With the rise of new compliance laws like GDPR in Europe, California’s new privacy requirements and other increased privacy scrutiny, as well as well-publicized law firm data breaches, it is understandable that law firms are feeling even more pressure to take steps to reduce their risk profile and triple-check that their data is safe. CIOs are looking at all aspects of security, including how systems can be breached or how data can be shared inadvertently. If you are working on 2018 data protection commitments made to your firm’s upper management, we wanted to make sure you are aware of a tool that can bolster the effects of your data loss prevention (DLP) solution: DLP Tagger.
Law departments are eager to make use of legal analytics technology to better manage their spend and help guide other decisions. According to HBR’s 2017 Law Department Survey of 300 U.S. and global law departments, nearly half of all respondents reported already having legal spend analytics technology, and 24 percent planned to adopt in the next two years. But once the decision is made to implement new or updated legal analytics technology, what is the best way to do it? Law departments have two options: develop it themselves or engage an outside provider.
During my recent visit to Denver for the 2018 Aderant Momentum conference, I noticed a common theme as I interacted with attendees at the conference: Many law firm leaders are currently questioning the effectiveness of their financial reporting systems.
One of the most exciting parts of my job as head of Software Solutions at HBR Consulting is that daily, I get to speak to successful law firm and corporate legal leaders about trends and topics influencing their industry.
As the legal industry continues to evolve so do the demands and needs of law firms’ internal and external clients. Like many other support functions, litigation support is an area that historically supported one primary business need (i.e., managing e-Discovery), but the role of the service is transitioning due to market changes. Today, law firms are revisiting litigation support services and strategies to account for evolving e-Discovery provider business models, increasingly sophisticated corporate client sourcing arrangements, rising technology and infrastructure costs and decreasing litigation support revenues.
Last month, I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the MER Conference in Chicago. The annual event is one of the largest educational conferences focused on addressing the ever-present challenges of managing electronic records from the legal, technical and operational perspectives.
Earlier this year, Legal IT Professionals featured an article co-authored by my colleague James Britt and me that provides a list of cybersecurity best practices global law firms should prioritize in 2017. More specifically, we discussed specific steps law firms can take to address gaps that previously provided hackers with easy access to sensitive data.
Managing mobility on an enterprise level can be a daunting and complex task. Each major mobile carrier is continually rolling out new plans and features, discontinuing others and also maintaining their own list of “custom offerings” that many organizations are not aware exist. The vast number of plan options and combinations is staggering — over 14 million different combinations for an organization with 1,000 managed devices. As a result, many organizations are paying 20 to 40 percent more than what others are paying for the exact same service requirements.
Earlier this month, Law360 featured an article by HBR Consulting’s Fahad Zaidi that provides insights into mistakes to avoid when building a law library. More specifically, Fahad explores common missteps that law firms should be aware of when considering data analytics tools and new software for their libraries.
Much has been reported on the frequency of carrier billing errors, causing telecommunications vendors to inherit a reputation for having ineffective billings departments. And for good reason – it’s been reported that one in five telecom invoices have errors and that 85% of these errors happen to be in the carriers’ favor.