The exhibit hall at Legaltech New York promises to be filled to the brim with legal technology companies providing the latest new innovations and amazing upgrades to each of their new systems. Afraid that you may miss something in the commotion? Legaltech News will be covering the latest legal technology company news during and after the show... but in case you want to get a jump on what technologies and innovations some of the biggest names in legal tech will be offering, here is a preview. The first part of this preview, with eight companies listed in alphabetical order, will run Friday, with the second eight companies being featured the day before the conference on Monday.
BQE Software
BQE Software, which provides time, billing, accounting and project management software for a number of industries, has announced upgrades to its BillQuick Legal 2016 product with an eye towards accelerating the efficiency, effectiveness and convenience of legal time tracking and billing. The new features in BillQuick Legal 2016 focus on automation (such as the ability to automatically import transactions, auto-update matter information from the client screen, and create a back-up SQL database), efficiency (with a matter-level retainer, time and expense by class, and a detailed view of unpaid expenses), and technical excellence.
According to the company BillQuick Legal will work with the latest version of operating systems such as Windows 10 and provide significant performance improvements.
“Simply put, BillQuick Legal 2016 allows you to do more in less time,” said Shafat Qazi, CEO and founder of BQE Software, in a release accompanying the news. “With this release, we focused on minimizing the time spent to complete day-to-day tasks. BillQuick Legal 2016 helps legal professionals get things done accurately, intelligently, automatically and ahead of schedule.”
Catalyst
Catalyst has announced that it will be delivering forensic investigation and collection services on a global basis. The new service, which has been rolled out over the past several months, will now provide remote or on-location services backed by testifying experts with a wide range of certifications and forensic credentials. These experts will be called upon to investigate and analyze computer data for purposes of identification, preservation, extraction, interpretation and documentation of electronic evidence, all with an eye towards future admissibility. A variety of hardware and software systems are eligible to be analyzed, including desktop and laptop computers, smartphones and older-model cell phones, and cloud services including Google Drive and Office 365.
At the show, Catalyst will also demonstrate Insight Predict, Legaltech’s 2015 new product of the year honoree, and discuss the launch of its new global forensic investigation and collection services, and how to lower the total cost of review. The company is also releasing the second edition of “TAR for Smart People” with new chapters focused on learning about TAR and CAL, along with new case studies that reinforce the power of TAR 2.0 systems, and updates on TAR case law with the latest decisions.
FTI Technology
FTI Technology has announced the launch of Radiance, a new visual analytics software platform that enables organizations to dynamically investigate and understand their enterprise data. Available as a cloud-based service or as a rapid deployment mobile option, Radiance is intended to provide visuals and data analytics similar to the company’s flagship Ringtail products, but with an eye towards pre-discovery and early case assessment analytics. As a result, Radiance is intended to be an “an easy-to-use, scalable platform” that works quickly, visualizing millions of documents from these disparate sources in a single, elegantly designed user interface. More on Radiance will be on Legaltech News in the coming days.
Separately, FTI’s business segment has launched version 8.6 of its Ringtail e-discovery software. Ringtail 8.6 offers a number of feature and performance enhancements, including new timeline analytics and faster rendering, to improve Ringtail’s usability and help legal teams efficiently find important data for legal, regulatory and investigative matters. The company said the focus of the upgrade is “speed, greater ease of use, and continuing our innovation around visual.”
Ipro
Ipro’s workflow platform, ADD Automated Digital Discovery, seeks to provide a simple and automated way for organizations to manage e-discovery. And with its latest ADD release, Ipro looks to take the automation to another level, introducing Media Manager as a web-based solution to “completely automate and optimize identifying and tracking electronic files across the eDiscovery workflow.” Media Manager, the company added, can also add key delivery and metadata information to source media (hard drives, thumb drives, DVDs, etc.) and electronic files for document management and tracking. The addition also allows users to auto-generate barcodes, copy media content to the network to create and track discovery jobs, and map media paths to existing clients and custodians.
The ADD platform also touts a number of other upgrades in its latest release, including increased integration between Ipro processing and Relativity review on the ADD platform (dubbed “Ipro-Q”), continuous streaming, first-pass filtering, and on-demand license consumption. At Legaltech New York, the company will also be showcasing processing speed and functionality upgrades to early case assessment tool Allegro, analytic web-based review Eclipse and the high-speed processing tool eCapture.
