agile KM&I Manifesto

By Sachin Gupta posted 10-24-2023
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Please enjoy this blog authored by: Sachin Gupta, Knowledge Management Attorney, Latham & Watkins LLP and Virginia Ong, Legal Innovation Manager, Greenberg Traurig In the late 1990s, the software development world faced issues like delays, cost overruns, and products misaligned with user needs. The Manifesto for Agile Development (“the Manifesto”), published in 2001, introduced a framework to address these problems by focusing on increments of functional software, embracing changing requirements, and cross-functional teamwork. Since its publication, the twelve principles articulated in the Manifesto have impacted various industries, from manufacturing ...
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Law Firms and Cryptocurrency—Can They Be Happy Together?

By Brian Balistreri posted 09-29-2023
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Please enjoy this co-authored blog article posted on behalf of Moish E. Peltz , P artner and Co-Chair of the Emerging Technologies & Blockchain and Intellectual Property Practice Groups, Falcon Rappaport & Berkman LLP and Kenneth J. Falcon , Esq., Managing Partner, Falcon Rappaport & Berkman LLP. Question: What is cryptocurrency? Answer : A digital decentralized currency where transactions are verified, and records maintained by a decentralized system usually referred to as a blockchain. The security and transparency inherent in blockchains stems from the immutable nature of sequential transaction records, with each “block” ...
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The Other Factor: Assessing the Efficiency of Law Firms

By Sachin Gupta posted 07-17-2023
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Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of: Sachin Gupta, Knowledge Management Attorney, Latham & Watkins LLP You may recall from your elementary math class that a multiplication equation includes factors multiplied together to produce a product. The two factors that determine the cost of legal services are an attorney’s hourly rate and number of hours billed. Clients pay close attention to the former. Anyone who has ever participated in a pitch, or an RFP process can tell you that hourly rates are an important factor for clients deciding whom to select for outside counsel. It is someone perplexing then that the other factor, the number of hours billed, ...
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Is the Billable Hour Holding Your Law Firm Back? Why You Should Get a Head Start on Value-Based Billing

By Brian Balistreri posted 04-28-2023
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Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the three co-authors, Kristin Rhodes, Senior Practice Manager, Paul Hastings LLP, Nikki Shaver, CEO, Co-Founder, Legaltech Hub and Harriet Joubert-Vaklyes, Senior Project Manager - Legal Operations, CBRE Group. In the first part of this blog series , we posited that a shift towards value-based billing for law firms would give rise to many benefits in the legal industry. We focused on external client demands and offered an alternative model from service design, the Jobs to Be Done (“JTBD”) framework, as a way of rethinking value. Our original post was informed by a series of surveys we conducted about the ...
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Law Firms in the Metaverse: What Do This Actually Mean and Why Do We Need It?

By Brian Balistreri posted 04-25-2023
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Please enjoy this ILTA Q&A Session posted on behalf of Ken Falcon, Managing Partner of Falcon Rappaport & Berkman LLP and Mike Ertel, Practice Innovation & Knowledge Attorney, Paul Hastings LLP. Mike Ertel What is the Metaverse? Ken Falcon Broadly speaking, the Metaverse is an immersive online environment where users can interact with that environment and with one another. While people frequently speak colloquially about “the Metaverse,” it is more accurate to refer to multiple “Metaverses”—online environments that serve a variety of purposes. Recent attention has been focused on ‘blockchain-based Metaverses’ ...
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Making the Jump to the Cloud

By Brian Balistreri posted 04-17-2023
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Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the co-authors, Bill Bice, CEO, nQ Zebraworks and Mike Ertel, Practice Innovation & Knowledge Attorney, Paul Hastings LLP. There are a number of considerations when moving law firm applications to the cloud: · The real technology jump comes from true software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, not just software that has been moved to the cloud. · Customization can initially be more challenging because of the nascent stage of many legal-specific SaaS applications. · Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), however, offer a more straightforward way for ...
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Is the Billable Hour Holding Your Law Firm Back? Rethink Value with a JTBD Framework

