In CICERO, it is possible to view and handle documents without Microsoft Word. For example, if you are not logged in to a server environment and you do not have an Office application / license available or for document processing on phone, tablet or Mac. With our WebDOC functionality in the Matters application, this is now possible.

How does it work?
When you want to open documents in CICERO, they will be automatically opened in the web version. If it is possible to open the document in Word you click the button Open in MSOffice, the top right.

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You can also create new documents with WebDOC. To do this, select Type Letter Web in Matters – Document Merge .

Settings
To use WebDOC, you first go to Users – Rights, in the Admin application. At Settings, on the bottom right, you see the option WebDOC. You check this option.

One year ago, we wrote about the world’s first robot lawyer. Donotpay.co.uk was created by Joshua Browder. It is a website with a chatbot that started off with a single and free legal service: helping to appeal unfair parking tickets. When the article was published, the services was available in the UK, and in New York and Seattle. At the time, it had helped overturn traffic tickets to the value of 4 million dollars. Apart from appealing parking tickets, the website could already assist you, too, in claiming compensation if your flight was delayed. Since then, a lot has happened. By now, DoNotPay has successfully appealed traffic tickets to the amount of 10 million dollars. But, more importantly, its activities have expanded considerably. And in the last year, several other legal chatbots have seen the light of day, as well.

Let us start with DoNotPay. A first important expansion came in March 2017, when it started helping refugees claim asylum. Using its chatbot interface, DoNotPay can offer free legal aid to refugees seeking asylum in the US and Canada, and assists with asylum support in the UK.

A second, and far more massive expansion followed only days ago, on 12 July 2017, when DoNotPay started covering a much broader range of legal issues. Its new version can offer free assistance in 1,000 legal areas, and does so across all 50 US states, as well as in the UK. It can now, e.g., assist you in reporting harassment in the workplace, or to make a complaint about a landlord; or it can help you ask for more parental leave, dispute nuisance calls, fight a fraudulent purchase on your credit card… The new DoNotPay covers consumer and workplace rights, and a host of other issues.

Browder didn’t stop there. Because he wants to address the issues of ‘information asymmetry’ and ‘inequality of arms’, as of 14 July 2017, DoNotPay is opening up so that anyone can create legal bots for free, with no technical knowledge. If you want to create your own free legal chatbot, all you have to do is fill in this downloadable form, and send it to automation@donotpay.co.uk.

Another interesting legal chatbot, is Law Bot, which was created by a team of Cambridge University law students, consisting of Ludwig Bull, Rebecca Agliolo, Nadia Abdul and Jozef Maruscak. When Law bot was launched, it only dealt with aspects of criminal law in the UK. More specifically, the bot wanted to inform people who had been the victim of a crime about their legal rights. What had motivated the creators, was the observation that most advice from lawyers on legal rights of the victims of a crime felt like it was written mainly for the use of other lawyers, rather than to help inform the general public, who were in fact the people most in need of the information. The first version of Lawbot guided its users through a series of questions and answers that helped them to assess what, from a legal perspective, may have happened to them and what they should do next, such as to formally report a crime to the police.

A second Law Bot initiative was Divorce Bot. It asks its users questions via an internet-based interface to guide them through the early days of a divorce. The chatbot explores different scenarios with them, and helps clarify their exact legal position. It also explains legal terms that are commonly used in divorce, such as ‘irretrievable breakdown‘ and ‘decree nisi‘, and provides a comprehensive breakdown of the divorce process. It gives a breakdown of the costs and forms needed, too. This way, people (in the UK) know exactly what to expect, even before they talk to a lawyer.

One of Law Bot’s co-founders also launched an AI-driven case law search engine, called DenninX. The free application’s aim is to help lawyers and law students conduct legal research on English case law by making use of AI technology, such as natural language pre-processing and machine learning.

24 July 2017 is the launch date of a new and more expanded version of Law Bot, called Lawbot-X. Lawbot-X will now cover seven countries: Great Britain, the US, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. It will also be available in Chinese, for markets such as Hong Kong. The new bot further adds a case outcome prediction capability to assess the chance of winning a legal claim that the bot has analysed. The free legal bot will also operate from a new platform and will be hosted on Facebook Messenger.

