Monthly Archives: June 2014

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Jason Atchley : Legal Tech : Quinn, Samsung Told to Pay $2 Million For Breach Fight

 

 
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Quinn, Samsung Told to Pay $2 Million for Breach Fight

 

Julia Love, The Recorder

June 23, 2014    | 0 Comments

U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal, Northern District of CaliforniaU.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal, Northern District of CaliforniaJason Doiy / The Recorder

SAN FRANCISCO — Samsung and its lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan must pay more than $2 million to compensate Apple and Nokia for the firestorm of litigation that followed a leak of confidential business information, a federal judge ruled Friday.
Laying to rest one of the last offshoots of Apple and Samsung’s original patent brawl, U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal ordered the South Korean company and its law firm to fork over $1,145,027 for Nokia’s attorney fees and costs as well as $893,825 for Apple’s. Grewal ruled in January that Quinn Emanuel deserved sanctions for giving Samsung details about the terms of a license struck between Apple and Nokia.
Ruling over protests from Quinn Emanuel, Grewal found that most of the attorney fees and costs requested by Apple and Nokia were reasonable and well-documented. He reasoned that Apple and Nokia were right to litigate fiercely after the leak of confidential information came to light.
“This was not a case where the parties tested a wild legal theory, or pushed the bounds of a subjective standard in seeking sanctions,” Grewal wrote. “Apple and Nokia had concrete evidence indicating wrongdoing at the time the motion was brought.”
Spokeswomen for Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. declined to comment on the order. Nokia did not respond to a request for comment.
Quinn Emanuel founder John Quinn vowed to keep fighting.
“We’re going to be appealing this order,” he said.
Grewal resisted most of Quinn Emanuel’s bids to prune Apple and Nokia’s bills. After learning that Apple had also failed to redact the terms of its license with Nokia, Quinn howled that Cupertino-based Apple did not deserve full fees if it could not protect its own information. But Grewal reiterated his view that Apple’s own missteps were irrelevant.
Grewal also disagreed with Quinn Emanuel about Apple and Nokia’s track record, finding that the companies had performed well enough to recover fees. In his order earlier this year, Grewal agreed with Apple and Nokia that Quinn Emanuel and Samsung violated the protective order and did not do enough to address the breach, though he was not convinced that the South Korean company had used the confidential information.
“Apple and Nokia succeeded on most of their claims, and the court declines to reduce its fee award to indicate anything less,” Grewal wrote.

Law firms mentioned: Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan
Filed Under: Intellectual Property

Read more: http://www.therecorder.com/id=1202660535063/Quinn-Samsung-Told-to-Pay-2-Million-for-Breach-Fight#ixzz369sEHskU

 
Posted by at 3:58 PM 
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Jason Atchley : Big Data : The Cloud Can Rain Medical Records

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The Cloud Can Rain Medical Records

The cloud is a handy place to store medical records, but it can also present a bit of a thunderstorm when it comes to patient privacy.

Marlisse Silver Sweeney, Law Technology News

June 30, 2014    | 0 Comments
Adobe Illustrator(R) 15.0

The cloud is handy when it comes to storing medical records, as it offers hospital staff almost limitless access and storage. But it can also present a bit of a thunderstorm when it comes to patient privacy. Richard Kellner, cofounder of Kabateck Brown Kellner, in a story in The Recorder, LTN’s sister publication, points out some of the areas in which the cloud may rain on your liability parade:
  • The Confidentiality of Medical Information Act: Kellner said the CMIA provides a mechanism for collecting statutory damages. Each unauthorized release of a medical record or information may be subject to a $1,000 penalty under the CMIA, and, recently, the California Court of Appeal for the Second District reaffirmed the broad scope of it, in Regents of University of California v. Superior Court. “The court ruled that the term ‘release’ under the CMIA includes negligence that has made the medical records accessible to third parties,” Kellner explained.
  • The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act: Under HIPAA, medical organizations and providers must safeguard health information and records from both unintentional and negligent disclosure, said Kellner. The act also requires them to have systems in place to prevent this from happening, even when using outside vendors. “The hospital or medical provider has a nondelegable duty under the law to make sure that the confidentiality of medical records is maintained,” he explained.
Attorney Marlisse Silver Sweeney is a freelance writer based in Vancouver. Email: MarlisseSilverSweeney@gmail.com. Twitter: @MarlisseSS; LTN: @lawtechnews.
Law firms mentioned: Kabateck Brown Kellner
Filed Under: Health Law

Read more: http://www.lawtechnologynews.com/id=1202661306381/The-Cloud-Can-Rain-Medical-Records#ixzz369rgJwEk

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Jason Atchley : Legal Tech : How Technology Can Fuel Small Law Firms

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How Technology Can Fuel Small Law Firms

Julie Pearl and J. Craig Williams outline key ways to incorporate tech into transactional and litigation shops.

