Do you, as a lawyer, pay much attention to your online reputation? You should. Because, in 2018, legal consumers are online consumers, as the following statistics clearly show:

  • 96% of people with a legal issue use the Internet first to find answers with regard to their problem.
  • 38% of people looking to hire a lawyer turn to the Internet first. (29% ask a friend or relative, 10% go directly to the local bar association, 4% rely on business directories like the Yellow Pages).
  • Once legal consumers have narrowed down their search to one or more potential lawyers, 74% of all legal consumers will visit that lawyer’s or law firms’ websites first, before taking action.
  • 74% of all legal consumers end up contacting a lawyer they found on the Internet, and of those 74%, 87% end up hiring that lawyer.
  • 70% of law firms have generated new cases through their website in the last year.

In these circumstances, Online Reputation Management (ORM) is more than highly recommended.

But how do you start managing your online reputation? After all, as the team of Blue Ocean points out: “Reputation, by its very definition is a nebulous, intangible and complex concept. Trust, along with an excellent reputation as a legal resource, cannot be directly measured like income and expenses.”

The Wikipedia describes Online Reputation Management as “the practice of attempting to shape public perception of a person or organization by influencing information about that entity, primarily online. (…) Specifically, reputation management involves the monitoring of the reputation of an individual or a brand on the internet, addressing content which is potentially damaging to it, and using customer feedback to try to solve problems before they damage the individual’s or brand’s reputation.”

In other words, ORM is about influencing how you are perceived on the Internet. You can affect this perception through multiple channels:

  • Your website often will be responsible for a potential client’s first impression of you.
  • Make sure to use testimonials.
  • You can publish a blog to help establish you as an authority in your field.
  • You can engage people via social media and discussion groups, by answering questions and offering free advice.
  • Online consumers typically also look for reviews on third party websites. It is recommended to respond to those reviews. (More on that below).
  • There are search results in search engines.
  • Not to be forgotten are your profiles in business directories.

Practically speaking, the first step is finding out what is being said about you and your firm. So you can start by doing an online search about your firm. Make sure, too, to find out what is being said on online review sites, as online consumers are eager to know what the experiences are of others who have used your services. You want to augment positive reviews, and to address negative reviews.

Addressing negative reviews can be tricky, especially since there are ethical considerations. You must make sure you never reveal any confidential information! As a rule, the best response to a negative review is to not respond with specific details, but to issue an apology instead, and to ask for personal feedback and to be contacted privately to address the matter.

In 2018, addressing fake news is also a concern. Make sure you do not give out false information about yourself (or your clients), and make sure to address any false information about you or your firm that might be available online.

Apart from addressing any factors that might damage your reputation, you can also more proactively start building a positive reputation through the channels mentioned above: your website, testimonials, blog articles, engagement with potential clients via social media and discussion groups, professional profiles in business directories, etc. Here, too, however, it is important to remain aware of ethical considerations, which may be specific to the bar association you belong to. Most bar associations do not allow lawyers to directly solicit clients. Some bar associations do not even allow lawyers to actively ask for reviews or testimonials.

 

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The market of legal services is experiencing unprecedented and profound changes. In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of alternative legal service providers (ALSPs), and a rapid increase in the use of Artificial Intelligence. We now even have legal chatbots and robot lawyers, and some of them are offering free legal services. The legal consumers are embracing these changes: in a recent survey in the UK, seven out of ten respondents would prefer to use a robot lawyer to a human one! This should not come as a surprise, and the culprit can easily be found: Billable hours are one of the main reasons legal consumers are reluctant to consult a lawyer.

In the past, we have written about the death of the billable hour. With the current evolutions in the legal market, that demise is more imminent than before. And there are plenty of good reasons to kill it off, and to start focusing on Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs).

So, what are Alternative Fee Arrangements? There is not standard definition, but basically any arrangement where the client is not charged by the hour is an Alternative Fee Arrangement. (There is debate about whether volume discounts are an Alternative Fee Arrangement or not, but that discussion is largely academic).

There are different types of Alternative Fee Arrangements. In the article on the death of the billable hour, we payed attention to:
• capped fees,
• fixed and flat fees,
• contingency agreements (where payment depends on the result),
• holdback (payment in phases and dependent on whether certain conditions are met),
• blended fees (lowering the cost of billable hours by delegating),
• cost-plus model (cost plus reasonable profit), and
• subscription billing (where the client pays a recurring fee to take care of its legal business).

