Recently, I attended the American Bar Association Techshow in Chicago.
Whether you’re a sole practitioner, technology newbie, IT professional, managing partner, first-time attendee, associate, or techno-geek, you’d likely find the show interesting and informative.
The ABA Techshow features more than 100 exhibitors showcasing various solutions targeted at legal professionals.
There were many noteworthy technologies, including five that I found most interesting:
1. Ejuris.ca: This Alberta-based company offers a records-management and client-collaboration system delivered through the cloud.
I suspect we’ll see more of these type of systems in the next few years as lawyers find new ways to engage with their clients.
2. MyCase: This is a social practice management solution. Similar to other practice management solutions, it allows lawyers to organize and manage documents, billing, and invoicing.
It differentiates itself from other product offerings because of the social nature of its client communications. This solution seems to touch upon something I have struggled with in my work: how to manage all correspondence with a client and keep a trail of everything.
3. Reed Tech Web Archiving Services: This product allows you to archive web pages for litigation protection, regulatory compliance, and discovery.
If you’ve ever had to use the wayback machine, you know how inconsistent it is in what it archives and what it doesn’t. Furthermore, in storing HTML pages you can sometimes have an incomplete save and then the question becomes how reliable the information is for evidence purposes.
4. Ambir Technology: I’m sure those who have a paperless office already have a scanner and those thinking of going paperless are considering buying one. It seems to me that as we bridge that gap between paper-based and non-paper-based practices, this type of tool might be necessary.
Ambir has a number of scanner solutions, including a portable sheet-fed scanner that is small enough to fit into a bag. How cool would it be for lawyers with paperless offices to be walking around with a scanner in their pocket?
5. Intella: This is a visual search engine that could be used for digital forensics or e-discovery. This tool is very interesting from a visual perspective and may be important when you’re dealing with many search results or many permutations of a certain chunk of information.
It will display the search results visually by layering them on top of one another. You can see the search results for individual searches as well as the intersection between them.
I’m excited to see how these five companies and others at the ABA Techshow 2012 continue to offer innovative solutions for professionals looking for practical, easy-to-use, and secure solutions for their practices.
Monica Goyal is founder of My Legal Briefcase. She’s available on Twitter at twitter.com/monica_mlb.
