We started with basic definitions, and went on to discuss what these tools offer, what the risks are, and how the cloud combines with traditional application software. We also emphasized ‘asking the right questions’, and how that leads to being a smart consumer.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the slide deck. Enjoy!

Today is the official launch of Small Firm Innovation, and I’m excited to finally be able to talk about this fantastic new website. Developed and sponsored by Clio, Small Firm Innovation inspires lawyers through first-person accounts of small-firm success.

Small Firm Innovation is a resource by, for and about solo and small firm lawyers, and it provides insights and advice on the realities of running a law practice. From the practical (how can I go paperless?) to the philosophical (what exactly is success?) to the perennial (what is my work really worth?), each post is written by someone who lived through the experience, wrestled with the idea, and came out a little wiser.

Jordan Furlong and I will participate in both an advisory role, as well as being contributors. My first post outlines 10 ways for solos and small firms to boost their online profiles; Jordan’s first post will be published shortly.

The  contributing group of authors range from well-established solos to new law school grads, alongside a handful of management, media, finance, web, and marketing consultants (that’s where Jordan and I fit in). And we find ourselves in pretty good company: Edward Poll, Rob Hyndman, Colin Cameron and Bob Ambrogi are just a few of our cohorts on this project. Russell Alexander, our solo/SF client in Markham, Ontario, is also contributing.

Small Firm Innovation will also be active on facebook and on Twitter (@sfinnovation).

The site was conceived of during the financial crisis, when many newly minted lawyers were hanging their own shingles or joining small firms. Jack Newton and Rian Gauvreau of Themis Solutions (Clio’s parent company) recognized that there was tremendous strength in numbers among these small firms and sole practitioners.  As Jack puts it:

“The needs of solo and small firm practitioners are often underserved in the greater marketplace and media, but they actually represent the majority of the legal market. Solos and small firm lawyers can learn a lot from each other’s successes and missteps, watching for pitfalls to avoid while also encouraging their fellow solos and small firms to experiment with new ideas.”

Congratulations, Clio, on developing such an excellent resource for a deserving community!

PolicyTool is a policy generator that simplifies the process of creating a privacy policy for your website or company. It’s easy to do. The streamlined process simply requires you to answer a brief questionnaire and provides you with a complete Privacy Policy customized to your company. PolicyTool has been developed by rtraction in collaboration with Harrison Pensa lawyer David R. Canton, one of Canada’s leading authorities in Internet and technology-related legal issues.

Wisely, PrivacyTool advises that using the site to craft a privacy policy is only the first step: “Once you’ve received the policy, make sure you and your legal counsel are comfortable with the promises you’ve made and [that] everyone in your organization is compliant.” This latter point rarely gets enough attention within organizations: simply posting a policy on your site does little good if your employees aren’t on board with the policy, its aims and its strictures — if the policy isn’t implemented in the organization’s everyday life, it won’t help you.

What I especially like about PrivacyTool is that it’s an excellent example of the evolution of legal services in the internet age. It condenses an array of legal knowledge and content into a simple, user-friendly Q-and-A process that doesn’t require any specialized expertise to navigate. This is where many legal services are heading, especially those for which the outcome is a document or other tangible output: lawyers will help create processes and algorithms by which clients can take on more of the work, corresponding to clients’ growing readiness to assume more responsibility for their legal affairs. PrivacyTool is a harbinger, one that law firms of all kinds should carefully review.

Click on the graphic below to see the view from each of the calendars:

I’m a big fan of Google Apps generally, but it does take some tinkering to optimize the offering for each business.  These new integrations should be a nice ‘value add’ for Clio’s current client base, especially for those currently using both services.

Congrats to Jack, Rian, and the entire Clio team!  Including their new Community Manager. :)

Perhaps unexpected, I really sit on the fence on this issue; and didn’t take the anti-blocking stance.  There are a number of ‘middle-ground’ alternatives which few firms have explored to date – including time based restrictions, and role-based (ie. based on business need) blocking.

