Legal IT Professionals published an interesting ten-minute interview with Jack Newton, President of Clio. Clio is web-based practice management system mostly targeted at small law firms. Jack has some interesting things to say about 'Software as a Service' (SaaS), the future of mobile devices and his own company/product. Worth listening to at Ten minutes with Jack Newton (Clio).

Apple will be launching the iPad in the US soon (3 April 2010). Every geek's favorite fruit-company has tried to create as much hype around the iPad as there was around the iPhone. The success of the iPhone has been astounding. The corporate world still seems quite hooked on Blackberries though the calls for iPhones among lawyers is becoming increasingly stronger. The biggest advantages of the iPhone: it genuinely easy and intuitive to use and it has 'an app for everything'.

Modern computer operating systems are (still) simply too hard to understand for most people. The same goes for most smart phones. There are thousands of people who hold on to the "I just want a phone that can call" adagium. On the other hand, there are plenty of people that actually want - or even had - a smart phone (one that can read e-mail, browse the web, play some music, take and show pictures, etc.) - but were never capable of fully understanding it. If I ask a typical Blackberry user (even those who have a Curve, Bold or Bold 2): "How often browse the web on their Blackberry?", the answer is usually: "never" (or: "I did not know that was possible"). Every iPhone user browses the web (either through one of the apps or through the standard Safari browser on a daily basis.

A category of its own

Apple has seen that their version of a smartphone has redefined the way people use their phone and has made it possible for non-technical users to perform various tasks on this single device. The iPhone has started to outgrow the 'smartphone' label - it is now used a small hand-held computer.

The logical next step for Apple is to take the success of the iPhone platform - both the iPhone Operating System with its consistent and easy-to-use interface (multitouch and well-designed hardware and software interface elements) and the concept of Apps and the App store - to another platform. The simplest approach: to increase the size of the screen (and thus the device) so that the tasks that require a little more screen real estate (like reading a book, office documents or long e-mails) will become a lot easier.

Huge success

The Apple iPad is going to be a huge success. Maybe the initial success will be smaller than that of the iPhone but in many ways the iPad is a lot more revolutionary. The iPhone is still seen as a phone -- and we had many of those already. The iPad will be the first modern (2010s) hand-held computer that is truly easy-to-use and versatile. That is why the iPad is classified as a device that defines a whole new category of its own.

In your private life the iPad will (among others) be useful for:

• Any type of information consumption (reading, video's, podcasts, the web, etc.)
• Digital photo book - holding your photo database and sharing these pictures with family and friends ('here Dad, take a look at our recent vacation pictures')
• e-Learning (language learning, cooking instructions, DIY instructions etc.)
• Games and Entertainment (it will not be long before you can play Farmville on your iPad)
• Communication (mail, chat, phone (Skype), and eventually - in a future version - video calls)

Professional usage?

But what about professional usage? How will this be a useful device to have in your law firm?

At first, the iPad will mostly be a success in the private sphere of life, just like the iPhone initially was less focused on the business world. But as our business life and private life will continue to become more intertwined - so will the usage of the iPad. Even with the initial lack of multitasking will the iPad be useful for usage in your professional life. Multitasking is a myth in its own anyway - people can not really multitask and studies have found that active multi-taskers tend to be less productive than single-taskers. The iPhone does not have multitasking (yet) and is still extremely useful (also as a business device). Instead of having to bring a stack of documents to your next meeting, you just bring your iPad and flip to documents right there. Checking and responding to e-mail will be a lot easier than on your (smart)phone.

The iPad will be success in your private life - and therefore it will be a success in your business life. You might want to keep those two fully separated. But most of us are still slaves to our Blackberries (or iPhones). So as you are lying on the beach during your two week holiday this summer, you will be enjoying being able to read the latest news or that newly purchased eBook on your iPad. You will also be grateful that you can check your (work) e-mail on the device. After all - you were expecting an important message - but were reluctant to bring your laptop to the beach (who does that, really?). This is just one example of how the business usage of the iPad (or the category of devices that it represents) will be creeping into your business life through your private life. That is aside from the direct business application that the device will undoubtedly have a short while from now.

Conclusion - get ready for a new breed of computer devices to claim a role in your personal and business life. As soon as you see your fellow lawyer (or neighbor) sporting his or her new iPad - you will be wondering whether you should get one as well. Leave it up to Apple to continue making products that have that effect.

In de markt voor Document Management oplossingen - ook wel ECM - Enterprise Content Management genoemd - blijft iManage Worksite van Autonomy (/Interwoven) in Nederland aan populariteit winnen. Worksite is één van de meest geprezen document management systemen (DMS) binnen de advocatuur/professional services. In Nederland zijn vooral twee bedrijven actief als implementatie partner van Worksite: I.R.I.S. Nederland (voorheen Morningstar Systems) en Epona. Beide bedrijven hebben de afgelopen tijd weer een aantal iManage Worksite opdrachten weten binnen te halen:

• Poelmann van den Broek advocaten schaft iManage WorkSite aan - I.R.I.S.
• Ook Trip Advocaten & Notarissen investeert in de toekomst met iManage WorkSite - I.R.I.S.
• Boekel de Nerée kiest voor Worksite en Epona - Epona
• Van Benthem & Keulen maakt de stap naar digitale dossiervorming met Autonomy iManage - Epona

Morningstar Systems is per 1 januari 2010 verder gegaan als I.R.I.S. Nederland. Het zal interessant zijn om te zien wat voor een invloed de producten van I.R.I.S. (bijvoorbeeld DocCenter en Docshare) - aangezien deze producten qua functionaliteit een grote overlap met Worksite vertonen - zullen hebben op de werkzaamheden van I.R.I.S. Nederland.

