Day two at ILTA 2013 – Thomson Reuters Elite, Business Law Solutions podcast and emerging technologies
Day two at the annual ILTA conference in Las Vegas was filled with some interesting sessions, and attendees from Thomson Reuters hosted two of them.
The morning kicked off with Justin Farmer, director of Product Management at Thomson Reuters Elite, speaking in a session titled “ERM + CRM Success: It Starts with the Right Technology.” During this session, Farmer talked about the business development process and noted that in order to be successful, law firms need to know the market, know the firms they are targeting, know the deal they are trying to make, and repeat. It is essential to invest in the proper tools to remain competitive and grow, said Farmer, referring to Thomson Reuters Elite’s new Business Development Premier solution that launched this week. Business Development Premier can help firms that are struggling with data collection and updating, holistic client insights, strategic focus and alignment, and providing ROI understanding.
Later, in a panel discussion between IT consultants called “What’s New and Cool in Emerging Technologies,” topics ranged from hacking, encrypted emails, security standards, wearable technology, and the ubiquity of video chatting. The panelists also weighed in on the future of Windows 8, e-discovery, and mobile devices.
Finally, Steve Obenski, general manager of Business Law Solutions at Thomson Reuters, spoke about the transactional practice workflow and productivity tools in use today. The main workflow issues for transactional attorneys and the Thomson Reuters solutions for those issues, according to Obenski, are:
1) Advising on market practice: Practical Law and Business Law Center on WestlawNext can help with lawyer pain points such as a lawyer’s own lack of ,experience and training, limited lawyer / firm “know how,” locating precedent “on point,” and mitigating risk of bad advice.
2) Researching companies and industries: Company Investigator and Business Citator can help with company information pain points such as sources and correlation and due diligence pain points such as big data, relevancy and expertise.
3) Drafting and revising documents: Practical Law Standard Documents, Drafting Assistant – Transactional, Km – Transactional and Sample Agreements can help with finding and incorporating precedent clauses from Microsoft Word, scanning documents for errors, finding terms, and dragging and dropping them into documents.
As an example of software tools that can improve productivity for transactional attorneys, a new study found that drafting software tools can cut review time in half and catch more errors than manual proofreading. A brief podcast below discusses what features are important to look for in automated drafting tools.
[audio: http://traffic.libsyn.com/legalcurrent/Drafting_Assistant_-_Transactional.mp3]Stay tuned for more from ILTA tomorrow!
