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In-house Counsel Need to Get Smart(er) About Tech
September 6, 2014
Maybe it's time for in-house lawyers to ditch all the technology and dust off their fountain pens. Our company, CEB, recently ran a full-scale study of in-house legal technology, interviewing corporate counsel and surveying 117 companies on the implementation and performance of their six most common technology systems (contract management, document management, e-billing, e-discovery, IP management and matter management). The study assessed such things as cost, efficiency and quality. We also asked...
September 6, 2014
Maybe it's time for in-house lawyers to ditch all the technology and dust off their fountain pens. Our company, CEB, recently ran a full-scale study of in-house legal technology, interviewing corporate counsel and surveying 117 companies on the implementation and performance of their six most common technology systems (contract management, document management, e-billing, e-discovery, IP management and matter management). The study assessed such things as cost, efficiency and quality. We also asked...
Robots Lack Common Sense
September 6, 2014
Fears that robots will replace humans in all aspects of the labor market are vastly unfounded. The Times takes a look at what Robots don’t do well–”common sense.” So what does that mean for workers over the years and decades ahead? Mr. Autor says that this weakness leaves plenty of opportunities for humans to serve as intermediaries of sorts between increasingly intelligent computers that nonetheless lack that common sense. He invokes the idea of “Polanyi’s Paradox,” named for the Hungarian...
September 6, 2014
Fears that robots will replace humans in all aspects of the labor market are vastly unfounded. The Times takes a look at what Robots don’t do well–”common sense.” So what does that mean for workers over the years and decades ahead? Mr. Autor says that this weakness leaves plenty of opportunities for humans to serve as intermediaries of sorts between increasingly intelligent computers that nonetheless lack that common sense. He invokes the idea of “Polanyi’s Paradox,” named for the Hungarian...
Patent Cases Pour into East Texas Despite Data Showing District Not So Plaintiff-Friendly
September 5, 2014
Businesses and individuals filed 26 percent more patent infringement lawsuits in East Texas during the first six months of 2014...
September 5, 2014
Businesses and individuals filed 26 percent more patent infringement lawsuits in East Texas during the first six months of 2014...
Are Old Ethics Rules Stifling Innovations in Legal Services Delivery?
September 5, 2014
The legal services delivery environment is changing with supersonic speed as technology brings new innovations. But these new methods of delivering and marketing legal services still must pass muster under ethics rules that have been in effect for years if not longer. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not entirely good, either, said speakers today at a program sponsored by the Law Practice Division in Boston, where the 2014 ABA Annual Meeting is being held. The program was titled "Beating—or...
September 5, 2014
The legal services delivery environment is changing with supersonic speed as technology brings new innovations. But these new methods of delivering and marketing legal services still must pass muster under ethics rules that have been in effect for years if not longer. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not entirely good, either, said speakers today at a program sponsored by the Law Practice Division in Boston, where the 2014 ABA Annual Meeting is being held. The program was titled "Beating—or...
Overhauling the Law Firm Model: Think Big, Act Small
September 5, 2014
Back in 1997, when Polly McNeill decided to quit Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe to help launch Summit Law Group, it didn't seem like the smartest bet. Leaving Heller, after all, meant giving up her busy environmental law practice, not to mention a coveted partner slot in the Seattle office of one of San Francisco's oldest and most venerable firms. Like her fellow Summit cofounders, McNeill was convinced that the standard law firm billing model was in desperate need of an overhaul. And she was excited...
September 5, 2014
Back in 1997, when Polly McNeill decided to quit Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe to help launch Summit Law Group, it didn't seem like the smartest bet. Leaving Heller, after all, meant giving up her busy environmental law practice, not to mention a coveted partner slot in the Seattle office of one of San Francisco's oldest and most venerable firms. Like her fellow Summit cofounders, McNeill was convinced that the standard law firm billing model was in desperate need of an overhaul. And she was excited...
ABA Legal Rebels 2014
September 5, 2014
This year we present nine highly qualified additions, rounding out our list to 100 Legal Rebels named by the Journal since 2009. In the following pages, meet: • A young iconoclast whose stated goal is to kill law practice as we know it. • A lawyer who organized a food truck festival to help her serve creative entrepreneurs. • The leader of an organization investigating groups that endanger human rights. • A woman whose childhood experience with the ugly face of divorce led her to provide...
September 5, 2014
This year we present nine highly qualified additions, rounding out our list to 100 Legal Rebels named by the Journal since 2009. In the following pages, meet: • A young iconoclast whose stated goal is to kill law practice as we know it. • A lawyer who organized a food truck festival to help her serve creative entrepreneurs. • The leader of an organization investigating groups that endanger human rights. • A woman whose childhood experience with the ugly face of divorce led her to provide...
“From Discord, Find Harmony”
September 5, 2014
Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. - Albert...
September 5, 2014
Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. - Albert...
The Fourth Era of American Civil Procedure
September 4, 2014
Every contemporary American lawyer who has engaged in litigation is familiar with the now fifty-four-volume treatise, Federal Practice and Procedure. Both of that treatise’s named authors, Charles Alan Wright and Arthur Miller, have mourned the death of a Federal Rules regime that they spent much of their professional lives explaining and often celebrating. Wright shared a sense of gloom about federal procedure that he compared to the setting before World War I. Miller has also published a series...
September 4, 2014
Every contemporary American lawyer who has engaged in litigation is familiar with the now fifty-four-volume treatise, Federal Practice and Procedure. Both of that treatise’s named authors, Charles Alan Wright and Arthur Miller, have mourned the death of a Federal Rules regime that they spent much of their professional lives explaining and often celebrating. Wright shared a sense of gloom about federal procedure that he compared to the setting before World War I. Miller has also published a series...
From the Particular to the General: Three Federal Rules and the Jurisprudence of the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts
September 4, 2014
With the possible exception of John Marshall, the Justice most frequently quoted by legal scholars is almost certainly Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Following that practice, I begin with an appropriate Holmesian injunction: our “business as thinkers is to make plainer the way from some thing to the whole of things.”1 Accordingly, the purpose of this Article is to suggest that recent Supreme Court decisions construing three Federal Rules of Civil Procedure “make plainer” some salient aspects...
September 4, 2014
With the possible exception of John Marshall, the Justice most frequently quoted by legal scholars is almost certainly Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Following that practice, I begin with an appropriate Holmesian injunction: our “business as thinkers is to make plainer the way from some thing to the whole of things.”1 Accordingly, the purpose of this Article is to suggest that recent Supreme Court decisions construing three Federal Rules of Civil Procedure “make plainer” some salient aspects...
Discretion in Class Certification
September 4, 2014
A district court has broad discretion in deciding whether a suit may be maintained as a class action. Variations on this phrase populate the class action jurisprudence of the federal courts. The sentiment reflects the equity roots of the representative class proceeding—a history that has been thoroughly investigated by leading scholars in the field of civil procedure, structured the work of the committee that drafted modern Rule 23, and has repeatedly been embraced by the Supreme Court as a necessary...
September 4, 2014
A district court has broad discretion in deciding whether a suit may be maintained as a class action. Variations on this phrase populate the class action jurisprudence of the federal courts. The sentiment reflects the equity roots of the representative class proceeding—a history that has been thoroughly investigated by leading scholars in the field of civil procedure, structured the work of the committee that drafted modern Rule 23, and has repeatedly been embraced by the Supreme Court as a necessary...