Another useful chatbot for legal consumers is Billy Bot. Unlike the DoNotPay and Law bot chatbots, Billy Bot does not offer legal assistance, but helps you find a lawyer, barrister or solicitor, in the UK. Billy Bot was created by Stephen Ward, a career barristers’ clerk, and founder of clerk-oriented technology company Clerksroom. Billy Bot can interface with members of the public about some of the same preliminary legal questions that barristers’ clerks often handle. It can currently refer users to appropriate legal resources and pull information from the 350 barristers’ offices. Ward intends to give it access to other systems, including scheduling and case management capabilities. It currently answers questions on LinkedIn.

Next, we have Lawdroid, which was created by Tom Martin. Lawdroid is an intelligent legal chatbot that can help entrepreneurs in the US get started by incorporating their business on a smartphone for free. No lawyer is required. Lawdroid is available on Facebook Messenger. Lawdroid, too, has expanded its services, and the company that created the bot, now also makes legal chatbots for lawyers. They claim to have over 100.000 of them already on Facebook.

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The Wikipedia defines digital marketing as an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.

In 2017, digital marketing is a must, and this applies to lawyers, too. The following statistics, updated for 2017, explain why this is the case:

  • 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 lawyers 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.
  • 72% of people looking for a lawyer hire the first lawyer they speak to.
  • 70% of law firms have generated new cases through their website in the last year.
  • Potential clients for law firms spend on average 16 minutes per hour on various social media platforms (in other words, people looking for a lawyer spend just over a quarter of their time doing so on social media).
  • More than half of interviewed law firms grew their number of clients due to increased social media engagement.
  • When legal firms use video content for marketing purposes, web traffic from search engines increases by 41%. The current prediction is that by 2020, video will make up 82% of all consumer internet traffic.

In other words, legal consumers are increasingly using digital media to find and hire lawyers, and you are missing out on potential clients if they cannot find you on those digital media.

So, what tools does a lawyer have, to engage in digital marketing? The most important ones are:

  • A website,
  • A blog,
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization),
  • Social Media, and
  • Reputation Management

Let us explore those briefly.

Website: in a previous article we pointed out that websites must have a quick load time, be mobile-friendly, contain relevant imagery, and have a modern design, and easy navigation. To convert visitors into content consumers and clients, the texts on your site must be client-focused, and must convey clarity, trust, relatability, and differentiation (i.e. they must explain why a potential client should choose you over others). Adding personal information helps build trust and relatability.

In 2017, having high quality video on your website dramatically increases your chances of receiving traffic, and of making a good first impression. Websites should include a ‘call to action’, i.e. encourage visitors to do something (subscribe to a blog or newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.). Make sure you can easily be contacted: have your telephone number and email address clearly visible, and include a contact form.

Blogging: in one of our previous articles (support.cicerosoftware.com/en/blog-starting-a-blog/) we showed how to start your blog. One of blogging’s biggest advantages is that it accelerates relationships and helps establish your reputation. Develop a strategy for your blog: write about items that are you passionate about, define your niche, and know who your target audience is. For lawyers, it is generally recommended that your blog is independent from the website of your law firm. (If it’s part of the website, it’s often perceived as a sales gimmick). Listen to your audience and engage with them. Remember to write to the medium, i.e. the writing style for a blog is typically informal. And make sure to build social media equity: your blog needs to be published or promoted on social media.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the mystical holy grail of success in reaching your target audience on the Internet. How does it work? Search engines scan your website and blog, etc., then create an index, and finally rank the results. There are many factors that influence that ranking. Some of the most important on-page factors include the URLs and the site architecture, the title tags, the body content, the internal linking structure, as well as page load speed. The most important off-page factor consists of the backlinks to your site, which include the backlinks on social media. For lawyers, local ranking is important, too, as people typically look for a lawyer in the neighbourhood. NAP information, i.e. Name, Address, and Phone, must be easy to find. Other factors that influence ranking are mobile-friendliness, and having a disclaimer, a privacy statement, and a site map.

