Third Annual Lawtech Summit and Awards

The team at Chilli Marketing in Sydney have announced their latest event for the APAC region which is the third annual Lawtech Summit and Awards - to be held this year in Byron Bay during the 25th and 26th September. We recommend this event to all our clients, and (based on our experiences at the past two annual events) give it (and the Chilli team) a massive stamp of approval for their speakers and content.

Each year they manage to snare great international speakers and chairs, and the peer-to-peer networking is one of a kind in the APAC market place.

Last year they had both Tom Baldwin (now global Chief Knowledge Office at ReedSmith) and Sally Gonzalez (Baker Robbins & Company alumni) come in from the US to address delegates, with Richard Susskinds also appearing via live video hook-up.

From what we hear, this year's independent speakers from the domestic and international regions are just as impressive as last year's. The conference has gained a wide following, with it being raised in discussions at the Janders Dean event in London last month by some of the LegalWeek Lisbon delegates. Chilli must be doing something right - our advice is register and nominate for the awards. One of the JD team will see you there!

LexisNexis & LinkedIn

An interesting news item surfaced today here discussing the fact that LexisNexis have taken a step into the brave new social networking world, and shown that they can move away (however briefly) from their obsession with product acquisition by announcing a tie up with LinkedIn.

Interesting reading from LexisNexis on the background to this arrangement can be found here.

Friends at theorangerag.com also picked this up tonight, and charles gives a good round up here.

Take a Break!

A five second break for you today early in the week to warn you that here comes the vendor press releases....so, before they arrive on your desks...

As it looks like we're all in for a raft of these, here is a prediction re what they will include. A large Australian practice management system win for Aderant (over 1,000 users), to which the response from Elite will be another New Zealand win to add to their recent win there in Hesketh Henry (75 users). Expect quite a number from Elite as three to four firms in Australia eventually go live, and again in November as Allen & Overy go live in London. Also expect more "people changes"...

Also expect news (formally or informally via "sales team drinks talking") from Alphawest and Recommind in the coming weeks about local APAC wins etc. The big piece to wait on is what will happen re one of the world's largest firms and SAP.

So now that you know the news (well, kind of) before it happens, you can look forward to the more important stuff from Janders Dean - including our upcoming Cocktail Leadership celebration event in Sydney to mark our birthday and say thank you to our clients and friends. Now that is something which will be worth reading! Recycle the rest....

Enough gossip people....tut tut...now back to work please!

Friday's Cocktail Leadership

Well hello strangers...you're looking wonderful today for a Friday...yep, it is Friday finally, and you're the best thing on the bus. We had another busy week this week...but we won't complain, as none of you care.

For this week's cocktail leadership, we're not going to bore you with work - who worries about all that at this stage of the week anyway? Why don't we share with you some of our favourite things (just like Julie Andrews did so many years before us)...unlike her we don't like kittens (unless they're tied up with brown paper packages and string..or if they're Tinks).

But we do like the fact that downstairs at The Regent on Liverpool Street there is PacMan....and hours of fun for all cheeky summer drinkers (every hour on the hour). We don't like Freddy Eynsford-Hill but we do love slippers.

We also like The Royal Berkshire Shooting School (bang bang), Liz and Phil, and pig heads. We like having the Tube map on our iPod (http://www.isubwaymaps.com/). We like laughing at the lone guy who lined up for 11 hours to be the first person in Australia to own an iPhone (OK, so a few people joined the queue after him, but we think they were just stray British tourist who saw the line and joined it because that is what they do). We like horse number 4 in the 3rd (you pick the location). We also like laughing at people who don't deserve cameras and/or Internet access - where do these people come from?

Oh...and we just love the difference between 105 and 107.

Finally today we'll let you in on three facts (ones that you'll forget by tomorrow - regardless of it you go drinking this evening or not) about recently discovered new species. Yep, new species are being found every day all over the place...

• Xerocomus silwoodensis is a new species of mushroom that was discovered on Silwood Campus of Imperial College, London. This guy didn't have to go far for his field work did he?!
• Malo kingi got its name from an American tourist, Robert King, who was stung to death off Queeensland, Australia, by the second known species of the box jellyfish genus Malo. High price to pay.
• Tecticornia bibenda is called the "Michelin Man" plant and is one of many new species noted during environmental impact studies for mining companies. Mining companies are good for the environment...obviously.

Have great weekends people - remember that Balsamic is for grown ups, and butter is for toast. We'll see you all bright and sparky again on Monday morning.

Cheese (and wine).

The Inmates Are Out Again

One of the developers over at Knowledge Thoughts has a recent blog posting on "getting lawyers to use wikis"...it even has a graph describing "adoption and trust" which not a single partner on your steering committees will understand.

Now we're not going to get involved in the value proposition argument of Web2.0 technologies in law firms, successes, failures, different approaches, etc - and indeed the posting is an interesting little read between coffees.

However we are a little concerned and surprised that there remains an element of "finding a problem to match the solution" within the technical development communities. One can best liken it to Coyote from the Roadrunner series running around in mad circles with a cartoon bomb (with the word "WIKI" on it rather than "ACME") trying to find somewhere to put it before it goes out...

Our advice?

There are probably many many many more areas within your Knowledge Management function which require and deserve your attention. They are probably higher priority and provide greater value to your fee earners....shock, horror...some may actually not even involve technologies...

Our advice on identifying these areas?

Don't have developers identify them for you....oh, and read Alan Cooper's text again.

Independence = Integrity

News is coming through from Sydney that a local APAC "integration/third party provider/reseller" is about to announce their partnership with the latest law firm software package on the market. Not really worth a posting here, however there is already some annoyance bubbling from the market in relation to this news - terms such as "jumping horses midstream", "selling your grandmother", and "so how long will they keep this one for" are circulating.

Although the sales teams and marketing engines will be going into overtime with press releases, breakfast briefings, client case studies from firms that few have heard of, our advice to firms within the top tier of the APAC region remains as it has been for many years - go direct to the international senior sales team/corporate management of the software company themselves, and subsequently negotiate and make your purchase via them, and without a reseller...

You're brands are big enough to take this approach, the size of the firm's investment in the application certainly warrants it, the risks of not doing so are many (as are the potential benefits which are opened up)...and typically, the reseller adds little value with the exception of being able to provide a local salesman to take you to lunch before the deal, drinks when you sign the deal, and vanish after the implementation (possibly to look for the next product out there that will replace the one you've just bought).

Summer in London

As many have noted, we've been quiet on the site since just before the successful Knowledge Management in Law Firms conference event in Sydney during May. The event was a great success thanks to the speakers, the content, and the attendees (and the tarts). Many thanks to all those involved, and to all those who have provided such wonderful feedback to us over the past few weeks.

Our silence has been down to our increasingly expanding international client base and our travel schedule meaning that we get no sleep, but fear not, we have been slapped for being away from the blog and will continue to post regularly from now on in....so there...

In fact, we're jumping on a flight from London tonight, so perhaps that will allow us a chance to get some more interesting things together for you all (only serious important stuff remember!).

See you Friday for the less serious stuff.


Be good to your gran - without them we would have no good recipes for jam left.