The opinions and solutions on this issue are, unfortunately, extremely polarized.  I think it’s also worth noting that neither extreme position (global blocking or unfettered access) actually aligns with the business goals of most law firms.

For a more detailed review, please link on over… I think the article does a reasonable job of describing my thoughts on the debate.

It’s been a tremendous first year for Clio since it launched one year ago today. Since then, the company has added has hundreds of users globally, who collectively manage (pulled from an upcoming press release): 150,000 contacts, 20,000 matters, and 25,000 documents.  Looking at their buzz page, there’s no shortage of enthusiasm.

The following quote is from Themis Solutions President Jack Newton on the company’s success,

“In our first year we’ve made great strides to enhance and refine Clio’s feature set, while ensuring it remains easy-to-use and accessible to all lawyers. This has been a terrific year and we see an exciting road ahead.  All success aside, we will keep our focus where it has always been: to provide an excellent product and superior customer support experience to our subscribers.”

If I had to pick my own moment from the first year, it would be this article from Kira Fonteneau. You don’t get a better endorsement than a client writing a hands-on article like that. … Launch day last year would be a close second. :)

In honour of birthday #1, the company announced three major new features today:

1. Outlook Synchronization (two-way synchronization of Outlook contacts, calendar items and tasks – items entered or updated in Outlook will appear in Clio and vice versa)
2. New and Improved Reports  (Client Ledger, Productivity by Lawyer, Work in Progress (WIP), Accounts Receivable (A/R), and more)
3. QuickBooks Integration

Also noteworthy, to celebrate the milestone, new users get a $25 discount on their first month’s subscription by entering the discount code “HAPPYBIRTHDAY” during checkout.

Congratulations to founders Jack Newton & Rian Gauvreau, and everyone at Clio. Many happy returns of the day…and year!

Here’s a quick run-down of Clio’s 10 key aspects for legal SaaS:

1. What is Software as a Service?
2. Why (or why not) choose a SaaS solution?
3. Why web-based practice management?
4. Security
5. Privacy
6. Data availability
7. Total cost of ownership
8. Terms of service
9. Data Migration
10. Offline Access

For more details, link on over and read the entire posts within the series. See: “10 Things Every Lawyer Should Know About Legal SaaS“.

First, the quote from Bill Wilshire, Lexis VP of CRM/Analytics:

“We estimate that the streamlined efficiencies of InterAction onDemand hosted software will enable a firm with 100 attorneys to realize average cost savings of about 22 percent over three years as a result of less hardware, staffing and licenses.”

This is a great statistic for web-software companies out there, including our own legal web software client, who can now point to a direct comparison (desktop application to SaaS) and show cost savings. Take that number, and identify the higher technology overhead (per lawyer) with smaller firms, and the sales proposition improves.

Second, the release shows that the legal web software market isn’t just for solos & small firms. Interaction is an enterprise CRM solution, and if Lexis can offer it to a firm of 100-lawyers, then the tipping point to a firm of thousands isn’t far off.  I don’t think that’s a prediction, that’s the future.

And lastly, I’m wondering if the web may be a merger point between all those software co. acquisitions and the Wexus duopoly of legal publishing products. Content is valuable when it hits eyeballs. In the current firm model, that means application software. Tomorrow?  Let’s just say it wouldn’t be surprising to see legal publishers hedging their bets; and perhaps using the web to deliver a unifying online product.

On Wednesday, notifications for twitter follows and friendfeed alone peaked at 45 emails, so I decided to route them around my inbox. We use Google apps for business, but the same thing can be done with Outlook or exchange. I simply created a filter for all incoming email from the two services, sending these messages into their own folder, and archiving them out of my inbox.

So here’s my new routine: I’ll scan these ever day or so, and will delete or follow back on Fridays.

