♫ The spheres’re in commotion
The elements in harmony
She blinded me with science
“She blinded me with science!”
And hit me with technology…♫

Lyrics and Music by Thomas Dolby and Jonathan Kerr, recorded by Thomas Dolby.

This is a guest post by my friend and colleague, Christy Burke, written today for the blog Legal IT Professionals.  With her permission I have reproduced it here.

Web-Based Dispute Resolution Systems Gain Traction as Court Delays and Low Value Disputes Surge

Courtroom showdowns make for great movie scenes, but To Kill a Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch would be shocked to hear that the courts are only resolving a fraction of today’s legal disputes. A growing number of cases are being resolved by online tools, and sometimes lawyers and judges are not even involved. Impartial web-based systems apply computation, algorithms and cryptographic technology to bring about resolution quickly and inexpensively.

A growing stable of private sector companies are beginning to compete with the judicial system for “customers” and are also changing the face of traditional Alternate Dispute Resolution or ADR, which has typically included mediation, arbitration and other alternatives to the courts.

Not only are approaches to justice and negotiation changing, but some of these new systems like those provided by Fair Outcomes, are actually prompting lawyers and their customers to be more honest about the value of a case and their realistic objectives from the outset, providing disincentives to lie, bully and posture. Utopian though it may sound, this is actually becoming a reality. Atticus would be happy to hear that, at least!

A potential paradigm shift is in the making here, but what is motivating parties to look outside traditional courts, mediation and arbitration and flock to the web for resolving their disputes? In short, overburdened courts, lean economic times, cost, and convenience all figure into the mix.

Pared Down Courts Cannot Keep Up

Many courts in the US and abroad are sagging under the weight of overflowing caseloads while budget cuts slash their resources – a double negative. Take California for example. (more…)

♫  Cos when I look at my life
How the pieces fall into place…♫ 

Lyrics and music by Jarl, Stenmarck, Andreas Carlsson, recorded by Westlife.

Gentle readers of this blog are aware of my interest in the intersection of business strategy, finance, leadership and technology within a law firm setting.  One of the emerging areas that lies within the  intersection of these disciplines is knowledge management.  I believe it has particular importance within a large firm setting as there is the tendency for lawyers in larger organizations to become ‘silo-ized’ – not for any other reason other than your ability to interact with people on a 1-1 basis diminishes as the size of an organization grows.  For example, if you work in a larger organization, ask yourself how often you speak to someone who works on another floor in your firm?  If you have multiple offices in multiple cities, the situation is compounded even further.  Since 1-1 interaction is at the heart of person-to-person knowledge sharing and transfer, the sheer size of an organization works against 1-1 knowledge transfer.

So to begin: What are we speaking about when we use the phrase “knowledge management”? (more…)

♫ Oh, put me in, Coach – I’m ready to play today;
Put me in, Coach – I’m ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be Centerfield…♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by John Fogerty.

This is a guest post from Beth Flynn at the Ohio Leadership Center.  Increasingly today, younger lawyers are looking for mentorship and support from the more experienced members of the bar.  However, not everyone is familiar with how to be a good coach.  Accordingly I thought Beth’s post on the personal attributes and qualities of a winning coach would be a great management topic for lawyers.  So without further ado, here are the 14.5 attributes:

1. You have valuable information that people can use.
2. You combine your experience with the real world.
3. You have a sense of humor.
4. You know the game better than they do.
5. You encourage.
6. You are a great presenter.
7. You have standards and ethics that you follow, not just preach.
8. You are enthusiastic.
9. You have great communication skills.
10. Your players like you.
11. Your players believe in you.
12. You inspire others.
13. You tell the truth all the time.
14. Your players respect you.

14.5 You can play (Gitomer, 2011, p. 108-109).

These tips are from: Gitomer, J (2011), “Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Book of Leadership: The 12.5 Strengths of Responsible, Reliable, Remarkable Leaders that Create Results, Rewards and Resilience”. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons

Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Book of Leadaership is available from the OSU Leadership Center. Click here to borrow this resource or any other resource. Once you are on the OSU website, click on the Spectrum icon.

Learn how the Ohio State University Leadership Center is inspiring others to take a leadership role that empowers the world at: http;//leadershipcenter.osu.edu.  To begin receiving Beth’s Leadership Moments newsletter, please click on Join Our Mailing List.

