alb technology supplement 2013 no 1

technology supplement 2013

AUSTRALASIANLEGALBUSINESS

document review at your finger tips

AustrAlAsiAn legAl BusinessTECHNOLOGY SUPPLEMENT

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the internet - the key to the story!this edition of the ALB tech supplement is packed with more content which will be of interest to cios, managing partners and others interested in the intersection between technology and running an efficient legal business.

internet is key to this story. bHl director christopher eddison-cogan quotes an interesting statistic that 77 percent of decision makers now find service providers, including consultants, using the web. Meanwhile, david bowie of fti technology look into the issue of discovery and the technological evolution in relation to discovery. they look at the ins and outs of predictive discovery.

allison stanfield of e.law international explains how to use technology to save litigation, our regular ALB contributor damian Huon provides five tips to steer your firm’s it strategy and our friends at law in order look at how technology is developing in the legal document review space.

Happy reading,THE ALB TEAM

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1. BHL Insight costs less. Firms use Insight for between $60 and $100 per user per month. You choose a subscription model or traditional licensing.2. Insight requires fewer computer servers than most other systems. It is fast and reliable. This is important if you decide to use a cloud-based or hosted platform.3. Insight does not need external consultants to connect and configure different components. IT and consulting costs exceed software costs in most firms, so reducing them is a major contribution to law firm profitability. CFOs and Partners love it.4. Insight is a secure, long-term platform for your business growth. It is not subject to sudden price increases or termination of support. BHL has increased the support costs for Insight by 4% per annum for the last eleven years. We don’t lock clients in with long contracts or closed databases.5. Your investment of staff time in your own systems and processes is safe. At BHL we have been developing and supporting practice management systems for 35 years. Insight is our fourth generation product. No BHL client has ever been denied ongoing support or obliged to move to a new system until they were ready to make the move.6. BHL Insight is easy to learn and use, so it is learnt and used. This delivers the promised productivity benefits of software and lets you manage more matters with the same number of staff.7. Clients who want to have the system modified to suit their needs can have that done swiftly and at reasonable cost. Insight adapts to your needs, so you can differentiate your firm and grow your practice groups.

8. The “Paperless Office” is here: BHL Insight is fully developed and very functional. We often hear that practice management software is all the same. Not so. Firms who examine prospective systems in detail usually buy BHL: “Mate, I don’t want to float your boat but the comparison between “________” and Insight is chalk and cheese.” Statement of the CFO of a mid-sized law firm.9. Many law firms have taken the word of their software vendor or consultants for the effectiveness of their accounting software. To their cost. Insight automates accounting as well as document assembly, document management, workflow and legal project management. Releasing the accounts staff from mundane data entry might seem like a trivial cost saving, but experience shows it has a material impact on the quality of firm management, cash flow and profitability.10. Using the same system for all of your firm automation initiatives reduces costs and speeds the adoption of automated processes. Control your IT costs and give your people the tools they need. It’s money in the bank.11. The people at BHL care about the results you get. We are not ‘incented’ by ROI or ROE, we are motivated by client satisfaction and building strong reputations as law firm automation specialists. We help you make it all happen.12. Insight has been developed in collaboration with a wide variety of law firm clients in Australia and New Zealand, it suits large and small firms, from 1 to 1000 users, and can make a significant contribution to your profit per partner. Contact [email protected] or call 1300 132 385 to arrange a free, no obligation presentation.

Software or more time at home? Software or bigger premises?

Software or better holidays? Use BHL Insight and have it all!

Ph 1300 132 385

BHL Insight gives law firms a complete accounting, matter management, document/ email automation, marketing and collections system. At a surprisingly low cost.

Unlock your growthpotential.Firms using BHL Insight really are more profitable.

BHL FULL PAG AD_ALB_COL2.indd 1 13/07/12 9:31 AM

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1. BHL Insight costs less. Firms use Insight for between $60 and $100 per user per month. You choose a subscription model or traditional licensing.2. Insight requires fewer computer servers than most other systems. It is fast and reliable. This is important if you decide to use a cloud-based or hosted platform.3. Insight does not need external consultants to connect and configure different components. IT and consulting costs exceed software costs in most firms, so reducing them is a major contribution to law firm profitability. CFOs and Partners love it.4. Insight is a secure, long-term platform for your business growth. It is not subject to sudden price increases or termination of support. BHL has increased the support costs for Insight by 4% per annum for the last eleven years. We don’t lock clients in with long contracts or closed databases.5. Your investment of staff time in your own systems and processes is safe. At BHL we have been developing and supporting practice management systems for 35 years. Insight is our fourth generation product. No BHL client has ever been denied ongoing support or obliged to move to a new system until they were ready to make the move.6. BHL Insight is easy to learn and use, so it is learnt and used. This delivers the promised productivity benefits of software and lets you manage more matters with the same number of staff.7. Clients who want to have the system modified to suit their needs can have that done swiftly and at reasonable cost. Insight adapts to your needs, so you can differentiate your firm and grow your practice groups.