Monica Bay, Law Technology News

June 27, 2014    | 0 Comments
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Attorney and technologist Julie Pearl can give the Energizer bunny a run for its money. Her resume gives you a clue to her high-octane personality: bachelor’s from Stanford, master’s from Harvard and a law degree from the University of California-Hastings College of the Law. She’s also the former California deputy attorney general.
In 1995, she founded The Pearl Law Group, a San Francisco-based immigration law firm, with Alan Nelson, the former head of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. But she’s the first to tell you that the secret to her success is technology—and a terrific staff.
Pearl and J. Craig Williams, founder of The Williams Law Corp. in Southern California, presented the opening panel on Tuesday at the Westin Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles. The presentation was the first of three in a new LegalTech track: “Exploiting the New Legal Ecosystem.” The fast-based discussion, “Can Tech Save Fuel Small Firms?” focused on how both lawyers base their practices on a foundation of technology.
In Pearl’s case, it wasn’t just buying existing technology to fuel her law practice. She also runs a separate technology company that creates apps and other technologies to help lawyers automate repetitive tasks to bring down costs for their clients and provide quality control. Within three years of opening her shop, she developedImmigrationTracker software, a management system that is widely used, even by her competitors, she notes.
From day one, Pearl told the audience, she never billed a client by the hour. Among the keys to her success: “Lots and lots of templates,” she said. And Pearl is constantly looking for new ways to trim costs. For example, the firm uses email auto-responders to keep clients informed of the status of their matters. “Streamlining the process for clients is crucial,” she said. Her philosophy is to provide transparency and self-help to her clients. “We use [Microsoft Excel] pivot tables to help clients get info as they want it,” she said. “We let the clients ‘own’ a piece of it, so they don’t have to do their own spreadsheets,” Pearl explained.
The firm also makes a habit of getting feedback from clients. “We go back to the clients to see what else we can do with data. Any improvements?” she said.
One of the most interesting points she raised was how technology can actually create more work that otherwise would be deemed too expensive to process if done manually. For example, the cost to manually review I-9 forms would far exceed the cost of fixing the inevitable typos or mistakes, so a risk-management assessment would be to not spend the money to proof them, and just react to mistakes as they become visible. But a machine can catch those typos and automatically fix them—and flag other errors—at a very low cost. Thus, the automation actually generates billable work that otherwise would have been lost and could have embarrassed the firm when mistakes were spotted by clients. “Machines can catch errors,” said Pearl.
Williams’ business is litigation, not transactions, so he has a somewhat different agenda than Pearl. But both lawyers’ firms also rely heavily on off-the-shelf technologies, in addition to using custom technology. Pearl said her team relies on Trello, Salesforce, Skype and other tools. Those technologies help her attain her goal of allowing most employees to work two or three days a week off-site, which enhances productivity, she has learned, by reducing commute time and other distractions. Plus, it can be a recruiting incentive. “We are heavily leveraging technology to enable work from home,” she said. “We will lose our best talent if we don’t allow work from home.”
Whether large or small firm, “you have to bring in the business,” noted Williams, who has worked in Big Law and in a small law firm. He started at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, then started his own firm; he later spent three years with Sedgwick before returning to his own firm in 2012. For marketing, Williams has been an active blogger, and has a long-running (nine years) twice-monthly podcast called “Lawyer to Lawyer,” with Boston solo Robert Ambrogi, on the Legal Talk Network. The podcast, he told the audience, has been a very effective marketing tool, reaching an audience far beyond his local region.
By effectively and nimbly using technology, “I think I’m more capable as a solo than at a 2,000-lawyer firm,” said Williams. Big Law, for example, can’t add a new technology on the fly like a small firm can because of the sheer logistics, he noted. “It’s hard for large firms to change tech because of size. With a 15-attorney firm: I buy it, plug it in, and we are ready to go.”

Read more: http://www.lawtechnologynews.com/id=1202660983982/How-Technology-Can-Fuel-Small-Law-Firms#ixzz369rGC6ns

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Jason Atchley : Big Data : Legal Infrastructure in the Age of Data

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Building Our Maps: Legal Infrastructure in the Age of Data

New technologies, like artificial intelligence and document automation, could dramatically alter the landscape of the legal profession.

Jason Boehmig, Tim Hwang, Paul Sawaya, Law Technology News

June 24, 2014    | 0 Comments

When Google set out to build a self-driving car, it first had to map the physical world. In short, Google had to figure out how to make a red light hanging from a pole—or a person crossing the street—into something a computer could understand and act on. To do this, a myriad of analog data points need to be gathered—by radar, GPS, and other sensors—before they can be turned into the digital signals that can be compared and analyzed. It’s this key infrastructure, akin to building a digital map of an analog world, that enables truly revolutionary technology.