Social Media: in two previous articles, we first explained why social media matter (support.cicerosoftware.com/en/blog-social-media-matter/), and provided a short introduction on how to use them (support.cicerosoftware.com/en/blog-introduction-social-media-lawyers/). Using social media to attract clients by engaging with them is fast, free, and it works. Find out where your audience is and where your messages will carry the most impact, and focus your efforts there. Using social media can be a balancing act, where you don’t want to come across as merely promoting your business: discuss general legal content, but also discuss firm activity outside of legal representation, and reveal something about your personality.

Finally, Reputation Management is an often-overlooked aspect of digital marketing. A first piece of advice would be to build a ‘wall of content’: provide enough information that potential clients want to retain you. Provide not only testimonials but also customer reviews, and allow clients to give online feedback. (Make a habit of asking your clients to give you a review. Online feedback is free research into how your clients perceive you). It also vital to learn how to respond to negative feedback: done correctly, a response comment communicates responsiveness, attention to feedback, and strength of character.

 

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With CICERO LawPack’s Collection module you can manage, import, follow-up and monitor your debt collection cases. You can also give your clients online access to their debt collection cases, using the Webview client portal.

How does it work? The Collection module lets you define invoice and debt collection terms per client: the interest to be charged, penalty clauses, any administrative costs, etc. For each case file a follow-up sheet can then be created. This follow-up sheet keeps track all outstanding claims, as well as all the payments that have already been made. The payments are linked to the accounting module: every payment can be entered with its own specific imputation rules. The follow-up sheet is also linked to the calendar where each time the next step to be taken can be added automatically. The daily agenda overview allows you to approve the actions to be taken. The module works with predefined templates for standard letters that are automatically processed, and into which the relevant file information (and calculations and settlements) are integrated seamlessly and without error. Once the collection file is created and there is an outstanding balance, you can also add a payment plan.

If you handle multiple debt collection cases per client, you might want to use the Automated Follow-up feature. If the cases belong to the same client then they often follow the same Scenario, which allows us to further automate the follow-up process. The Scenarios can perform specific tasks that are planned in advance: e.g., they can generate different follow-up letters (to be printed or by e-mail) that take into account all intermediate payments and in which the necessary calculations are integrated. Every day, the module presents you with an overview of all actions to be taken on that day, covering all case files.

If you have clients for whom you handle larger numbers of debt collection files, you can automate even further by using a digital import of your client’s data. This import saves you from having to manually add the relevant data with regard to the debtor, the outstanding claims and payments received. Once you have agreed upon certain conventions with your client, the entire administration can be handled automatically. Information with regard to the debtor, the amounts to be recovered, as well as the payments already received can be read in, and automatically added to your Relations and Case files. That allows you to work faster and more efficiently, while also reducing the chances of input errors.

With the Collection module, it is also possible to export the data of selected case files and hand them over to bailiffs who use the Organi software.

In summary, the process to recover unpaid invoices is ideal for a far-reaching automation. And that has nothing but advantages. The Collection module saves you time, and allows you to work more efficiently. (The automatic follow-up ensures e.g. that all correspondence is sent on time in all the case files). Because the process is automated, there is much less chance of material mistakes. The Collection module gives a high Return on Investment. Relying on customer feedback, the module has been optimized over the years. And because your clients can use the Webview module (i.e. the CICERO LawPack client portal) at any time, to follow the state of affairs and progress of their case files, they are satisfied, too.

Just one year after the decision of justice to digitalize, this week, the Digital Platform for Attorneys (DPA-deposit) was launched. From now on it is possible for lawyers to process and forward all legal documents digitally. No piles of paperwork and stamps anymore; also the legal industry modernizes.

CICERO is currently busy developing its software for integration with DPA deposit. Later this year this will roll out. This makes it possible to communicate directly from CICERO with the digital platform.

How does it work in CICERO?
You sign up as a user on the platform. Next, it is important that the parties on a case are properly imported, so the documents will be sent in the correct format (digital, fax, paper, etc.) and to the correct parties, using DPA deposit. From a case in the DMS application, you can retrieve all related documents and send them to the platform. The platform passes it directly to the right party. You will also receive a digital inbox (linked to your CICERO Mailbox) in which you receive documents, confirmations, etc.
In short, all the comforts of the DPA developments in your trusted CICERO environment.

The next few months, the industry will respond to all changes. Justice continues to evolve and, in the meantime, continues to work towards the digitization of the courts.

Once the integration is completed, we will inform you about the next steps to take. We will also keep you up to date of further developments.

This is the second article in a two-part series that looks at the law practice of the future. It is largely based on the Law 2023 Study (www.law2023.org), which predicted seven evolutions law firms will undergo by 2023:

  1. Technologies Will Enable Lawyers to Bill for Real Value
  2. Firms Will Develop Offerings That Transcend Jurisdiction
  3. Demand for Responsive Institutions Will Create New Markets for Accountability
  4. Firms Will Tap New Talent and Enable New Pathways to Practice
  5. Information Access/Transparency Will Push Firms to Seek Hyper-Specific Markets
  6. Firms Will Launch R&D Departments to Create New Offerings
  7. User/Anthropological Research Will Shape Client Experience of Legal Products

The first three were discussed in the first article. In this second article, we’ll focus on evolutions four to seven. Note that the original Law 2023 Study was published two years ago, and that more recent findings have been integrated into this article.

Evolution 4: Firms Will Tap New Talent and Enable New Pathways to Practice

The study found that “all kinds of companies are coming to grips with how they will acquire the skills and abilities they need in a workforce of unprecedented demographic and cultural diversity. Many organizations are also faced with the challenge of rapidly developing capacities they never needed before. Law firms will need to figure out how to hire new kinds of minds and address ongoing value concerns from clients.”

This is one of the evolutions that is already clearly visible. Traditionally, law firms consisted of lawyers, assisted by some administrative aids. Larger firms could have paralegals, accountants and an IT department. Now, it is not uncommon to also find project managers, client service managers, programmers, business analyst, industry advisors, etc. in law firms.

Another new tendency is to find lawyers who no longer are ‘just lawyers.’ On the one hand, there are e.g. scientists, engineers and mathematicians who are switching to the legal sector, and combine their fields of expertise. On the other hand, we are witnessing the emergence of what some call the “T-shaped lawyer”. Traditionally, lawyers had a deep knowledge in one discipline or ‘vertical’ market, i.e. the Law. A T-shaped employee, however, has a wide breadth of knowledge across multiple disciplines that allow them to bring new and innovative ways of thinking to their job. Some Law Schools already offer a curriculum for T-shaped lawyers. As a result, individuals with a deeper understanding of technology and data, as well as the law, are changing the way the law is done. We can find some examples of that in the fields where AI is being integrated into the law.

Millennials are also changing the legal workplace. They grew up in an ‘always online’ paradigm, where services are available 24/7. More flexibility is required because the work can be performed at any place and at any time. So, they approach their work differently, and that affects the way law firms operate:

  • They prefer to work independently
  • The prefer assignments that can be done from home
  • They don’t care much for the traditional meaning of “work/life balance”
  • They value constructive coaching/mentorship relationships
  • Leadership and professional development opportunities are important
  • They give back

In short, in the office of the future, the employee gets more freedom, but also more responsibility. Law firms that adopt more flexible work practices and pay structures will be best prepared to compete with other industries for the capable people needed to fill these new jobs.

Evolution 5: Information Access/Transparency Will Push Firms to Seek Hyper-Specific Markets

The study found that “clients will have much more access to objective information about the effectiveness of firms and individual lawyers. Public companies in particular will face increasing pressure to rely on firms with the best track records.”