8. The “Paperless Office” is here: BHL Insight is fully developed and very functional. We often hear that practice management software is all the same. Not so. Firms who examine prospective systems in detail usually buy BHL: “Mate, I don’t want to float your boat but the comparison between “________” and Insight is chalk and cheese.” Statement of the CFO of a mid-sized law firm.9. Many law firms have taken the word of their software vendor or consultants for the effectiveness of their accounting software. To their cost. Insight automates accounting as well as document assembly, document management, workflow and legal project management. Releasing the accounts staff from mundane data entry might seem like a trivial cost saving, but experience shows it has a material impact on the quality of firm management, cash flow and profitability.10. Using the same system for all of your firm automation initiatives reduces costs and speeds the adoption of automated processes. Control your IT costs and give your people the tools they need. It’s money in the bank.11. The people at BHL care about the results you get. We are not ‘incented’ by ROI or ROE, we are motivated by client satisfaction and building strong reputations as law firm automation specialists. We help you make it all happen.12. Insight has been developed in collaboration with a wide variety of law firm clients in Australia and New Zealand, it suits large and small firms, from 1 to 1000 users, and can make a significant contribution to your profit per partner. Contact [email protected] or call 1300 132 385 to arrange a free, no obligation presentation.

Software or more time at home? Software or bigger premises?

Software or better holidays? Use BHL Insight and have it all!

Ph 1300 132 385

BHL Insight gives law firms a complete accounting, matter management, document/ email automation, marketing and collections system. At a surprisingly low cost.

Unlock your growthpotential.Firms using BHL Insight really are more profitable.

BHL FULL PAG AD_ALB_COL2.indd 1 13/07/12 9:31 AM

contentsVolume 01, 2013

03Welcome

06predictive discovery

10document revieW at

your fingertips

12using technology to save litigation costs

16five tips to steer your

firms it strategy

20Web-based marketing

for smaller firms



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In commercial litigation, the process of discovery can place a huge burden on defendants. often they have to review millions or even tens of millions of documents to find those that are

relevant to a case. the search and review costs can spiral quickly.

traditional methods such as manual reviews are time consuming and expensive. and, keyword search is notoriously inaccurate because a handful of keywords is a blunt tool for extracting relevant documents from a huge pool.

Predictive coding is a different approach. it is a machine-based method that can rapidly classify a large pool of documents which are relevant to a lawsuit by taking an attorney and expert’s judgments about the relevance of a sample set of documents and building a computer model that extrapolates their expertise to the rest.

in a typical discovery process using predictive coding, an expert reviews a statistically significant sample of the full

set of documents and ranks them either responsive or non-responsive. a computer model then builds a set of rules that reflects the lawyer’s judgment on the sample set.

Working on the sample set and comparing its verdict on each document with the expert’s, the software continually improves its model until the results meet the standards agreed to by the parties and sometimes a court. then the software applies its rules to the entire population of documents to identify the full responsive set.

studies show that predictive coding usually finds a greater proportion — typically in the range of 75 percent (a measure known as recall) — of the responsive documents than other approaches. a seminal 1985 study found keyword searches yielded average recall rates of about 20 percent.1 a 2011 study showed recall rates for linear human review to be around 60 percent.2

and, according to these same studies, the proportion of relevant documents in the pool of documents identified by predictive coding

david bowie

Managing Director, FTI Technology, Sydney

dIscoveryin litigation and Investigations

predIctIve

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studIes show that predIctIve codIng usually fInds a greater proportIon — typIcally In the range of 75 percent (a measure known as recall) — of the responsIve documents than other approaches.

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(a measure known as precision) is better too. these measures of precision and recall are important metrics – an improvement in these areas means predictive discovery does not reduce accuracy in a headlong rush to be efficient.

the cost of predictive discovery is a fraction of that for linear manual review or keyword search, especially for large document sets, because most of the expense is incurred to establish the upfront search rules. afterwards, the cost increases only slightly as the size of the collection grows.

in a recent engagement, fti were asked to review 5.4 million documents. using predictive discovery, we easily met the deadline and identified 480,000 relevant documents — around nine percent of the total — for about $1 million less than linear manual review or keyword search would have cost.

the use of keywords has been a key strategy for investigations and discovery

to date. the challenge with keywords is determining which terms to search. bias can sometimes creep into the creation of terms, and where terms are agreed between the parties (a scenario where compromise might reduce the efficacy of the terms) key documents may go undiscovered. finally, where a set of one million documents may have 100,000 distinct words, the use of keyword searching soon becomes a primitive way of mining a complex set of documents.

With predictive coding, lawyers begin with no preconceptions about the most relevant words. they let a computer figure that out, considering each word and every combination of two and three consecutive words without constraint. further, predictive coding can use the fact that certain words will indicate against responsiveness. Processing this volume of possibilities is much too big a manual task. but, of course, the procedure can be done easily (and cheaply) by a computer. and it produces far


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so, How Does PreDictive Discovery work?As suggested above, there are five key steps:

experts code a representative sample of the document set as responsive or non-responsive.

Predictive coding software reviews the sample and assigns weights to features of the documents.

the software refines the weights by testing them against every document in the sample set.

the effectiveness of the model is measured statistically to assess whether it is producing acceptable results.

the software is run on all the documents to identify the responsive set.

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better results than keyword search.Predictive discovery is not new.

With patents dating back to 2005, fti consulting was the first firm to use machine learning for commercial e-discovery. yet adoption has been slow. in a survey conducted last year, we found only about half of corporate in-house and external lawyers are using predictive discovery. but even companies using the technology are largely experimenting with it to cull and prioritise documents for manual review3.

Why has the uptake been slow? our study and experience suggest two primary reasons: 1) a reluctance to invest in something the courts might not support and 2) a widespread lack of understanding of how predictive coding works. two recent u.s. court cases are helping eliminate the first concern:• DaSilvaMoore:InFebruary,both

parties in this case agreed to e-discovery by predictive coding. this was the first validation of the use of predictive coding by a court.

• LandowAviation:InApril,aVirginiastate court judge permitted the defendant (over plaintiff’s objection) to use predictive coding to search an estimated two million electronic documents.

the second concern, though, has yet to be overcome. our recent survey found that one of the biggest impediments to the adoption of predictive coding is that many lawyers do not know how it works. the principles are basic; and we intentionally keep the computer model’s

math simple. for example, the machine score for a document is the sum of the weights of all its features. there are no more straightforward arithmetic functions than addition and subtraction.

as courts begin to endorse predictive coding and judges articulate its advantages, lawyers will not want to be left behind.

as we mentioned, we found when we surveyed in-house counsel and outside lawyers that most are using predictive coding to cull the document set to reduce the task for the follow-on manual review. the need for some human review never will go away — with predictive coding, manual review is required for coding the sample set, learning the facts of the case, and for identifying privileged documents, for example. but predictive coding can take a higher proportion of the load in e-discovery than most are allowing it to do today.

to be sure, predictive discovery isn’t right for every e-discovery process. cases with many documents in which only a handful are expected to be responsive — searches for needles in a haystack — can be approached differently. smart people, process, and a variety of technologies can address these varying and different research goals.

but for most companies that have millions of documents to review in e-discovery, predictive discovery is a lower-cost solution with greater reliability and a higher level of transparency that should be used more frequently than it is today.

footnotes:1“an evaluation of retrieval effectiveness for a full-text document retrieval system,” by david c blair of the university of Michigan and M.e. Maron of the university of california at berkeley, 19852“technology-assisted review in e-discovery can be More effective and More efficient than exhaustive Manual review,” by Maura r. grossman and gordon v cormack, richmond Journal of law and technology, vol. Xvii, issue 3, 2011.3advice from counsel: can predictive coding deliver on its promise? by ari Kaplan of ari Kaplan advisors and Joe looby of fti consulting, 2012.


1010

when the first iPad was released in april 2010, its purpose was not really clear, however today the iPad and other tablet devices

have unknowingly become part of our lives. its remarkable how fast we adapt to technology and how it filters into all aspects of our lives without inviting it in.

one of the most common questions i am asked when discussing technology in the ediscovery space is, “is it accessible on the iPad?”. there are a few iHaters out there who ask about access on other tablet devices, but the majority seem to focus on the iPad. there is a definite interest in this technology but why? the underlying reason is we are accustomed to having information available to us, instantly, wherever we are. When we are faced with a situation where information is not accessible we question it. and why do we feel the need to be constantly connected – this is a question of time, or efficient use of time at least. there are massive efficiency gains to be

had if information is always at our fingertips (quite literately), wherever we are. there are generally a few periods of “dead time” during the day, perhaps on the train or between meetings, where lightweight tasks can be carried out. Having the option of completing some of these tasks during these periods allows us to focus on the larger tasks back in the office.

