Bar gears up tech plans to assist membership
Bar President Greg Coleman is kicking into high gear his program to help Bar members with technology.
He gave an overview during the Member Benefits Committee and the Special Committee on Technology/Office Tools & Resources meetings at the Bar’s Fall Meeting October 16 and 17 in Tampa.
“I want to have in place a toolbox of technology solutions for our members from young to old, from solo practitioners to small and midsize firms,” he said at the Member Benefits Committee meeting, adding that most large firms have their own information technology staffs.
He said the Member Benefits Committee will help by reviewing a range of tech programs and services that can be added to the Member Benefits Program. Coleman said he hopes the committee can review up to 10 or so potential offerings in time for them to be included in a scheduled revamping of the Bar’s website set for early next year that will put all technology information and resources in one place.
The special committee is working to organize and set up the new tech website segment.
Both committees worked on Coleman’s goals. The Member Benefits Committee set a special meeting for November 20 to hear in-person presentations from tech companies. Coleman said he hopes to have tech goods and services ready for the Board of Governors to review at its December 12 meeting, which will allow those to be included in the rollout of the revamped website.
Programs will include document management, forms, security, billing, practice management, and secure cloud computing and storage.
And the special committee worked on organizing that part of the website, including grafting in parts of the Bar’s Law Office Management Assistance Service, which the website will substantially replace.
That will have practice management information and videos as well as “a whole portion on technology applications and products. It’s not necessarily making recommendations, in terms of which product to buy. But if you’re a solo practitioner coming out of law school opening an office, this is hardware we’re recommending, without a brand, and this is the type of software we recommend, practice-specific software, account software, ancillary devices, and things of that nature,” Coleman said.
He also hopes that a “low-cost IT consulting” service can be offered through the website, which he said would be an efficient alternative for small firms when they have IT problems. For many of those firms now, Coleman said, “the best they can do is unplug their computer and run down the street to the Geek Squad.”
He also plans to have a tech show/seminar at the Bar’s June Annual Convention, similar to the ABA’s annual tech show.
Coleman gave some examples of how technology can help lawyers, but also how it can be a challenge. He said scheduling a deposition the normal way, with back-and-forth phone calls between the involved law firms, can take several days to work out. But using a resource like doodle.com, a scheduling program, it can be done in minutes.
E-filing and the transition to electronic courts presents other challenges. For example, Coleman said if five lawyers in his 10-lawyer firm are working on a case, when a document is electronically filed by another party, each of the five lawyers gets an electronic copy. If they each save that separately, that requires five times as much computer memory, which can get expensive.
The Special Committee on Technology spent most of its meeting working on the upcoming revamped technical assistance part of the website. That includes setting the title for the new area as the Practice Resource Institute/Promoting Excellence in the Profession.
The five main areas in the new tech website area are Office Technology, Accounting/ Finance, Marketing, Management, and New Practice.
Aside from deciding what would go in the four main areas of the site, committee members discussed with Bar Program Director Terry Hill and technology consultant Adriana Linares what else would be on the site and plans for the tech show at the convention.
Linares said the site tentatively will include live chats, instruction videos on various topics, white papers prepared by outside experts on various tech issues, podcasts, and other resources. She said plans also call for a “self-help portal” that will allow attorneys to pose questions, and the portal will marshal resources available through the site and from outside sources if necessary.
“We’re hoping to be the technology resource center,” she said.
Hill said the Bar may do a series of one- to-two-minute videos on the most frequently asked tech questions, as well as brief how-to instructional videos. He said Coleman is hoping to show the Board of Governors a prototype of the technical website at its December meeting and perhaps a “soft launch” at the General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Section’s “Wild, Wild Tech: Getting Down and Dirty with Technology” seminar during January’s Winter Meeting. The site should be open for general use during the first quarter of 2015, he said, but noted it will always be changing.
“It’s never going to be finished; it’s always going to be tweaked and revamped. It’s always going to be a work in progress, because it has to be,” Hill said.
For now the plans are to “get everything we need in there and have it functioning and vibrant enough to where our members are impressed,” he added. Hill also said the Bar plans on hiring a law practice advisor/technology director to oversee the law practice and technology section of the website and to help Bar members with those issues.
As for the Annual Convention tech show, Linares said the Bar is working to bring Bar members information about proven technology and how they can use it in their practices.
“I think it’s one of the most critical things we are doing for our members,” Coleman said of the technology efforts. “I embrace it because of the need for us to reeducate our members. It’s such a benefit to us as practicing lawyers. When our practices are more efficient, it saves our clients money; it saves us time; and it allows us to spend more time with our families.”
