Technology Forum Meeting - Transcript of Discussions - Page 2  <<   >>

MR. GALLAGHER: I want to welcome everyone to the New York State Bar Association's Technology Forum that we are holding here at Cornell Law School. Steve Krane and I want to thank you for agreeing to participate in this meeting.

In 1994, the Association's NYLawNet Committee came to Cornell to meet with Professor Peter Martin as we began to explore the bar association's role relating to the Internet. Nearly eight year's have passed and thanks to NYSBA president, Steve Krane, he decided to come back to Ithaca to examine how the landscape has changed, and to again examine how we can best serve New York lawyers.

What I'd like to invite each of you to introduce yourself, and give the group a little bit about your areas of practice and your comfort level with emerging technologies. We know that each of you have varying levels of comfort with technology, as you come from very different backgrounds. We hope to draw on the group's diversity.

After we meet everyone, I'd like to ask Steve Krane to give us his overview and expectations for today's program.

For the remainder of the morning session, we have asked Professor Peter Martin, our host, and long-time partner with NYSBA (LIIBULLETIN-NY), to share with the group changes he sees in legal education, and his personal perspective on how the Internet is affecting change in practice of law. We also asked Professor Martin to give us his thoughts on the role of the bar

Jack Lippert and Lenny Sienko were two of the original members of the NYLawNet Committee that met with Professor Martin in 1994.

So let start with our introductions:

MR. JOHN SZEKERES: I'm John Szekeres from the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in Manhattan. I've been with them about two years. And I'm actually not practicing law. I am the Assistant Director of Knowledge Management for Cleary.

Some of you are wondering, what does a knowledge manager do? Actually that was the first question I was asked in my interview,
Some of you are wondering, hey, what does a knowledge manager do?

PROF. MARTIN: Were you the first knowledge manager?

MR. SZEKERES: Yes.

PROF. MARTIN: At that firm?

MR. SZEKERES: At that firm. And they asked me, "Well, what does a knowledge manager do?" And I looked at them, and I said, "I was hoping you would tell me." I got the job in spite of that. And it's been a real challenge and a lot of fun.

Cleary has ten offices around the world. They have almost 700 attorneys now. As with, I think, most firms, they're not very good at sharing their information with each other. I believe that because of the difficulty communicating at a large firm, the bigger you get, the more difficult it is not to reinvent the wheel every time. These days with clients' expectations regarding cost containment. It is incumbent on firms to practice more efficiently by reusing the knowledge they've already gained. My role is to try and help as a facilitator. In one sense I help identify the needs of the lawyers in trying to capture their knowledge, and I work with the Information Technology (IT) group to develop systems to capture this knowledge. I work with attorneys to take those things that are unique about each transaction -- about the knowledge that they've gathered, and put it into a central knowledge repository, so that other attorneys in the firm can build on that knowledge. If an attorney comes up with a situation that is unique to him or her, he can go to that repository and find out if somebody has already dealt with that issue before, and how they've dealt with it.

We collect model forms and precedents, and we develop automated assembly documents, automated forms on Hot Docs. We've developed discussion forums where people can ask questions of each other. Instead of questions ending up in an e-mail, which gets deleted, the question and the answer stays in an archive and can be searched. We have enhanced our Intranet to provide news of firm wide interest as well as practice specific news. We are working with Lotus notes to develop databases and the discussion forums, and that's [sort of] in a nutshell what we try to do.

We are doing this throughout all of the offices so we've developed knowledge management resources in most of the other offices.

MR. GALLAGHER: John has been active with the NYSBA Young Lawyers Section for a number of years.

MR. SZEKERES: I am not a young lawyer anymore though.

MR. GALLAGHER: When I first visited John's office at Cleary, I really started thinking that maybe John's Knowledge Management responsibilities was something the bar association should be doing for solo and small firm practitioners throughout the state,

John brings us a wealth of experience in technology.

MR. SZEKERES: I was with Matthew Bender for 10 years, years developing electronic research tools for lawyers, and I practiced for a short time.