Having information so freely available does have its risks though. the question of security is always paramount in dealing with data on mobile devices and one that should always be addressed in any product. there are two main approaches to mitigate the risk. one method is not to store any data on the device and instead stream the data so that nothing is stored locally on the device, if the device does go missing then there is nothing to retrieve. this does limit the risk but also limits accessibility because the user would have to rely on an internet connection to access the data. an alternative approach is to encrypt the data, there is an argument to say any data can be decrypted given time,

There is a plethora of new apps that are emerging in the legal domain, from transcript apps to legal research apps, but what technology is developing in the legal document review space?

document revIew at your

fIngertIps by Martin flavell

eDiscovery Manager, Law in Order


11

however with the sophistication of encryption technology, the length of time is generally months or years, not minutes. there are also methods, such as setting expiry dates on data or remotely wiping data to overcome this.

in the document review space we are starting to see the first wave of mobile technology apps and mobile friendly internet pages which are designed for people on the move. the iconect review platform has in fact been around for quite some time, their Xera product has been accessible through tablet devices for the last 12 months. venio systems will soon be releasing veniotouch, an extension of venio’s eca platform, it delivers vital case information to users’ mobile devices, without requiring access to a laptop or desktop. another product that has had some attention recently is casefolio, a document review app originally designed by the law firm corrs for internal use, which has now been turned into a commercial product. law in order is about to release lio docs. this is a simple but effective collaborative document review app which allows users to organise, tag, comment and annotate documents. synchronisation is performed over the private cloud, so multiple reviewers can access the same set of documents and see each other’s mark-ups. the content in lio docs is downloaded locally to the device so it is even possible to work on the document when there is no internet connection, for example on an aeroplane. the focus with this product is around security. the connection to the web is encrypted and the data on the device is stored in a secure container. it is also possible to remotely wipe the data if the device is lost.

We are seeing a new generation of software which was previously only available on desktops and laptops. this is going to rapidly evolve and will change the way we work. in the next 12-18 months, any data collaboration product that doesn’t have some degree of iPad/tablet integration will be behind the power curve and catching-up. Mobile technology will not be replacing existing technology designed for the desktop but will certainly have a place supplementing it.

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IntroductIontoday, almost all documents to be reviewed and exchanged for discovery in litigation are created electronically. therefore, lawyers need to understand electronic information in order to properly search to obtain evidence relevant to the issues in dispute. With the volume of data increasing exponentially within corporations, discovery is such that now even a small volume of electronic data from your client can contain thousands, or even millions, of documents to review. Without the tools to review this electronic data, discovery can be costly and time consuming. However, technology is now available to assist with finding relevant documents quickly. indeed, in the u.s., recent case law has criticised lawyers for failing to use software in their document review.

use of technology In collectIng evIdence as social media usage is growing, the number of legal matters requiring evidence from social networks such as linkedin and facebook is also growing. Matters

increasingly rely on evidence from these social networking sites, for example, when an employee leaves their employment, they often turn to their professional network on linkedin including contacts formed during their previous employment. in some employment contracts, employees are prohibited from making this form of contact with their former employee’s clients or contacts. advanced forensic tools are now able capture these interactions should the former employer wish to take legal action. these tools allow the collection of facebook, twitter, linkedin, youtube, gmail, yahoo and aol accounts.

as with the advent of any new convenience-based technology, security is easily bypassed and it is important that lawyers are aware of any potential security breaches concerning the digital evidence they wish to rely on. for example, the number of individuals claiming their smart phones have been hacked has been growing and upon examination of the phones, sophisticated applications capable of duplicating almost all activities (i.e. sMs,

usIng technology to save

lItIgatIon costs

by allison stanfield

CEO, eLaw

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“as wIth the advent of any new convenIence-based technology, securIty Is easIly bypassed and It Is Important that lawyers are aware of any potentIal securIty breaches concernIng the dIgItal evIdence they wIsh to rely on.”

email, keyloggers, location tracking, live audio streaming to remote servers) have often been found. in such matters, it is best to engage a forensic expert to ensure that any of the digital evidence is preserved.

as storage increases, it also naturally follows that traditional manual approaches to searching through volumes of data become inefficient. one development in digital forensics is ‘entity extraction technology’ which allows users to see entities within the data, such as people’s names, job titles, locations, currency, sex, ethnicity, times and dates. the technology uses the content of the document to extract the entities rather than the traditional approach of using structured file meta-data. this approach yields superior results to combined meta-data and/or key word searching particularly where the matter has investigative elements.