Thanks Beth for another great leadership post on how all of us can become winning coaches and mentors.

♬ I want a new drug 
One that does what it should…♬ 

Lyrics, music and recorded by Huey Lewis.

On Monday April 2, 2012, Dr. Frank Fowlie, the Internet Ombudsman, Kari Boyle of MediateBC and your humble scribe did a presentation for the University of British Columbia law school.  It was entitled: ODR Around the World and was meant to be an introduction into the emerging field of Online Dispute Resolution and how it is changing the way that people could resolve their disputes using internet technology.

During the presentation, I asked the students to reflect on the inherent structure of the justice system.  Being bright law students, they perceived that it is:

• Synchronous: All parties must attend the court house at the same time.
• Serial:  Each case follows the one before it on the docket in order to be heard or processed by the presiding judge or court official.
• Expensive:  Each bricks and mortar courthouse has to be built and staffed.
• Geographically Tied: All parties must attend the court that is hearing the case.
• Jurisdictionally Tied: For the most part, each case is heard according to the laws of the jurisdiction where it is filed.
• Involves Transactional Costs:  Not only are there hard costs involved in filing the claim or action, the parties involved suffer a loss of opportunity cost – the time that they put into the claim or action represents time that they could have used otherwise.  The longer the resolution time, the greater the transactional costs.
• Involves Delays:  A case takes time to weave its way through the court system. In some cases that delay is relatively short – in other cases it is quite long.  We are seeing headlines today on the increasing delays in the justice system. We all know that justice delayed is justice denied.
• Limited Availability:  It used to be that courts and bankers kept the same hours.  However, today, courtesy of the internet, banks are open 24/7.  Courts, however, are not.
• Involves a Judge:  For the most part, a case must be heard and determined by a judge (yes you can go before Masters and the like but they can’t make final orders). This means that the judge represents a bottleneck in the system.

I then posed a challenge to the students: How can you structure a dispute resolution system that tries to break down one or more of these constraints?  What would that system look like?  Moreover, what would be the advantages to those involved in the dispute that don’t currently exist in the present justice system?  What about disadvantages? (more…)

♬ Money talks, it’ll tell you a story
Money talks, says strange things
Money talks very loudly
…Money talks…♬

Lyrics and music by JJ Cale and Christine Lakeland, recorded by JJ Cale.

Having just returned from ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago, I thought I would take a moment and lay out what I believe was the grand theme that was running through this year’s show. Yes, there were great and new technologies. Yes, the conference showed just how deeply the iPad and Apple technologies have penetrated the legal profession (the iPad Apps session was standing room only and iPads were seen everywhere.  The  (near) absence of laptops underscored how lawyers have jumped onto the tablet / iPad platform as their mobile solution.  Yes, there were great presentations by wonderful speakers on cool and upcoming technologies such as the Microsoft phone and Windows 8.  Yes, the Cloud and all kinds of hosted IT services were big. And yes, the exhibit floor was packed with vendors and attendees alike.  But…

In my opinion, the biggest (understated) theme was the open question over the future of the legal profession. You could almost feel the undercurrents. Ben Stein, the noted lawyer, economist and television personality, in his keynote presentation, raised the distinct possibility of the economic collapse of the USA and what that might mean – and not just for lawyers. Certainly he dealt with the changes that the recession has had on the legal profession to date and the fact that these changes may be permanent. While he gave hope that things may improve, it was one of the nicest ‘things are never going to be the same’ speeches I have ever heard. (more…)

♬  And you just gotta move on, Because it’s all, Lessons learned…♬

Music and lyrics by Wendell Mobley, recorded by Carrie Underwood.

Most lawyers are as yet unaware of the growing discipline known as Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). ODR taps into technology (principally the communication abilities of the Internet) to help resolve disputes between parties. While it is seen as the online equivalent of ADR, it really is much much more.

ODR was born by the combination of ADR and Information and Communication Technologies. In ADR, there are three parties: the plaintiff, the defendant and the third neutral party (a mediator or arbitrator for example). However, ODR differs from this three party system by introducing computers and software – an independent fourth party that can help manage the dispute. Indeed, at the highest and most sophisticated levels of ODR, the technology applies mathematical models and algorithms based on group theory to resolve the dispute. www.SmartSettle.com, one ODR e-Negotiation system, states as follows:

“As the world’s most advanced negotiation system, Smartsettle Infinity can do what human minds alone cannot – model the problem, manage preference information, and quickly optimize solutions. Infinity supports an unlimited number of quantitative or qualitative issues between any number of parties in any combination of real-time and asynchronous negotiations, whether face-to-face or over great distances, anywhere on Earth.”

