The Kennedy-Mighell Report

In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell discuss recent commentary on the last decade of blawging, the current state of blawging, and the future of online interaction and marketing for lawyers. They discuss whether legal blogs are still popular, how the online landscape has changed for legal professionals, and what might be replacing the personal law blog. Tom notes that due to podcasts, social media, and general writing exhaustion, individual lawyers are updating less often or have stopped all together. Dennis talks about how there are more law firm and group blogs that are SEO optimized and targeted for marketing. They both agree that blawging is not dead, but has changed remarkably in the past ten years. Special thanks to our sponsor, ServeNow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell reflect on their experiences at TECHSHOW 2015, share notes on legal technology trends and products, and have the aftershow discussion that they didn’t have time to have at the show. In a general overview, Kennedy discussed spending time at the concierge desk and catching up with old connections. Mighell commented on how the conference is about building relationships, gaining outstanding technology education, and interacting personally with vendors. The hosts also discuss top highlights from TECHSHOW, new products that excited them (pay attention for Legal Earth, Zola, and others), and the Appathon hosted by the ABA Legal Technology Research Center (LTRC). Finally, Kennedy and Mighell analyze whether similar conferences are still relevant as and how TECHSHOW might be adapted to a global legal community in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell discuss why legal technology projects fail, the human element of legal technology, and why Woldow and Richardson’s blog post should launch some important conversations. When addressing the fundamental problems lawyers have with technology (a common subject) Kennedy believes lawyers seek an unachievable standard; they want something impossibly intuitive and easy to use that fills all management and accounting needs. He also mentions that efficiency technologies are counter-intuitive to the billable hour. Mighell believes that lawyers will only adopt technology through client or management pressure and encouragement. In the end, they both agree that technology can be used to streamline or automate busywork, leaving more time for quality legal analysis. Special thanks to our sponsor, ServeNow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell explain why shadow IT happens, discuss implications to the company’s IT and legal departments, and suggest steps employers can take to resolve the prevalence of shadow IT in their own companies (hint: it doesn’t involve more regulations). Kennedy and Mighell describe the different forms of shadow IT that have been used over time, from personal instant messaging before companies introduced accepted ones, to current cloud-based softwares like Basecamp and Dropbox used for project management and collaboration. Mighell even suggests that backing up your email on a home computer can be considered shadow IT due to issues created in data preservation and discovery. Shadow IT causes issues for IT departments, because they can’t control the hardware and software being used, legal departments, because of regulatory issues in electronic discovery, and even human resources departments due to unseeable employee interactions. Tune in to hear what Kennedy and Mighell explain as a relatively simple solution to technology workarounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lawyers often focus on the core elements of hardware technology: computers, tablets, and smartphones. However, the best experiences with hardware are driven by and dependent on the way we accessorize and personalize them. Most people choose their technology accessories based on word-of-mouth recommendations from friends, family, colleagues, or other connections. So what are lawyers using and buying today? In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell talk about accessorizing technology, discuss some of their favorite accessories, and recommend ways lawyers can accessorize their smartphones, laptops, and tablets. Kennedy and Mighell have some favorites that they want to share and they would like to hear about your favorites too! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell reexamine the paperless office, survey the current process of going paperless, and speculate as to whether the era of the paperless office might have actually arrived. Kennedy muses the “if it comes to you in paper, it stays in paper” mentality of lawyers. While he points out that many of the themes around going paperless are processor powers, speed, bandwidth, the cloud, smartphones, and apps, his true hangup is with storage and organization. With an optimistic mentality, Mighell discusses getting more lawyers to use scanners, making sure they are never presented with paper copies, and how apps like Genius Scan and Evernote can facilitate the process of going completely paperless. Both Kennedy and Mighell agree that the only way to effectively go paperless is to start with a process and build good habits. Luckily, it’s tax season! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Tom Mighell interviews Dennis Kennedy about LegalTech New York 2015, covering highlights from the show and what this year’s event might tell us about future trends in legal technology. As always, e-discovery was a big topic, with an estimated 54% of the vendors falling within the e-discovery category. Kennedy speculates that information governance will be a focus for 2015 as the legal community shifts toward records management, predictive coding, and TAR (Technology Assisted Review). This year boasted fewer new product announcements but many upgrades and new generations. Some interesting collaboration and matter management tools were announced, and Kennedy shares the coolest new thing he saw: an analytics tool that takes a dashboard approach with a user interface reminiscent of an app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell revisit speech recognition technology, look at the ways people are dictating text today, and discuss arguments for and against using it in your law practice. Mighell discusses how faster speeds and improvement in broadband for Siri, Google Now, Cortana, and other tools have made speech recognition a hot topic. He personally uses dictation most often when sending texts from his smartwatch, but he runs into connectivity issues. Kennedy has recently tried dictation again, yielding relatively successful results, but he would not use it to draft full documents. He discusses lawyers’ interest in full-time dictation, using an application like Dragon Dictation, and how younger lawyers come into the workplace with the ability to type faster and more efficiently than any speech recognition program. Both Kennedy and Mighell agree that the success of speech recognition technology depends mostly on social and cultural acceptability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lawyers, even solos, are constantly working with experts, opposing counsel, court officials, and colleagues. Dennis and Tom like to keep an eye on new developments and the current state of collaboration tools and technologies, which they consider one of the most important, yet under-appreciated, areas of legal technology. In 2008, they wrote a book together called The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies, which gives suggestions about the bigger collaboration platforms and smaller discrete tools that lawyers can use to work together. In the last seven years, many collaboration tools have changed but a lot of systems have stayed the same. What's happening in 2015 and what developments do you need to know about and incorporate into your work? In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell survey the current landscape for collaboration tools, trends and best practices, and what lawyers should be doing to make better use of these tools. They begin by examining their book and the collaboration tools that have disappeared or morphed into different programs. Kennedy mentions that Sharepoint, Wikis, Instant Messaging, Adobe Acrobat, and Microsoft Office Suite can all be used by attorneys and staff to work together, although Mighell is skeptical that many law firms actually use any of these. Both hosts maintain that lawyers almost exclusively use email for collaboration, although they believe future generations of lawyers will introduce a new perspective on technology use. They finish the first section by mentioning social media and listing other underutilized tools for lawyers who work with others on many cases. In the second portion of the show, Kennedy and Mighell discuss the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The CES revealed the latest consumer technologies to expect throughout the year. They discuss the best and worst of drones, wearables, or new selfie technologies. As always, stay tuned for Parting Shots, that one tip, website, or observation that you can use the second the podcast ends. Special thanks to our sponsor, ServeNow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every new year brings a new opportunity to "start fresh" and get something done that you might not have accomplished in the previous year. As we look ahead to 2015, we start to think about our legal technology resolutions for the coming year. There are often new technologies for lawyers that did not exist in the previous years and new ways of automating or organizing their lives. What are some specific, measurable, actionable, and realistic legal tech goals that can be made for the coming year? In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell discuss their personal legal technology resolutions for 2015, how to get started making your own technology resolutions, and how last year's resolutions have turned out. The hosts first suggest some general resolutions including turning on Find My iPhone, going paperless, using a password manager, and backing up in 3 different ways. They then talk about their own resolutions. Kennedy aspires to prune down his data intake from things such as podcasts and rss feeds, look into automating as many repetitive tasks as possible, revisit old systems which might be improved by 2015 technologies including the cloud, broadband access, increased storage, or processing power, and to simply try something new. Mighell is looking to learn new Microsoft Office skills in Access, Excel, and Project, start creating more content for his blogs, try a new platform with Microsoft Surface Pro 3, and also automate repetitive tasks using If This Then That and other tools. Both hosts express that it is important for lawyers to increase their technology experience each year and resolutions are a useful way to structure and inspire new learning. In the second half of the podcast, Kennedy and Mighell review and analyze the legal technology resolutions they set for 2014. Mighell wished to learn about his new Mac and be able to work on multiple platforms and get his certification in privacy. Kennedy aspired to revamp his website, become a successful Evernote user, and take his backup to the next level. Tune in to hear whether they achieved their goals. Special thanks to our sponsor, Serve Now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices