Last week, I spent a four hot and humid days in sunny Orlando at ILTACON 2019. As always, it was a whirlwind of activity and the days passed quickly; and before I knew it, I was back on a plane and headed homeward.
But my time there was well spent. I had many opportunities to learn about the latest and greatest in legal technology, while also connecting with old friends and meeting new ones.
When I wasn’t networking or exploring the massive Exhibit Hall floor, I was meeting with representatives from a number of forward-thinking legal technology companies that caught my eye.
I’ll be covering these meetings in a 2-part blog post series. In today’s column, Part 1, I’ll share the latest news from ZERØ, Diligen, ALN and Fastcase.
One of the products I learned about, ZERØ, was of particular interest to me since it uses AI in a really interesting and useful way: to manage email. I learned from Ryan Steadman, ZERØ’s Chief Revenue Officer, that since its debut one year ago, the company now has nearly 50 percent of AmLaw 100 firms using its product either in production or exceptions testing. The reason it’s gained so much traction in such a short time is because it offers a solution to a gap in the market by providing AI natural language processing software — on both mobile devices and desktop computers — that scans all incoming emails and then facilitates the secure filing of the emails into a firm’s document management or billing systems. As part of this process, the software captures the billable time spent reading and responding to emails.
I also caught up with Erez Bustan, CEO of American LegalNet (ALN) and he got me up to date on the company’s latest news. ALN provides a number of useful software solutions, including: 1) court rules-based calendaring tools, 2) legal docketing and calendaring tools, and 3) automated court and agency forms. At ILTACON, ALN announced its integration with ZERØ. The integration combines ALN’s calendaring and docketing platform eDockets and its AutoDocket Pro feature so that litigation-related emails and documents from ALN’s software can be automatically filed into a law firm’s document management software using ZERØ’s AI technology.
I also learned about the latest Diligen news from Laura van Wyngaarden, Diligen’s co-founder and COO. Diligen provides AI-powered contract review software that is used by law firms, legal service providers, and corporate counsel. Using this software, teams can easily collaborate and manage the entire contract review process. At ILTACON Laura shared the recent news of the release of Diligen Prodigy, a new training system that is designed to quickly train Diligen to recognize new contract clauses in as little as 10 to 20 minutes. This allows its customers the ability to customize the software to meet their specific needs by expanding the range of concepts the contract analysis system can identify.
And last, but certainly not least, I met with Ed Walters, CEO and co-founder of Fastcase. We talked about their focus on expanding the types of content available to Fastcase subscribers. Over the past year, Fastcase has made the following treatises and data available via its legal research platform: 1) a catalog of bankruptcy publications through a partnership with the American Bankruptcy Institute, 2) expert witness profiles as a result of partnerships with JurisPro and Courtroom Insight, 3) paid access to certain ABA publications, 4) public records search and analytics through a partnership with TransUnion, and 5) James Publishing’s entire library of treatises, books, and practice guides. In other words, at Fastcase, content is king, and Fastcase customers are the beneficiary of this newfound focus.
That’s just a taste of what I learned during press briefings at this year’s conference. Check back next week for the second installment of my ILTACON round up to learn the latest news from Intapp, NetDocuments, iManage, and LexisNexis.
Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and the Legal Technology Evangelist at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.