The buzz at LegalTech New York
This post was written by Patrick Hurley, vice president of Global Implementation at Thomson Reuters
I’ve been coming to LegalTech New York (LTNY) for more years than I care to count, and every year there is some overriding theme that permeates the exhibition floor conversations. Often it’s the Super Bowl…well, unless you’re a Seahawks fan or a Bob Dylan purist, no one has much to say about that in 2014. The plethora of e-Discovery vendors has been a popular topic the last several years, and continues to be. This year, however, I don’t think anyone will have had more than a two-minute conversation that doesn’t include the weather. It is messy, cold, airplane-cancelling, best-laid-plan-altering, and frankly, just darn ugly!
But still, despite the challenges getting here and even crossing 6th Avenue through the slush and ice to get into the Hilton, the show is hopping with legal technologists from around the world. And what we’re hearing the most buzz about at the Thomson Reuters Elite booth is around our client and matter management solutions.
Our industry-leading Prolaw solution for practice and financial management is hot hot hot! It combines comprehensive case and matter management with time and billing, accounting, and financial reporting capabilities into a single, integrated solution. In particular, LTNY attendees are loving Prolaw Mobile. Perfect for doing things on the road, like attending industry trade shows, you can enter time, save email and attachments into case management, view matter and contact information, and more, all from your iPad®.
Our client and matter management solutions for larger firms include MatterSphere and Engage, and are designed to address the specific challenges most firms are facing today in our new economic reality – efficiency, predictability, and control. With effective matter management, firms can ensure, through the Microsoft Office interface that is easy to use and that lawyers are familiar with, that best practices are followed. This provides the firm the ability to offer competitive pricing at better margins, all with fully customizable workflows to meet the unique needs of each practice area. The legal project management features enable firms to respond to alternative fee arrangement demands from their clients and establish, track, and report against a matter budget, so there are no surprises for the firm or their clients. It makes it easy to monitor and manage resources during all stages of the matter, with ongoing profitability analysis to optimize the use of firm resources through to matter completion.
Yes…I don’t think anyone will soon forget the winter of 2014, and I’m quite sure that 2014 will be the year that effective Matter Management is embraced and taken to a new level in firms across the globe, with products and services that make up the Thomson Reuters Elite Enterprise Business Management Solution.