Beide partijen (Epona en I.R.I.S./Morningstar) staan goed aangeschreven.

Now that Windows 7 is widely available on newly purchased systems, migrating your law firm professionals to this new Microsoft OS, becomes an interesting option. Windows XP is still the most used operating system in most firms - as most firms decided to skip the troubled Vista. Partial migration - only upgrading some of your users, for example those whose PC's you replace - is nowadays a more accepted option. It used to be that firms preferred to have all users on the exact same installation as this usually had some cost/efficiency benefits in terms of maintenance and support. These days, a temporary migration period where in the course of for example one year you migrate your users to a new OS, should - when your support and maintenance strategies are flexible enough - not cause too many pains.

Before you decide to migrate - make sure you have thoroughly tested all your existing software for compatibility with Windows 7. It surprises me how slow most companies are with providing information on Windows 7 compatibility. Most product specifications and software requirement overviews on websites do not mention the existence of the new Windows version at all. To add to the complexity: Windows 7 comes in both a 64-bit and a 32-bit version. Which version should you install?

The short answer is that you should go with Windows 7 64-bit unless you’re running a system well into its antiquity where driver support is going to become an issue.

Check out the Windows 7 Compatibility Center to search for compatible software and hardware. Unfortunately, mostly consumer software is listed on this site. If software is written for 32-bit Windows then it will most likely install as a x86 (32-bit) program under your 64-bit Windows.

The most worrisome will be the more obscure hardware that does not have driver updates available or the occasional lawyer that is wondering why his/her old Palm PDA software does not work anymore. Within the next six months, most major hardware and software manufacturers should have made their current products all Windows 7 compatible. For older hardware (or software) there will probably be ways to circumvent the problems. I was worried for example that some the Smart Card readers that are commonly used in the Netherlands would not be supported yet. That worry seems to have been unneccessary.

In the next few weeks I will be doing more hardware and software tests with Windows 7 as I am trying to introduce the OS at a Dutch law firm (remaining on Windows XP for most users). If anything important comes up, I will post that here. Preliminary findings so far show the VPN program (OpenVPN) and the Anti-Virus software (McAfee) both need updating (both free of charge).

Before I start, "Corporate Intranet" in this article refers to the internal (corporate) website (that is usually named "the intranet" in a firm). In a more general (and correct) sense the term intranet refers to "a private computer network that uses Internet protocols, network connectivity to securely share part of an organization's information or operations with its employees". Sometimes other terms are used to describe something similar to an intranet, for example: "enterprise portal" or "intraweb".

A corporate intranet is always a 'custom' built website/application. No matter what framework, portal server or intranet engine you have running, you will always have to customize the intranet to meet your company's needs. The first step in building/shaping your intranet: identify the needs/goals. What is the purpose of the intranet? What would you like it to do? What problems are you trying to solve with it? These are all common questions that are relevant to any project, yet they are more than often left unanswered.

"Corporate intranets facilitate communication and access to information" according to an old (but still relevant) (student) source on corporate (library) intranets. Intranets should be central to a firms' information management: sharing, creating and processing information can all be done on the intranet. Because of this central role of the intranet - the application should be able to "talk" to the other application within a firm. An intranet application can therefore soon get extremely complex. That complexity usually already starts with the wishes and goals of a firm. My advise: try to keep it simple in the beginning and build on from there.

Intranet Wish-list

To find all the items on your intranet wish-list, you can ask yourself the question: "what tasks will a (typical) employee hope to accomplish with the use of the intranet?".
Possible answers:

• Look up the phone number of the Marketing Manager
• Request to take some time off
• Read the latest company news
• Register for the company's yearly Social Event
• Read the company's health insurance benefits
• Enroll in a training
• Match the name of a new colleague with a picture
• Find Knowhow on a certain subject

From that list we can already deduct a couple of intranet functions:

• Employee Directory with Pictures
• Human Resources Services (form processing)
• Company News
• (Event/Training) Registration (form processing)
• Company Information (HR, Policies)
• Knowledge sharing

And with some more thinking we could add a few more things to that:

• Questionnaires
• Document Management
• Company Calendar
• Social functions (employee profiles)
• Company Pictures (for example event pictures)
• Financial and Marketing information (for management)

We should however be careful here to not let this list grow endlessly. As I said earlier: try and start simple in the beginning. The most basic way of starting with your corporate intranet is to only offer information on it (like a regular website). Minimally your intranet should have company news and Human Resources information - those are usually the most requested information on an intranet. In a future article I will discuss organizing your intranet further and look what is sometimes called: Intranet 2.0 (after the web 2.0 trend)

See also: Adaptive Path: Organizing Your Global Corporate Intranet