There are, of course, many other implementations of ODR systems, that range from simple blind-bidding systems (one variable, two parties) where the system does not reveal what each person is willing to accept unless a settlement is reached (the software compares each party’s position and declares a settlement once the positions become sufficiently close), to assisted negotiation, to adjudicative methods and others.

Is this science-fiction? Not in the least. For example:

“The European Consumer Centers Network (ECC-Net) consists of 29 centers in the European Union, Norway and Iceland. Financed by the European Commission and members states, and staffed by individuals trained in law, the network seeks to increase consumer confidence in its internal market. Mr. Knudsen explained that 40,000 to 60,000 complaints and information requests are typically addressed each year, and that eCommerce complaints outstrip on-premise and non-eCommerce distance sales on an order of 2:1. Approximately half of the complaints the ECC-Net oversee are resolved through mediation.”

How important is the field of ODR? It is recognized that low value e-commerce, or sales/purchases conducted over the web, is stalled due to the lack of any effective enforcement mechanism where the purchaser and vendors are in different jurisdictions. Accordingly, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) has created an ODR Working Group to focus exclusively on a global ODR system for low-value eCommerce disputes and to craft recommendations that can be taken back to the full UN General Assembly. This represents a major development in the effort to build a global ODR system, since it is the first time a body with representation from every sovereign nation in the world has so seriously tackled this complex subject.

Furthermore, governments are looking at more localized ODR systems for small claims, custody and family disputes, among others. Businesses are looking at building in ODR to their contracts of sale to provide a low-cost and effective method to resolve consumer disputes.

One thing is clear: the world is turning to ODR as a way to bridge distances and time zones and implement a dispute resolution mechanism that will allow e-commerce disputes to be settled in a way that is just not possible using the current dispute resolution systems that are otherwise too tied to geography, too expensive or too complex for these types of disputes.

The next ODR Conference will take place in Prague, Czech Republic on June 27-29, 2012.  For more information click here.  This conference will continue the dialogue on how to effectively create a world-wide ODR system for e-commerce disputes.

Once this type of ODR system is effectively built – it will not be long before it is applied to many other types of disputes, since it will all be lessons learned.

(This post was originally written for the Canadian Bar Association – British Columbia Branch’s newsletter “BarTalk” in the column “PracticeTalk”).

♬  You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up… To more than I can be…♬

Music by Secret Garden‘s Rolf Løvland and the lyrics byBrendan Graham, recorded by Josh Groban.

This is a guest post from Beth Flynn’s Leadership Moments newsletter at the OSU Leadership Center. It speaks to how we can lift up others in our workplace and in so doing, uplift ourselves.

Make it unfashionable to be a downer.  Inspiration doesn’t survive in an energy-sapping context.  This doesn’t mean that tough realities are denied and not faced.

The electrifier always has a positive spin on a setback.  After all, inspiration stems from our spirit and our inner spirit is stronger than our outer circumstances.  Earlier we defined our spirit as our unlimited resource that transcends, and adds strength to our weary physical bodies and fragile psychological egos.  When our bodies and minds are down, an insight from our spirits gives us the jolt!

The first way of energizing our work environment is by inspiring the development of a culture of people who are filled with energy, hope and positive motivation.  Each person moves from the highest part of his or her mind, heart, and spirit (Losoncy & Walsh, 2011, p. 82).

♫ Food for thought
You give me food for thought..♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by 10cc.

