Dennis Kennedy

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March 31, 2003

My TechShow Handouts Posted to Web (PDF)

I have now placed copies of my handouts for TechShow on my web site in PDF format. The first set is for a presentation called "Are Clients Driving Your IT Strategy?" and the second is "The Technology Manifesto: Working Closer With Your Business Partners." Both presentations will be on April 5.

Tom Mighell, Sabrina Pacifici and I have been working on getting a group of bloggers and bloggers-to-be together for lunch on Thursday at TechShow after Sabrina and Tom's presentation on blogging. I invite you to join us. Also, please say hello and introduce yourself to me at TechShow.

Posted by dmk at 12:48 PM

March 26, 2003

Law Blogs All on One Page

Bob Helmer has created the Daily Whirl, a one-stop shop to see headlines from many of the lawyer and law blogs now available. The site also offers a lot of personalization options. Another good example of lawyers creatively using blogs and feeds.

Posted by dmk at 10:35 PM

How CIOs Are Responding to Economic Pressures

In tbe CIO Roundtable--Leadership for Tough Times, 5 CIOs discuss their responses to current economic pressures and the emphasis on value. Among the items discussed: outsourcing, maintenance license renegotiation and reduced service levels for cost cutting purposes. This economic reality brings to the surface a legal reality: each of these items raise difficult and important legal issues that can and should be addressed up front.

Posted by dmk at 10:32 PM

Law Firms Not Alone in Using Old Operating Systems

Computerworld offers an interesting report on IT managers who have yet to upgrade from aging operating systems. Definitely worth a read and as CW aptly describes it, the article is a "rare look at those users on the lagging edge." The article on Windows NT is a must-read for those still on that OS.

Posted by dmk at 10:30 PM

March 24, 2003

War News and Blogs

It seems that everyone is looking for good sources of current Iraq info. Lately, I'm consistently returning to these: The Agonist, The Mercury News War Watch, Warblogs.cc, and the comprehensive Cyberjournalist.net blog, which will lead you to many, many resources.

Posted by dmk at 09:47 PM

Setting Up an 802.11b Home Wireless Network

Wei-Meng Lee's recent article on the O'Reilly Network is a solid, well-illustrated primer on setting up a WiFi home network.

Posted by dmk at 09:40 PM

Tomorrow's Tech

ZDNet's Anchordesk has a good collection of articles in a special report on personal technology choices that may help you make decisions about hardware, software, and services over the next 18 months.

Posted by dmk at 09:39 PM

CFOs Eye IT Security, Sell-side Systems

Interesting report from iSource Online summarizes the results of a recent survey of CFOs on IT issues. While it's no surprise that security remains a major concern, the primary emphasis for CFOs in 2003 will be improvements in customer-facing systems. Other news of note, most CFOs remain wary of outsourcing and 25% of CFOs do not communicate with CIOs on budgets.

Posted by dmk at 09:37 PM

March 19, 2003

E-lawyering in the UK

Press release from Divorce Online notes that: "Divorce-Online the UK’s leading online divorce service has announced that it has processed its 5000th divorce since launching their service in May 2000. The service which allows consumers to undertake their own divorce proceedings without a lawyer for just £85.00 has saved the consumer a whopping £4 million GBP in legal fees over the course of the last 2 ¾ years and deals with people from all social classes from famous actors to low income housewives and is a vital service for people living abroad who cannot easily get access to legal advice in the UK."

Posted by dmk at 07:45 PM

March 18, 2003

Open Source in the Corporate Environment - Practical Issues

I found two great articles today on the practical issues involved in using Open Source software (Linux, et al.) in the corporate environment.

The first comes from the ever useful CIO Magazine (free to qualified subscribers) and is called "Your Open Source Plan." The abstract says, "Once a toy for geeks, open source is slowly but surely filtering into the enterprise and transforming the way software is designed, sold and supported. And any CIO without an open-source strategy in 2003 will be paying too much for IT in 2004." This article is as good a piece as I've seen on practical aspects of Open Source in the corporate enterprise, and includes a good number of actual "from the trenches" reports. Highly recommended.

The second, called "Free and Clear?" by Sanjay Murthi in Intelligent Enterprise, sets out a good summary of business issues involved in selecting Open Sources options, concluding that looking at only licensing costs is unwise indeed. It's a good companion piece for the optimistic CIO article.

Are there many legal issues with the Open Source licenses? Only enough for me to write a law review article. See "A Primer on Open Source License Legal Issues: Copyright, Copyleft and Copyfuture," from the St. Louis U. Public Law Review. I also keep a set of links to resources on Legal issues on the Open Source licenses at http://www.denniskennedy.com/opensourcelaw.htm.