In fact, this process has repeated itself countless times in the digital age. Things that were once analog—phone books, bulletin boards, even photos—have undergone a transformation into new digital forms, which are capable of being understood and manipulated by computers. Once data is in a format that a computer is able to understand, the possibilities are endless—books can be copied and distributed in nanoseconds, bulletin boards become places for global commerce, and photos can be copied and edited in ways that were never possible with a purely physical medium.

Law has not escaped this trend. Projects such as LegalXML and Akoma Ntoso have realized the value of having legal documents in machine-readable format and have set forth standards by which lawyers or administrators might markup the documents they produce. This markup is then readable by machines and can be manipulated once it is in the specified format.

The problem thus far in law has not been the lack of purported standards for data entry, but rather that many documents have not made it in to any machine-readable standard at all. The reasons for this are perhaps obvious—formatting data in a machine-readable way takes additional effort and many lawyers simply don’t have time. Additionally, many lawyers are averse to technology to begin with, and even if they do see the benefits on the horizon, it’s hard to move off the starting block where it won’t make a difference in handling the case on their desk at the moment.

We propose that this problem is simply too important to be left up to lawyers alone. Lawyers need to reach out to technologists and get their help in figuring out ways to bring machine-readable documents into every day practice. There are people doing great work in this field already, like the State Decoded and the Madison Projectfrom OpenGov. They are making great progress for legislation and statutes.

It’s time for the legal profession as a whole to catch up.

How can we do better? One way forward might be to implement tools that will make the process for gathering and formatting legal documents automatic. For instance, now that some of these projects are putting legal documents up on the web as text (and we’re even seeing governments like the City of San Francisco join this trend), it might make sense to have a tool that can take the raw text of documents and use the work that others have done as a jumping off point for adding more useful context and formatting automatically.

The Restatement project is an effort to move in that direction (disclosure: the authors all participate). It is a free, open source effort to create a standard—and more importantly, a method for getting documents into that standard—for legal text on the web. It works by taking existing text (even in Microsoft Word document form) and using a parser to extract additional information from the raw text, enabling more functionality.

One example of how Restatement works, in the transactional law context, is Series Seed documents. These have been up on GitHub for quite some time. They are a set of open source financing documents for use by startups in raising seed capital that have been widely adopted for by the startup and venture capital community. By parsing the Series Seed documents with Restatement, additional layers of functionality are unlocked. For instance, instead of merely having access to the documents, the Series Seed documents when passed through this project can be manipulated and filled out online.

In a way, what’s currently missing from the legal technology landscape is the Google StreetView cars that drive around America, sucking in data and pictures from every conceivable point and capturing the physical world in digital form. Everyone seems to agree that the potential for a sea change in the legal profession is enormous. There are a number of technologies, from artificial intelligence, like IBM Watson to new search algorithms for case law, to advanced document automation programs, that could dramatically alter the landscape of the profession itself.

 

Companies, agencies mentioned: State Decoded | Series Seed | Google Inc. | Robot, Robot & Hwang | Stanford Center on Legal Informatics FutureLaw 2014 Conference | Bonaventure, Quebec Hotel

Law firms mentioned: Fenwick & West

Read more: http://www.lawtechnologynews.com/id=1202659924617/Building-Our-Maps-Legal-Infrastructure-in-the-Age-of-Data#ixzz369qi3IEX

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Jason Atchley : eDiscovery : Stagnant Magic Quadrant for 2014 eDiscovery

 

 
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Stagnant Magic Quadrant for 2014 E-Discovery

Despite a quiet year, some analysts predict possible disruption in the near future.

David Horrigan, Law Technology News

June 24, 2014    | 0 Comments

Maksym Yemelyanov – Fotolia

The IT analyst research firm, Gartner Inc., released its annual Magic Quadrant for E-Discovery Software Thursday. The report analyzes 22 electronic data discovery software vendors. The most notable observation about this year’s Magic Quadrant is how little difference there is from the 2013 report. Does a static Magic Quadrant mean a stagnant EDD market?

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is a closely watched barometer of the EDD market. The company is one of many research organizations that track EDD trends, including my employer, 451 Research, Forrester Research, International Data Corp., and others. Gartner launched its Magic Quadrant for E-Discovery Software in 2011, and has developed Magic Quadrants for other IT markets.

The report designates the vendors into four categories: “Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries and Niche Players.” Although these was some movement within categories, this year’s analysis remains essentially the same as last year’s—with only one vendor dropping out, two vendors changing categories and no new vendors entering this year’s matrix of vendors.

