The summer and Labor Day holidays are over, and so we are off.

The ILTA conference (our coverage is here) held two weeks ago was an eye-opener on new trend lines, jobs for contract attorneys, etc. — especially the amount of Federal government work in the pipeline and the surge in work in Europe.  We’ll have more on ILTA later in this post.   First, some general comments on the contract attorney market.

1.   In many areas of the country the contract attorney/document review market seems to have broken open.  We hesitate to say “exploded” but as Gabe Acevedo of the über e-discovery site Gabe’s Guide said “in the old days it would be an uptick.  But in this lousy economy, in this market call it exploded.”

2.  We have posted 87 projects/positions in the last 2 weeks across all 70+ job lists, most being in the South and the West. 

3.   But DC is alive.  In the past 2+ weeks we have seen new projects or ramp ups from Covington and from Crowell (two law firms that do direct hire) plus projects from De Novo, Firm Advice, Hudson, Kelly Law, Lexolution, Palmer, Pat Taylor, Phase Legal, Special Counsel, and Update.  And Fulbright & Jaworski has a monster going: 120+ attorneys in two locations.

4.   NYC has remained fairily moribund.  The subprime and credit-crisis related work we all expected to hit DC and NYC seems to have avoided both markets for the most part although we count a combined 4 “financial crisis related” doc reviews in DC and NYC.  (We use feedback from Posse List members, Kevin LaCroix’s site http://www.dandodiary.com/ and a few other sites to track the progress of cases and their location, and determine which law firms are handling them).

5.   A good portion of the subprime and credit crisis-related doc review work seems to be centered in the Atlanta area, the Carolinas and the Midwest — lower cost regions.  As we have mentioned before, farmshoring has been gaining favor (click here).

6.  That doesn’t discount the projects that have scuppered off to India.  We have received feedback from our India-based Posse List members who work for LPOs (as we have previously reported scores of U.S. attorneys have been hired by LPOs as project managers).   They report 3-4 “credit crisis-related” projects.   We try to rectify those numbers with various media reports (many of dubious validity because they tend to be press releases by LPOs).  But admittedly we do not have full coverage in India.  Of the 85+ Posse List members based in India only about 10-15 report in on a regular basis and they cover only 5 LPOs and there are lots of LPOs out there.

     Note: the summer issue of ACC Docket, the magazine of the Association of Corporate Counsel, did a series on outsourcing and Indian LPOs — the good, the bad, the problems.  We hope to provide a detailed post this month with links to the issue as we did on the ACC Docket series on document review (click here).

7.    But on the bright side for DC and NYC (and London and Brussels) is that the increase in economic tensions/issues and the increase in high-profile scandals has lead to a rise in government data requests, compliance audits and investigations from both a state and federal level.  We have chronicled, among other investigations: the DOJ investigation of DTCC in the credit default swap probe; the EU target investigations of the energy, tech, and drug markets (the EU has stepped up antitrust enforcement in the technology, energy, drug and transportation sectors); the LCD makers cartel investigation and the DOJ review of the telecom industry.

8.   Foreign language projects still rule the roost with the FCPA and IP litigation cases dominating, and they are all over the market: DC, LA, NYC, Philly, the South, and West.  Europe postings have also increased.  We have posted 21 foreign language projects in the last 3 weeks.   Many are part of the rising number of FCPA follow-on civil lawsuits, projects we also track through Kevin LaCroix’s site (cited above).

9.    Lastly, in answer to your many questions, our job listings have expanded because our membership includes a great number of EDD vendors, in-house legal departments, and other entities who have posted projects and positions that benefit from a legal background.  In the last few weeks we have posted a number of project management and client services positions (not responsible for generating revenue) where the vendor has sought a contract attorney to manage a project (legal and non-legal) and handle the inevitable issues that arise, or, for instance, manage the contract administration function.  These have been with law firms, litigation support providers, corporate legal departments and corporate finance departments.