Posted by dmk at 10:45 PM

March 17, 2003

Revisiting the Legal Technology Primer

As some of you know, for a few years I have been collecting my articles on legal technology topics in the form of an "online book" as a method of organizing what is now approximately 100 articles. I've referred to that online book as "The Legal Technology Primer."

As a few others of you know, I've recently been working on re-editing The Legal Technology Primer, with the idea of turning it into an e-book and/or downloadable PDF book, in large part because it is quite unwieldy to read in its current online version. After finishing up a first pass this evening, I was pleasantly surprised by how well some of the older pieces still stand up and how interested I still am in many of the themes that I addressed much earlier in my writing (simplicity, usability, workability).

There were two articles in particular that I found especially interesting. One was called "Fast Fish and New Technologies: Ten Advantages Small Firms Have Over Large Firms," which seems even more accurate today, especially since I've spent the past 3 years at a firm over 300 lawyers, than it was when I wrote it in 1997. The second is called "Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and Late Night Thoughts on Rethinking the Practice of Law," ostensibly a book review of the book, Dealers of Lightning, about Xerox and its legendary ability to develop new and compelling technologies but inability to bring them to market. When I wrote that article, it felt very unfinished (hence the title) and I keep thinking that I'm going to return to it and the themes it addressed, but now I'm thinking that it, in its own way, may stand as it is.

I recommend both articles, both to those of you who are familiar with my writing and those of you who are not, as windows into some of the issues about law and technology that fascinate me most.

Posted by dmk at 09:43 PM

March 13, 2003

Client Driven Technology at Preston Gates

Law.com reports that the Preston Gates law firm has developed software to manage electronic discovery documents and transactional documents. This effort illustrates another effort by a law firm to respond to client concerns with technological innovation.

"Whenever a client expresses cost concerns, a law firm responds," says B. Gerald Johnson, Preston Gates' managing partner.

The article says, "Johnson set up a committee called 'Work Smarter,' headed by IP partner Martin Smith, to search for the good ideas. It has taken awhile, but Preston Gates lawyers have created two tools that have made their lawyers work faster and their clients envious. One is the document search tool Patterns. The other, called Structure, helps assemble documents in transactions."

While it probably helps to have Microsoft as a major firm client, this approach is one that law firms are going to have to consider and that large clients will want to request.

Posted by dmk at 10:18 PM

March 12, 2003

Chief Legal Officers Continue to Voice Dissatisfaction with Outside Counsel

I've spent a little time recently on the Altman Weil site, largely in response to their excellent AW Direct email newsletter, which I definitely recommend.

I'm fascinated with these summary comments on the 2002 survey of corporate legal officers:

"55% of Chief Legal Officers surveyed indicated they have fired or were considering firing outside counsel in 2002, compared with 62% in 2001 and 63% in 2000. Each year ‘lack of responsiveness’ has been the number one reason for dissatisfaction. When asked about the most innovative practice proposed or instituted by outside counsel in the last year, the greatest number of respondents said that there were ‘none.’"

I suggest that the last sentence of those comments is the greatest argument for client-driven technology initiatives ever put in print, and the seond greatest might be that it follows a sentence that talks about "lack of responsiveness." I'll definitely be using this quote in my presentations on client-driven technologies at the ABA TechShow.

A wake up call? Definitely. But which firms will hear it?

Posted by dmk at 10:35 AM

Partnership Has Its Rewards??

A new study from Altman Weil confirms something many of us had already suspected: law firm partners feel like they are working harder than ever because they are. Average billable hours for law firm partners increased 11.4% between 1984 and 2001, from 1,531 in 1984 to 1,706 in 2001. Partners in some law firms are now seeing minimum billable requirements in excess of this average. Marci Krufka of Altman Weil notes that it is "now typical for a law firm partner to work a total of 2,400 hours (billable and non-billable) annually."

Interestingly, average annual billables for associates increased only 3.8% during the same period, from 1,798 in 1984 to 1,867 in 2001.

Krufka's conclusion is sobering: "What does this mean? It is no longer the case that associates 'pay their dues' with hard work to be rewarded with an invitation to partnership. To the contrary, law firm partners work harder and have more responsibility than ever before, and there is nothing to indicate that will change any time soon."

More evidence of a system out of balance.

Posted by dmk at 10:30 AM

March 10, 2003

Out, Damn Metadata!

