Top 5 Legal IT technologies of 2012

Following my last post on review of 2010/11 Legal Tech, here is what Jason from No Option for Law Firm thinks are the top legal technologies for 2012 ie emerging technology for Legal in 2012 or that will be technology that will feature heavily in Legal in 2012. (And bear in mind, this is the US he is talking about, it will be a while before Africa gets that kind of broadband, even for law firms)
  • Speech Recognition
  • Windows Phone/Android/iPhone : Or more to the point, the death of the blackberry in Legal.
  • SharePoint (Jason's on the fence about this, although I think that Law Firms will not be leaning toward Google Apps)
  • The return of the laptop/netbook : not that they ever really went away.
  • A new vendor emerging as a major Legal IT player : Jason thinks that the market is ripe for a new Legal focussed player to emerge. "I’m not sure where, but there seem to be plenty of opportunities for technology focus in Legal that aren’t being addressed or existing technology that is perhaps being forgotten as the traditional players diversify into other verticals."
  • There are things from the last few years that will continue in 2012, Office 2010 becoming the default platform and IM continuing to proliferate around Legal. But these feel more business as usual now. 

Top 5 Legal IT technologies for 2010 and 2011 in Review

This list from Jason Plant’s Blog (who is an IT expert who works in a law firm, who will post the 2012 list tomorrow) :
My 2010 list was as follows:
  • Mobile Applications
  • Search
  • Office 2010/Windows 7
  • Instant Messaging
  • Speech Recognition
And then in 2011 was:
  • Glue Tech
  • Microsoft Lync
  • YouTube
  • Mobile Applications
  • Office 2010 and Windows 7
And I love what he said about the pace of legal tech, which underscores the overall pace of change, adaptability and innovation in the industry:
"...it’s clear that things don’t move at a fast pace across the whole of Legal."

Legal Opinion delivered via Poetry

I read about this recent piece of brilliant poetry aka legal opinion on Martin Gramatikov's Access to Justice blog, and just had to share. This is an awesome twist to innovation in justice- using not new technology like cell phones or the internet (which we often blog about on this site), but old fashioned poetry. Admittedly, this judgement so much easier to read and understand than a typical legal document. Gives some food for thought about the dissemination of legal knowledge for legal empowerment- maybe we can have legal information in poetry via SMS!

(reproduced partially from the legal opinion of Commonwealth v. Goodson here):

In January, 2001, appellant’s car was in a collision.
His insurer totaled the aging New Yorker, then made a just division
of the value of the insurance claim, sending $6,289 to the lender;
the balance of $135, to appellant they made tender.