Increased competition on the legal market already pushed law firms to explore niche markets and to build greater expertise in specific fields. What we are witnessing now is that clients get access to all kinds of extra information about law firms like their success rates and effectiveness. This will force law firms to “define and dominate niche markets in which they can credibly claim to be the best. As with other industries, changes to legal markets will increasingly be driven by organizations’ collective ability to produce disruptive innovations, in addition to individual lawyers’ skills and experience.” Which leads us to the next topic.

Evolution 6: Firms Will Launch R&D Departments to Create New Offerings

The study found that “the variety of demands on law firms will lead to a new diversity in the way legal solutions are conceived, packaged, sold and applied. Some of these novel legal products will immediately find vast markets; others could take years to catch on or turn out to be false leads.”

Technology is changing the way that law is being practiced. It is to be expected that law firms will start creating their own R&D departments, either to take the lead or to keep up with the pace in a certain field. These R&D departments may focus on products, services or methodologies, which respond not only in changes in technology on the market, but also to shifts in industry needs and client preferences.

Evolution 7: User/Anthropological Research Will Shape Client Experience of Legal Products

The study found that “a deeper understanding of users’ experience is increasingly becoming the driving force behind the offerings of all kinds of companies. Companies are using data and design to predict consumers’ desires, aiming to appear in their lives before they even know what they want.”

The role of the clients’ experience when dealing with the law firm is becoming an even more important aspect of great customer services than it was before. Just like online retail shops can keep track of what you and other people buy to give you recommendations, technologies are being developed to anticipate the clients’ future needs. This may lead to greater understanding of entire industries, which in turn will allow law firms to approach their clients with new opportunities instead of simply reacting to their problems.

 

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Law firms are going through a phase of intense transformation. The way law practices are run has changed more in the last two decades than in the entire century before. One such change is that law firms largely have become corporate entities, and consequently are being run as such. Other changes are the result of the Internet and the emergence of new technologies. This has led to virtual practices, paperless offices, Artificial Intelligence assistants and even some robot lawyers. We work with digital devices, and we need to be aware of cybersecurity. On these devices, files and information are digitized, and as a result, evidence often is digital evidence, which in turn led to eDiscovery. Lawyers and clients find each other online, and interact through social media. Because of the cloud, traditional employment relationships are also disappearing. Most young people opt for self-employment and prefer to take assignments that can be performed at home. The need for a fixed workplace and fixed working hours seem to be obsolete.

These changes raise the question of what the future will hold for law practices. Will robots take the place of lawyers? Will offices disappear as everything moves to the cloud? How will the way lawyers work change? We will be looking at the law practice of the future in a two-part series, which is largely based on the Law 2023 Study (www.law2023.org). This study projected what a law firm will look like in 2023. For these two articles that information has been updated and complemented by more recent findings.

The Law 2023 Study predicts that law practices will evolve in seven ways:

  1. Technologies Will Enable Lawyers to Bill for Real Value
  2. Firms Will Develop Offerings That Transcend Jurisdiction
  3. Demand for Responsive Institutions Will Create New Markets for Accountability
  4. Firms Will Tap New Talent and Enable New Pathways to Practice
  5. Information Access/Transparency Will Push Firms to Seek Hyper-Specific Markets
  6. Firms Will Launch R&D Departments to Create New Offerings
  7. User/Anthropological Research Will Shape Client Experience of Legal Products

We will focus on the first three evolutions in the first part of this article, and the other four in the second part.


Evolution 1: Technologies Will Enable Lawyers to Bill for Real Value

The study found that “many lawyers are already experimenting with digital tools to enhance their practices. But the most powerful new technologies will likely be developed by innovators outside the traditional legal industry who are incentivized to offer basic legal services for radically lower costs.”

We are, in fact, already witnessing this with, e.g., the arrival of legal chat bots that offer legal assistance (often for free) with regard to parking tickets, damage to luggage claims, applying for refugee status, and even on divorce. A recent study found that approximately 23 % of the work lawyers do at present can be automated. Eager to seize that opportunity, there are dozens of startups that want to offer AI-driven services that offer very specific legal solutions.