Lawyers are beginning to focus on the issue of the hidden metadata that is carried by documents, particularly those generated by Microsoft products. This "metadata" includes both information contained in prior drafts, comments, information about authors and sources and other items that can result in embarrassing and damaging disclosures. I'm aware of several firms that have attacked this problem at a variety of levels. In general, however, these solutions have addressed solely Microsoft Word documents. Unfortunately, much embarrassing and damaging metadata can be found in both Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides and dealing only with Word Documents will leave a serious hole in your overall effort to scrub out metadata.

There is good news from KKL software. ezClean scrubs Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents and integrates with Outlook, allowing you to scrub documents as you e-mail them. You can download a 45-day free eval copy of ezClean and KKL Software's other useful utilities. The metadata issue is one issue on which lawyers should be in the forefront.

Posted by dmk at 04:56 PM

The Dupont Legal Model

One of the compelling features of the Dupont Legal Model, one of the most studied approaches to inside counsel / outside counsel partnering and client-driven technologies, is Dupont's transparency about the process. Dupont has created a first class web site for the Dupont Legal Model and it is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in this very important trend in the legal practice. As I've mentioned before, I'm working toward developing a pretty comprehensive set of resources on this topic at http://www.denniskennedy.com/clientdriven.htm.

Posted by dmk at 04:52 PM

Let Us Now Lament the Final Issue of Legal Thought Leader

John Kelly's great newsletter, Legal Thought Leader, has long been a highly useful resource for me. Much of my first exposure to inside counsel / outside counsel partnering and the Dupont Legal Model came from reading this newsletter. With its insightful, well-researched, and just plain interesting articles, and John's excellent book reviews of leading business and professional books, LTL became a must-read for me. Unfortunately, I just got word that the current issue is the final issue. The only silver lining in this black cloud is that the archives (in PDF) are still available online.

Posted by dmk at 04:25 PM

March 06, 2003

WordPerfect Office 11 Out Later This Spring - Sales Might Just Surprise

I was a bit surprised when I saw Corel's press release about WordPerfect Office 11, because Corel seemed to have fallen off the radar screen over the past year or so. In the new version, there's a curious mix of old (you can revert to the "classic" WP 5.1 for DOS interface) and new (enhanced XML features).

Although Microsoft Word's march to domination of the legal market has been relentless, there remains a significant core of lingering good feeling and support for WordPerfect in the legal profession. Add to the mix the substantial cost of Microsoft Office and the reluctance of law firms to move up in versions of Microsoft Office because of costs and the unpopularity of Microsoft licensing options. With a lower price point, some built-in legal features and the ability to creat PDF files natively, we might see a comeback of WordPerfect, especially among the more cost-conscious lawyers and firms.

Posted by dmk at 01:48 PM

The World Goes Better with a Completely New Channel for Marketing?

I have an upcoming presentation on the role technology can play in inside counsel / outside counsel partnering and the talk was given the unwieldy title of "A Technology Manifesto." So, I've been researching different historical manifestos.

I ran across a recent speech by Coca-Cola Co. chief Steve Heyer that falls into the category of manifesto and is one of the more thought-provoking discussions I've seen this year.

Heyer essentially argues that the traditional marketing medium can be inverted so that content deliverers and others can take advantage of the Coke delivery system. Far too simplistically, imagine that a TV show buys space on Coke cans rather than Coke buying ad time on the TV show.

Unlike many others, I think that the word "paradigm" can be useful and this approach seems to be one that suggests a paradigm change. Worth the time to read and think about.

Posted by dmk at 01:45 PM

Speaking of Legal Tech Blogs

I'm quite interested in what Glenn Garnes is experimenting with in turning a newsletter into a blog and other things at The ESQlawtech Weekly. kfsource is another place to look for legal technology news. FYI: There's been some early talk of getting all the bloggers together for a, uh, get-together at ABA TechShow.

Posted by dmk at 01:40 PM

Oklahoma Bar Journal Blogging Article Online

Here's Jim Calloway's article in which he interviews Tom Mighell and me on the subject of legal blogging. As Tom mentions, the article is interesting for the parallels and overlaps, since we weren't interviewed together and neither of us saw the other's interview.

Posted by dmk at 01:36 PM

March 05, 2003

North by Northwest

On far too many nights the Cable disappoints. But, tonight, the grand exception -
North by Northwest with no commercial interruptions. This movie has been described as "a strong candidate for the most sheerly entertaining and enjoyable movie ever made by a Hollywood studio." I could not agree more. I found myself thinking "great scene" "great line" "great shot" time after time. And, of course, the movie ends with the greatest jump cut ever. The legendary crop-duster-in-the-cornfield scene even works well despite the fact that Cary Grant is not blogging the scene by wireless. Total fun - I'm even thinking about getting the limited edition DVD.