(CICERO LawPack users probably know that the Accounting app offers sufficient flexibility for using these Alternative Fee Arrangements).

Why opt for Alternative Fee Arrangements? All the arguments in favour of AFAs are the arguments against the billable hour.
From the point of view of the legal consumer, billable hours undoubtedly offer a lousy consumer experience. First, there is a fundamental double uncertainty: the client does not know in advance how much it will cost to address his or her legal issue, and if litigation is involved does not know what the end result will be. So the legal consumer is expected to commit to paying an undefined amount of money for an unknown result.

There also is the factor that being charged by the hour is always perceived as expensive. And the fact that the client is being charged for everything, including communications does not really make sense. Imagine you have a computer or car problem, have it fixed, and when you receive the bill, you are also charged for phone calls and consultations, on top of the actual repairs.
For lawyers, too, billable hours have negative side-effects that affect the overall productivity of a law practice. As you constantly have to keep track of everything you do, it necessitates a lot of extra administration. A survey published a year ago revealed that only 29 % of the time a lawyer spends working is billable, and that the rest was mainly administration, as well as some time spent on acquiring new cases. Add to that, as mentioned above, that the fact that clients are being charged for communications can easily become an obstacle for clear and essential communications.

Recent progress in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and process automation further illustrates that charging by the hour becomes less and less meaningful. How much time are you going to charge, e.g., for a contract that is compiled or reviewed by an AI system in seconds? Or what about eDiscovery, where computers can scan thousands of documents in minutes for relevant information, where it would take days to do the same manually?

In short, as the legal market is changing, the demand for Alternative Fee Arrangements is only expected to grow. In future articles, we will have a closer look at some of these Alternative Fee Arrangements.

Sources:
• www.businessmag.co.uk/high-wycombe-consumers-favour-lawbot-robotised-help-real-lawyer/
• www.abajournal.com/news/article/clio_releases_legal_trends_report_2017/
• www.firmofthefuture.com/content/how-to-kill-the-billable-hour/
• www.firmofthefuture.com/gated-assets/using-value-pricing-to-grow-your-business/
• biglawbusiness.com/billable-hour-makes-no-sense-in-an-ai-world/
• mena.thomsonreuters.com/en/articles/legal-fee-fear-factor.html
• www.americanbar.org/publications/law_practice_magazine/2014/may-june/alternative-fee-arrangements-that-work-for-clients-and-lawyers.html

As a lawyer, and especially as a lawyer within the EU, you often need to work with documents in more than one language. Fortunately, there are online translation services available that can give you an almost instant translation, and several of those are free. But are they any good when it comes to legal texts? In this article, we’ll have a closer look at the most popular free and instant online translation services.

How does it work? Most of the available services use a form, where you can enter some text that has to be translated. Some offer the option to upload a document, or to use a web address of a web page that you would like to be translated. For all of them, you have to choose the language the text has to be translated to. Some of the services can automatically detect the language of the original text, and all of them allow you to choose the language of the original text.

So, who offers what?

Google Translate: translate.google.com/ Google Translate is completely free. It can translate texts between 103 different languages, which is far more than any of the other services. It also offers alternative translations. It allows you to translate entire documents, as well as web pages.

Bing: www.bing.com/translator/ The Bing Translator is free, but limited to texts of maximum 5000 characters at a time. (If your texts are larger, you’ll have to split them up). At present, it can translate between 65 different languages, including Klingon. (Though I doubt that, as a lawyer, you’ll ever need that one). The Bing Translator does not allow to submit entire documents, but it is possible to use a URL. Also worth noting is that you probably have direct access to the Bing Translator from within Microsoft Word. If you are using Office 365, then the option to select a text, right-click on it, and have it translated is directly available in Word.

DeepL: www.deepl.com/translator DeepL stands for Deep Learning. It is a German translation service, made by the people who created Linguee. DeepL offers a free service as well as a subscription service, where you pay a monthly fee, and are allowed up to 1 million characters per month. There is a limit to the free service, but, at present, it is not clear what that limit is. DeepL can translate only between seven languages. It does offer the option to upload and translate documents.