use of technology In document revIewearly case assessment is now widely used to assist lawyers to drill down into a data set in order to find the documents that are pertinent to their matter. While such software does not presume to take the place of lawyers, it does significantly reduce the time to find relevant documents, and arguably is more accurate than using paralegals to undertake the review.

another term which is on the trend up is ‘predictive coding’. When using predictive coding software, a senior lawyer with knowledge of the case, reviews a small percentage of documents and determines whether they are ‘relevant’ or ‘not relevant’ to the case. the software then, by analysing each word in each relevant document, but within the context as against other relevant documents, assigns the rest of the documents in the document set, a percentage relevancy as against the initial reviewed set.

Predictive coding can be used in conjunction with other methods of removing irrelevant material from the data set. other such methods can include keyword search, boolean search, conceptual search, clustering, machine learning, relevance ranking, and sampling.

reports can also be generated such as folder analysis, a keyword list and number of documents each word applies to, a date range histogram, a spider graph showing patterns of communication between key players and statistics on exact and near duplicates. this allows the legal team to get to the core of relevant evidence quickly. by reducing the data set at this early stage, litigants are able to save the amount of time and money they spend on document review at a later stage.

case law from the unIted statesin australia, technology is widely used to assist lawyers to reduce large electronic document sets to a more manageable level. However, australian case law has not yet considered the impact of technology such as predictive coding. in the u.s., in the case of Moore v Publicis Groupe , Magistrate Judge andrew J Peck, issued the first decision in a court in the u.s., specifically addressing the use of predictive coding as a replacement for traditional linear document review. during argument, the plaintiffs expressed concerns about the accuracy of the original coding and the possibility that the software would overlook relevant documents.

Magistrate Judge Peck stated that while many lawyers have embraced the technology, there remained lawyers reluctant to do so due to the risk of legal sanction. With his decision, Magistrate Judge Peck has now removed that risk. as the court noted, “statistics clearly show that computerised searches are at least as accurate, if not more so, than manual review.”


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citing a recent study, Judge Peck claimed that technology-assisted review is more accurate and fifty times more economical than exhaustive manual review. the judgment was based on Magistrate Judge Peck’s reasoning that “the use of predictive coding was appropriate considering...the superiority of computer-assisted review to the available alternatives (i.e. linear manual review or keyword searches)”.

Judge Peck’s decision exemplifies the changing nature of discovery for lawyers. in his ruling, Judge Peck stated his long-held position that the legal industry needs to embrace predicative coding and other technological processes as they continue to play an increasingly important role in the justice system.

addressing lawyers, Judge Peck stated:“What the bar should take away from this

opinion is that computer-assisted review is an available tool and should be seriously considered for use in large-data-volume cases where it may save the producing party (or both parties) significant amounts of legal fees in document review.”

usIng technology at trIal the technology available now simplifies not only document review, but also trial preparation and access to documents and transcripts during the hearing. new products, such as Magnum by opus2, have been designed to allow lawyers to work much like they would in hard copy. documents can be marked up, and issues can be assigned to various parts of the document. once the hearing is in progress, the same issues can be applied throughout the system, and documents referred to in the hearing can be hyperlinked to paragraphs of other documents. this is a unique feature and one not previously seen before: generally databases only allow references to documents, or sometimes to a page, this is the first time paragraphs or even certain words can be highlighted and hyperlinked for reference. extensive collaborative note-taking is also possible, and reports on

notes made throughout the system can be printed out for cross-examination or other requirements. at the hearing, a twitter-like feed of the notes people on the team are making can be followed, so users can view what is of interest in the case.

Is thIs easy to use for small fIrms?for small firms, which do not have the resources that ‘big law’ has available, and with a limited budget, help is at hand. some suggestions when faced with having to review electronic material for discovery: 1. locate an external provider who can

provide you with the technical assistance that you need.

2. obtain a quotation – pricing is often done on the number of gigabytes contained in the dataset, so you should have this information ready to provide to the external provider.

3. Work with your provider – while the provider can process your client’s files, they do not know your case and you must provide them with the information they require in order to assist you effectively during the review stage.

4. use your provider’s online review tool to enable review to take place before the production process – this saves time and money. electronic material is here to stay, so make use of online review tools which are very cost effective today. you will need this to look at your discovery and once you receive electronic discovery from the other side, you will need to import their data into the review tool in order to look at it.

5. Make yourself aware of the court Practice notes that deal with the use of information technology in civil litigation.

summaryelectronic evidence is now the norm, since almost all evidence is created electronically in the first instance. accordingly, electronic discovery and use of courtroom technology will only increase and it is important that litigators understand requirements.

