LJN Newsletters

Analysis of a recent case of interest.

In a bad economy, a range of recent decisions can be cited to overcome the argument that an earning capacity in excess of current income should be attributed to a parent.

For many years, the firm managed its electronic documents and files without a document management system (DMS) by using Windows Explorer to navigate folders and Windows Search to execute searches when needed. However, we reached the point where we had approximately 1.2 million documents (mostly Word documents) across both offices, sorted by year, client and matter, and were not searchable in an efficient way. We wanted to select a DMS that could easily store client-related e-mails in the same repository as the other documents, and provide efficient searching functionality.

Aon experienced significant growth in the 1980s and 90s, both organically and through a series of strategic acquisitions. The growth brought about tremendous business gains, but created operational challenges that lingered for many years. One of these was the legal department.

When selecting and implementing new technology, many CIOs and IT professionals are challenged when the business process that the application is supposed to address plays second fiddle to focusing on a specific technology or product. With a new technology implementation, many key business sponsors (i.e., owners of the application or department leaders whose teams use the application) want to be involved in the selection process, weighing in on requirements, definition, functionality, "look and feel" and expected output. This is similar to building a new home: The new homebuilder wants to select the style of home, amenities, paint, etc. In both scenarios, the buyers are concerned with the output, which is very understandable, as they desire useable products.

This was the decade of electronic discovery. Rapid development of technology, law and business processes, both in and out of the courtroom, brought legal and technical issues involving electronically stored information (ESI) to the fore. Although the General Counsel's office was the primary recipient of this uninvited wake-up call, legal is not the only department impacted by this change. IT departments across organizations must now understand the impact of ESI discovery obligations and regulations. Collaboration with legal is needed to create and implement new policies, while altering existing policies to keep pace with the rapidly evolving data storage and communication methods coinciding with the rising tide of ESI.

There are many discussions going on about the use of social media among attorneys. Surely there are folks who don't understand the value of these mediums, mostly because of inexperience in using them. "Why should I go on Twitter and tell someone what I'm doing? Who is going to care?" they ask. To those people, I would suggest turning that question around: "When I have just heard a piece of important and timely information that would benefit some of my colleagues, how can I tell them all at once ' easily and quickly?" Now that's the question to be asking.

The Internet as we know it has evolved into an almost limitless arena where just about everything short of physical activity can be done. This online "playground" allows a user to read magazines, research current events, share photographs, transact business, enjoy life through a virtual character, organize class reunions, and update friends that you just finished a great meal at your favorite restaurant. Yet, this playground is generally an unguarded realm that gives thieves, criminals and other troublemakers opportunities to make money through the use of sophisticated scams and frauds. These scammers are looking for any information that can be used for profit, such as Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, user names/passwords and bank account numbers.