Paralink: translation2.paralink.com/ The Paralink translator is free, and in theory there is no limit to the amount of text you can translate. Paralink offers translations between 55 different languages, but does not do all of them itself: it works with translation pairs it developed itself. If your needs do not match one of the available pairs, your text is submitted automatically to Google Translate and/or Bing. Texts between, e.g., Dutch and English are not done by Paralink itself.

SDL: www.freetranslation.com/ The SDL translator usually is offered in a free version, as well as a paid version. At present, however, the free version is not available.

WorldLingo: www.worldlingo.com/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html WordLingo offers translations between 15 languages, and is limited to texts of 500 words per submission.

Reverso: www.reverso.net/text_translation.aspx?lang=EN Reverso can translate texts between 13 different languages.

The Online Translator: m.online-translator.com/ The Online Translator offers translations between 19 languages. It uses the Paralink translation engine.

So, are they any good, and how do they compare to each other? We ran some practical tests. These were not meant as a scientific experiment, but just as a field test where we took some legal texts, and had them translated from English to Dutch and vice versa. We also did some back and forth test, where you submit a text in one language to be translated in another, and then have that result translated back to the original language.

(There are some humorous but unconfirmed stories of the early days of machine translations. In a first example “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” came back as “the wine was alright, but the meat had gone off”. In another example “out of sight, out of mind” came back as “invisible insanity.”)

The first observation is that none of these services offer the same quality as a human translator does. The translations by the best services offer texts that are understandable / readable but that still contain multiple grammar and style errors, and therefore still need human revision.

In the tests we ran, DeepL ended as the best service. Their texts needed the least interventions, and score best on grammar and style. They are followed by Google Translate and Bing in a shared second position. All three did well in the one way translations, as well as in the back and forth. (Google Translate offers alternative translations, and typically, one of those will have a correct translation if the suggested translation is not accurate). The services that rely on the Paralink engine came in fourth position, but needed more corrections. The translations of legal texts by Wordlingo and Reverso were useless.

Some other considerations: with translations, context is important. Typically, translations of paragraphs are more accurate than translations of sentences. And often specific terminology (if it is recognized) is translated more correctly. Take, e.g., the terminology used in Dutch for the GDPR: it is quite specific, and therefore more easily identified. As a result, corrections were minimal and the translations from Dutch to English in DeepL were very good. Also, if texts are officially available in several languages, as is the case for many EU texts, then the translations tend to be more reliable.

In conclusion: the top four free online translation services can create texts that are understandable but that still need human corrections. But we do have reached a stage where using these services can already save a considerable amount of time. It is faster to use the big 3 and revise the translations than to start from scratch. In our experience, revising texts that were translated with Bing or Google, is 30 % faster than doing it manually. With DeepL, translations took on average only half of the time one would need to do everything manually.

 

Sources: Online translation engines:

For a while now, the American Bar Association has been recommending that lawyers use client portals to exchange information with their clients. One of the main arguments is that client portals provide a more secure way to communicate than email is. So, what are client portals, and what benefits do they offer?

In a previous article, we described client portals as a place on the Internet where your clients can view, and possibly edit, their own data, usually with a browser. It allows you to interact with your clients, to share files, to have discussions, chat, plan, organize and manage tasks and events in a private, online, and secure environment. The data are often stored in the cloud (or are accessible via cloud technologies) and are encrypted. The communications between the portal and the client is encrypted as well.

Client portals have several key features. Sharing of information is one of the most important ones. Once a client has access to the client portal, he or she can consult the status of his or her cases. The client can view documents, get overviews of billing and accounting data, of what tasks have already been completed and what tasks are in the agenda, waiting to be executed. As such, clients portals offer greater transparency, as well as an effective way to collaborate.

A second key feature of client portal, and mentioned above, are the secure communications. Because the data on the portal, as well as the exchange of data between the client and the portal are encrypted, the communications are more secure than email exchanges. Google publishes a real time transparency report that keeps track of the amount of email that is not encrypted and can therefore be intercepted and read. It shows that at present, on average one in four emails are not encrypted. For a lawyer, this is important, because sending email over non-secure channels could lead to liability for violation of confidentiality if the mail is intercepted.

A third key feature of clients portals is the tight integration with practice management software. Client portals typically are available as add-ons to existing practice management packages. (For CICERO LawPack, the CICERO WebView app is available as an optional extra). The practice management software typically will provide an administration backend, which, among other things, incorporates permission management. In it, you can specify who has access to what information, and what they can do with that information, i.e., e.g., whether they can only read information, or whether they can comment, or modify information, etc.