“Judge peck claImed that technology-assIsted revIew Is more accurate and fIfty tImes more economIcal than exhaustIve manual revIew.”Judge Andrew J Peck, Magistrate

S Y DN E Y

M E L BOU RN E

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fInancIal year plannIng for It:

as June 30 draws closer, many squirm at the thought of looming deadlines, rash decisions, and sheer panic that is synonymous with this time of year.

and it – with all of its techie jargon, bits and bytes – is sometimes the most tempting to avoid.

it may not be your ‘job’ - whether you are a Managing Partner, Practice Manager or anything in between – however it is to ensure your firm can operate. and with our dependence on technology growing by the day, it needs to jump the priority queue – fast.

fortunately though, you don’t need an it degree to help in this endeavour. you simply need to know the right key issues to address, the right people to engage, and the right questions to ask. Here are five issues to add to your firm’s agenda, to ensure your 2013-14 financial year is a good one.

1. understand the cloud and where It lIes on your horIzonWhile cloud has crept into many firms, it is a long way from getting an industry-wide stamp of approval. still controversial in terms of both security and reliability, many remain sceptical. However it is an undeniable part of the future, so while you may not be ‘in’ the cloud yet – it’s important to at least know where you stand on it.

the first step is to understand that there is more than one type of cloud. While there are many ways to slice, dice and define cloud computing, at a high level there are a few key models:Public Cloud:this is what most people envision when

fIve tIpsto steer your firm’s It strategy

by damian Huon CEO, Huon IT

1717

“...whIle you may not be ‘In’ the cloud yet – It’s Important to at least know where you stand on It.”

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thinking of the cloud – resources that are available to anyone via the internet, such as amazon and google. While this model offers significant cost savings, it raises security and support concerns, so also carries the most risk.Private Cloud:resources operated solely for one organisation. also known as ‘internal cloud computing’, this can be housed on your premise, or hosted externally. Whilst it can come at a higher investment, it also increases security as the data doesn’t leave your network, and provides the freedom to customise the system to meet your business needs. Hybrid Cloud:a mix of public and private cloud. While you may operate most of your system privately, some parts are hosted. examples of this may be payroll, customer relationship management systems, or even disaster recovery.

ultimately, it’s about achieving the right balance between those cost savings you keep hearing about, and what’s truly right for your business.

2. mobIlIty the safe way wIth mobIle devIce managementyour firm is probably already on the ‘mobility’ bandwagon, as staff demand access to your corporate system from anywhere, at any time, on any device. but are you doing it safely?

allowing users access from personal devices raises significant security and compliance concerns, and consequently your it faces a constant battle between keeping users happy, and keeping your company safe.

now, there are some exciting products emerging that let your it team go far beyond the basics of simply enforcing a password.

Mobile device Management (or MdM) systems offer a central way to manage the

growing number of devices connecting to your system. Without detracting from the flexibility given to users, suddenly it is empowered with a range of tools such as policy controls (which for example, might restrict access to a certain application or dataset when on public wifi), and the ability to better encrypt and protect your iP.

3. check your bases have a plan b, c and dif you go looking for problems, you’ll find them. and in the world of it, doing this before they hit is absolutely vital.

at a high level, there are three layers of business continuity you should check on:

System Redundancy:in normal terms, ‘redundancy’ means to exceed the norm. but when it comes to it, it refers to duplication of critical components to avoid downtime.

simply put? your firm’s system should have no single point of failure. if any part – a disk, a fan, or even a whole server – dies, your system should still be able to operate. this not only depends upon best practice setup, but also what emergency processes you have in place. Many companies sign up for part replacement programs where local partners carry thousands of spare parts and can guarantee delivery in a matter of hours. this is particularly important for older, out of warranty equipment where parts can be hard to source.

Backup Selection Review:While one would assume all firms have a backup system in place, the risk usually lies in what they are backing up. too often there is a disconnect between it and the business, and incorrect assumptions are made about what needs backing up, and what doesn’t.

therefore, a backup selection review is recommended every six months, as well as any time a change is made in your system. a junior it staffer changing just one seemingly insignificant setting can have a drastic impact on how, or if, your critical data is being backed up.

“your fIrm’s system should have no sIngle poInt of faIlure. If any part – a dIsk, a fan, or even a whole server – dIes, your system should stIll be able to operate.”