Some housekeeping:

a.  To subscribe to our job lists go here:  http://theposselist.com/mailman/listinfo   The master Posse List (called “Distribution” on that link) normally posts only articles of interest, trend reports, webinars/webcasts, etc.  If a project/position is national in scope or permits telecommuting then we will post on the “Distribution” list.

b.  starting this week, foreign language projects will post ONLY to the master foreign language listserv and the respective language listserv and will not post to the respective city/region listserv.  To subscribe to the Master Foreign Language listserv go here:  http://theposselist.com/mailman/listinfo/foreignlang_theposselist.com

We are still building out the individual language listservs.  So far we have:

Arabic

Chinese

Dutch

French

German

Greek

Hindi.Punjabi

Japanese

Portuguese

Spanish. 

We will be adding more and if you are on the Master Foreign Language list you will be notified what languages have been added.

Now, on to ILTA.   There have been some good blog posts (besides our own) which summarized the conference and we have them below.  But a few points from the conference that affect contract attorneys:

1.   Our  favorite “mantra” which we heard continually: greater use of contract attorneys by corporations, a trend we reported on earlier this year (click here) and recently confirmed by the Sapire Search Group (click here) and which Rees Morrison has covered numerous times on his blog (click here).  It has been reflected in our job postings.

     Note:  this is a topic area at the ACC annual meeting in October (http://am.acc.com) which we will be covering so we’ll have more to report.

2.   The march of EDD vendors into document review continues, the accelerating trend of corporations by-passing law firms and going directly to vendors.  Many EDD vendors are trying to move more into the “right side” of the EDRM as EMC has done (click here).  

3.   More important to the EDD vendors success is the continuing move of EDD directly into corporations and the (incessant) mantra of “early case assessment early case assessment early case assessment …” which is critical, of course, to the corporate client.  It’s the EDD vendors that can do this, not the regular staffing agencies, although many staffing agencies have paired up with EDD vendors to provide A-to-Z service (for example The Dine Group and Huron Consulting).  The reason is obvious:  the better you assess and plan, the lower the volume of data to review – and review is the biggest cost in the entire process.   Companies are desperate to save a buck or two, so they’ll be more likely to secure more ownership over the e-discovery process to enhance control and reduce costs.  Leveraging in-house technologies, internal legal teams will deploy early case assessment methodologies and data reduction strategies.

4.   And there is the Europe-Asia factor.  As litigation and arbitration cases are increasingly becoming global in nature, and data may come from a variety of countries, there is a mixture of legislative jurisdictions involved as well as a myriad of languages and cultures – including vast differences in the maturity of attitudes towards e-discovery.   With cross-border cases ever more frequent, the process of disclosure grows more complex. Documents created in any country and any language can be, and increasingly are, relevant to lawsuits, investigations or regulatory matters. 

     Note:  Much of the European work has been captured by EDD vendors and agencies with “boots on the ground” in Europe such as Hudson Legal London, Merrill Brink, Trilantic, and Outindex.  Much of this is attributable to the use of blocking statutes and the impact of European privacy laws which we have chronicled on our Europe page (click here). 

5.       Which is why … taking points 2, 3 and 4 above … you have the one-stop-shop-solution that corporations have been seeking and why companies like Catalyst Respository Systems,  eMag Solutions, EMC, eTERA Consulting,  FTI Consulting, Huron Consulting, and Merrill Brink have made such inroads.

6.   But “The Big Enchilada” discussed was Federal government contract work.  There is a flood of work from the FDIC, SEC, Treasury, etc. …  standard financial document review/processing contracts … hitting the FBO (see our background post by clicking here).

Many staffing agencies bid on and get these contracts (for example Pat Taylor and Associates in D.C. which is GSA qualified and has placed many contract attorneys on Federal projects).  But the EDD vendors are looking for the the large dollar projects such as, for example, Mega 3 contracts (competitively awarded contracts with the DOJ) that are for providing information technology and automated litigation support services to wide range of Federal government agencies.  These contracts go into the millions of dollars.  Scores of EDD vendors (and a growing number of regular staffing agencies) are now GSA Schedule qualified and bid on these contracts and many are setting up special teams for these projects which include contract attorneys.   We have posted a large number on our job lists.