By Brian Balistreri posted 04-12-2023
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Ple ase enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the co-authors, Kristin Rhodes, Senior Practice Manager, Paul Hastings LLP and Nikki Shaver, CEO, Co-Founder, Legaltech Hub. This is a follow-up to a prior post by Kristin Rhodes and Harriet Joubert-Vaklyes in a series that aims to reexamine the cultural and structural norms at law firms. If you work at a law firm and have decided to read this post, you are likely starting with a healthy dose of skepticism: the billable hour isn’t going anywhere, so why bother? We get it. But we also think that the billable hour promotes both an internal cultural divide (between the practicing ...
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Law Firm Attorneys and Business Professionals Survey Results: Bridging the Divide is Good Business

By Brian Balistreri posted 02-14-2023
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***Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the co-authors, Kristin Rhodes, Senior Practice Manager, Paul Hastings LLP and Harriet Joubert-Vaklyes, Senior Project Manager - Legal Operations, CBRE Group. I am going to admit something embarrassing to you: I’ve been in legal for more than 15 years and I’m not an attorney. I thought about going to law school but at that time the economy had recently tanked and many of the associates I worked with seemed unhappy. Instead, I got my Master’s degree in philosophy and public policy. It’s important for you to know that because I work in a profession where degrees and pedigree matter . They matter so much ...
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The Vital Role of Emotional Intelligence and Interpersonal Skills in Today's Legal Field

By Brian Balistreri posted 02-13-2023
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Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the author Ricci Masero, Marketing Manager, Intellek. In his role as Marketing Manager at Intellek, Ricci helps firms to access technology that will revolutionize training, accelerate digital transformation, boost adoption, and streamline employee onboarding. The demand for employees with strong soft skills, such as emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills , is on the rise in today's professional world. Organizations are recognizing the importance of these skills in creating a positive and productive workplace culture, fostering better communication and conflict resolution, and improving overall ...
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Tools to Tackle the To-Do List in Law Firms

By Brian Balistreri posted 01-23-2023
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***Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the author, Sachin Gupta, Knowledge Management Attorney, Latham & Watkins LLP.' The “to-do” list has been around since, well, since lists have been around. Yet many businesses still struggle with managing an ever-growing task list and copious amounts of email. The marketplace for solutions in this space has seen explosive. There are multitude of tools available from kanban-based Trello to software development-oriented Jira. Yet a recent ILTA survey revealed that many law firms have not implemented any project management software and still heavily rely on email. Even at firms that have implemented solutions, ...
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Future of Practice Management Tools: Automation, Integration, AI

By Brian Balistreri posted 01-17-2023
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***Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the author, Bill Bice, CEO, nQ Zebraworks. I’ve spent my career in legal tech working on practice management tools. I believe we are on the verge of a revolution in this space, driven by advances in automation, integration, and AI. Automation – No-code and Low-code Automation doesn’t sound like a new element since it is inherent in why you use these tools. Too often, however, it requires the law firm or specific practice areas to conform to the tool instead of the other way around. In the past, custom programming would be required to meet those specific needs. And then when the requirements changed, ...
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May the RPA Force Be With You

By Gordon Moffat posted 10-25-2022
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Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the author, Emily McIntosh , D.Eng., Senior Manager | Forensics, Ernst & Young, LLP. A quick internet search will return pages of results with impressive statistics about how many organizations have either successfully deployed RPA solutions or are planning to do so. Yet, most of us have encountered “bots” in our personal lives through only (sometimes painful) chat bots. Since the main benefits of automation include cost and time savings, you would expect to see more implementations in the legal industry, where we constantly feel the pressure to “do more with less.” In this blog post, we will discuss how ...
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COVID-19 Was a Big Catalyst for Law Firms, Is It Still? Or What Will Move the Needle Next?

