Unbundling Legal Services

Unbundling, also called discrete task representation or limited services representation, is a practice by which a client hires an attorney to perform only specified tasks agreed upon beforehand by both attorney and client. The concept is not new, but it has received more attention lately for a couple of reasons.

"Seize the Future" Comments

The conference started off with a bang. Our first speaker was Tom Peters. He is a very dynamic nationally known writer, speaker and business consultant. He wanted to acquaint us with the revolution which is taking place in the business community as a result of the internet. These are "bizarre times." Microsoft is worth more than GM, Ford, Boeing, Sears, Lockheed plus seven other Fortune 500 companies. What does this mean?

The 2007 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report

Take a listen to an ABA Book Briefs Podcast highlighting some surprising results from the 2007 ABA Legal Technology Survey.

Electronic Marketing: Harnessing the Web's Whizbang

How do you help clients find their way to your doorstep? Use the Internet's whizbang! This podcast contains many tips and strategies, including website development and search engine optimization, the purchase of keywords on search engines, directory listings (free and paid), electronic newsletters, blogs, podcasts, and much more.

Better than Batman's Belt: Our Favorite Utilities

Holy downloadable data directors! In this edition of “The Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology” Jim Calloway and Sharon Nelson discuss their favorite software utilities.

Seven Legal Technology Trends for 2007: Widening the Digital Divide in Law Practice

Lawyers and law firms have an uneasy relationship with technology. Never known as "early adopters," lawyers approach technology with wariness and often see technology as a necessary evil. There is, however, a general consensus that, good or evil, technology is a necessity in the modern practice of law.

eLawyering Task Force

"How can I practice law over the Internet?" This web site will help you find answers to that question. The highest leadership of the ABA knows we need a catalyst for lawyers to adapt and flourish in the new technology-driven economic order. The Internet presents us with unparalleled opportunities and powerful new tools to provide legal services. Innovative law firms and web-based companies (many run by lawyers) have already cast off -- successfully -- into these uncharted waters. They have set up web sites that go far beyond a list of partners, practice areas and a map to the law firm.

Build client loyalty: Improve visibility into your workflow, billing practices

Professional services firms today face growing pressure to distinguish themselves from the competition by offering the most superior client services. While vitally important, providing these expert services must also now be blended with a level of attention to client care that is new for some firms.

Blank Rome drives client service with Microsoft collaboration tools

Blank Rome, an Am Law 100 law firm, improves internal collaboration and client service with Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies.

Client Experience Management solutions

To differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded, global marketplace, professional service firms must anticipate, meet, and exceed rising client expectations. To do so, they need to work closely with their clients to understand needs and service opportunities, and then craft and deliver the kind of superior, personalized service experience that builds loyalty and inspires referrals.

How a virtual workspace brings together a worldwide firm

Like many professional services firms, the international law firm of Hunton & Williams must work diligently to create an environment where its attorneys and partners collaborate effectively.

The Virtual Law Office Reengineering the Practice of Law for the Digital Age

"Evolution has been seen as a billion-year drama that led inexorably to its grandest creation: human intelligence. The emergence in the early twenty-first century of a new form of intelligence on Earth that can compete with, and ultimately significantly exceed, human intelligence will be a development of greater import than any of the events that have shaped human history.

Extranets: Creating the Collaborative Law Practice

This year's legal industry buzzword is "intranet." Intranet's are internal systems that are based on Internet technology that are designed to connect the members of a specific group of single organization.

From Legal Services to Information Services

The practice of law is experiencing extraordinary changes that will have a lasting impact on the structure of the legal profession and the ways in which lawyers approach their practices. Within the next five years, the practice of law will change even more than it has during the past five years, because of new developing information and communications technologies which will enable anyone to access any legal resource essentially for free, or at very low cost.

The new economy and the virtual law firm of the future

One would not use farm models to manage a factory economy, and one shouldn't use factory models to manage an information economy. One hallmark of the new economy is the need to define business in terms of customers' changing needs. Defining a law firm from the producers' —the lawyer's— point of view is simply no longer workable and will have vast implications for the practice of law and the structure of law firms. Information technology enables an organization to differentiate itself along several critical dimensions: 1) time; 2) space; 3) matter; 4) substitution of electronically-based information service for high-priced labor; 5) elimination of intermediaries through direct contact with the customer; and 6) customization of product or service to the particular needs of the single individual.