7.   Another growth area:  the use of contract attorneys in the area of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) markets.  This is not a “new new thing” and has been chronicled for the last year and half (see for example here) but it was given heavy emphasis at ILTA.  There will be/has been a convergence of e-discovery and GRC technology and management and it is reshaping the industry.  Many contract attorneys are employed in these markets already.  Given the rate of technology shown at ILTA, and discussions we had with vendors, most e-discovery and GRC solutions will be cloud based in 10 years and corporations are moving toward solutions. 

In the U.S. and Europe one of the big combinations covering this area is eDiscovery Solutions Group, a major player in the GRC market, and Trilantic, a leading European-based e-discovery company.  See their recent press release here.  Another significant player is Fios Inc.

    Note:  we’ll discuss the GRC area is area in more detail in the coming weeks, most likely after the Association of Corporate Counsel annual meeting in Boston which we have been invited to attend.  The areas of governance, risk and compliance are major topics at this year’s event.

NOTE:   any and all projects or positions that we have received relating to points 1 through 7 immediately above have been posted and will continue to be posted to the appropriate Posse List job listserv.  In answer to your questions, there is no one geographic area where these jobs are.  We have posted them all over.  And there are scores of companies staffing in all of these areas.  We have only mentioned ones we interviewed at ILTA or in our D.C. office.

Now, for some good coverage/analysis of ILTA we recommend:

—  Chris Dale blog Edisclosure Information Project which you can access here and here.      

—  Ron Friedmann’s blog Prism Legal whch you can access here.

—  The ILTA/InsideLegal.com Technology Purchasing Survey which you can access here

—   The Above and Beyond KM blog which you can access here

Many of these topics deserve further discussion and analysis and we will attempt that in the coming weeks. 

And rather than bombard you daily with posts and articles about e-discovery and/or the contract attorney market, check our Twitter feed (top of the right hand column) or if you have a Twitter account follow us here:  www.twitter.com/PosseList

On Monday, August 24th, the first full day of the ILTA ’09 conference, The Posse List decided to be a fly on the wall at one of the educational tracks. We chose the Project Management Peer Group track and sat in on these four sessions: Maximize Project Success by Minimizing Risk; Project Management Executive Boot Camp; Calling All Stakeholders: Gathering the Right Requirements from the Right People; and Strategies for Successfully Managing Change. All of these sessions were held in a large room with space for 250 (attendees sitting around tables to be able to easily talk with each other), a wide stage with two huge screens to project presentations on them, and an area reserved for “clickers” – those people using laptops, netbooks, PDAs, etc.

Maximize Project Success by Minimizing Risk was an interactive session and sparsely attended with about 35 people (probably because it conflicted with a SharePoint 2007 session). There were three presenters, who addressed the entire group with background and examples of situations with risk, and how to weigh probability of risk versus its impact. Then they gave a scenario and broke the room up into thirds, each holding a hands-on mini-session discussing risk for that particular scenario and how to identify and then avoid, transfer, or minimize the risk. Then the results of each of the mini-groups were presented to the entire group for discussion. It was an interesting and effective way to maximize the involvement of the participants.

Project Management Executive Boot Camp had a host and a panel of four seasoned professionals who each gave a presentation. There were about 70 attendees, mostly non-lawyers, and after the presentations they engaged the panel in discussion. All in all, it presented useful tools for managing a project. The Posse List found the most interesting and novel one to be the “Information Radiator”, which is like an interactive bulletin board placed in a central location where all information on the project is posted and on which everyone involved can add their comments. It served as a central point for the team to walk past and even congregate, and addressed the principal reason that projects fail: lack of communication. However, the key takeaway from this session was that one size does not fit all – each project needs to be tailored to its own needs.

