Wandering through the exhibition hall at ABA Techshow last week, I’d ask friends I bumped into whether they’d seen any new products that interested them. Time and again, it seemed, the answer was the same: TheFormTool. TheFormTool is an add-in to Microsoft Word (2007 and later versions) that makes it extremely easy to create document [...]
I wrote just yesterday about the announcement from MyCase of its application programming interface and App Bar, which will allow third parties to develop applications to integrate with the MyCase practice management platform. Today at ABA Techshow, the company had another announcement: the launch of MyCase Draft, an internal word processor and document generation tool. The tool lets users create and edit documents from within MyCase. It also allows users to create document templates that can be merged with existing and custom client and matter fields within the applications.
I have not seen this in action yet. A press release from the company describes these features:
I recently wrote about announcements (here and here) from two other practice management applications, Rocket Matter and Clio, that they had added document assembly to their menus of features. MyCase appears to have taken this a step further, with the addition of word processing.
Just yesterday, I posted here about announcements by two of the leading cloud-based practice management platforms, Clio and Rocket Matter, that they had launched application programming interfaces (APIs) that will allow third-party application developers to integrate directly with their platforms. I noted the coincidence of the two companies’ announcements coming within days of each other, after having just recently both announced the addition of document assembly to their platforms, also within days of each other. I jokingly suggested the possibility of high-tech corporate espionage.
Well, the plot just thickened. Today, another cloud-based practice management platform, MyCase, announced the launch of its API allowing third-parties to develop applications for its platform. In addition, MyCase announced the launch of the MyCase App Bar, a feature that it says will “provide one-stop access to important firm data as well as popular third party apps.”
Unlike Clio and Rocket Matter, whose announcements both named third-party apps ready to integrate with their platforms, MyCase’s announcement did not name any. It did say this:
While the initial app focus is on core workflows and tasks such as seamless synchronization (between MyCase, Outlook and Google) and integration (of emails into specific MyCase case/client folders), social media management apps such as twitter and popular legal productivity apps will follow. The MyCase App Bar and marketplace, which over time will include a wide variety of legal services and applications, is focused in the short-term on third parties that are already popular among existing firms and that help enhance clients’ ability to manage their practices and better serve clients.
MyCase will be exhibiting at ABA Techshow this week, so if you’re attending, you can find out more there.
A half-dozen of them wandered in this morning and then wandered off.
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| From 2012-03-27 |
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| From 2012-03-27 |
I’m starting to wonder whether Clio and Rocket Matter are engaged in high-tech corporate espionage. In January, within days of each other, both companies added document assembly to their cloud-based practice management applications. (See my earlier posts here and here.) Now, again within days of each other, both companies announced that they have launched an application programming interface (API) that will allow third-party application developers to integrate directly with their platforms.
Clio’s announcement will be released tomorrow morning, just a day before the start of ABA Techshow in Chicago. It calls its API the Clio Platform and it will allow third-party developers to securely access data and actions within Clio. It uses OAuth 2.0 for secure authentication, which allows secure access between applications without having to share credentials.
Rocket Matter’s announcement was made Friday and it calls its API RMAPI. It uses JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON, for data exchange and Microsoft’s ASP.NET forms-based authentication.
Both companies also announced initial third-party applications that will integrate with their platforms. Clio said that both Zencash, a receivables management application, and DirectLaw, a virtual lawyering platform, will be integrated immediately. Chrometa, a time-tracking application, will be integrated in April. “We’ll have lots of other exciting partners launching tools built on top of the Clio platform,” Jack Newton, Clio’s founder and CEO, said in an email.
Rocket Matter is launching is API with Chrometa already integrated, its announcement said. Chrometa and Rocket Matter will be demonstrating the integration at Techshow this week.
“Rocket Matter is no longer just a product: it’s a platform for other software companies to create amazing products for lawyers,” said Larry Port, CEO of Rocket Matter. “We wanted our first API integration to be with an incredibly useful, amazing product and forward-thinking company, and found this partner in Chrometa.”
Meanwhile, Jack Newton said his company is excited about the launch of its API. “We’re tremendously excited to announce the Clio Platform, and are thrilled to see the integrations and extensions developers are building using the Clio API. Clio’s users will benefit through a broad range of integrations and add-ons being built for Clio by a broad range of partners.”
If you are attending Techshow, both companies are exhibiting there, so check out their new APIs.
Here is a post I wrote for the ABA Techshow blog: Seven Tips for Building up Your LinkedIn Network.
I’m sensing a trend here. In January, I wrote here that the Web-based practice management application Rocket Matter had added document assembly. Less than a week later, I posted here that Clio had announced its addition of a document assembly feature. Then I learned that HoudiniEsq had already offered document assembly for at least a year.
