Research

Lawyers take notes. Lots of notes. Client notes, research notes, brainstorming, checklists, ideas, reminders and the list goes on. Taking notes on paper is comfortable and efficient, but extremely limited. Handwritten notes on paper cannot be searched or repurposed. They are difficult to share or use for collaboration. Paper notebooks begin to proliferate like bunnies. In our multimedia world paper…

By Catherine Sanders Reach and Ben Schorr For many years the promise of knowledge management in law firms was poised to take off, but the technology and the results proved expensive, illusive or both. Effective knowledge management puts content at the fingertips of those who develop and provide your products and services. Knowledge management helps shorten development cycles for new…

When Google’s generative AI Bard was released, it was less capable than competitors like ChatGPT, Claude2, and Microsoft’s Bing Chat. However, with the introduction of the DeepMind project named Gemini, there are many enhancements including the ability to reason in Google Workspace products like Drive and Gmail, as well as the release of the Google NotebookLM, a “smart” notebook. Google’s…

Search engines like Google, generative AI applications like ChatGPT, and automation tools like Zapier serve distinct purposes and have different capabilities. The key is choosing the right tool for specific business needs and use cases, rather than trying to replace one with another. With an understanding of the unique capabilities of each, organizations can combine these technologies to enhance productivity….

The technology that powers ChatGPT, Open AI using a large language model (LLM), can be turned to look at specific data repositories. Law firms can create tools that can be used internally or externally to query and chat with a firm’s own data. Several products are already on the market that let you turn an LLM generative AI towards your…

Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard are two chat-based search engines powered by artificial intelligence. What can they do? Let’s run through the basics, including how you can get access to these tools. Google’s Bard If you haven’t already, you can sign up to get on the waitlist to try Bard. Bard is listed as an experiment, and readily admits to…

During the program “Weathering the Storm: Managing Your Firm Through an Economic Downturn” Erik Mazzone and Catherine Sanders Reach presented “Free and Cheap Technology for Thrifty Lawyers“.  As law practice becomes increasingly technology-oriented, law firms spend on technology has also increased to command an ever-larger share of the budget. We can’t turn back the clock and practice without all the…

Podcasts are serial audio programs on a vast range of topics that you can subscribe to and listen at your leisure. While you can listen to them on a browser, there are podcasts players that provide more bells and whistles for your mobile device. What podcasts cover practice management topics? What if you want to go from listening to starting…

Every week subscribers receive the ICYMI enewsletter from the NCBA Center for Practice Management. The newsletter highlights tips, tools, trends, and techniques to help your law practice. Following are a few quick tips from past issues of the newsletter, highlighting tech know-how you can use today! How to Compress Images in Microsoft PowerPoint Many presentations built in Microsoft PowerPoint result…