There are different types of client portals. Most common is the regular client portal that is used for messaging and document sharing. Some law firms use client portals that have more advanced document management functionalities, where clients can, e.g., generate legal documents by filling out forms. These forms supply the data that are then merged into templates. There are law firms, too,  who are using project management client portals. An increasing amount of client portals also allows clients to make online payments.

So, when do you need a client portal? You can use one if you want to

  1. share confidential information,
  2. enhance your communications with your clients
  3. accept online payments (though not all portals provide this functionality yet)
  4. improve collaboration, between lawyers, clients and possible other third parties
  5. audit access to the information (i.e., you can keep track of who access what and when)
  6. leverage “anytime anywhere access” to your law firm’s information

So, it’s clear that client portals offer multiple benefits. Apart from the ones already mentioned the increased transparency that client portals offer, also leads to greater client satisfaction and reduces the need for ‘keeping up to date’ communications. The collaboration aspects of client portals increase productivity. Having a client portal can offer also a competitive advantage in that it will appeal to more Internet-savvy clients.

So, what are you waiting for? Read this article to find out more about our CICERO Webview module. Or contact us for a demonstration.

 

Sources:

This is the second article in a series of articles on Legal Project Management. In the first article, we looked at the what and why: Legal Project management allows to increase productivity and profitability, and is especially beneficial in law firms who use alternative fee arrangements like fixed or flat fees, cost limits, budget restraints / capped fees and contingency fees. “Such cases require management of scope, schedule, risk, and cost in a more rigorous and measured manner than firms have practiced in the past” (Wikipedia). Because Legal Project Management is not typically part of the legal curriculum (yet), we will pay attention to some of its key principles and concepts in this article.

Legal Project Management requires a different approach to the mechanics and business of providing legal services. A useful analogy is to approach a legal project the way an architect or engineer would. Together with the client or clients, you determine what the goals and deliverables are, and how success will be measured. You work with a schedule that often has milestones. Communication with the client is ongoing, as are the evaluations of the progress that has been made. LPM typically also works with a predetermined budget that parties agree on.

In the previous article, we referred to the LPM methodology used by the American Law Firm Baker Donnely. They distinguish three different phases, and each of them has its own concepts and tools.

  • In phase 1, the tools are scope, stakeholder input, statement of work (SOW), budget, communication plan;
  • In phase 2, the tools are control scope, control budget, monitor schedule, regular team meetings, monitor tasks;
  • In phase 3,the tools are client evaluation, lessons learned, update resources, team closure meeting.

Let us have a closer look at these tools and concepts. Please note that the list below is far from exhaustive and is meant as a simplified introduction only.

One of the first things that parties have to agree upon is a project definition statement. “This is the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of your project: a short statement summarizing the purpose, goals, and final deliverable(s).” (Elizabeth Harrin, quoted by Wrike).

A more extensive version of the project definition statement is often referred to as a Statement of Work (SoW). The Wikipedia defines a statement of work as “a document routinely employed in the field of project management. It defines project-specific activities, deliverables and timelines for a vendor providing services to the client. The SOW typically also includes detailed requirements and pricing, with standard regulatory and governance terms and conditions.”

Related to this, and sometimes part of it, is the Scope of the project that parties have to agree upon. The scope of a project explicitly determines what is and what is not included in the project. It typically consists of a breakdown of all the tasks to be done in order to deliver the objectives of the project, as well as a list of measurable success criteria.

Once we have an inventory of the tasks to be done, the Schedule determines when each task has to be accomlished, and who is responsible for it. Often the work is broken down in phases, and the successful completion of such a phase is a called a Milestone.

Once we know what all has to be done, we can calculate the costs involved. Planning, managing, and monitoring the Budget also is a key element of project management.

Throughout the whole process Stakeholder input is essential. If many stakeholders are involved, it can be useful to create an organizational chart that explains who is who and what their role is. In each phase of the project communication with the client, as well as ongoing evaluations of the progress made are essential. Often this is organized in a Communication plan.

Project Management typically also involves Risk Management. Parties anticipate where things could go wrong, what the possible outcomes and the possible alternatives are.

At the end of the project, parties sit down for a Client evaluation, i.e. an evaluation by the client of how the project was completed. Parties focus on what went right or wrong, and on where there is room for improvement.

