At the ILTA conference I was introduced to 3 different legal KM blogs of note. They are:

Caselines has a Litigation KM angle to it (but not e-discovery – which is good). I saw David Hobbie present on Litigation KM – which is his thing at Goodwin Proctor. Good presentation showing great KM implementation. Nice KM blog to watch.

KM Space, which is the blog of Doug Cornelius. I also saw Doug present, then noticed him in a number of sessions with his laptop open. He was blogging live from the sessions. Cool stuff and nicely thought-out posts.

LawyerKM is the last one. This blog included live ILTA posts as well, but the author shows as anonymous (with a little effort you can find his name). Being at a large firm, I can understand that approach. In any event, another well-written legal KM blog to follow.

Although this time convergence is not in-house counsel cutting its number of outside firms, its software providers cutting the number of platforms they work on.

One example is the partnership announced at the ILTA conference between Interwoven and Lexis. The two are combining their products into one offering Lexis is calling “Lexis Search Advantage.” This combines the intelligence of Total Search with the enterprise search power of IUS. As Doug Stansfield noted in their announcement meeting, this creates a unique combination of Work Product Retrieval with Enterprise Search. IUS allows you to search multiple data sources, then Search Advantage applies its legal value-add of marking up the results with case citations and Shepardizations.

On its own, this combination is interesting. But it is also reflective of the industry moving towards converged platforms and systems. Large firms especially these days struggle with supporting too many platforms and search engines. So this trend is welcome relief.

After seeing more demos than one person should in the span of four days, I can see this trend taking shape in many corners of the market. Both Interwoven and Lexis separately talked about taking all of their products and moving them towards “unified platforms.” This effort will not happen overnight, but the path is clear.

I suppose now it will just become a race among the various vendors. Being last in this game will probably be quite expensive.

After not seeing much value in the Martindale-Hubbell – LinkedIn deal and after waiting (and not alone) to see more value come from social networking, I admit Lexis may be on to something. What many of us have been waiting to see is some definable business value to come from social networking. There is some value in building up your network, but leveraging those connections into a business proposition has much greater value.

LexisNexis owns the InterAction CRM software, having purchased Interface Software. They announced at the ILTA conference that the next release of InterAction (Version 5.6 SP1) will include LinkedIn functionality. Contacts within InterAction can include LinkedIn icons which will pull in the LinkedIn tools, focused on how you and those you know are connected to the contacts. This adds the power of social networks directly into a CRM application.

This new connection between InterAction and LinkedIn equals business value.

Some firms will be challenged by this value. Social Networks are not universally valued by firms, as they can threaten IT and data security. And they challenge the dogmatic hoarding of contacts by many lawyers.

Whatever a firm’s point-of-view, overlooking tools that bring value to your firm and clients is not good business.

Of course, being a geek, I have to love the fact that Google releases a comic book to explain its new browser. Google Chrome, Google’s new Internet Browser, is set for an early release tomorrow, due to the fact that some within Google leaked the information out a little earlier than planned.
From the comic book, and the blog release, it sounds like they are promising the same type of performance that IE 8.0 Beta is also promising. Tab functions that are “independant” (so if one crashes, it doesn’t bring down the entire browser); more powerful JavaScript engine; make it work on all operating systems (you know those other than Windows!); and the ultimate promise of faster and cleaner regardless of your operating system.

Now I get to try out IE 8.0 and Google Chrome and test them side-by-side!

NOTE:  I downloaded Chrome today, and so far, it is pretty tasty!!  The only thing I don’t like so far is how it handles MS Outlook’s Webmail.  The folders are not displayed like they are in IE, and it is not very good to get from folder to folder very easily.  
However, it is very fast, and I love the tabs feature and the way it previews the nine most visited sites on a new tab.  There are also a few plug-ins (i.e., FLASH) that you’ll need to get for Chrome to work right on most sites, but the downloads are quick and no reboot is necessary (unlike some browsers….)
I also thought it was funny that one of the Google Beta products called “Lively” will not work at all in Chrome.  You’d think they’d make their own products work right out of the box!