Inventus
International legal process outsourcing services provider Inventus is looking to shine a light on data analytics with the launching of its new platform Spotlight. Inventus Spotlight is a business data analytics platform that provides clients with insights into their litigation portfolio, which the company said will enable comprehensive outsourcing visibility, predictability and cost management. The tool will aggregate data from various sources, including Relativity, LAW and other third party applications, as well as integrate directly into the Luminosity system.
This tool, the company said, gives clients real-time insight into their data and litigation portfolio, as well as allow them to quantify the ROI on e-discovery spend and better manage and predict the capital that goes into their e-discovery budget. The company will showcase the new platform at Legaltech New York, including its functionality on mobile devices.
Every enterprise today—from the world’s largest financial and retail establishments to the smallest of healthcare providers—is struggling to manage and exploit the exploding volume of personal information that comes within their possession,while also maintaining data security and complying with privacy-related laws and regulations. They are not alone. Courts, legislators and regulators also are striving to find ways to protect legitimate privacy rights while keeping the realities of today’s technology evolution and business environment in mind. The breakneck speed at which technology continues to develop, often without consideration of privacy concerns, further heightens these already difficult challenges.
Looking at privacy issues through the prism of existing laws and regulations is sometimes like putting a round peg into a square hole. Despite the current difficulties and uncertainties in today's high tech, Big Data world, J. Trevor Hughes, president and CEO of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, has identified certain trends in legal and regulatory spheres that provide important insights into where we all may be headed in the near future. We recently sat down for a conversation and he outlined his observations.
Class Action Litigation
As a general rule, plaintiffs must have suffered a legally cognizable injury to have standing to sue in federal court. Plaintiffs must demonstrate 1) that they suffered an injury in fact, 2) that is fairly traceable to the defendant's actions, and 3) that will likely be redressed with a favorable decision. This has become a contentious issue in privacy cases where stolen financial or health information is never used.
Recent cases demonstrate the disparity in the way courts are deciding that issue:
Polanco v. Omnicell, 2013 WL 6823265 (D.N.J. 2013) (plaintiff lacked standing because her self-imposed increased costs following a data breach constituted speculative and manufactured damages where there was no misuse of her information) and In re: Sony Gaming Networks and Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, MDL No. 11md2258 AJB (S.D. Cal. 2014) (court reaffirmed prior ruling that the plaintiffs had standing based on allegations that personal information was wrongfully disseminated, thereby increasing risk of future harm, regardless of whether actual harm had yet occurred.)
"Harm is the big issue in class action litigation, and plaintiff lawyers are likely to explore every innovative argument they can think of to satisfy the ‘injury’ requirement,” says Hughes. “I expect that plaintiff lawyers will attempt to quantify some harm from a data breach by utilizing economists and other experts in an effort to identify marketplace cost differentials to demonstrate premiums paid by consumers for protection of their personal information.”
Hughes also predicts a focus on deceptive trade practice cases, such as where private information is improperly collected or used in a manner inconsistent with what was represented at the time of collection. Lawyers should anticipate “enormous activity” in cases where statutory damages are at issue, such as alleged violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, he asserts. Despite the formidable injury hurdle imposed by most courts in data breach cases, Hughes warns that breaches resulting from “egregious fact patterns” will have a big effect on judicial outcomes and political and legislative agendas.
Governmental and Enterprise Tracking
Recent events—such as the Edward Snowden/National Security Agency affair, disclosures of data sharing between private corporations and the U.S. government, and international corporate espionage incidents—have created “enormous international issues,” observes Hughes. The effect of this current environment, he says, is that “overseas consumers are demanding that their data be held overseas, and European cloud providers are leveraging the EU’s stricter data privacy laws to promote service offerings over their U.S. competitors.” The resultant “balkanization of data caused by this phenomenon, which serves to prohibit the free flow of data, is inconsistent with the advancement of a global economy and optimal utilization of the Internet, and will take us further into uncharted territory,” says Hughes. “As regulations and laws continue to evolve in this uncharted territory, it is becoming increasingly important to stay current on new privacy and security developments to better protect companies and individuals.”
Proposed European Union Regulations
U.S. regulators are not the only ones confronting cutting edge privacy issues. The European Union currently is engaged in debate concerning the replacement of Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC, which was enacted before widespread use of the Internet and substantially prior to the advent of smartphones, social media and Big Data.