LITTLE CHANGE

The only substantive changes were that Falls Church, Va.-based Driven Inc., dropped out of the Magic Quadrant; while Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC Corp., the seller of Kazeon software, fell from the Visionaries quadrant to the Niche Players quadrant and Tokyo-based UBIC Inc. traded places with EMC, jumping from Niche Player to Visionary.

The Magic Quadrant’s four categories are based on what Gartner calls a vendor’s ability to execute and its completeness of vision.

THE RANKINGS
• Leaders: AccessData Group Inc., Exterro Inc., FTI Consulting Inc.’s FTI Technology division, Guidance Software Inc., Hewlett-Packard Corp.’s  HP Autonomy, kCura Corp., Kroll Ontrack Inc., Recommind Inc. and Symantec Corp.
• Challengers: Epiq Systems Inc., KPMG, Nuix Pty Ltd., and Xerox Corp.
• Visionaries: Catalyst Repository Systems, IBM Corp., UBIC Inc., and ZyLAB.
• Niche Players: CommVault Systems Inc., EMC Corp., Integreon, LexisNexis, and Stroz Friedberg.

For inclusion in the Magic Quadrant, vendors must license EDD software, software appliances or software-as-a-service for which they own the intellectual property, have at least $20M in annual revenue, cover at least two functions of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model and meet other requirements.

WHAT IT MEANS

At first glance, a stagnant Magic Quadrant might make one think the EDD market itself was stagnant, but many industry observers don’t see it that way.

“A lack of movement in the Magic Quadrant doesn’t necessarily indicate a downturn in the e-discovery market,” said Barry Murphy, senior vice president at Seattle-based X1 and a former EDD industry analyst at both Forrester and the eDJ Group. “We’ve had some significant new technologies in the market in recent years, and the last 18 months may represent a period where corporate customers are sticking with their current technology and evaluating their options before changing to a new technology—and a new vendor.”

Murphy predicts there may be greater movement among EDD providers in the near future. “Given the cyclical nature of any industry, including the tech sector, you’re always going to have periods where there’s not much change among providers, but I think we will see change in coming years,” Murphy said, adding that, although the EDD industry is entering another period of new EDD technologies, with the legal market’s conservative approach to embracing new technology, change comes more slowly in legal than in other business verticals.

Bobby Balachandran, president and CEO of Beaverton. Ore.-based Exterro (a vendor named a Leader in the Magic Quadrant), agrees a lack of movement in the report doesn’t equal a dormant market. “There has been a considerable consolidation in the e-discovery market, but I expect to see a more movement,” he said.

Although some have predicted the move to corporate information governance will supplant the e-discovery market, Balachandran disagrees. “The demand for e-discovery is growing. Information governance is something that’s in support of e-discovery, not in lieu of e-discovery,” he said.

Some EDD experts have gone a step further, noting the limitations of the Magic Quadrant.

Chris Dale of the U.K.-based eDisclosure Information Project, is skeptical. “I am no great enthusiast for lists, which purport to rank e-discovery software providers, feeling that even Gartner’s sophisticated model does not do justice to the range of factors which contribute—or which ought to contribute—to the decision-making,” said said Dale, a former London-based law firm litigation partner, who is now a consultant to many of the companies in the Magic Quadrant.

Rob Robinson, managing partner of the Austin, Tex.-based e-discovery consulting firm, Complex Discovery and a former marketing executive at e-discovery companies that have appeared in the Magic Quadrant report, echoes Dale’s sentiments. “The Magic Quadrant is a valuable, well-researched tool, but it doesn’t assess many of the important parts of the e-discovery market,” he said. “The e-discovery market is an industry comprised of companies that may develop, integrate or aggregate both software and services. As the Magic Quadrant is limited to software developers, albeit some with services as well, there are many service providers making a real impact in e-discovery that are outside the software scope of the Magic Quadrant.”
Robinson adds the Magic Quadrant may also miss the disruptive innovators in the EDD market. “As good as the Magic Quadrant is, it doesn’t truly highlight new and emerging information governance platforms that move beyond the textual analytics limitations of many of today’s e-discovery and information governance platforms.”

Dale says there’s at least one important takeaway. “The fact that the rankings have hardly altered this year does at least confirm one thing: the e-discovery world is holding its breath as predictions of impending cataclysm for some—and a leaping ahead for others—seem to have been deferred for another year.”

David Horrigan is analyst and counsel at 451 Research and a former reporter for LTN and The National Law Journal.
 

 

Read more: http://www.lawtechnologynews.com/id=1202660391208/Stagnant-Magic-Quadrant-for-2014-EDiscovery#ixzz363tbTICt

 
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Jason Atchley : Legal Tech West : eDiscovery and Cybersecurity

 

 
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LegalTech Tackles E-Discovery and Cybersecurity

Panels address risk management, information governance, regulatory hurdles, the cloud, e-discovery spending.