MR. GALLAGHER: Okay. Thank you John.

MR. MIRANDA: Dave Miranda. I'm an attorney with Heslin, Rothenberg, Farley & Mesiti in Albany. It's an intellectual property law firm. We've got about 20 attorneys and patent agents who practice exclusive in the area of intellectual property law. My practice is focused on litigation and Internet law.

With the bar association, I'm currently the chair-elect of the Young Lawyer Section and I'm chair of the state bar's Electronic Communications Task Force, ECTF, which is the committee, that's designed to assist the bar association with electronic communications and web-based outreach with its members.

For the past 18 months we've been working on the redesign of the bar association's web site. We've done some surveys of the members, some focus group meetings to try to find out what it is that the members want from the bar association and different content that our web site can provide. We are moving along with the web site redesign. We hope to have it in place and live on May 1, 2002 for a Law Day roll out. So that's kind of where I'm coming from.

MR. GALLAGHER: Okay. Thank you, David.

MR. RICHARD MARTIN: I'm Richard Martin, director of marketing for the association. I will have been there four years this coming May, and the department itself being only five years old this coming May. One of my main areas of focus is on research, which helps us determine the needs of members or potential members have, and in helping the association to hopefully be able to deliver products and services that meet those needs. So I've been very active. the last couple of years. We did a member satisfaction survey this last year which included 400 19-minute interviews of 250 members and 150 nonmembers. And we can talk about some of that a little later. Also we did a law practice management survey and also the web survey that David had talked about so -- that probably sums up my activities.

MR. GALLAGHER: Thanks, Richard.

MS. CRISTINE CIOFFI: I'm Chris Cioffi. I'm an attorney in Schenectady, New York just outside of Albany. I started a firm of my own after practicing with what is for our region the largest firm in Schenectady. And part of the reason I started it was for more family flexibility. So we've tried to use technology in our firm to allow staff members to work off site and, in fact, we've had people work out of state for periods of time.

I am not a technology person myself. I tend to delegate those functions in my firm. So, I will tell you right now that I brought a glossary with me, so when you all start talking words that I don't know, I'm going to start looking them up.

But, I've also been active in state bar and House of Delegates for several terms and different committees, and now I'm on the committee that looks at governance issues in state bar. So I'm very happy to be here both personally so can I bring my own firm up to a new level and then on behalf of the governance committee.

MR.GALLAGHER: Welcome, Cris.

MS. ALISA DALTON: My name is Alisa Dalton, and I am a sole practitioner in Saratoga Springs. I came from a big firm practice. I worked for Thatcher, Profit & Wood in the World Trade Center for a number of years. Then I worked downtown Manhattan at One Broadway for Fox and Horn, which is an international boutique firm with many lawyers who had also worked at big firms. I gave up the view of the Statue of Liberty, and I spend a year in Italy practicing international law. I was lucky enough to do that before the Internet and e-mail, so I've worked exclusively by modem, which I never seemed to be able to work, and by fax, which was not directly to my computer either. I had to ride my bicycle to the fax place where I lived, which has changed completely, having recently visited, with the Internet cafes on every corner, so the whole world has changed.

So after that, I went to work in Albany and worked there for a number of years practicing corporate law. Then with e-mail and Internet access, I decided to go out on my own for more flexibility. I also had met Steve Gallagher at that point, and I got much encouragement from him. This is truly a new age, I now do a lot of work with Internet attachments of documents.

In fact, I closed a recent deal, an acquisition, where I reached the point where I needed the guy's fax number to fax the signature pages. Having worked on this for six months, I did not have his fax number. I had never printed out a document. Just comments going back and forth, editing changes. It was phenomenal. I had to call his secretary for their fax number to send the fax pages. I thought, "This is fabulous." I ended up conserving paper and time for everyone. So it's been a great experience, and I really look forward to technology even making it easier for me to function, and I'm happy to be here to learn.

Thank you.