Among other things, the new regulation will require some businesses to have a data protection officer. Some nations, particularly the United Kingdom and Germany, have expressed significant concerns over the proposed “one-stop shop” principle included in the proposed regulation. Persuant to that principle, a regulator in the country in which a multinational corporation is based would be responsible for monitoring the corporation’s activities throughout the E.U. and for taking any necessary enforcement actions. Despite these difficulties, Hughes thinks that we may now be seeing what the finish line might be. “Regarding E.U. regulations, this year we are likely to a continued effort to define and provide clarity around the privacy and security practices.”
Opportunities for Information Economy Professionals
Threats to privacy, from whatever source, are becoming increasingly destabilizing and less predictable, observes Hughes. This situation, however, is creating tremendous opportunities for well-rounded privacy professionals. Hughes argues that today's environment has led to a demand for trained “information economy professionals” who bring a comprehensive approach to pressing privacy issues. “We need professionals, a new breed of people, who can look at risk from a legal, corporate and societal perspective. Information economy professionals who can lead entities through these difficult times will be in high demand.”
Judy Selby is a partner at Baker & Hostetler in New York. Email: jselby@bakerlaw.com. Twitter: @judy_selby.
SAN FRANCISCO — In case it wasn’t already crystal clear that plaintiffs and defendants in patent suits have different ideas about where they want to litigate, another nasty East Texas-Northern California turf fight has broken out, this time between Google Inc. and Rockstar Consortium, the IP firm partly owned by Apple.
The feud started when Rockstar filed a spate of suits in the Eastern District of Texas against gadget-makers who use Google’s Android platform. Mountain View-based Google upped the ante in December with a declaratory judgment action in the Northern District of California.
Now lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and McKool Smith are trading blows in a venue fight, each accusing the other of blatant forum-shopping.
“There is only one reasonable place to conduct this litigation: California,” argued Google’s lawyers at Quinn in a Feb. 6 court filing.
“California is not even an option for this litigation, and Google’s contrary view squarely conflicts with controlling law,” McKool Smith lawyers retorted in a brief filed Feb. 13.
Rockstar wants Google’s suit to be tossed, or at least transferred. Its lawyers contend the California court lacks jurisdiction over Rockstar and its wholly owned subsidiary MobileStar Technologies LLC, which owns or holds an exclusive license to the seven patents at issue. Moreover, Rockstar insists it was the first to file suit and its choice of venue trumps.
“Google’s effort to invoke the Declaratory Judgment Act invites precisely the kind of inefficient, duplicative litigation (and risk of inconsistent results) that the Act will not tolerate,” Rockstar’s lawyers argued.
The so-called first-to-file rule allows a federal court to refuse to hear a case if issues substantially overlap with those raised in an earlier-filed case. Transfer is discretionary.
Meanwhile, Google also claimed that it was the first to file, pointing out that Rockstar amended one of its pending suits in the Eastern District of Texas to include Google roughly a week after Google filed its declaratory judgment action.
“Rockstar admittedly sued Google only after Google brought [the declaratory judgment filing],” the company asserted.
Google is represented by Quinn Emanuel partners Sean Pak, Amy Candido and Matthew Warren. The team also seized on Rockstar’s origins as a patent holding company to support its jurisdictional arguments.
Rockstar was created out of the 2011 bankruptcy of Nortel Networks. Apple, Microsoft, Research in Motion Inc., and other Google competitors paid $4.5 billion to acquire Nortel’s patent portfolio, outbidding Google. Apple contributed approximately $2.6 billion of that sum.
Rockstar transferred thousands of U.S. and foreign patents to its owners and reorganized itself as a patent licensing business that produces no products. It formed MobileStar one day before filing its spate of lawsuits in October.
Google contended that Rockstar’s ties to Nortel, which did business in California, and its links to Apple both give rise to jurisdiction. The Quinn Emanuel lawyers also noted that Google’s Android platform is “designed, developed, tested, and built primarily here in California.”
Rockstar’s team, which includes McKool Smith founder Mike McKool in Dallas and partner Courtland Reichman in Redwood Shores, Calif., took different view. “Google cannot sue Rockstar in California by saying it could have sued Apple or Nortel in California,” Rockstar’s lawyers insisted. “Personal jurisdiction is personal, and Google has not shown Rockstar itself is subject to suit in this Court.”
As for MobileStar, the team wrote: “If Google wishes to hale MobileStar into court, it has to establish jurisdiction using MobileStar’s contacts."