Mark Gerlach, Law Technology News

June 16, 2014    | 0 Comments

Edward SnowdenEdward Snowden

LegalTech West Coast kicks off June 24 at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, promising two days chock-full of informative panels. The second day offers 11 panels within four tracks: information governance; mobility and security; cost control and efficiency; and investment/fund management compliance. 
The day begins with what should be a provocative keynote starting at 9 a.m. “Navigating Today’s Cyber Environment: How Secure Is Our Data?” panelists will discuss client confidentiality in light of National Security Agency surveillance of U.S. law firms revealed by Edward Snowden, as well as the technology available to protect firm and corporate data from malicious hackers. The program was inspired by Law Technology News’ April cover story by Editor-in-Chief Monica Bay, who will moderate the discussion. Panelists include Judy Selby, a partner at Baker & Hostetler; Ray Aghaian, a partner at McKenna Long & Aldridge; John Tomaszewski, a senior counsel at Seyfarth Shaw; Jason Ruger, the chief security officer at Motorola Mobility; and David Cunningham, the CIO at Winston & Strawn.
Among the panel offerings: 
Track 1: Information Governance: “Information Governance: More Than Defensible Disposition,” 10:30 a.m.-11:45 a.m. The panel addresses how obsolete, redundant or transitory information is no longer needed for operational, legal/regulatory or historical purposes. John Isaza, a partner at Rimon, flies solo. Sponsored by ARMA International.
Track 2: Mobility and Security: “Moving Your Practice to the Cloud to Enhance Efficiency and Security,” 1 p.m.-2:15 p.m. The panel is designed for smaller firms transitioning to the cloud. Edwin Larkin, a partner at Edwards Wildman Palmer, also is a soloist. Sponsored by Dell Software, a division of Dell Inc., and eSentire Inc. 
Track 3: Cost Control and Efficiency: “Reducing Discovery Expenses: How to Accelerate the Discovery Process and Save Money,” 1 p.m.-2:15 p.m. This panel will discuss ways to decrease the cost of e-discovery. David Cohen, a partner at Reed Smith, will moderate the panel, which includes Christopher Acosta, the director of practice management at Nossaman; Claire Hass, the discovery counsel at Google; and Martyn Wiltshire, the director of strategic IT initiatives at SanDisk. Sponsored by SanDisk Corp., Onit and Lenovo Group. 
Track 4: Investment/Fund Management Compliance: “Utilizing Technology to Navigate the Global Legal and Regulatory Environment,” 10:30 a.m.-11:45 a.m. The panel’s focus is on complying with regulatory reporting requirements and applying technology to a compliance management program. Speakers: Keith Kirk, the deputy general counsel and chief compliance officer at DoubleLine Capital, and Jay Gould, a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop. Sponsored by the California Hedge Association. 
The day also includes “emerging technology” offerings that are open to all attendees. 
See Day 1 preview here.
Mark Gerlach is a staff reporter for Law Technology News.

 

Read more: http://www.lawtechnologynews.com/id=1202659569787/LegalTech-Tackles-EDiscovery-and-Cybersecurity#ixzz35Z4IG5fR

 
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Jason Atchley : Legal Tech West : Exhibit Guide Part 2

 

 
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Exhibit Guide to LegalTech West Coast Part 2

A preview of some of the many vendor offerings in the exhibit hall at LegalTech West Coast.

Sean Doherty, Law Technology News

June 23, 2014    | 0 Comments

Photo: Adrian104 via Wikimedia Commons.