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Disaster Recovery: once considered an excessive insurance policy against an unrealistic scenario, disaster recovery (dr) is fast becoming a ‘must have’ for any competitive business. in fact for many of the firms i speak to, their top tier clients demand it before engaging in any transaction.

beyond simply setting this set up for your business, it is crucial to regularly check the reliability of the system. at minimum, you should undergo six monthly tests. the important results to look out for are:• RecoveryTimeObjective(RTO)–how

long it took for your system to become available.

• RecoveryPointObjective(RPO)–whatpoint in time was your data restored from; 15 minutes, one hour or one day before the outage? this impacts how much work would be lost.

• Performance–itisonethingtohaveyour system operating after an emergency, but how does it perform in an active dr state? this will dictate how many staff it can support, and for how long.

4. keep your provIders honest re-evaluate everythIngin the fast paced world of it, technologies and services change quickly. While this might make things harder to keep up with, the rate of change also presents a strong lever to renegotiate.

even if you’re happy with your current arrangement, it’s important to not let your providers get complacent.

so ensure your firm receives best value by annually reviewing all contracts, particularly internet service Providers (isPs). technology and coverage is rapidly improving, so as competition mounts, prices are regularly driven down. before simply resigning, shop around.

beyond what you pay, you should also review what you use. Most organisations have unused software lurking in their systems; whether it is forgotten features of your Practice Management system, or

entire legacy programs that have never been uninstalled. these can be costing you in terms of maintenance costs and resource utilisation, so a clean-up is a healthy exercise.

5. ask the rIght questIonsKnowing the right questions to ask is crucial to ensure your firm’s strategy is on track. the following 10 questions will indicate the health of your firm’s systems, and help you determine how involved to get.1. do you know the roi % on your last major

it project? Y/N2. do you have a byod policy for staff using

personal devices? Y/N3. do you know where your firm stands on

the cloud? Y/N4. Have you benchmarked your ratio of ‘it

staff to total staff’ against other firms in the past 2 years? Y/N

5. Have you received less than six staff complaints about it last year? Y/N

6. Have you performed a staff survey on their satisfaction with it in the last 12 months? Y/N

7. do you have an it disaster recovery plan? Y/N

8. do you receive disaster recovery test-run results at least every six months? Y/N

9. is your infrastructure (servers) less than three years old? Y/N

10. Have you undergone an independent review in the last 12 months? Y/N

Check Your Results:All “Yes” – On track: you can be confident that your it strategy is comprehensive for the year ahead. but don’t get complacent; remember to review this regularly as your business changes.

Three or more “No’s” – Keep it on your radar: there may be deficiencies in your strategy. address these with your it team, and consider a full independent review to identify other gaps for the year ahead.

Five or more “No’s” – Get involved: your it strategy requires real attention. this is a top priority issue, and needs action before a crisis hits. engage an independent advisor to not only help address these deficiencies, but also help you build a more solid strategy for the future.

“ensure your fIrm receIves best value by annually revIewIng all contracts, partIcularly Internet servIce provIders (Isps).”

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web-based marketIngfor smaller fIrms

recently, several owners of small and medium sized law firms have been asking me about their websites. they have confided their difficulties in getting their “fair share of

instructions”, despite longstanding reputations as highly-regarded lawyers. simultaneously, i have been dealing with the very same issues directly, as i look at ways of promoting businesses i am directly involved with: bHl insight, goodlawyers and soon speedidocs. our experiences are relevant to your challenges, as this article hopes to make clear.

bHl insight (a PMs) is relatively easy to promote as there are fewer than 10 competitors, the key search terms are relatively well-established, and most potential customers will google suppliers of ‘legal practice management software’. i have an independent specialist search engine optimisation (seo) consultant on board and he is doing a good job of keeping bHl on the first page of google.

the key issues to solve for bHl have been

building a new search-engine-friendly website, brand recognition (which we are trying to remedy by some print-based advertising), and ensuring that it is easy and enticing for potential clients to make contact with us when they get to the site. it took about 10 months and $10,000 to get consistently good results, but i am now pleased with the outcome, and bHl insight is getting a lot of quality enquiries from the website. to put that in perspective, print advertising costs about $70,000 per annum and no one is sure what impact it has, if any. digital marketing, done properly, can work.

according to Jay levinson and Michael Mclaughlin’s book Guerilla Marketing for Consultants, “a study by the information technology services Marketing association (itsMa) found that 77 percent of decision makers now find service providers, including consultants, using the Web, even after they receive referrals. clients use the information on the Web to make preliminary assessments of consultants’ talents and to gauge how

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by christopher eddison-cogan

Director, BHL Software

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well they would fit with their organizations. nearly 75 percent of buyers find consultants through their own research, not through contacts initiated by consultants.

