Reinventing Professionals

I spoke with Doug Caddell, the new chief information officer for kCura, the maker of Relativity, a web-based platform for the processing, review, analysis, and production of electronic data. Prior to joining kCura, Caddell served as the firmwide CIO at Foley & Lardner based in Chicago. We discussed his new position, the distinction between his role in a corporation vs. a law firm, kCura's new Relativity Binders iPad app, and what the rise of influential CIOs means for the future of legal technology development.

I spoke with Dave Deppe, the president of UnitedLex, a global legal services company, which focuses on litigation, contract management, and intellectual property. Prior to joining UnitedLex, he was a founding partner of Focus Legal Solutions, an electronic discovery boutique, which Mutual of Omaha acquired in December 2008. We discussed the release of Questio, the company's new consultant-led technology platform, how it differs from predictive coding, its development cycle, and what it reveals about the evolution of client interaction with digital tools.

I spoke with Albert Buckwalter, the Director of Litigation Support for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division in Washington, DC, and the editor-in-chief of Litigation Support Today, a magazine for litigation support professionals that has been published since 2007.

I spoke with Leah Beckham and Beth Thompson, the CEO and Director of Business Development, respectively, for BillBLAST, a cloud-based application that helps law firms manage their e-billing and related reporting.

I spoke with Larry Barela, the Chief Technology Officer for Catalyst Repository Systems, the developer of Insight, a cloud-based e-discovery platform.

I spoke with Larry Port, the founder and CEO of Rocketmatter, a cloud-based legal practice management and time and billing software product, about Rocket X1, the company’s new Internet marketing agency and hosting platform.

I spoke with Peter Mercer, the founder and managing director of Vound, an Australia-based software development company focusing on forensics and e-discovery, which is the maker or Intella, the company’s signature tool for processing, searching, and analyzing electronically stored information.

In the fall of 1990, I interviewed for a job that ended up changing the course of my life. The ad to which I responded was for a tutor in the then 1-year old Intergenerational Literacy Project, a collaboration between Boston University’s School of Education and the Chelsea Public Schools in Chelsea, Massachusetts. I had no experience, but wanted a work-study job that was meaningful and rewarding. It turned out to be both. 23 years later, this program continues its mission to improve the reading skills of adults and the literacy knowledge among pre-school and school-aged children.

I spoke with Eric Hunter, the Director of Knowledge, Innovation & Technology Strategies at California-based Bradford & Barthel, as well as the Executive Director of Spherical Models, a business model innovation consultancy.

I spoke with Matt Homann and JoAnna Forshee, producers of the annual LexThink.1 legal innovation conference, which is being held in Chicago on Wednesday April 3rd on the eve of the ABA Techshow. Homann is the well-known founder of LexThink, a legal innovation consultancy, as well as the creator of the popular [non] billable hour blog. Forshee is the CEO of InsideLegal, which she describes as “the insider’s guide to doing business in legal technology.”