Based on the client evaluation, the law firm then compiles a report of the Lessons learned and updates its resources accordingly.

As mentioned before, this is not a way of working law firms typically are used to. Using the LPM methodologies can contribute to increase efficiency, profitability and client satisfaction, but is only part of the solution. A survey in the context of the Legal Project Management Competency Framework (LPMCF) revealed that “legal project management encompassed not only project principles and practices, it extended to technology enablement, process improvement and people leadership (team dynamics). The integration of all four of these elements represents the core foundation of legal project management in practice.”

 

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As a result of a push towards innovation and increased efficiency and profitability, more and more law firms are turning to Legal Project Management (LPM). So, what is it? Why is it important and what are the benefits? How does one start implementing LPM? These and other questions will be addressed in this series of articles on Legal Project Management.

Let us start by looking at two definitions of Legal Project Management, which are complementary, and have a slightly different focus. The Wikipedia defines Legal Project Management as “the application of the concepts of project management to the control and management of legal cases or matters.” The International Institute of Legal Project Management, on the other hand, does not limit LPM to the work lawyers do and offers a more general definition as “the application of project management principles and practices to enhance the delivery of legal services.” This latter definition rightfully also applies to alternative legal service providers, who typically have a proven track record of using LPM.

Both definitions are a bit circular in that they only explain Legal Project Management as Project Management for legal projects, and leave the “Project Management” part of it open. So what is Project Management? This is what the Wikipedia has to say:

“Project management is the practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time. A project is a temporary endeavour designed to produce a unique product, service or result with a defined beginning and end (usually time-constrained, and often constrained by funding or staffing) undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives (…). The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals within the given constraints.”

The basic idea behind project management is simple: if you have a complex task to perform, which typically involves coordinating work to be done by several people, then you break everything down as much as possible. You create an inventory of all tasks that have to be accomplished, and then determine who has to do what, and by when. (So, if your law firm management software has contact management, task management and an agenda, you can already cover the basics).

That, in essence, is the core of project management, but, by now, there is more to it than that. There are specific concepts, principles and ‘best practices’ to streamline the process. Attention is paid to the management of scope, schedule, risk, and cost in a more rigorous and measured manner than law firms have practiced in the past. (We’ll explain those more in detail in a follow-up article). The ongoing communication with the customer or client as well as other stakeholders, too, is an essential part of it; as is the ongoing evaluation of how the project is doing.

Legal Project Management has reached a point of maturity that there are now internationally accepted standards, as well as a Legal Project Management Competency Framework (LPMCF).

Let us have a look at an example of how LPM is implemented. In the US, the American Bar Association has referred to the LPM approach of the Baker Donelson law firm as a model of how to implement LPM. “Baker Manage”, as their LPM system is called, works in three phases:

  1. Development Phase: here the objectives are to identify the client’s needs and to create a project plan. The tools to achieve these objectives include the scope, stakeholder input, the statement of work (SOW), budget, and a communication plan.
  2. Execution Phase: here the objective is to implement the client goals and to engage in ongoing communication with the client. The tools to achieve this objective include: control scope, control budget, monitor schedule, regular team meetings, monitor tasks.
  3. Closure Phase: here the objective is to offer the client the solution and evaluate the client’s satisfaction with the solution. The tools at hand are: client evaluation, lessons learned, update resources, team closure meeting.

So, what are the main reasons for law firms to start turning to Legal Project Management? For many law firms using LPM was a response to a demand by their clients. Clients prefer alternative fee arrangements where they know how much something is going to cost them. LPM allows you to break down the tasks and costs, and give a clearer view of what the client will end up paying. Predictable costs are a first benefit.

The main reasons to use LPM are increased efficiency and profits. Legal project planning offers noteworthy opportunities for profit maximization and for substantial revenue growth. Law firms, as well as Alternative Legal Service Providers often specialize in certain types of cases and/or services. The combination of repetition and LPM allows to improve efficiency and increase profits.

Because constant evaluations and feedback are part of the process, LPM also improves team cooperation and proficiency. And it also strengthens the relationship between your law firm and your clients.

All of these are good reasons to consider using LPM in your law firm, wouldn’t you agree?

In part 2 of this series, we’ll pay attention to some of the key principles and concepts of Legal Project Management

Sources:

Making headlines some days ago, was a story of how the UK government is spending 1 billion GBP to modernise its court system. The aim of this innovation project is to cut annual spending by £250m and staff by 40%, while at the same time improving access to Justice, as well as the speed and quality of service delivery (e.g. by the use of online forms for petitions).