Is this novel or innovative? Not at all. Lots of friends have recommended this to me for some time. If the volume had been a little lower, I’d probably have put up with it…  But setting the bar a little lower isn’t always a bad thing, and inbox management helps everyone.  So I’m passing it along.

The focus of this new column will be on the practical aspects of web innovation within the legal community. My role, or at least as I see it, will be to track down stories (and authors) that highlight the latest methods of web engagement. The read write web is an environment that’s constantly evolving, both on the public-Internet and within law firms. My hope, is that this column will help lawyers decide which tactics & technologies are valuable investments of their time, and which are not.

I’m very excited to be expanding my role with Law Practice in 2009.  I’m also thankful to have the mentoring and guidance of Editor-in-Chief Dan Pinnington, as well as Joan Feldman and Joy White.  All three have been incredibly helpful, and I feel confident going forward knowing that I have their support.

And while I’m on the thank-you circuit… I’d also like to acknowledge former Editor-in-Chief Dave Bilinsky, who both got me involved in LPM and persuaded me to sign up for (yet) another volunteer gig. Thanks Dave! ;) Actually, all sarcasm aside, my time with LPM has been an exceptional experience.  It’s a extremely smart and fun group to be around. And I highly recommend it.

Given that Stem is almost entirely run on web applications like Google Apps and Freshbooks, I probably owe it to myself to take this one for a run. That said, I’m also a big fan of Firefox so my loyalties are definitely going be tested.

And speaking of Firefox, it will be interesting to see where Google stands on its support for the Mozilla Project (see comment #1 on Matt’s post) after the announcement. All I can say is, browser standards & interoperability had better adhered to. Web design could take a serious step backwards otherwise; especially when adding what could soon prove to be a major player in the browser market.

On the plus side, Google is billing it as an open-source product. So fingers crossed.

(Update) One bold prediction: If Google gets any kind traction, Chrome will be the jumping off point for a future Google Operating System. The first requirement needed to compete with the likes Microsoft & Windows in the OS market is a user base willing to install application software. Other than the Google Toolbar, this might be their best opportunity yet.

Both bloggers have been long time favourites of mine, and if they can rekindle some of the Between Lawyers magic with a collaboration tool slant, I’ll certainly be all ears on this one.

Congrats on the new book, blog and wiki gentlemen! Subscribed.

A quick plug for the upcoming April 21st edition of Leg@al IT, Canada’s Premier Legal Technology Conference. For the second year running, Dominic Jaar has put together a stunning lineup of speakers for this event.

Unfortunately, I can’t be in attendance this year; but I have promised Dominic to fly out & join the fun for Leg@l IT 2009! I’m including some background info, below, taken from the site’s About page:

“Leg@l.IT, in collaboration with the Young Bar Association of Montreal (“YBAM”), the Canadian Bar Association and the Montreal Bar, is proud to present Leg@l.IT 2008, a conference on information technologies (“IT”) and law. This year, Leg@l.IT will take place on April 21st at the Mount Royal Centre in Montreal.

Every day, businesses, enterprises, people but also lawyers work with their computer, Internet, scanners, PDAs, etc. However, most lawyers are not aware of the impacts of IT on their work and on their professional obligations. Furthermore, they often do not realise how IT can help or harm them in their practice.

Last year, more than 130 people attended Leg@l.IT2007 and we expect this number to increase to over 200 in 2008 with the addition of partners and advertisers such as the Canadian Bar Association and the Montreal Bar! More sessions (3 tracks), world-class speakers, interesting and varied topics, etc.: a clear receipt for success!

The panellists and speakers are judges from different Courts, university teachers, lawyers, and IT specialists from Canada, the United States and Europe. The conference will attract members of the canadian, Quebec and Montreal bars, government employees, CIO, CLO, CTO, CEO, teachers, law and computer science students and teachers, computer technicians, records managers, etc. In other words, you should be there!”

Visit the online registration page for more information!