LegalTech West Coast 2014, held Tuesday and Wednesday at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites in Los Angeles, is the place to see demonstrations of the latest legal technology products and upgrades and get practical legal technology to improve and grow your law practice. The event includes panels of speakers and continuing education opportunities (described here and here) and a full two days of exhibits from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Here’s Part 2 of our preview of some of the many vendor offerings in the exhibit hall. See here for Part 1.
Lenovo (booth 111) should be on your short list to visit and watch for 2014. If you only think about ThinkPads when you see the Lenovo brand, think again. Lenovo is a Global 500 company, is the world’s largest PC vendor and the fourth largest smartphone company. With its January acquisition of Motorola Mobility from Google Inc., Lenovo is poised to be the legal industry’s next best friend after Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., and our dogs.
This month Lenovo introduced the ThinkServer RS140, an affordable entry-level single-processor, rack-mounted (1U) server for the small to midsize law firm and remote offices of large firms. Before that, the PC maker introduced an all-in-one A540 Desktop running Windows 8.1 and sporting a 10-finger touch-control display, an Intel Core i7 processor, JBL speakers with Dolby Home Theatre, optional support for Near Field Communications to transfer files to and from other NFC devices, and an optional TV Tuner to watch TV programming on the desktop. With the A540, Lenovo introduced a B series of laptops for business starting at $399. The B-50 laptop has afull, high-definition 15-inch display with a Windows 7 operating system that runs Intel Core i7 or A8 AMD processors, NVIDIA GeForce 820M or AMD Radeon R5 M230 graphics, a DVD burner/player, and up to 1 terabyte hard disk storage with optional solid state drive for hybrid storage or disk caching. And don’t forget to check outLenovo’s tablet computers, including the ThinkPad 8, that support local versions of Microsoft Office. (www.lenovo.com)
LexisNexis will be hard to miss at the show, covering booths 404 to 409. The Legal and Professional team for law firms, corporations and government agencies will be on hand with show the new release of Early Data Analyzer, software that uses data analytics such as near-duplicate analysis and email threading to reduce the number of documents in e-discovery and lower document review costs.  Near-duplicate analysis is already a feature in Concordance document review software and Law Prediscovery, imaging and electronic data processing software. LexisNexis will also showcase Firm Manager, which can now synchronize with your Google calendar, identify time not billed, and help you track trust accounts. (www.lexisnexis.com/)
SanDisk Corp., a flash storage provider for data centers, desktop computers, mobile devices and consumer electronics, will be showing off its memory technology in booth 213. If you have a tablet computer, smartphone, camera or other mobile device, SanDisk can provide the memory for it. The storage company recently unveileda four-terabyte, serial-attached SCSI (small computer systems interface) solid-state drive (SSD) and the new X300 self-encrypting solid state drive that leverages TCG  Opal 2.0 and Microsoft support for hardware-based encryption. If you store client data on disk, don’t think about encrypting it—let the disk do it for you. (www.sandisk.com)
Tabs 3 (booth 311), maker of law firm billing, financial and practice management software, now supports individual or batch billing in PDF format that allows custom hourly rates and billing options such as LEDES (Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard). At LegalTech New York, the company released Tabs3 and PracticeMaster release version 17. New features include:
Click image to enlarge.
Click image to enlarge.
  • Smart Tabs facilitate program navigation.
  • Quick Views combine column layout with filters and sort functions.
  • Task-based billing codes specified by LEDES.
  • Bulk import groups of documents to PracticeMaster.
  • Split-billing between two attorneys for work performed.
Xerox Litigation Services (booth 309), the e-discovery division of Xerox Corp., will be on hand to demonstrate their Viewpoint e-discovery software by Lateral Data, a Xerox company. Recently, XLS bundled the pricing for Viewpoint’s on-premise software and cloud-based software as a custom or fully managed service. XLS also makes OmniX, cloud-based document review and analysis software, and CategoriX, technology-assisted review software that learns from attorneys and applies machine learning algorithms to rank documents on how likely they are to be relevant to a matter. (www.xerox.com)
Attorney Sean Doherty is LTN’s technology editor.

 

Read more: http://www.lawtechnologynews.com/id=1202660368636/Exhibit-Guide-to-LegalTech-West-Coast-Part-2#ixzz35Un0PMw9

 
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Jason Atchley : eDiscovery : Lawyers Who Understand Data Visualization Avoid Sanctions

 

 
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Lawyers Who Understand Data Visualization Avoid E-Discovery Sanctions

Attorneys who don’t need help finding key documents during e-discovery reduce spoliation risks.

Patricia Kutza, Law Technology News

June 16, 2014    | 0 Comments

Maksym Yemelyanov – Fotolia

“Winning cases is about winning the race to the facts. In high-stakes cases, it gets late early,” said Brendan Kenny, a Minneapolis-based trial lawyer at Blackwell Burke, during the recent 2014 NorCal eDiscovery and Information Governance Retreat. Mastering data visualization tools gives litigators an advantage during electronic data discovery, helping them quickly find key documents, he told the Sausalito, Calif., audience.

“Many legal hold tools are great at tracking who has received or responded to legal hold notices.” Kenny said.  But it isn’t just a matter of simply pushing a button and letting the machine do all the work, he continued. At a minimum, outside counsel must track what has been collected in order to make a gaps analysis, he argued. Many review platforms have data visualization capabilities that help a lawyer identify additional custodians or other sources of data that need to be reviewed.

But it’s key to actually understand the process, Kenny insisted. Lawyers who face spoliation sanctions as their case develops often do not have, or are not able to use, tools that help them to track what happened with their client’s collection and preservation of documents. They represent to their client, the court and opposing counsel how they thoughttheir client’s systems worked, and what they thought has been done to preserve, collect and review documents. “But relying on second and thirdhand knowledge from people who often don’t understand the discovery process (such as IT) leads to big mistakes and big sanctions,” Kenny stressed.

