Here is a brief synopsis of last week’s LegalTech New York 2014, one of the most important legal technology trade shows:
Jason Thomas of Thomas Reuters jolted attendees awake with his keynote “TOR, Bitcoin, and the Anonymous Web: Drugs, Bombs and Murder-for-Hire”.
According to the Tor Project’s website: “Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.” Thomas demonstrated that Tor is morally neutral technology: it can allow people who live under totalitarian regimes to access the internet, but it is now a tool to build websites that can be used for illicit purposes. Bitcoin has become the “coin of the realm” for illicit online transactions as well as for legitimate purchases. Thomas warned the attendees that the legal system, and the world at large, will need to learn the capabilities and implications of the technology and systems we use to better understand the risks and opportunities they offer.
As legal technology consultants, we have posted previously, and no doubt will post again, on the opportunities and risks of storing information in the Cloud and directly on phones and tablets. Thomas’s talk touched on how oblivious most of us are to where we store information and the rapidity of the growth of that data.
We took a walk around the Exhibit Hall at the New York Hilton. The show was well attended on Day One, when the skies and streets were clear of snow and ice, and bounced back on Day Three after the storm. My impression is that people were there to buy new technology, not just browse, and they certainly had their choice, with over 600 vendors crowded into three floors.
We homed in on vendors at Gavel & Gown Software (Amicus Attorney), LexisNexis (PCLaw/Time Matters), World Software (Worldox), and NetDocuments. Read below for details:
Amicus Attorney Premium Edition 2014: Gavel & Gown announced the release of the latest version of the practice management program. New features include back-end syncing of contacts, calendar and tasks with Microsoft Exchange and Google, integration with Dropbox, graphical timesheets. Amicus Anywhere – browser access to practice management data, from a workstation, tablet or phone, through a secure link. Amicus Time Tracker – time entry from a workstation, tablet or phone that updates Amicus from anywhere.
Time Matters 13: Client Portal Online File-Sharing. The WatchDox add-on, available from within Time Matters, allows secure sharing of documents from Time Matters to external parties such as clients and experts, designating whether they can view, print or download the documents, and providing a timeframe for access to the documents. Access can be revoked at any time.
Worldox GX3: Canon’s new integration with Worldox, expected to be released in March, provides an easy way to scan documents into Worldox document repositories directly from a Canon scanner. Users can scan documents directly into their matter folders using familiar Worldox Favorite Matters, Quick Profiles, Workspaces, and Bookmarks. Worldox integration has also been added to the image RUNNER ADVANCE Desktop. Worldox is working on an iPhone app: expected release date is late March 2014.
Trumpet OCR Conversion: Trumpet’s popular integration with ABBYY fine-reader, Symphony OCR, which works with Worldox looking for pdf files to convert to text-searchable files, is now being offered as a service that crawls through Windows folders on a server. Anyone saving pdfs to a server who needs to be sure that the documents are text-searchable can use Symphony for Windows.
NetDocuments: The vendor announced ndOffice and ndConnect to embed cloud-based document management in Microsoft Office, and integration with SkyDrive and Dropbox. NetDocs has reengineered its integrations to function entirely inside the Office applications, including Office 365 WebApps. Users no longer have to switch back and forth between the Office applications and the browser to profile, save and open files.
Please contact Eastern Legal Systems to ask for consulting advice about any of these product offerings and to get our take on how to maintain confidentiality while working with client data.
Jack Schaller has been active in the field of law office technology since 1989, and has worked with a variety of commercial accounting, legal billing, practice management, and document management software products during his twenty plus years in the software consulting field. During his tenure as a software consultant he has garnered many sales and service awards for his work with legal software products. Jack is a frequent presenter at legal conferences and seminars, and is a regular contributor to TechnoLawyer and other technology publications.