The movie has become even more fun because it now has a personal, emotional resonance. My friend Jim McKelly has filmed and produced a documentary about Mount Rushmore. During the filming, he was allowed to go up on the heads (where Hitchcock was not permitted to go). One time when Jim and I were swapping fear of heights stories, he told me his story of climbing to the top, with a heavy awkward pack, up a hidden set of "stairs," which consisted of little more than metal pegs driven into the rock and a rickety metal hand rail.

Now, I can't watch the great Mt. Rushmore scenes in North by Northwest without thinking about Jim reaching a point where he decided that he felt better making the climb with his eyes closed rather than open. I have to believe that scrambling over the replica of the monument on a sound stage would have been much easier.

Posted by dmk at 10:37 PM

March 03, 2003

Word Bursts and Pattern Recognition

For a while now, one of my favorite Internet "tools" has been Yahoo's Buzz Index. The Buzz Index is a listing of the biggest movers and the top searches in Yahoo in a number of categories. You can put it right on your My Yahoo page. I like to watch the way that certain TV shows spike up the ratings and you can see the long term popularity of some things (Lord of the Rings, for example). Just checking out the patterns of popular culture.

Now, through DayPop, you can check out a daily tracking of key words most commonly used by bloggers and see what people seem to be talking about most commonly. Again, patterns of culture. New Scientist magazine also has an article on "word bursts". The excellent bIPlog also mentioned the topic recently. Notice a pattern.

Aggregating news feeds on similar topics will also tend to show you some patterns, although you have to be careful because you start to think that everyone you know is talking about digital rights management or some other esoteric topic.

It's the skill of pattern recognition that will become key in our information world. Watch for new tools (3-D visualization of data) that will help us make sense of what is coming to us. I can't wait, because it's hard to see what's going on now. Which reminds me, I've got to get around to read William Gibson's new book titled interestingly enough, Pattern Recognition.

Posted by dmk at 10:53 PM

Recording Live Lectures Digitally

I want to record some of my presentations live in a digital format (presumably MP3) to edit and turn into samples on my web site and potentially cassettes and CDs of the talk for sale. I don't want to record directly to the notebook computer I'm using (that seems to be a high risk move while presenting). I've tried to research some options but have found little that I would consider definitive. At this point, I'm leaning toward the Pogo RipFlash line of MP3 recorders with a high-quality preamped microphone, preferably of the lapel type.

If anyone actually does make recordings of their own speeches for product development or other use, I'd love to hear about your experience and your recommendations. Email me at dmk@denniskennedy.com. I'll post whatever helpful information I learn on this blog.

Posted by dmk at 10:50 PM

Client-Driven Technology - The Cisco Way

Rick Klau has a fascinating report from the CIO Forum on the panel presentation of Cisco general counsel, Mark Chandler. Important comments from Chandler included Chandler's goal that, by end of 2003, 80% of all of Cisco's outside counsel expenses will be non-billable hour work. Astonishingly, for lawyers in the minimum billable hour world, today that number for Cisco is about 65%.

Chandler's final quote: "Technology is absolutely the only way firms will stay efficient and effective. Those who don't use it well won't survive."

If you are looking for a quote to tape up by your bathroom mirror to think about every morning, that's not a bad candidate.

Thanks, Rick, for reporting on the conference, another example of the cool blog thing where you can learn from bloggers what went on at conference you would have liked to attend (or, for those of us with the speaking bug, to have spoken at) but were not able to.

Posted by dmk at 10:46 PM

The Demise of Red Herring

I was just thinking this weekend about how much I like reading Red Herring magazine, but that I noticed that it was getting thinner and had fewer ad pages, always a bad sign. I was hoping that the fact that I liked a magazine would not turn out to be the kiss of death, like it seems to be for TV shows I like. Unfortunately, it was.

I got a lot of great information and ideas from that magazine (not counting the tech stocks that took horrifying plunges after I bought them based on Red Herring articles, or, worse yet, the recommendations of the Red Herring stock portfolio column - but, hey, those stock stories will make for good nostalgia in the years to come, right?). The industry briefings were always great sources on particular industries or areas of technology.

After my initial disbelief, I marched right over to Tony Perkins' new web venture, AlwaysOn and signed right up. I'm very interested to see what comes next.

Posted by dmk at 10:43 PM