“Without a great Web site, you will not be considered a serious player, and the most desirable potential clients won’t invite you to the game. as technological breakthroughs emerge, it will become even more important for consultants to establish an outstanding presence on the Web.” even if these figures are self-serving for itsMa, they show that your website ought not to be neglected.

Many lawyers say that you don’t get quality clients from the web, and to some extent i agree, but it’s a bit like the old argument that lawyers build their practices by word of mouth not by advertising or brands: true, until slater & gordon, following many years of concerted effort, transformed the Pi market by backing up their powerful brand with advertising. Web-based marketing to attract business clients will not suddenly become the main game, but it is gradually gaining leverage and should not be ignored.

the challenge for most law firms with limited advertising budgets is that there are 15,000 competitors, the key search terms are expensive, varied and often too general (‘Melbourne lawyer’), and it is difficult for lawyers and law firms to differentiate themselves from competitors. i have struck exactly these challenges with the goodlawyers.com.au site. goodlawyers aims to give sole practitioners the benefits of membership of a larger group, especially quality referrals and marketing reach, without the downsides of a large partnership. We have spent more than $45,000 promoting goodlawyers to the general public and have had only limited success.

one of the mistakes with goodlawyers was that early on we exposed too many of the potential members to google, which labelled goodlawyers as a directory site just when google decided directories were a bad thing. another problem was that we allowed members to use the same profiles on goodlawyers as they used on their own

sites, making it look like we were screen scraping and had only duplicated data. these errors arose because i used a different consultant for goodlawyers than i did for bHl (deliberately) and i allowed the site to be designed by a committee instead of just doing what he suggested. so, rule 1 of digital marketing is to get a good consultant (not an seo cowboy or a too-slick digital marketing agency) and to take advice.

rule 2 is to ensure your website design and the software tools it is built with are search-engine friendly. We don’t need all the jargon here, but it seems that WordPress, Joomla and bare HtMl are the best, while flash seems to be a problem. beware of advertising agencies promoting flash. a good seo consultant will advise you on your website, but technology people can be one-eyed about their favourite tools, so seek a second or third opinion before embarking on expensive re-writes.

experience shows that most small businesses, including law firms, need to go through three phases of website development: your first site, which is either very basic and/or is created by a generator, gives you an inexpensive ‘web-presence’. it brings in very little new business, but when it is listed on your business card it gives your clients and potential clients some comfort: you exist in cyberspace.

once a firm realizes that its cheap website is not adding revenue, and that other firms with bigger, better sites are eating their lunch, the firm will hire a web design agency and have their second site built. if you get the right agency, this may work, but often it proves to be a waste of money. this is because you need to abide by rules 1 and 2, you need to ensure that your website is part of a well-structured marketing process that includes media other than digital media to build brand recognition, and you need to know who your customers are and how to target them. these principles (if not the digital media) have been the same over decades, and most successful law firms from the 1950s to today have been built by

“clIents use the InformatIon on the web to make prelImInary assessments of consultants’ talents and to gauge how well they would fIt wIth theIr organIzatIons.”Jay Levinson and Michael McLaughlin, Guerilla Marketing for Consultants

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understanding this and/or by getting a few heavyweight keystone clients. at the risk of being sydney-centric, think gilbert & tobin, atanaskovic Hartnell, or swaabs. the basics are simple; specialist expertise + reputation + targeted promotion. easy to say, hard to do consistently, but there is no other way.

once a firm understands that its digital marketing is more than just a website, and that it must be part of and consistent with its overall strategy, market differentiation and branding, then often it will implement its third website, one designed to rank with search engines, appeal to its target markets, communicate the firm’s key messages and generate valuable enquiries. this takes more than pretty pictures and a contact us form; it may require video, white papers, a flow of relevant articles, and newsletters in pdf. it ought to give away some of your expertise,

so that prospective clients can decide for themselves that they want to contact you. in short, it is a serious undertaking and most firms will need expert help.

i enjoy helping firms who believe they offer first rate legal services but are not getting the work they deserve. i am therefore expanding goodlawyers to include a digital marketing consultancy for law firms.

the digital marketing space is changing quite rapidly, witness the rise of social media, another topic in its own right. successful digital marketing requires an understanding both of the underlying technologies and of the requirements of legal practice. after listening to lawyers, law firms and the users of legal services every day, it is clear that a different perspective compared to most it service providers is required, and that many law firms would welcome help.

Christopher Eddison-Cogan is a lawyer and a technologist. He is a member of the Law Society of NSW IT Committee and a member of Sydney Angels. He can be contacted at [email protected] or via www.bhl.com.au.

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