Practice Technology

Is Avvo’s fixed-cost service a fee-sharing violation?

The timing seemed prescient. One day after the ABA adopted a hotly contested resolution to guide states in their regulation of nontraditional legal service providers, Avvo rolled out Avvo Legal Services, offering fixed-fee, limited-scope legal services through a network of attorneys in 18 of the nation's most populous states.

May 1, 2016 1:30 AM CDT

Elevate Services acquires Legal OnRamp

Elevate Services has announced that it is expanding its legal technology business by acquiring Legal OnRamp. Paul Lippe, the founder and CEO of OnRamp Systems Inc., will serve on the advisory board of Elevate. Lippe is also an ABAJournal.com columnist. The Silicon Valley engineering team of Legal OnRamp will join…

Apr 28, 2016 4:20 PM CDT

Recommind and Hire Counsel announce new fixed-price document review model

Recommind and Hire Counsel are teaming up to offer a fixed-price document review model for electronic discovery. In a joint Wednesday press release (PDF), the two companies and partners announced they would offer first-pass review of electronic documents at a set price. According to the release, Hire Counsel combined project…

Apr 27, 2016 7:00 AM CDT

The CLOC is ticking: Will lawyers embrace operational excellence?

From the beginning of our conversation around the New Normal, we’ve argued that the way legal work is created, consumed and assessed would be more and more like other knowledge and digital work. Faster. More integrated. More automated. More measured. Hence New Normal. For my money, this has all somehow…

Apr 19, 2016 8:30 AM CDT

Former Locke Lord IT engineer gets 9 years, owes $1.69M for hack into firm’s computer system

A former information technology engineer for Locke Lord was sentenced Thursday to more than nine years in federal prison for hacking into the 1,000-attorney firm’s computer system on two days in December 2011, some four months after he stopped working there. Anastasio Laoutaris, now 41, was convicted by a jury…

Apr 18, 2016 4:00 PM CDT

Does facial recognition technology incorporate racial bias?

Police departments across the country are using facial recognition software to match images captured by their surveillance cameras with photos of fugitives or mug shot databases. But are police failing to account for the possibility of mismatches and failed matches that could affect blacks more than whites? Police in Chicago,…

Apr 13, 2016 6:15 AM CDT

The ‘magnet’ of expertise draws clients, generates fees

“We’re all here today because we’ve been lied to,” said Richard James, an entrepreneur and law firm consultant. “It wasn’t malicious. People we trusted told us things we thought to be true. We were told to get a good education, get a job at a good firm and get good…

Apr 11, 2016 1:30 PM CDT

In spite of regulations, lawyers should be bold with their advertising efforts

It was gloomy and gray for most of the day as the seventh annual Avvo Lawyernomics conference kicked off Friday from the Wynn Las Vegas. But it certainly felt like the record crowd of more than 600 attendees Avvo touted, as the conference rooms were filled to capacity. Maybe the…

Apr 11, 2016 10:54 AM CDT

Avvo announces it is offering free legal forms

In a move intended to direct more clients to Avvo lawyers, the company announced Thursday at its Lawyernomics conference that it is offering free legal forms over the Internet. Initially, the free Avvo Legal Forms library will offer only 20 documents. However, by the end of the year the company…

Apr 7, 2016 3:25 PM CDT

Should cellphone signals be jammed at prisons? FCC mulls issue of contraband devices there

What to do about a reported proliferation of prohibited cellphones in the nation’s prisons? Officials confiscate them when they find them, and can punish those responsible for providing or possessing contraband electronic devices. But the most practical solution is to jam the signal so cellphones can’t be used by those…

Apr 7, 2016 10:55 AM CDT

At 7th annual Avvo Lawyernomics, the emphasis will be on ‘unmarketing’

Scott Stratten, president of UnMarketing, has an interesting analogy for lawyer marketing in an increasingly competitive marketplace: One of his earliest jobs was serving as a sales training manager for a bubble wrap company. “The thing about bubble wrap is that everyone needs it, so my job is to tell…

Apr 7, 2016 8:00 AM CDT

Partner: Massive data breach at ‘Panama Papers’ law firm was from hack attack, not internal leak

Journalists reporting worldwide about offshore wealth of prominent people got millions of confidential documents from Panama-based Mossack Fonseca as a result of an attack by hackers, not an insider data leak, a partner of the law firm says. “We rule out an inside job. This is not a leak. This…

Apr 6, 2016 4:30 PM CDT

Voice-responsive programs can assist—but not replace—human help

For many years, one lawyer and his or her secretary made a team. Over the years, one administrative assistant working for several or even many lawyers has become the norm, especially in larger firms. Are we now arriving at a time when lawyers will move back to a one-to-one relationship, at least for certain tasks, but with digital assistants named Siri, Cortana or Alexa?

Apr 1, 2016 2:00 AM CDT

How artificial intelligence is transforming the legal profession

The future of the legal profession began 20 years ago.

The technology boom was just beginning with the emergence of email and personal computers. Jay Leib was working for Record Technologies Inc. as director of software sales and training in 1999, and the company was scanning documents into databases for clients. At one point the company printed and scanned legal documents related to a lawsuit with Microsoft. Leib thought that was inefficient, a waste of time and paper.

Apr 1, 2016 12:10 AM CDT

Cybercriminals target 50 BigLaw firms for phishing attacks seeking corporate deal info

A would-be securities fraud broker has spotlighted methods used in attempts to penetrate law firm computer systems, by seeking help with his project on a cybercriminal forum, authorities say. A post earlier this year by “Oleras,” who lives in the Ukraine, outlined a plan to target nearly 50 BigLaw firms,…

Mar 30, 2016 2:10 PM CDT