Now it seems that MyCase is joining the fray. Sam Glover at Lawyerist.com points to a MyCase announcement saying that document assembly and word processing are “coming soon.”
Stay tuned for further developments.
If you are attending ABA Techshow in Chicago next week, be sure to download the Techshow app for your mobile phone. It is available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
The app includes a number of features. Among them:
If you preregistered to attend Techshow, you will have received a code to enter in the app. The code gives you full access to the app’s features. Without it, some features are limited.
LexisNexis said today that it has acquired Portfolio Media, the company that runs Law360, a subscription website that provides legal news and analysis targeted at business lawyers.
Law360 covers legal news on its website and in e-newsletters. News is organized according to some 30 practice areas, industries and regions. According to its website, it covers:
The Lexis press release says that Law360 has over 100,000 subscribers. “The acquisition of Law360 is part of the continuing LexisNexis commitment to provide critical legal and business content to help customers increase productivity and achieve better outcomes for their organizations and clients,” the release says.
What if you could have a law job that let you wear pajamas at noon, take extended trips to visit family and friends, and burn the midnight oil because that is when a great idea hits you? If that strikes a chord for you, then don’t even finish reading this post. Just head over and buy your own copy of The Freelance Lawyering Manual: What Every Lawyer Needs to Know About the New Temporary Attorney Market, by Kimberly L. Alderman.
If you wonder what qualifies Alderman to write this book, consider this: She built a successful freelance lawyering practice from the wilds of Alaska, with nary a lawyer, police officer or courthouse within hours of her. After completing a judicial clerkship in the U.S. Virgin Islands (where I once met her while giving a CLE presentation), she moved to Alaska to pursue her dream of remote living. “Freelance was the only way I could continue practicing law,” she writes. If she was able to do it from there, she can probably help you do it from wherever you are.
So just what is a freelance lawyer? Alderman offers this definition:
A freelance lawyer completes discrete assignments for attorney clients. She is a self-employed free agent, and
works from her own office. She rustles up her own assignments and invoices her attorney clients directly. Freelance lawyers are, in every sense, independent contractors and small business owners.
The first freelance lawyers were stay-at-home parents, attorneys in-between jobs, and semi-retired older practitioners, Alderman writes. In the last decade, however, the freelance lawyering market has changed dramatically. Even as the economy has driven many lawyers out of full-time jobs and into freelance lawyering, all 50 state bars and the ABA have now addressed the ethics of using freelance lawyers.
Alderman does not sugarcoat freelance lawyering. While she clearly enjoys the freedom it gives her from workaday drudgery, she cautions that it takes time — possibly years — to build a profitable freelance practice. You need to be self-motivated and happy working on your own. Getting lawyers to hire you will often be a hard sell and, when they do hire you, you may not get the types of matters that most interest you.
But if you are ready to take the plunge into freelance lawyering, Alderman’s 293-page book walks you step-by-step through how to do it. She gets into the nuts-and-bolts here, talking about which legal-research services to use, how to set your rates and bill your work, how to market a freelance practice, what form of agreement to use when you’re hired, and even how to manage your files.
Kimberly Alderman
There is also a section of the book directed to lawyers who may be thinking about outsourcing work to a freelancer. It covers topics such as why outsource, how to find the right freelancer, and how to address it with clients.
The final section of the book is devoted to the ethics of freelance lawyering. It covers supervision of freelance lawyers, confidentiality, malpractice concerns, screening for conflicts and billing for freelance services. Appendices include key ABA ethics opinions on freelance lawyering and a state-by-state summary of state ethics opinions.
The book’s preface is written by Carolyn Elefant, who, as founder of MyShingle.com and author of the book Solo by Choice, has demonstrated that she knows a thing or two about building a law practice. Both she and Alderman point out that, even as freelance lawyering has gained greater traction, there has been no comprehensive guide to assist freelance lawyers or hiring lawyers in understanding the practical and ethical issues involved.
Kimberly Alderman’s book not only fills that void, but does so comprehensively and intelligently. An added bonus is that Alderman is a darn good writer. Here is that rare legal practice guide that is actually a pleasure to read. Whether you are actually starting a freelance lawyering practice or merely daydreaming about it, you should buy this book.
You can get the book for $45 through either Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Better yet, you can save 10 percent and get it for $40.50 if you buy it directly from the book’s website.
While you’re at it, check out Cultural Property & Archaeology Law News, the fascinating blog written by Alderman, who has now left the wilds of Alaska for the wilds of Wisconsin, where she is an assistant clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