Lawyers, too, are being urged to be innovative. Last year, the British Law Society published a 116-page guide on innovation for law firms, called Capturing Technological Innovation in Legal Services. And there are good reasons to being innovative. It gives a competitive advantage, improves productivity, profitability, and, as mentioned above, the speed and quality of service delivery.

But what does it mean for a law firm to be innovative? The first thought that usually comes to mind, which is also reflected in the title of the Law Society document, is the use of new technologies. Lawyers have already successfully been automating many aspects of their law practice for over three decades. New advances in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning are heralding a new age, a second wave if you want, of office automation.

Some examples: law firms can already use virtual legal assistants to do legal research. They can even use virtual receptionists. Document assembly and document review can now be done more efficiently by AI than by their human counterparts. In fact, many specific tasks that have a sufficient degree of repetition can already be automated, as the advent of robot lawyers and legal chatbots has proven. Progress is also being made with smart contracts, where human intervention is often no longer required. AI is proving useful, too, in knowledge management and eDiscovery, as well as in predicting the possible outcome of cases.

These advancements in legal technology are resulting in a change in the professional demography of law firms. With new technology comes a demand for new skill sets, which in turn leads to new roles and positions that need to be filled in law firms. It is not uncommon, these days, to find law firms who employ specialized programmers, statisticians and data scientists, chief data officers, and project managers.

One of the more novel new occupations is that of Data Analytics Attorneys (often shortened to either data attorneys or analytics attorneys). In their article on legal innovation, Wendy Butler Curtis and Kate Orr explain that “the data analytics attorney understands the needs of the client, the function of the tools, and the value of the data. They know it is necessary to train and maintain the artificial intelligence and the richness and quality of the data to predict the accuracy and value of the AI output. Analytics attorneys are also adept at identifying tasks that can and should be automated.”

But just as innovation in law firms is not limited to the use of new technologies, so are the new roles in law firms not limited to tech related jobs. Gone are the days where lawyers were solitary consultants who would charge by the hour. Lawyers now are professionals who are running a business that delivers legal services and products. They are concerned with optimizing and automating processes and work flows, with improving service delivery, as well as customer relations and customer satisfaction. As a result, law firms started employing non-lawyers to run their company (CEO), to keep their finances in check (CFO), and to handle their accounting, marketing, and even customer relations.

As these examples show, innovation requires a different approach, which can affect each aspect of being a lawyer and running a law firm. The first part of the Law Society’s paper focuses on technological innovation in practice. It deals with working smart (which involves putting the client first, innovation hubs, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, and predictive analytics), with agile resourcing (where attention is paid to a fluid workforce), with new pricing models, as well as with innovating for Access to Justice.

For CICERO LawPack, we closely monitor all these new evolutions and best practices, so you don’t have to keep track of them all. When new technologies have sufficiently matured, we look at how to best integrate them into CICERO LawPack, so you get the best combination of innovation and reliability.

Sources:

… CICERO is working on innovations around the Billing workflow, whereby we digitize the preparation process as much as possible? Many small optimizations (checking, changing, approving performance and the proof) should lead to a better workflow up to the invoice. You will have the opportunity to work with multiple rates per prestant and you will receive the details of possible changes / discounts per case or debtor.

… the component CLIDoc can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store for both Windows and Apple users in combination with Office 365? This works considerably faster and more user-friendly because you don’t need to have IT knowledge for the installation.

… the CICERO development team has been expanded? As of March 1st we have a new employee at the IT department. She will join the CICERO team, so that we can process the developments in the industry to our software as quickly as possible.

… you have to make an annual transfer with cleared bookings included, so the balances of debtors and creditors will be taken over correctly? As soon as the balance sheet for 2017 is definitive (and no correction entries have to be made) you can make the annual transfer. You do this in Accounting – Accounting partners – Annual transfer 2017/2018.
Important criteria are:
– Also Layed out ON (in order for ledgers to correspond with the balances of debtors and creditors)
– Mutations OFF (your accountant may ask for clarification, if desired)
Check immediately whether the memorial / miscellaneous booking (with transferred balances of the balance sheet accounts) corresponds with the end balance sheet of 2017.
As long as the memorial / miscellaneous booking has not yet been processed by daily closure / centralization, this booking can still be removed and the annual transfer can be executed again.