The Calling All Stakeholders session was also sparsely attended, again due to a possible conflict (Office 2007 deployment tools were featured in a session at the same time). There was a single presenter, and she did a top-notch job of keeping our attention and interest while she explained how to identify the stakeholders in a project and their relationship to the success of the project. Since only one-third of projects are deemed successful, this session seemed far more important than brushing up on Office 2007. The takeaway points were that you cannot ignore the stakeholders and succeed and how important it is to share information with everyone who is relevant to the project. Of course, this needs to be properly framed and put in the right language.

Strategies for Successfully Managing Change, was the last session we observed, and the most popular one. It followed the format of four speakers each presenting their views and then having a question and answer session, with contributions from the audience encouraged. The speakers discussed what is involved in change management, when a plan is needed, and the challenges to managing change. It was particularly noted how important it is to have resources properly allocated in advance and to agree up front when a project is done. There was a theme that attorneys are resistant to change and their adoption of change is a critical measure of success. Consequently, a lot of the discussion was how to win attorneys over and that it has to be done gradually. Sample comments: “Change is painful and they’re going to let you know.” “Adoption is hard – it invades their comfort zone!” Again, a key point was the importance of communication and collaboration.

Presentations of most of the presenters at ILTA are available as downloads through their website (information available by clicking here).  But scrolling through a powerpoint pack is not the same as being there, and The Posse List wanted to give you an idea of the various approaches to teaching used by the different sessions. These sessions, all being run and sponsored by a peer group of ILTA members, are probably less formal than most of the others, but also more effective.

The International Legal Technology Association, or ILTA, is currently holding their annual conference in Washington, DC, at the Gaylord Hotel and Conference Center, on the PG side of the Wilson Bridge.

For those subscribers to The Posse List who are in litigation support and live near Washington DC today (August 26th) is the best day for you at ILTA ’09.  And, yes, you can get a one-day pass for this impressive conference being held at the new Gaylord Hotel and Conference Center.

Look at the following educational offerings in the area of litigation support that ILTA ’09 offers on Wednesday. It is like a one-day immersion program. Added to this is being able to visit the exhibition area, where there are about 250 vendors discussing and demonstrating their products, and the ability to hobnob and network with others with similar interests.

 And as we have reported previously, there is an explosion of e-discovery work in Europe and Asia.  We will have a full post-ILTA wrap-up later in the week with a focus on vendors hiring/staffing up.

Our full ILTA coverage is here:  http://www.theposselist.com/category/ilta-2009

At the ILTA09 meeting held at the Gaylord Hotel in Prince George’s County outside of Washington, D.C., there is a relaxed atmosphere. Kicking off the conference with the keynote address on Monday morning was Tom Koulopoulos, founder of the Delphi Group, who implored the participants to “stand up” and “give a big hug” to a neighbor to break the ice. He was sharply dressed in a dark suit, white oxford cloth shirt, and red necktie, and one could look around in vain to find another necktie in the room.

Koulopoulos, in the center of a wide stage with a backdrop of ilta09 and framed by a wide arch reminiscent of the arches of the Wilson Bridge (which can be clearly seen spanning the Potomac River from the hotel), spoke energetically with his hands in motion as he paced to and fro on the stage making his points in an entertaining and humorous manner.

One principal point was that technology is sold by promoting values and behaviors. Another was that standing in the way of every innovation is the idea that everything that can be invented has already been invented, as stated in 1899 by Charles Duell, the then U.S. Commissioner of Patents. Another point was that we cannot predict what future products will be: “we do not shape innovation as much as we are shaped by it”. To think otherwise is arrogant, and we are arrogant.

When people are asked what they need, they do not know and only tell what they have and what already exists. But innovation is not about invention; the focus has to be on behavior. Any trajectories that we make of future products do not factor in behavior, which cannot be predicted or imagined. Koulopoulos used many examples to demonstrate this, foremost of which was the cellphone. No one predicted how popular or ubiquitous the cellphone would become, with 3.3 billion already sold, and Koulopoulos cautioned us not to be too sure of our ability to predict the future.