Technology can also help outside counsel’s persuasive efforts at both Rule 26(f) conferences and Rule 16 hearings, he said. The data visualization features of e-discovery review tools enable lawyers to show, rather than just tell, opposing counsel and the court how reasonable, diligent and comprehensive their client’s discovery efforts have been.

Patricia Kutza is a business and technology journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Email: pkutza@pacbell.net.

Read more: http://www.lawtechnologynews.com/id=1202659516498/Lawyers-Who-Understand-Data-Visualization-Avoid-EDiscovery-Sanctions#ixzz35OQadRe7

 
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Jason Atchley : Big Data : Regulation, Part 2: Legal and Compliance  

 

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Big Data and Regulation, Part 2: Legal and Compliance

 

John H. Walsh, Corporate Counsel

June 20, 2014    | 0 Comments

Last month in this column, we talked about the increasing importance of big data analytics in regulation, with a particular focus on the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission’s examination program. We discussed the National Examination Analytical Tool (NEAT), which the SEC has already deployed to review firms’ trading blotters, and other tools it has in development, such as Machine Analyzed Risk Scoring (MARS), which will be used to apply quantitative analytics to examination targeting. We concluded by noting that as a practical matter, when SEC examiners arrive at a firm armed with their new tools, they will not be impressed with less sophisticated compliance programs. Corporate counsel and compliance professionals should take a new look at their own processes in light of these regulatory developments.
In an interview with the author of this column, Andrew (Drew) Bowden, director of the SEC’s examination program, spoke about his expectations for compliance in this area. As a practical matter, he said, based on his own past experience in private compliance, firms do not want to learn something for the first time during an SEC examination. If the SEC is going to use big data tools during examinations, than firms should make sure they have a pretty good idea of what those tools will show before examiners arrive at the door. To do that, firms need to deploy similar tools to those in the regulators’ hands. In fact, Bowden said, he believes an important part of his mission is to encourage the private sector to move forward in this area. He hopes to promote compliance by “raising the bar” in regards to big data analytics.
The encouragement has begun. SEC examination requests regarding the trading blotter have grown dramatically in scale and sophistication. Firms report receiving inquiries requesting more than two-dozen fields of data about each trade. While the SEC’s analytics reside in the background, one can only wonder what they will be able to do with that much information. Moreover, as firms scramble to collect the requested information, they are—presumably—being introduced to the new role of big data in regulation.
What should legal and compliance professionals do to respond?
  • First, they should make sure they collect data sets that are appropriate to their business, and the trading blotter is a good place to start. For some firms this may involve collecting new data. This could be an operational challenge—or at a minimum, an unexpected expense. However, unlike certain past regulatory initiatives—the angry furor surrounding regulators’ first venture into requesting and reading emails comes to mind—the response to this initiative has been relatively matter-of-fact. Legal and compliance professionals seem to recognize the benefits of the new tools. Instead of fighting the initiative, they want in on the action.
  • Second, they need to learn how to use the new tools. Providers are already stepping forward to address this need. For example, Ascendant Compliance Management recently hosted a compliance conference dedicated to data, risk analytics and surveillance. When asked why, ACM partner and general counsel Keith Marks responded that the regulators are plainly moving in this direction and compliance must as well. Legal and compliance practitioners, he says, should listen to what the SEC expects as an appropriate standard of data review and make sure they are “right there” with the regulator.
  • Third, they should be mindful that big data tools are only that: tools. Marilyn Miles, head of consulting for National Regulatory Services, hopes regulators will remember that a positive signal in the data does not necessarily equal a violation. She also cautions that the power of the big data tools may not be needed in every business model, and that different firms may pursue different data strategies. Nonetheless, she agrees that the attention to data has been positive. Legal and compliance professionals, she suggests, are already spending more time reviewing the data created and used within their firms. At a minimum, she suggests, they should understand what their firms already have.
  • Fourth and finally, collecting and crunching data is not enough. Marks states that the key function is to ask: why do results happen? When first entering a big data environment, many firms experience a large number of false positives. It can seem a headache to track them down and resolve them. But in reality, Marks says, the process does more than simply reduce the incidence of false positives. More importantly, it can be a valuable exercise to winnow through the data and learn where a firm’s patterns differ from the norm. He suggests that this type of exploratory work gives legal and compliance professionals new perspectives on their own firms and helps get them ready for regulatory inquiries.
In short, as the SEC sets out to “raise the bar” in regards to big data, it appears the regulated community is listening. There remains, however, an area where the SEC’s leadership could play an even more helpful role. While the data sets of interest to the SEC quickly enter the public realm, the analytics do not. Greater disclosure of the analytical components of the new tools would be very helpful. Indeed, in a best-case scenario, regulator and regulated community alike will drive the new tools forward with an open conversation. Legal and compliance professionals want to understand the signals produced by their data so they can prevent problems, just as the SEC wants to understand the signals so it can address problems. This is an area in which mutual transparency could be very productive. The SEC can start the conversation by making its analytics public.
From an historical perspective, the present moment bears a striking resemblance to the early onset of electronic tools—or data-processing tools, as they were first known. Before data processing, compliance was conducted with paper and pencil. The author of this column once had the opportunity to review a 1960s-era compliance tracking system. It consisted of a large index card with a handful of prelabeled lines and boxes. Compliance professionals using the system manually wrote information onto the card, where it resided for manual extraction and use. The lines were few and the boxes relatively tiny. After the development of electronic tools like automatic exception reporting, the index cards were nothing more than an historical curiosity. Today, when we look at the compliance power of big data tools, we get much the same feeling that we did when comparing an index card to a one- or two-variable exception report. The industry standard is moving again. Legal and compliance professionals must strive to keep up.
John. H. Walsh is a partner at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan. He previously served for 23 years at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where he was instrumental in creating the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations. (This article is for informational purposes and is not intended to constitute legal advice. The views expressed by the author are the author’s alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan or its clients.)

