Just a few years ago, the New York Times predicted that an army of robots would put attorneys out of work. It’s an interesting premise, and there may be some truth in it. But in my experience in legal technology, the real challenge is not that technology is taking over legal tasks. It is that,…
read moreThis week, Josh Gilliland from the Legal Geeks podcast and I discussed why cloud computing is vital to the future of litigation. I know, it’s not a big surprise that Nextpoint is in favor of cloud computing. Our products are Discovery Cloud, Trial Cloud, and Cloud Preservation. But the fact is, eDiscovery is ideally suited to…
read moreProviding more evidence of the continued restructuring of Big Law, the Wall Street Journal’s front page reported that Weil Gotschal has announced layoffs, followed up by Above The Law’s continuing reports of ‘stealth’ layoffs in law firms — mostly of staff and legal secretaries. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with basic business…
read moreSince Nextpoint introduced Trial Cloud in 2007 and Discovery Cloud in 2009, one of the main questions we get from law firms regarding our cloud-based litigation software is about security. We’ve pointed out as often as possible that cloud applications like ours offer inherent security advantages over traditional, locally installed litigation software. That’s because cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft,…
read moreLaw firms need to wake up to the legal data security risks. The newspaper industry is in full freakout mode, with revelations that Chinese hackers have been targeting U.S.-based newspapers. The New York Times recently revealed Chinese hackers gained entry to the newspaper’s internal systems and accessed the personal computers of 53 employees- including David Barboza, Shanghai bureau chief…
read moreOne of the most useful rules in the history of economics is called Stein’s Law. Named after Nixon’s chairman of the Counsel of Economic Advisors, Herbert Stein, the rule says “Trends that can’t continue forever, won’t.” That may sound too simplistic to be of much use, but the fact is, humans are bad at trend…
read moreThe ongoing collapse of Autonomy is just the latest verification that big, installed software packages for the enterprise are doomed. Everything Autonomy stood for – in-sourcing sophisticated technology for highly specialized tasks – has proven to be a sham. Just look at the allegations of accounting irregularities. According to Hewlett Packard, Autonomy’s commoditized hardware expenses were co-mingled…
read moreLawmakers have a talent for confusing issues and scaring people unnecessarily. The current example is the proposed Cloud Computing Act of 2012. As Professor Eric Goldman at the Santa Clara University School of Law says of the Act, “I have no idea what problem this bill purports to solve.” The laws regarding criminal trespass in…
read moreBack in January of 2010, we published a post that the legal industry could be in for a technology disruption on the scale of newspapers. The signs abound that a disruption is now underway. I recently ran across this chart in The Business Insider from famed internet analyst Henry Blodgett that provides vivid detail as…
read moreAccording to last years’ Midlevel Associates Survey at Law.com, associates were excited about all of the new gadgets and software being made available to them. For a brief period, it seemed like new devices, software, and even the latest Windows upgrade might finally give overworked associates the technology they needed. Predictably, this year’s survey found…
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