Prism Legal Consulting, Inc.

Prism Legal Consulting, Inc. has the experience to help law firms, law departments, and suppliers to the market use technology effectively. Here are some articles highlighting the areas on which Prism Legal Consulting focuses.

Law Firm Management and Legal Technology

Technology Solutions for Corporate Law Departments

Links to Other Material on Legal Technology
Legal Technology News Delivering Advice Over the Web - Examples Software of Interest Prism Articles & Conference Presentations Useful Links

Law Firm Management and Legal Technology.
Adopting Best Practices and Doing Away with Castes	A presentation to the College of Law Practice Management 2003 Annual Meeting (Washington, DC, September). This is a "fire starter" presentation that was designed to elict a discussion among the attendees. It proposes that lawyers, like doctors and pilots, adopt formal best practices.
Federalism & Foundations	An article that proposes a model – a combination of federalism and foundations – that law firms might adopt to encourage continuous innovation. Firms can behave like grant-making foundations and budget money specifically for innovation. Practices can behave like states, proposing innovations that best meet their “local” conditions and competing like grantees for scarce funds. Innovations that work for one practice can be replicated in others. This articles appears in AmLaw Tech, March 2003
The Future of Legal Secretaries	Advances in legal technology have caused the role of secretaries to change significantly. Law firms have opportunities to re-think how they manage secretaries to save money and improve internal and client service. This article appeared in the May 12, 2003 issue of the Legal Times.
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The Future of Legal Technology.
A Brief 10-Year Retrospective	For its tenth anniversary issue, Law Technology News asked about a dozen commentators to answer two questions: (1) How will technology most significantly impact law practice over the next decade and (2) What is legal technology's greatest shortcoming so far? Here are Prism Legal Consulting's answers.
The Future of Legal Technology	A presentation (May 2002) concerning the future of technology in law practice to an ABA meeting.
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Articles and presentations on delivering legal advice over the web.

Legal Advice Over the Web	Presentation in March 2002 to the International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law Conference. A brief overview of online legal systems and issues they raise.
Should Litigators Use the Web to Deliver Legal Guidance to Clients?	This article discusses whether litigators should consider delivering advice over the web and what the impact of doing so might be. It was published in the ABA Litigation Management Committee Newsletter, Summer 2001 . It starts with a brief survey of innovative Web-based services by firms in the USA, England, and Australia. It then discusses key questions such as will clients find them useful, impact on amount of litigation, and steps required to build such systems.
Legal Web Advisors	Why in-house counsel should consider creating expert systems to provide answers instead of merely information.
Delivering Know How to Clients	Why law firms should move beyond internal knowledge management and seek to deliver their expertise directly to clients.
The Business Case for Delivering Legal Advice Over the Web	Business models for law firms that want to deliver expertise directly to clients.
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Knowledge management materials.
Charting Your KM Course	How do you know if your law firm or law department is ready "to do KM?" What are the signs of readiness? And if you are ready, what issues do you need to address to have KM succeed? This presentation, co-authored and co-presented with Kingsley Martin, answers these questions. Presented at Legal Tech Show in September 2003 in NYC and in October 2003 in Chicago.
Implementing KM at a large law firm	Law firms that are considering a KM program should have a process to assess needs and develop a plan. Here is a short, “top level” project plan outline for assessing KM needs and developing a KM program.
The CKO's Mission and Work	As law firms invest in knowledge management and hire Chief Knowledge Officers, they need to define what the CKO should do. This article proposes a mission for the CKO, outlines the knowledge the CKO must manage, and suggests that CKOs need to focus on far more than just technology. A condensed version of this article was published in AmLaw Tech, September 2001
History of Work Product Retrieval Systems Projects	Ron Friedmann, the principal and founder of Prism Legal Consulting, Inc., worked for Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering for several years. While there, he and colleagues built several work product databases over the years. In 1994, Jean O'Grady (then and now Librarian at WC&P) and Ron wrote an article (unpublished) that reported on the results and lessons learned. Subsequently, the firm bought Soft Solutions document management software and another round of work product database building began in 1996. A staff person used Soft Solutions to screen for relevant documents (and access for users was vie a Web front-end). But the underlying process developed in earlier projects was used by and large.
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Technology Solutions for Corporate Law Departments.
Technology in US Corporate Law Departments	Prism Legal Consulting, Inc. developed this presentation for Blake Dawson Waldron, a large Australian law firm that is a leading user of technology to serve clients. BDW wanted to share with its clients a current perspective of interesting technology used by in-house counsel in the USA. The goal was not to survey all uses of technology. Rather, it was to highlight interesting applications. To develop this presentation, Prism contacted several leading legal technology vendors and interviewed them by phone. November 2002.
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Litigation Support and Other Topics
Lessons Learned in Litigation Support	Also during his tenure at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (1989-1998), Ron co-developed several interesting ideas and systems. Although this article is relatively old, it is still relevant. Technology has changed a lot, but the human and process issues of using it in law firms has not. The firm built its own litigation support system, integrating scanning, OCR, full-text, and structured databases. Many lawyers reviewed documents on-screen and recorded their comments digitally. Legal assistants used the system to meet document production requests. Ron outlined the key findings concerning process and technology issues in an advanced litigation support system for a PLI seminar; the outline was published in 1997 by the Practising Law Institute in Strategic Techniques and Technologies for Efficient Litigation Management in connection with a similarly titled PLI seminar.
Litigation Risk Analysis	David G. Post and Ron published an article in 1990 explaining how lawyers can use formal risk analysis to analyze the value of a case and proposed settlements. This technique is still arguably underused. The article appeared in the Legal Technology Newsletter, December 1990.
Colleagues Exchange	David R. Johnson, David G. Post, and Ron published an article in 1992 proposing a "Colleague's Exchange." This proposal formed the basis for the commercial service, Counsel Connect, of which David Johnson was Chair. This article anticipated many of the benefits that the Web has brought us and is still struggling to achieve fully.
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Prism Legal Consulting, Inc. has the experience to help law firms, law departments, and suppliers to the market use technology effectively. Here are some articles highlighting the areas on which Prism Legal Consulting focuses.

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