… you now receive a separate mail every week with the Webinar agenda? You will no longer find the overview in the newsletter, but in a special mailing in which the webinars of the following week will be brought to the attention.

You may not have noticed, but Office 365 keeps on being updated, and a lot of the subtle enhancements have to do with the ongoing integration of additional cloud services. Let’s have a closer look at Word and OneDrive.

OneDrive comes in different versions with different features. Anybody can sign up for a free account, but, as a lawyer, you are typically expected to sign up for a professional version of ‘OneDrive for Business.’ CICERO LawPack users, e.g., are advised to use Office 365 Business Premium. (If, for some reason, you are using a version of OneDrive that does not offer certain features, it is good to know it may well be possible to subscribe to those features separately).

In Office 365, it is possible to save documents to the cloud, which is done by saving them to OneDrive. A first advantage of having a document in OneDrive, is that it can be accessed from anywhere at any time, and on most devices. There are apps for mobile devices and tablets, and it is even possible to use Office Online, a free web version (with a limited feature set) of the most popular Office applications.

Another advantage of using OneDrive is that the copies saved by autosave are saved in the cloud, too. If your device would crash while working on a document, you can continue working from another device. Microsoft also automatically makes backups of all your OneDrive documents.

One of the biggest advantages of using OneDrive, is that you can share files and folders with other people. If you need feedback from your client, from other lawyers, or even from an external consultant, there is no need to email anybody a copy of the document, you just give them access to the document in OneDrive. And you have the option to determine for each person whether they get access to just read or to edit the texts. etc. It is also possible to insert comments into the text, where Word will keep track of who said what. What’s more, the person you want to give access to one or more documents, doesn’t even need to have Office 365 themselves. They can use the free apps, or Office online to access the documents. All you have to do is send them an email with the link.

OneDrive is specifically designed for people to cooperate on documents. It has built-in capabilities such as advanced permissions management, versioning control, eDiscovery, and records management to ensure documents are managed, controlled, archived and can be retrieved in one place with reduced overhead.

“But is it safe?” you may wonder. The short answer is that it is. Typically, professional cloud service providers have excellent security measures in place. Your data is in all likelihood more secure in the cloud than it is on your own servers. Add to that that the professional version of OneDrive allows to use two-step authentication to access documents. OneDrive also offers a more advanced permission management system, called the Advanced Security Management (ASM), which will detect abnormal usage and allow you to monitor how your documents are being accessed and used. (If your version of OneDrive doesn’t include ASM, it is possible to order it separately).

It is important to remain aware of the terms and conditions of OneDrive, especially if, as a lawyer, you store evidence on OneDrive. Microsoft has strict policies when it comes to, e.g., nudity or graphic violence. Storing such content, even if it is evidence in a case, may be a violation of Microsoft’s terms and conditions, and may lead to your account being suspended. One possible workaround, is to sign up for ‘Customer Lockbox’ which gives you greater control over what Microsoft can scan on your OneDrive, but it offers no guarantees. If Microsoft does find anything it considers a violation of their terms and conditions, your account may be suspended.

We started this article by referring to the constant updates of Office 365 and the addition of additional cloud services. For many of these cloud services, is making progress with the integration of Artificial Intelligence. You may know that within Word, e.g., you have the option to translate text in a document to different languages. Those translations have been getting better and better. Another new feature is an intelligent dictionary for acronyms, which will tell you what a certain acronym in a certain context means. Specifically interesting for lawyers are the advancements Microsoft has been making in the field of eDiscovery on OneDrive.

Needless to say that the usage of OneDrive is integrated into CICERO LawPack. You can choose whether to save your documents locally, or in the cloud, and the different CICERO LawPack apps, like e.g. the built-in DMS, can handle it all, without a problem.

Sources:
• lawyerist.com/microsoft-office/onedrive/
• blogs.findlaw.com/technologist/2016/07/tips-for-using-onedrive-in-your-legal-practice.html
• www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/productivity/office365.aspx
• www.abajournal.com/news/article/60_tips_tricks_and_technologies_to_improve_your_life_and_practice/
• www.fool.com/investing/2018/03/12/1-smart-artificial-intelligence-bet-you-can-make-t.aspx

‘Man versus Machine’ contests are always popular. We have already seen such contest where Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems defeat human experts at chess, Jeopardy, and Go. And in recent months, robot lawyers have been giving human lawyers a run for their money, too. In the headlines this week is a story of an Artificial Intelligence system outperforming human lawyers in reviewing non-disclosure agreements. Some months ago, in October 2017, there was a similar story about an AI system that was better at predicting the outcome of cases about Payment Protection Insurance than human lawyers were. Let’s start with the latter.