The America Bar Association (ABA) established the 20/20 Commission almost 3 years ago to report on the:

“Impact of Internet technology on the delivery of legal services, both globally and within the United States”

Today, the revised drafts of a number of the 20/20 Commission’s proposals were released on the ABA Site-tation website in the following areas:

• Technology and Confidentiality (PDF)
  Addresses lawyers’ obligations and responsibilities in handling the storage and security of clients’ confidential data.
• Technology and Client Development (PDF)
  Addresses lawyers’ use of web-based technology, including social networking, to market their practices and attract new clients.
• Outsourcing (PDF)
  Addresses the ethical responsibilities associated with the outsourcing of legal and law-related work, both domestically and offshore.
• Model Rule 1.1 (Duty of Confidentiality) (PDF)
  Addresses disclosure of confidential information particularly in the context of detecting conflicts of interest.
• Practice Pending Admission (PDF)
  Addresses issues relating to the establishment of a practice in a new jurisdiction in the context of an increasingly mobile, multi-jurisdictional profession.
• Admission by Motion (PDF)
  Addresses the number of years required for admission by motion, again addressing movement towards multi-jurisdictional practices and mobile lawyers.

As the ABA site-tation website states, considerably more information, including comments and news, can be found on the Commission’s official website.

The deadline for submitting comments on these final proposals is April 2, 2012. Comments should be directed to Senior Research Paralegal Natalia Vera at natalia.vera@americanbar.org.

These proposals are sure to give us food for thought…(hat tip to Ann Halkett, BA, SSIS, Litigation Support Coordinator, Alexander Holburn Beaudin & Lang LLP).

♫ Strange fascination, fascinating me
Changes are taking the pace I’m going through

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Oh, look out you rock ‘n rollers…♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by David Bowie.

PROCEED WITH CAUTION: Addressing Challenges and Making Changes Requires a Thoughtful Approach

This is a guest post from our friend Bob Denney on a topic near and dear to my heart: Change Management in the context of lawyers and law firms.  I have to admit that I have a strange fascination with managing change.  Accordingly, here is Bob’s take on addressing change:

Now that the economy continues to recover, forward-thinking law firms are trying to shift from survival tactics to the “New Normal” by addressing, not only the challenges they face, but also the changes they may have to make. However, as discussed in our February and April, 2010 Communiques, the list can be long and there are few precedents for addressing many of the issues.

The issues will vary to some degree for each firm but the first challenge for every firm is to identify those issues it must address and where it should start: Growth? Alternate fee arrangements? Leverage? Firm structure? Management structure? Revise marketing and business development strategies? Client service? Or what? (more…)

♬ I’ve got the magic in me…♬

Lyrics and music by: Rivers Cuomo; Lukasz Gottwald; Bobby Ray Jr Simmons, recorded by B.O.B.

Magical Lawyer

This is a guest post by Pam Woldow  of Edge International on legal project management, posted originally on her blog, At the Intersection:

On the eve of LegalTech, I have been encountering a lot of magical thinking recently when talking with law firm partners about Legal Project Management.  One partner, hoping that the IT and KM folks can simply buy a tech solution so that he could avoid making any real changes to the way he manages matters, engaged in extreme magical thinking when he asked, “isn’t there just some software where I can click one button and it manages everything?”   He just wants to keep doing what he’s always done and have technology somehow make the result different.

Sorry, we live in the real world.

Here’s the bottom line:  Siri can’t analyze what tasks need to be done (or not done) for a client, and iPads don’t independently tailor project plans.  Software sits inert until some lawyer lights it up, infuses legal judgment and knowledge into matters and uses the software to reflect back the enhanced management skills being applied.

If your firm has invested (or is about to invest) in magnificent new software – that elegant integrated dashboard will sit on your computer screen and tie together project scope, phases, tasks, team members, timeframes and the all-important budget-to-actual comparison – but it can’t overcome inefficient or non-existent management of legal matters.  Only the lawyers can do that.  And, that requires extreme practical acceptance that clients today want excellent lawyers who also are accomplished managers that drive efficient work product.

Software tools support efficient lawyering, but it is extreme magical thinking to suppose that some push-button silver bullet can convert inefficient work into efficient work.

One of the most widely read blog post I’ve ever written deals with this very subject: Legal Project Management Tools:  Let Rube Goldberg Rest in Peace.

But, it is worth a reminder that LPM and its technological support tools are about how legal projects are planned and managed.  What is practiced and delivered will always remain up to the lawyer.  The core functions of being a lawyer and exercising professional acumen can’t be delegated to technology, and that won’t be changed by even the most sophisticated tools, templates and software.  As always, those decisions will be up to you.

Thanks Pam for a great article on how magical technology won’t replace the lawyer-manager who leads his or her team into action – you have to have the magic in you!

© 2012, Edge International US, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be copied or reproduced without advance written approval.