Month: September 2015
Law firms still not proactively investing in IT?
It is now nearly 20 years ago since my book Legal Practice in the Digital Age was first published. The book’s central theme was that despite all the money law firms were spending on technology in those days, most of this money (money which might otherwise be going to partners) was being spent on the wrong stuff. […]
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Can ODR deliver better access to justice?
Professor Richard Susskind OBE is well known within the legal profession for his numerous books predicting a dramatic transformation in legal practice, and calling for an overhaul of 21st century lawyering. In February 2015 he made national headlines for his proposed eBay-style scheme for online dispute resolution (ODR) and the recommendation that HMCTS introduce a […]
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The intellectual property revolution
Despite the UK Government commissioning the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth in 2010 to ensure the UK has an IP framework best suited to supporting innovation and promoting economic growth in the digital age, there is still a marked lack of awareness in the business community about intellectual property and what it means. […]
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Getting the best from GOV.UK
The Government has been transitioning its published web data to the GOV.UK platform over the last few years. Since the move of departmental websites over to GOV.UK, which completed in December 2014, documents and information have become increasingly hard to find. Collections of information on certain topics that previously could be browsed on departmental websites […]
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Introducing eDisclosure and eSignatures
The “e” in the lives of lawyers has gradually crept up on us, and will remain with us for the foreseeable future. Our new world is full of dangers from the point of view of practice. The Bars and Law Societies continue to produce guidelines regarding practice, and any readers, if they are not already […]
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Free case law resources online
Here is a selection of some of the most important resources for free case law online drawn from my web page www.venables.co.uk/caselaw.htm. BAILII (British and Irish Legal Information Institute) provides free access to the most comprehensive and up-to-date collection of British & Irish primary legal materials on the internet with 90 databases covering 7 jurisdictions. […]
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Five free (or low cost) digital marketing tools
There are so many excellent tools for different purposes that I think I need to start with two pieces of rather generic advice. Firstly, your time is expensive and limited; so fast, easy things are generally better value than less slick free ones. Secondly, where a product has a free version and a paid-for version, […]
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What is the Deep Web?
The term “Deep Web” was coined in 2001 by Computer scientist Mike Bergman in his white paper “The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value”. He used the term to describe the parts of the web containing content which was not indexed by traditional search engines, claiming that it was “400 to 550 times larger than the […]
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DNA testing: the fastest route to the truth
There is one ingredient that can greatly change the pathways in the journey of people’s lives more than any other. A closer look at this ingredient could result in two strangers discovering they are brothers and sisters, reunite children with long lost parents or it could potentially shatter an existing relationship through broken trust. Its […]
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