Blogs

Blogs

Empowering Law Firms: Importance of Emotional Intelligence and Interpersonal Skills Development

By Ricci Masero
Emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills play a vital role in the success of any organization, particularly in a professional setting like a law firm. Law firm administrators are in a unique position to not only improve their own emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills but also help others in the firm do the same. This can lead to better communication, conflict resolution, teamwork, and overall job satisfaction, contributing to the success of the law firm. How can law firm administrators increase their emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills? Law firm administrators can increase their emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills ...
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Law Firm Branding: More than Just Legal Services: Follow-Up Blog Post Survey Results

By Brian Balistreri
***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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Tools to Tackle the To-Do List in Law Firms

By Brian Balistreri
***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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Evolution of Legal Operations – from Efficiency to Strategy

By Brian Balistreri
***Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the author, Mike Russell, Head of Global Legal Operations, Expedia Group. Traditionally, many legal operations teams began as purpose-focused on technology project management and operational efficiency. Productivity gains in-house coupled with reductions in external spend have long been recognized as justifications for establishing legal operations, often focused on improving efficiency and reducing costs by streamlining processes, automating tasks, and using data and technology to support decision making. However, “savings is not a strategy” 1 , and basing a legal operations function on this premise is an exercise ...
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Future of Practice Management Tools: Automation, Integration, AI

By Brian Balistreri
***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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Legal Data Wonks - New Report on the State of the Legal Market - Charts Galore

By Maureen Blando
2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market by Thomson Reuters Posted on January 17, 2023 by Maureen Each year I look forward to the State of the Legal Market report in order to get a more granular look at the past year in legal services. In 2022, the demand for transactional law firm services declined, most notably in Big Law. But law firms continued to hire apace. The result was a drop in productivity and profits. Profit Per Equity Partner growth was down in 2022. But PPEP is still at a healthy level compared to pre-pandemic. That is the top line view from the new 2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market by Thomson Reuters ...
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Excel Tips for eDiscovery

By Brian Balistreri
***Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the author Kathy Dallaire, CEDS, eDiscovery and Litigation Support Coordinator, Stikeman Elliot LLP. In this blog, we will demonstrate some handy Excel formulas commonly used to build load files where the information required is spread out over multiple spreadsheets or has been parsed out into separate cells. While there can be numerous situations which require manually building a load file, hopefully these tips will save you some time and effort. Combining values from multiple spreadsheets using VLookup. In this scenario, we want to append values for Title and Filename from separate sheets of an Excel ...
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Excel Tips for Litigation Teams (Or Anyone) - Pivot Tables

By Brian Balistreri
****Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of Julie Niebel. Julie has over 25 years of experience in Litigation Support / Information Services and is now retired. She is passionate about education, learning and trying to keep up with technology! Pivot Tables Pivot noun the central point, pin or column on which something turns or balances. [1] In the context of litigation and data sets, the two key words are: “column” and “turns”. A pivot table provides a way to “turn” or change the way you look at information by adjusting the data columns. Pivot tables in Excel are used to view and analyze complex information to identify patterns ...
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Excel Tips for Litigation Teams (or Anyone) - Cheat Sheet

By Brian Balistreri
****Please enjoy this quick cheat sheet posted on behalf of the author, Denise Ash, Event Education Manager, ILTA. Concatenate Have you ever been tasked with having to combine multiple fields? If so, hopefully you used a formula to do it! If not, you should definitely check out the Concatenate function. Here is how I always get to it because it’s how I found it initially. 1. Click the Insert Function button (it is an fx ) to the left of the Formula Bar. 2. The Insert Function box will appear. Type the word Join into the top text box and click Go . 3. Several options should appear; choose Concatenate and the following dialog box will appear: ...
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Automate, Automate, Automate! (Like Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. Brady Bunch? Anyone? Sigh... Part 2

By Brian Balistreri
***Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of the author, Phil Weldon, Director of eDiscovery and Litigation Support Technology, Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP. With Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), software has undertaken a Copernican Revolution. OpenAI's GPT3-5 has passed both Evidence and Torts on the bar exam . Where we used to have to point and click, we now have software that pushes its own buttons. We can now use low code RPA workflows coupled with API or GUI access to have software run itself. To your delight or dismay, this is already happening. Sneaker heads and Swifties have been using this technology ...
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Automate, Automate, Automate! (Like Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. Brady Bunch? Anyone? Sigh... Part 1

By Brian Balistreri
***Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf o f the author, Stephanie Clerkin, Director of Litigation Support, Korein Tillery, LLC. Automation can be a powerful tool for streamlining processes, saving time, and increasing efficiency. Automation can also reduce the risk of human error, leading to more accurate and consistent results. However, it is important to approach automation with care, as there are also potential dangers to consider. Given I am a department of one, I have no choice but to turn to automation in order to stay on top of my workload. As a starting point, I automate as many repetitive, routine, or mundane tasks as possible. I ...
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Press Release | ILTA Announces Partnership with Legaltech Hub

