New SaaS Legal Application

As a update to my previous posts regarding the availablility and use of SaaS applications in the legal market, I recently came accross RocketMatter, a new Web 2.0 based case and time management solution for small and medium sized law firms. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Labels: Case Management, Saas, Small Markets, Software-as-a-Service, Virtual Law Office (VLO)

posted by Charles Skamser @ 9:35 AM 1 Comments

Will SaaS Ligitation Support Tools Change the Litigation Vendor Landscape?

In a recent article about SaaS Litigiation Support Tools on Law.com, Brett Burney writes that the new generation of online tools such as Lexbe and ImageDepot that are delivered under the new architecture called Software-as-a-Service are an appealing alternative to the standard more expensive and combursome solutions such as Summation and Concordance that have been on the market for years. real equalizer for small to medium sized law firms. In the same artilce, Cliff Shnier, an e-discovery expert and consultant who has written on this topic in the past, states, "SaaS litigation databases to be something of an equalizer for small and big litigation firms. He muses that while smaller firms may not enjoy the resources of their larger counterparts, using a SaaS litigation database could level the playing field and make the smaller firm more attractive to a big corporate client."

If you read this blog on a regulary basis, you will know that I am a big fan of SaaS technology and therefore agree with Brett's conclusions. However, I would take it a step further by pointing out that SaaS tools will quickly outpace the older competitors in the market with their inherent ability to quickly and easily add very sophistiacted features and functions and to also support very customized look and feels for every single user. This capability, referred to as extensibility is a standard feature of a true multi-teannet and self provisioning SaaS application and is literally impossible for older competitors build on client server applications and serverd up under a Citrix or similiar technology to support. There is no doubt that they can mimic these capabilities with cumbersome code fixes and write arounds. We have already seen several vendors come out with online solutions of their client server tools.

However, the very nature of their older code base is such that over time they will just flat not be able to keep up unless they undergo an expensive and client disrupting rewrite. And, once a software vendor does down this path, they open up their customer base to seek newer technologies. It's a model that has repeated itself time after time in the software industry and has spelled doom for many a software company that couldn't keep with the inevitable cycle of new technology.

As such, in the months to come, you will begin to see the new Litigation Support SaaS vendors quickly gaining marketshare and overshadow the older software players in the industry. I predictd that it will completely change the landscape of ligitaiton software vendors.

In the weeks to come, I will post a more detailed discussion of this topic along with some predictions of who will survive, who will not survive and what it will mean for Litigation Support software users.

Labels: Condordnace, iConnect, ImageDepot, Lexbe, Litigation, Litigation Support Software, Medium Markets, ORT, Saas, Small Markets, Software-as-a-Service, Summation

posted by Charles Skamser @ 8:55 AM 0 Comments

Has the Need for EDD hit Small Markets?

I talk to 15 or 20 different Litigation Service Providers and at least 10 law firms througout the country every week regarding the Litigation Lifecycle, EDD and the technologies and services that are being used the most and having the biggest impact on day to day operations and case management. As such, I have a pretty good pulse on what the market is asking for and what the service providers and vendors are doing to fulfill these needs.

First of all, its an understatement to say that the market is growing at an accellerating rate. According to the Socha-Gelbmann Survey it is already a $2B market. However, what I have been investigating over the past couple of weeks is whehter all of this growth is with the Fortune 1000 and the big law firms in the large metropolian markets or if the need for EDD has made its way into the small and medium sized markets and thererfore the law firms and litigaton service providers that support these markets?

I think that the answer is yes in regars to the market and no in regards to whether or not the law firms and the service providers have the ability to provide the EDD support that is required.

Obviously, no matter what size market you live in, if you are involved in an IP, sexual harrassment, Human Resources or stock fraud case of any kind, ESI and therefore EDD is more than likely going to be a part of the case. As an example, just becuase you live in Eau Claire Wisconsin does mean that you don't have a laptop and use email. So, just like any other custodian, you are going to have 90,000 pages of potentially discoverable documents or about 1.5 GB.

However, what my travels and discussions have uncovered is that there are very few if any support infrastructure in these smaller markets to support these cases and thererfore the litigants are having to go to larger markets. As an example, I talked with the owner of a litigation services company in a medium sized market this past week and asked if they had "geared up to support eDiscovery" and if so, how much collection and EDD they were doing. He indicated that they really hadn't invested any resources in eDiscovery because they were not seeing very much activity. I countered by asking if maybe he wasn't seeing much activity becuase the market in general and his client base specifically didn't view his organization as capable of supporting eDiscovery and therefore were not even talking to them about it.

I am interested in input and comments on this issue and will continue to post my experiences and finding as they occur.

Labels: Discovery, eDiscovery, ESI, FRCP, Litigation, Litigation Service Providers, Medium Markets, Small Markets

posted by Charles Skamser @ 4:51 PM 1 Comments