 
Law firms mentioned: Sutherland Asbill & Brennan

Read more: http://www.corpcounsel.com/id=1202660050197/Big-Data-and-Regulation-Part-2-Legal-and-Compliance#ixzz35BoUOD90

 
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Jason Atchley : BYOD : Strategies That Balance Company Goals

 

 
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Learn BYOD Strategies That Balance Company Goals

The tricky key is balancing IT and legal department agendas.

Patricia Kutza, Law Technology News

June 18, 2014    | 0 Comments

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A perfect storm is brewing in the workplace, but this time around it’s not about salaries or benefits. The trend for companies to implement Bring Your Own Devices processes is setting up a convergence of challenges—placing legal staff in the delicate position of balancing the requirements of an IT department’s mandate to implement a BYOD plan with the legal department’s priorities to protect company data.  
Building an effective policy that both supports IT objectives and mitigates BYOD security risks is tricky. As the following YouTube videos show, the conversation about these challenges is increasing complex, as companies navigate what is essentially a new frontier.  Law Technology News chose video selections that offer the broadest glimpse of what drives executive management to adopt BYOD policies; best practices that characterize successful implementations; and security options that can help everybody get a better night’s sleep.
1. Understand the drivers that motivate executive management and information technology teams.
Producer: HP Enterprise Business, 01/30/2014.
Viewing time: 29 minutes.
Style: Moderated by Hewlett-Packard Co.’s Software Evangelist Paul Muller, this panel-style format features Tim Crawford (CIO strategic advisor at AVOA), Brian Katz (director and head of Mobility Engineering at Sanofi) and Genefa Murphy (HP senior director, Go-to-Market, Enterprise Mobility).
Takeaway: If, as Katz said, “It’s very rare that you save money” launching a BYOD program, just where does a company reap the savings so often advertised as one of the main reasons for transitioning to BYOD from company-owned devices?  Watch this video to hear the rationale as well as to understand how the power of mobility drives much of the motivation to adopt BYOD standards.
2. Review what BYOD processes contribute to successful outcomes.
Producer:  TriadTechPartners, 06/04/2013.
Viewing time:  5 minutes.
Style: No-frills presentation by MobileIron’s Computer & Network Security Manager Ann Marie Cullen.
Takeaway: This is the 30,000 feet view of BYOD, summarizing the best practices that MobileIron fleshes out in its online BYOD toolkit (free download). The white paper dates back to 2011, but its principle concept remains relevant: Namely to balance security, compliance, legal liability and cost concerns with a positive user experience.
3. Hear about security options from an IT viewpoint.
Producer:  Mobile Enterprise 360, 04/11/2013.
Viewing time: 8 minutes.
Style: This is a one-on-one interview with Bill Laberis, Mobile Enterprise 360’s content director, and Kurt Roemer, Citrix’s chief strategy strategist.
Takeaway: Roemer echoes the approach mentioned by Genefa Murphy in the previous video—that employee BYOD access to company resources should be risk-appropriate, i.e., relevant to the device, type of work and the location of the user. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition and today’s virtualization technologies provide the granular functions needed to carve out application access based on these three considerations.
Patricia Kutza is a business and technology journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Email: pkutza@pacbell.net. 
 

 

Read more: http://www.lawtechnologynews.com/id=1202659912885/Learn-BYOD-Strategies-That-Balance-Company-Goals#ixzz356l1jvGw

 
 
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