[From our friends at Hogan & Hartson]
“Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 InPrivate Browsing May Affect Online Activities.”
On August 25, 2008, Microsoft announced on its Internet Explorer Blog that Internet Explorer 8, for which Beta 2 was released on August 27, 2008, included a new suite of features designed to limit the information stored or shared when users browse the Internet. Collectively referred to as InPrivate and described in greater detail in Trustworthy Browsing – Guidance for Third Party Content Providers (rev. August 21, 2008), a whitepaper distributed by Microsoft to select web publishers and content providers, these new features include Deleting Browser History, InPrivate Browsing, InPrivate Blocking, and InPrivate Subscriptions. If these new features are successfully implemented as they are presently described in Microsoft’s documents, they may have a significant impact on a number of common Internet business practices, including online behavioral marketing and web traffic analytics.
August 28, 2008
[View Article]

LinkedIn is expanding the capabilities of its Group Networks by adding some enhancements. Here is the email that I got on Tuesday. NOTE: The enhancements are ready until FRIDAY!! (I missed that part of the message and started yelling at my computer screen when I couldn’t find the enhancements.) Here’s the announcement:

First, thank you for managing your group on LinkedIn. We sincerely appreciate the time and effort you devote to your members, and we know they value it. Together you have made Groups one of the top features on LinkedIn.
This Friday, we will be adding several much-requested features to your group:

  • Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for you and your members. (You can turn discussions off in your management control panel if you like.)
  • Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
  • Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics which your members may choose to receive. (We will be turning digests on for all current group members soon, and prompting them to set to their own preference.)
  • Group home page: A private space for your members on LinkedIn.

We’re confident that these new features will spur communication, promote collaboration, and make your group more valuable to you and your members. We hope you can come by LinkedIn on Friday morning to check out the new functionality and get a group discussion going by posting a welcome message.Sincerely,
The LinkedIn Groups Team

Well, it looks like I’m going to skip over another one of the Microsoft upgrades. Although I’ve used Internet Explorer almost exclusively since 1996, I somehow didn’t get to use the 7.0 version at work because of the amount of “customizations” that we made on the IE 6 platform.

Now it is time for IE 8. I’m going to run home tonight and install it on my personal computer, and then see how many of my apps don’t work on it either!! There is a good review of the product on the NY Times blog today.
I’m pretty sure if IE 7 didn’t play nice with my ‘work’ apps, then 8 surely can’t plug all the holes! So, now I’m going to have to have an “over-under” bet with some of my IT friends to see how many more months I’ll have to stay on IE 6. If it is ’12’, then I’m taking the over!

Wow… there is a great “conversation” going on in the Competitive Intelligence world over the ethical requirements that law firms should require their CI professionals to uphold. Melissa Ruman Steward, Shareholder in Winstead’s Dallas office, penned a NLJ article this week as a response to Ann Lee Gibson’s article on 45 CI Tips for Law Firms. Steward suggests that law firms need to step up and proactively create a code of CI Conduct, or even go as far as having the state bar association create the code of CI conduct. Gibson has already come back with a pretty strong rebuttal to Steward’s article. I blogged earlier about whether a CI professional could actually be brought up on criminal charges using 18 USC §1030, and discussed the ethical vs. illegal line that CI pros come up against. I think that Steward seems to be a little behind the curve on what is involved in Competitive Intelligence gathering, but she’s not without merit in her arguments either. Lawyers don’t exactly have the greatest of reputations when it comes to “ethics” (after all, ethics is the shortest class we take in law school). Therefore, her argument that law firms should hold themselves to a higher level of “ethical” competitive intelligence gathering is a legitimate argument. In my opinion, the shifting of this “code of CI ethics” to a regulatory body such as the state bar association seems to be a little bit of an overreaction at this point. Again, we talked about the fact that CI professionals in the legal environment usually hit the “ethical” line long before they hit the “legal” line when it comes to CI information gathering. But, it wouldn’t take too many cases of law firms arguing that “what we did was perfectly legal” to start blurring the lines and causing CI professionals to become insensitive to the “ethical” line. Taking arguments like Stewart’s too lightly could backfire in the end. My suggestion: It wouldn’t hurt for firms to have a CI Ethics Code for their organization and make it understood that CI professionals should be very conscious of the firm’s ethical line, and make sure that it is never crossed.

You here something once – you notice it. You here it twice and it catches your attention. You start hearing it everywhere and you better pay attention.

This is the case with virtualization (a.k.a. Virtual Private Server). This 80’s mainframe concept is back and back in a big way. So much that it’s even touching the legal technology world. The concept is very simple. Virtualization means creating multiple virtual servers on a single piece of hardware. The technology has evolved to the point that one physical server can host many different servers. Different to the point of having distinct operating systems and the ability to separately reboot.

For law firms and anyone else, this means a sharp reduction in server hardware. And it means a firm can set up a server for any number of reasons (e.g. testing, demo’s, etc.) very easily. As might be expected, not all software providers fully support virtualization, but most are there or headed there soon.

To give an idea of the potential impact of virtualization, the State Bar of California plans on cutting its power bill by $60,000 per year by taking this approach.

Needless to say, I strongly suggest you check into virtualization and explore how your organization, be it small, medium or large, can best benefit from it.