By Christiane Matuch posted 09-09-2022
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Please enjoy this blog post which is posted on behalf of the author, Ann Rainhart, Chief Strategy Officer, Taft Law. Evolving takes time. In fact, lasting evolutionary change takes about one million years. Of course when we talk about change in law firms we don’t really mean the “Darwin” kind of evolution. For those of us who focus on doing things better and faster, and who care about helping people find meaning and success in their professional lives, we’ve spent most of our careers talking about helping lawyers and law firms evolve the practice of law in innovative and successful ways. And many of us might confess to feeling like significant change would ...
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Legal Project Management and Practice Management - They Sound Similar, But How Are They Different and How Do They Complement Each Other?

By Kristin Rhodes posted 06-29-2022
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Please enjoy this co-authored blog post by Kristin Rhodes, Senior Practice Manager, Paul Hastings LLP, Mike Ertel, KM Attorney, Paul Hastings LLP and Lori Millang, Legal Project Manager, Paul Hastings LLP. Introduction Legal Project Management (“LPM”) and Practice Management (“PM”) are two terms that are commonly interchanged or misused. This blog post offers a concise recitation of the differences and similarities between LPM and PM. There is often synergy between the roles, but they each bring their own value to the practice. This blog focuses on their unique contributions. In broad strokes, Practice Management (“PM”) is the global ...
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How to Implement an Embedded Practice Management Program

By Kristin Rhodes posted 04-27-2022
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Please enjoy this blog post co-authored by Kristin Rhodes, Senior Practice Manager, Paul Hastings LLP and Mike Ertel, KM Attorney, Paul Hastings LLP. Our previous posts discussed practice management generally and how it adds value to law firms . This post discusses how to introduce an embedded practice manager. A new practice manager has several process goals, including: Obtain holistic view of priorities Generate simple and high value wins Gain champions Build trust Reaching these goals is an iterative process requiring a slow build of reliance over time. They are also non-sequential and can inform each other. As you learn about priorities, ...
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Practice Management: What are the Practical Benefits?

By Kristin Rhodes posted 01-28-2022
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Please enjoy this co-authored blog post by Kristin Rhodes, Senior Practice Manager, Paul Hastings LLP and Mike Ertel, KM Attorney, Paul Hastings LLP. A properly implemented practice management program is an arrow in your firm’s quiver that helps maintain efficient and profitable practices. We discussed practice management generally in a previous post ( Practice Management: What Is It and Why Do You Need It? ), but will now take a deeper dive into the day-to-day practical value it adds to the firm’s partners and employees. The Benefits of Practice Management to Practice Group Leadership The practice manager is the right-hand person, or chief of ...
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The Impact of Staffing on the Adoption of Legal Innovation

By Christiane Matuch posted 12-20-2021
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By Christiane Matuch, LL.M., ALPM and Harriet Joubert-Vaklyes Have you ever found yourself in the situation where the firm has bought or developed a new legal tech tool, but nobody knows how to make the most of it? Or maybe one person knows but just can’t handle the volume of support? Who are the first adopters of new, legal technology solutions in your firm, and does it matter what kind of support you provide? It sure does! (At least that is what our latest survey shows.) Let’s get into it. Our survey shows that there are different levels of adoption between shareholders/partners, associates, paralegals, and staff. Almost 90% of respondents stated that ...
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Practice Management: What Is It and Why Do You Need It?

By Kristin Rhodes posted 12-17-2021
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Please enjoy this blog post co-authored by Kristin Rhodes, Senior Practice Manager, Paul Hastings LLP and Mike Ertel, KM Attorney, Paul Hastings LLP. Introduction Practice management in law firms is not new. While some firms have had practice management programs for decades, many still do not. The definition and implementation of the program varies widely across firms, and even across practice groups within the same firm. This is the first in a series of blog posts designed to provide an overview practice management to help you consider whether your firm should implement or bolster its practice management efforts. What is Practice Management? ...
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