Case Cruncher Alpha

One of the first occasions where robot lawyers beat their human counterparts happened in October 2017, in the UK. The Artificial Intelligence system taking on the human lawyers was Case Cruncher Alpha, developed by Casecrunch. Casecrunch is the current name for the company that previously had developed LawBot, Lawbot-X, and Divorcebot. It was started by a group of Cambridge University Law students. (See the article on Legal Chatbots). Case Cruncher Alpha is designed to study existing legal cases in order to predict the outcome of similar cases.

In the contest, CaseCruncher Alpha competed with 112 lawyers. All of them were commercial lawyers from London. None of them were experts in the specific matter the cases dealt with.

The purpose of the contest was to predict the outcome (success or failure) of cases dealing with Payment Protection Insurance (PPI). The topic is well known in the UK, where several banks were ordered to pay damages to customers to whom they had sold insurance products that they didn’t require. The contestants were given real cases that had been handled by the UK Financial Ombudsman Service. The lawyers were permitted to use all available resources.

The result was a staggering defeat for the lawyers: they achieved an average accuracy score of 62%, while Case Cruncher Alpha scored 86.6 %. (No data were provided on how individual lawyers did, or on whether there were any that had scored better than the AI system).

Richard Tromans from artificiallawyer.com rightfully points out that evaluating the results of this contest is tricky. They do not mean that machines are generally better at predicting outcomes than lawyers. What they do show is that if the question is defined precisely enough, machines can compete with, and sometimes outperform human lawyers. At the same time, this experiment also suggests that there may be factors other than legal factors that contributed to the outcome of the cases. But what the contest undoubtedly made clear was that legal prediction systems can solve legal bottlenecks.

Ian Dodd was one of the judges. He believes AI may replace some of the grunt work done by junior lawyers and paralegals, but that no machine can talk to a client or argue in front of a High Court judge. In his view, “The knowledge jobs will go, the wisdom jobs will stay.”

LawGeex

Another occasion where robot lawyers got the upper hand was in a contest in February 2018, in the US. In this case, the Artificial Intelligence system was developed by LawGeex, the company that was started in 2014 by commercial lawyer Noory Bechor (cf. the previous article on AI and contracts). Noory Bechor had come to the realization that 80% of his work consisted of reviewing contracts and was highly repetitive. He believed it could be done faster, cheaper and more effectively by a computer, and that’s why he started LawGeex.

In this challenge, the AI system competed with 20 lawyers in reviewing Non-Disclosure Agreements. All 20 lawyers were experts in the field. The LawGeex report explains: “The study asked each lawyer to annotative five NDAs according to a set of Clause Definitions. Each lawyer was given four hours to find the relevant issues in all five NDAs.” In that time, they had to identify 30 legal issues, including arbitration, confidentiality of relationship, and indemnifications. They were given scores reflecting how accurately they identified each issue.

Once again, the AI system did better than the human lawyers. It achieved an accuracy rate of 94%, whereas the lawyers achieved an average of 85%. There were, however, considerable differences between how well the lawyers did. The lowest performing lawyer, e.g., only scored 67%, while the two best performing lawyers beat the AI system and achieved, depending on the source, either 94 or 95% accuracy. For one specific NDA, one lawyer only identified 55% of the relevant issues, while for another one the AI system reached a score of 100%, where the best human lawyers reached 97% for that one.

The human lawyers were no competition for the AI system when it came to speed. The AI system cleared the job in 26 seconds, while the lawyers took 92 minutes on average. The longest time one lawyer took, was 151 minutes, while the shortest time was 51 minutes.

Gillian K. Hadfield is a Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Southern California who advised on the test. She says, “This research shows technology can help solve two problems: both making contracts faster and more reliable, and freeing up resources so legal departments can focus on building the quality of their human legal teams.” In other words, the use of AI can actually help lawyers expedite their work, and free them up to focus on tasks that still require human skills.

 

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