Flexible Legal Collaboration Software

It's critically important to build software which is flexible and can be adjusted to meet a variety of different needs.

We have used our software recently for many different types of projects in addition to the initial intended use of Litigation Support. Some of these areas include the construction of systems to track internal projects (status, due dates, costs, vendors, etc.). Other uses include change management and task tracking with the the IT discipline as well as other implementation to support business development efforts for some clients.

Thankfully, we are in the position, based on our object oriented method of programming and strong focus on developing reusable code, to adjust our software to meet a wide variety of emerging business needs and client requirements.

Extranet - Coding Strategies

If you are considering building your own legal extranet, here are some quick do's / don'ts.

• Do be sure to manage your source code with a source code management system.
• Do be sure you have a strategy to manage and control software versions.
• Do be sure you have strong technical specifications written.
• Do be sure you write reusable objects to perform common system functions.
• Don't allow a single person to code the system without adequate backup.
• Don't forget to put together a solid project plan.
• Don't forget to have a skilled and knowledgeable technical professional perform code reviews.
• Don't forget the need to have developers perform unit tests that they prepare and are approved by a project manager.

They are many other considerations when running a software development project, these are just a few of them. More to follow in the future.

Web-Based Applications

Recently, there have been many interesting articles about the proiferation of web-based hosted applications for common, everyday use. There are many players in the market of providing on-line spreadsheets, work processors and presentation software. It will be interesting to see how this trend plays out in the world of managing legal and litigation data -- in a world where we all do on-line banking, manage our portfolios on-line, send emails using services like YAHOO, GOOGLE and others and where we soon might be creating all of our documents online and watching television online -- how soon will it be before we move more and more legal case management and document management applications out of technologies which require local installations, powerful PC hardware and a robust law firm intranet network (which is often a huge constraint to providing cross-office access to litigation data in multioffice law firms) into technologies which are common, hosted solution accessing in a secure and encrypted manner using the same internet backbone we use (or will soon use) for these other common, day-to-day activities.