877-375-2810 [email protected]

ABA TechShow 2017: Emerging Trends

by | Mar 21, 2017 | Law Firm Technology, Practice Management

ABA TechShow 2017

I spent the latter part of last week (March 15-17) wandering the aisles of the ABA TechShow 2017 in Chicago, trying to discern any emerging trends in the world of Law Office Technology. I found a few things of note.

 

  1. The Cloud-based Practice Management category seems to be expanding very rapidly. Although a major “on-premises” law office technology provider like Lexis decided it didn’t need a booth at TechShow this year, that large hole in the vendor lineup was filled many times over by aspiring competitors like PracticePanther, Centerbase, LEAP, and Zola Suite. These relatively “new kids on the block” joined more established Cloud vendors like Clio, RocketMatter, and MyCase to offer a dizzying array of choices for Cloud-based practice management.As this market becomes more crowded, it seems inevitable that some specialization (or “vertical focus”, as we like to call it) will occur, along with some industry shake-out. Picking the winners and losers in the early stages of this race to the Cloud is still premature and fraught with peril, however. Perform your due diligence carefully!
  2. Dedicated Document Management Systems (DMS) seem to be coming into their own at this time, and are becoming recognized as essential tools for firms of all sizes. Historically dominated by a few big players, this category of software has migrated to the small law space, and like their cousins in the practice management space offer versions for both on-premises and Cloud-based deployment. Some of these systems offer somewhat of a “hybrid’ approach, bundling modest practice/case management features in with a robust document management capability.These two classes of product can significantly overlap, sharing many features in common. Prospective purchasers should evaluate their needs in each area very carefully, to avoid over-buying and duplicating features across multiple products.
  3. As Cloud-based applications continue to gain market share, a new class of “add-on” software is starting to emerge which either adds functionality to existing Cloud applications, or serves as a “linking service” between multiple Cloud products. Symphony, the popular OCR product from Trumpet, Inc. has announced an integration with NetDocuments which will provide automatic optical character recognition to all PDF’s uploaded to NetDocuments. This should significantly improve the already-powerful search functionality found within NetDocuments.

Mot-r for NetDocuments, from Mercanix, provides workflow management within the document management system. This add-on allows the user to build custom workflows, or business processes, based on document creation and management. It also offers some compelling visuals on the number and type of client “touches” within a given client workspace, helping to keep cases on track. Finally, Zapier has emerged as a leading contributor of what I call “Cloud Glue”, binding multiple Cloud apps together to reduce redundancy and repetitive data entry across multiple apps.

While it is way too early for predictions, the pace of new rollouts, and of subsequent Cloud services adoption, it feels a bit like the early days of Windows. Back then we were all caught between operating platforms, and trying desperately to find the safest course among all of the choices.  As was true then, choose carefully, and try not to get caught using MultiPlan when the rest of the world has moved on to Excel.

Confused about on-premises vs. Cloud applications? Need help evaluating the merits of different approaches to implementing law office software? Give us a call at 877-357-0555 or email us at [email protected] to see how we can help you make the right decisions.