In its response motion, Google specifically pushed back against Rockstar’s contention that MobileStar cannot be tried in California, calling the argument a “too clever by half assertion of immunity by subsidiary.” It cited Dainippon Screen Manufacturing v. CFMT, a 1998 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
“Rockstar’s argument … would be an awfully neat trick—had the Court of Appeals not already considered and rejected it,” Google stated.
A hearing is scheduled March 13 before U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland.
Lawyers need to embrace technology, can’t be afraid to try new things, and must focus primarily on improving their clients’ experience.
Those were the main takeaways from Friday’s ReInvent Law conference in New York City. More than 800 lawyers, academics, business owners, students and others in the legal industry packed into the Great Hall at New York City’s famed Cooper Union for the second annual ReInvent Law conference, which was sponsored by the ABA Journal, Michigan State University College of Law and the Kauffman Foundation. Founded by Michigan State University College of Law professors and Daniel Katz and Renee Newman Knake, ReInvent Law NYC brought people from the United States, Europe and Australia in a frank exchange of ideas about the need for innovation in the legal industry.
With its rapid-fire and jam-packed agenda, nearly 40 lawyers, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, students and others in the legal industry spoke about topics ranging from price transparency and use of data analytics to emerging technologies such as Google Glass, 3D printing and computable contracts.
The talks ranged significantly in quality and tone. Lisa Damon of Seyfarth Shaw went the inspirational route by imploring her fellow attorneys not to be afraid to blow things up. “I love to blow things up - the bigger, the better,” said Damon, whose talk was entitled “Confessions of a Pyrotechnician.” Damon, who spoke about her role in implementing Six Sigma principles into Seyfarth Shaw’s operating plan, urged lawyers to follow their passions, because that was where innovation came from. “Don’t be afraid to fail,” Damon told the audience. Similarly, Patrick Lamb of Valorem Law Group encouraged the audience to take chances. "There will be falls, maybe a step back for every two forward," Lamb said. "But it'll be progress."
Much of the discussion focused on the need for law firms to ditch the old business model of billable hours. Mark Chandler, general counsel of Cisco spoke of the changes his company had to make in the wake of the economic downturn. For instance, Chandler’s company changed its compensation structure so that firms had incentive to get work done as efficiently as possible. Additionally, Chandler embraced technology and automated as much work as possible as a way of saving costs. “People don't change their habits very easily,” Chandler said of law firms, during a sit-down interview on stage with Indiana University Maurer School of Law professor William Henderson.
Other GCs agreed, arguing that lawyers needed to focus on delivering better services to clients. Susan Hackett, chief executive officer of Legal Executive Leadership, and Jeffrey Carr, FMC Technology’s general counsel, said that it was incumbent on general counsel to take the lead in forcing outside counsel to adopt new business models and innovative technologies. Josh King, general counsel at Avvo, advocated price transparency by pointing out that the vast majority of clients pointed to fees as the biggest factor in choosing a lawyer. Paul Lippe chief executive officer of Legal OnRamp, said that lawyers had to use metrics to determine their quality, arguing that “unless you define what you want and measure it, the probability of positive feedback is low.”
Technology also played a large role in the proceedings. Several of Katz’s students touted new and existing technology and argued that lawyers could improve their practices tremendously if they adopted them now. Kristen Kolakowski-Godin told the audience that they should embrace predictive coding, telling them that they could save millions by cutting down on document review time. Chase Hertel, meanwhile, spoke of immigration and how innovative law firms can use the cloud to provide better service to the millions of immigrants who aren’t being served by law firms right now. And, in a presentation that generated plenty of controversy amongst real-time commentators on Twitter, Andy Ninh talked up Google Glass and how lawyers could use it to do everything from time and billing management to recording depositions to getting information on jurors during voir dire.
“Guy on stage talking about Google Glass in the legal practice. I think we're really reaching now - it's just a display!” Tweeted Rubsun Ho, a lawyer & co-founder of legal services provider Cognition.
Other criticism of the event centered around the lack of practicing attorneys speaking from the stage. According to several commentators on Twitter, there were few BigLaw attorneys present—perhaps unsurprising given the tone of several speakers, including FMC's Carr, who said that “BigLaw is irrelevant—they won't be the source of the change because they are in the business of billing hours.” Of the speakers, only two came from Am Law 200 firms. Meanwhile, others noted that many speakers were from legal start-ups and spent much of their allotted time talking about their companies and products. “Is #reinventlaw for practicing attorneys or legal tech start ups?” tweeted LegalTypist.
Ultimately, those criticisms were merely background noise for those who believed in the cause. "If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more," notes one of Carr's slides.
