LJN Newsletters

In today's world, most business activity creates electronically stored information ('ESI') ' whether it's an e-mail, document, voice-mail or database transaction ' and the exponentially increasing volume and diversity of those digital files at corporations represents exponentially increasing corporate risk. However, according to a survey of corporate counsel attorneys, only 7% of them rate their companies as prepared for the electronic discovery amendments to the FRCP. This lack of preparedness is not surprising since, until recently, many in-house legal departments have taken a back seat and let outside counsel manage their discovery needs.

The harms that can result from computer security breaches are largely uncovered by the types of insurance policies most law firms maintain. Combined with the inadequate security most law firms provide for client data, the resultant risk exposure arguably violates legal professional ethics. A firm's failure to adequately protect computer-based master files, time-and-billing records, court filings, wills, powers of attorney, corporate records, and other client-related materials is a violation of bar association requirements to preserve client files and more generally a failure in the firm's overall duty to act competently in the best interests of its clients.

In a victory for big telephone companies, a federal appeals court has upheld a ruling by the FCC that effectively deregulated high-speed Internet access service provided over traditional telephone lines.

A Minnesota woman was found guilty oif illegally downloading music onto her computer -- to the tune of $222,000, a jury decided in federal court in Duluth on Oct. 4.

Today's bills are as thick as case files, and at least as detailed. Concerned over what lawyers are doing with their time and who's working on a matter ' whether to track diversity or to keep expensive but inexperienced first-year associates off the case ' clients demand exhaustive accounting from their outside counsel.

The harms that can result from computer security breaches are largely uncovered by the types of insurance policies most law firms maintain. Combined with the inadequate security most law firms provide for client data, the resultant risk exposure arguably violates legal professional ethics. A firm's failure to adequately protect computer-based master files, time-and-billing records, court filings, wills, powers of attorney, corporate records, and other client-related materials is a violation of bar association requirements to preserve client files and more generally a failure in the firm's overall duty to act competently in the best interests of its clients.

Most law firm managers understand the importance that business analysis plays in steering a firm toward success. However, as with so many things in life, a little bit of analysis can be a dangerous thing. Management reporting processes typically collect, organize, and ultimately combine data sets from different practice areas, offices, industries, etc. Superficial reports compare aggregate characteristics (e.g., top-line results) without identifying the varying components contained within the data sets and normalizing for these variables. This can lead those who examine such reports to draw misleading or even totally wrong conclusions.

Aside from a few sensational disbarments and criminal prosecutions for overbilling, most evidence of billing irregularities is anecdotal. In order to provide a more precise assessment of the scope of the abuse of time-based billing by attorneys, I conducted nationwide surveys of outside counsel in 1991, 1995, and 2007. The large majority of respondents to all three surveys ' 82% in the most recent survey ' indicated that time-based billing was their dominant method of billing.