It is perfectly possible that law firms will start integrating these new technologies in their offer. They would be wise to do so, as it will reduce their costs. And they may even start developing their own such tools (cf. evolution #6). But the main effect of these new technologies is that lawyers will have to start focusing on what brings real value to their clients. Often this will mean specializing in specific fields of expertise. Another effect of these new technologies is that they will lead to entirely new forms of practice, like computer-assisted law, that can only be pursued in this technological environment.


Evolution 2: Firms Will Develop Offerings That Transcend Jurisdiction

The study found that “as the pace of globalization quickens, the nature of jurisdiction will change. It’s not just that corporations and other institutions will need to navigate dozens or hundreds of sets of rules and regulations — they’ll also have a significantly greater need to choose among them. These clients will expect their counsel to keep up.”

Globalization creates a demand for global legal services, which creates new challenges and new opportunities. Proactive firms will develop methodologies and employ technologies to compare and assess how legal issues related to products or services are solved in different jurisdictions.


Evolution 3: Demand for Responsive Institutions Will Create New Markets for Accountability

The study found that “enabled by technology, citizens are demanding greater transparency and responsiveness from corporations, government and other institutions — which very frequently seem caught off-guard. In a world where a WikiLeaks is around every corner, institutions will need more than just good PR; they’ll need new tools to fortify their credibility and maintain public trust.”

Law firms who to tap into this new market must adhere to a ‘triple bottom line,’ evaluating their success using metrics beyond profits:

  1. Is your law firm the preferred place for the most profitable clients to do business?
  2. Is your law firm the preferred place for the most talented people to work?
  3. Is your law firm the preferred place where the most inspired leaders want to serve their communities and the larger world at hand?

Smart firms already understand how important the element of trust is to their long-term viability. This in turn creates a new market for lawyers who can help other institutions achieve transparency, accountability and responsiveness, by crafting the necessary policies and practices.

The demand for greater transparency and responsiveness will not only come from clients but also from the people who will work for the law firm: millennials prefer to work in companies that inspire, and that display a commitment to philanthropy and social responsibility. This ties in with evolution #4, which describes how law firms will tap in to new sources of talent. That will be one of the items discussed in part 2 of the article.

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Below an overview of the most important updates of last month.

ADMIN > Settings
– Setting ‘bookZeroTaskInAccounting’ added (True / False) to determine whether 0-rules of invoices (after modifying red amounts) should or should not be recorded as 0-line in accounting.

ADMIN > Configuration > Tasks
– We now distinguish between ‘enabled’ and ‘history’. ‘Enabled’ is linked to rights, ‘history’ is no longer accessible to anyone.

ADMIN > Users
– Right Setting ‘Consult inactive task codes’ added. – Right Setting ‘Insight company sheet case’ added.

DMS
– Mobile mail added.

TASKS
– Option added in bulldozer to modify performed/billed tasks.

REPORTS
– Fix for loading excluded accounting partners for selection parameters.

Recently we have a new feature in CICERO Mobile: CICERO Mailbox. This can be found in the menu under DMS.
Through CICERO Mailbox you open your set inbox(es).

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Using the upper left button you open the folder structure of your inbox. Below you can select the desired mailbox, if you have several.

You see your received emails, which you can access by clicking them.

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You can book the opened e-mail by using the menu options: BookMe, answer (Reply), answer all (Reply all), Forward or go directly to the case details associated with this email.
On the homepage of CICERO Mailbox you can use:

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the + button to create a new e-mail, or reload your inbox with the refresh button.
With the magnifying glass you’re looking through your inbox. You have a few options to book, delete, move or mark the selected email(s) (see image below).

4juist

 

 

DPA is developing and CICERO develops along with it.
We are currently working on the integration of the following services:

– e-Deposit service (new version Dpa-Deposit): This service allows you to exchange documents online with courts (and other stakeholders) safely. This service is available starting this month through DPA and later in the year in CICERO.
– e-Payment service: This service allows you to make electronic payments of amounts owed to the registries. This service is realized in the autumn of 2017.

In addition, in March for every lawyer, connected to a Belgian counter,  an electronic attorneys card is available. More information will follow.

We will keep you informed.