By ILTA News
(Chicago, IL) January 10, 2023–  The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) Announces a new partnership with Legaltech Hub. ILTA is pleased to announce a new member and business partner benefit via a partnership with Legaltech Hub . With this new partnership, ILTA members will have free access to an integrated directory featuring over 2,000 legal technology products and services, together with a powerful search tool and filters to help members find the solutions that will best meet their legal technology needs. Legaltech Hub, co-founded by Nicola (Nikki) Shaver and Jeroen Plink, was launched in October 2020. Shaver, CEO of ...
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How to Win the Talent War for Cyber Security Professionals

By David Whale
Hiring cyber security professionals to fill current vacancies is one of the toughest and most important challenges we face when trying to build out a successful cybersecurity team. A strong team with a good bond is important and that can be hard to accomplish when supply is low and demand is high. The cybersecurity market quickly evolved into a global market over the pandemic and with work from home options available the competition for limited resources is fierce. This blog will look take a look at what you can do to stand out when trying to fill that vacancy and ways to think outside of the box to land that next hire. The competition for professionals is ...
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Deposition Transcripts and You: Considerations When Requesting Transcripts and Exhibits

By Ryan Gerlach
Please enjoy this blog posted on behalf of Mike Murray, Director of Technical and Creative Solutions, Veritext. With the multitude of formats available for transcripts and exhibits, ensuring your order with the court reporter is accurate can save you hours of hunting for the right file. This article will provide information on the different transcript and exhibit formats, as well as tips on best practices for requesting and organizing them. ASCII Transcript The raw file coming from the court reporter’s software is in a standard format called ASCII, which is a plain text format. When opened in a text editor such as Notepad, this file is not very useful ...
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STREAMLINING THE FIRM’S HANDLING OF MATTER MOBILITY

By Denise Prior
Our last blog established that far more matter mobility is taking place nowadays, and that this is a trend, not a phase. Since it can cause a significant administrative burden to fall on firms, they should try to minimize the impact. But how do you ensure that off-boarding and on-boarding are performed as efficiently and compliantly as possible? The answer is that firms should develop policies, systems, processes and procedures for both. Off boarding data The first rule of off-boarding, which should be enshrined in policy, is that the firm doesn’t take action until it receives official authorization from the client of its intention to move. (Lawyers jumping ...
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CCT Mini Survey #2: Task/Project/Matter Management

By Sachin Gupta
We want to hear from YOU ILTAns!! We want to know how you manage your tasks, projects, and matter. Do you use project management software? How do you manage your inbox? How do you manage tasks for billable matters? Please consider sharing your thoughts, in confidence, using the link, here: https://www.cognitoforms.com/ILTA1/TaskProjectMatterManagement The ILTA Practice Management CCT greatly appreciates your time and responses in advance! #PracticeManagementandPracticeSupport #KnowledgeManagementandSearch #Firm #ProjectManagement
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The ILTA Distinguished Peer Awards and YOU

By Beth Anne Stuebe
For decades, ILTA has been the leading educational resource for legal technologists. You come to ILTA to learn and grow your skill set, to challenge yourself and become an innovator. You join us at ILTACON, LegalSEC, onsite for ILTACON Europe, for our one-day roadshows, and throughout the year, virtually, to expand your knowledge base and to connect with peers and partners. Now, more than ever, ILTA’s peer-powered network is connecting members, partners, subject-matter experts, and all #legaltechnologists in ways that we could not have fathomed prior to 2020. Today, we are asking our fellow ILTAn’s to look around their own legal tech sphere’s and to nominate ...
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InterAction v8/Hybrid Cloud

By Tiffany Smith
We are looking into updating our environment to v8/hybrid cloud and was wondering if anyone could give me their experience with that transition. Thank you in advance for your time. Tiffany
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PUTTING DATA RETENTION AND DISPOSITION INTO PRACTICE

By Denise Prior
The key to resolving the challenge of excess data is for firms to establish a robust data retention and disposition policy. This means drafting and agreeing a policy, supporting it with appropriate processes, controls and procedures, and then ensuring it’s faithfully executed. Creating a data retention and disposition policy Policies don’t have to be elaborate, but they must be adequate, realistic, and signed off by all parties. A retention schedule sits at the core of your policy. This living document allocates a review date to every piece of data. This will be when it’s assessed for further retention, or disposition or destruction. In the case of matter ...
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Budget: A New Approach to Work

By Marcelo Cardoso
We all know how much the word Budget gives us butterflies in our stomachs, normally the end of the year is the time when we have to stop everything we are doing to start understanding what we spend, list what we are not going to spend and with this information start spending planning for the following year. And the best, all for yesterday… A major barrier in developing an assertive Budget is controlling what we spent during the past few months, where we exceeded what was planned and where we have money saved for not having spent as we planned. This control is one of the main activities of the Legal Ops team. With the observation of this arduous activity in ...
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