Koulopoulos also said that we do not like uncertainty. We like things to stand still; when things move, there is uncertainty. Success, he said, has the effect of stalling innovation by conferring the illusion of having achieved a status that can easily be put at risk by sudden movements. However, when we are in a recessionary economy, as now, many successful innovations are born. He gave examples of scores of successful companies whose innovations took off when the market was down. This happened because people want the pattern to change under such conditions; this is not the case when the economy is strong. Moreover, uncertainty creates more opportunities, not fewer.

We can be the visionaries and builders in our organizations. We just need to remember that when we run into reality, not to react in the standard or predictable manner, but to take the detour. To find out more about this and the other facets of technology and innovation that Koulopoulos spoke of, go to www.TKspeaks.com

Speaking of reality, on leaving the keynote address and looking through the massive grid of glass, one could see swimmers and sunbathers below in the foreground and the Virginia shore in the distance. ILTA09 is not just set in a new and majestic hotel, but in a resort perched at the edge of our national capital. It is an outstanding venue with an impressive lineup of speakers and exhibitors over four days (August 24-27, 2009).

The 32nd annual educational conference of the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) starts today, August 23rd.   This year it is at the Gaylord National just outside Washington, DC in National Harbor, Maryland.

It is considered one of the premier events for ILTA members and decision-makers to come together to share their experiences as technology leaders to talk about how they best use leading technologies, and how to best optimize the value of IT in law firms and law departments.

And given the explosion of work in Europe (click here) and growing work in Asia (click here) which we have reported extensively, there will be much to learn.

It is a four day event and the Posse List team will cover as much as it can.   Content goes across 26 tracks, and it is regarded as the place to make connections.    The registation fees are going to be out of the price range for many Posse List members to be able to attend.  So we will cover as much as we can.   Through the courtesy of Peggy Wechsler, Program Director for ILTA, we have been granted several media credentials for members of our staff to attend and our colleagues at Mayer Brown will be providing us additional material. 

But the Exhibit Hall (there will be 180+ vendor booths) is the place for Posse List members to see and to connect.  To see the current list of vendors click here.   There are Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Basic Sponsors.   Contact them to obtain exhibit hall passes (click here).

As we have posted, we are working in a part of the legal industry that is unusual because it is open to sharing and collaboration, through publications, quality conferences, and trade shows, and peer networking organizations such as ILTA, LegalTech, ABATech and the ILSL Conference.

Posse List members are a vast store of untapped creativity, expertise, and wisdom.  We all know that.  Go out and make connections.   Show people your value, your worth.  Don’t be negative.  And review our suggestions to “get out there” (click here).

And keep in mind the trend we first reported last year and that has continued to grow.  It’s the movement of the lawyers who know the most about EDD and who are the best at EDD who have moved out of law firms and into the employ of EDD service providers.   This ”tectonic shift” is probably yielding a long-term result where EDD service providers will largely taking this work away from law firms and EDD will no longer be considered part of the ordinary practice of law, leaving litigation lawyers to redefine what they actually do as clients route around them to the EDD service providers who have all of the talent.

And it affects the contract attorney world.  Because one thing we have heard over and over has been amore direct trend affecting contract attorneys:  law firms and corporations have begun asking e-discovery companies and vertically integrated staffing agencies whether they can provide “enterprise wide” e-discovery solutions: managing and/or staffing projects for a law firm or corporation in any of its offices across the U.S. and/or across the globe.  Can they be “the one” vendor?  And part of this is due to a sub-trend: doing the doc reviews “local” in Europe and Asia because of blocking statute rules and data privacy.

But more importantly, going to e-discovery companies – the folks processing the data from the start – and asking “…and can you staff the review?”  Which is why companies like Catalyst, eTERA, Trilantic, etc. are landing document review work.

We will be highlighting a number of vendors next week but to start two important vendors and major sponsors of ILTA:

* Catalyst Repository Systems  (click here)  – vendor of the industry leading review platform Catalyst CR

*  Fios Inc. (click here) — providing comprehensive services and expert guidance that transform the burdensome nature of electronic discovery into a streamlined, legally defensible business process.