Emerging Legal Technologies and Malpractice

New technologies have evolved the way in which legal practices serve client needs. Some features and functions of legal practice management software include: case management, time tracking, document assembly, contract management, calendaring and docketing, and time and billing.

Not only is the purpose of such software, as discussed above, to assist law firms with everyday practice needs, but many seek to reduce the possibilities of engaging in legal malpractice.

Essentially, it can be agreed that regardless of a lawyer’s competency to handle a legal matter, the possibility of a malpractice claims become increasingly more possible as the matter becomes more complex. Some of the major areas in which malpractice claims tend to follow, involve, but are not limited to, the following: deadlines, failure to settle, poor management of expectations/poor communication, lack of knowledge or preparation, and conflicts of interest.

According to one report on legal malpractice, depending on which malpractice carrier supplied the information, the highest figures reported 12 out of every 100 attorneys being targeted by malpractice suits.^[1] Figures from the same report, found the median figures being between $10,000 and $30,000 for total malpractice damages, in which a claimant was successful in recuperating. Furthermore, about 9.4 to 12 percent of malpractice damages exceeded $100,000.

  

1 This particular report stated, the “[Lawyers Mutual Insurance Company of Kentucky] and [Wisconsin Lawyers Mutual Insurance Company], report frequency of claims per 100 lawyers insured... WILMIC shows rates ranging from about 3.75 to 4.75 100 lawyers while for LMICK the corresponding rates range from 2.71 to 3.79 claims for 100 lawyers... The [Oregon State Bar Professional Liability Fund]... claim rate was about 12 per 100 insured.“ Reports for the Attorneys’ Liability Assurance Society are much lower because it reports claims per 1,000 lawyers and figures 6.5 and 8.5 per 1,000 lawyers since about 2000. Herbert M. Kritzer & Neil Vidmar, When the Lawyer Screws Up: A portrait of Legal Malpractice Claims and their Resolution (2015), available at 
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6182&context=faculty_scholarship 

THE RION CORP STANDARD:

RION Corp. has developed a cutting edge conflicts software application that is accessible in the Cloud. RION provides a secure, audit friendly, intuitive software program that is easy to use, highly accessible and customizable, and provides value through time and cost savings.

We promise that with our software, law firms are able to engage in the representation of clients knowing they are not violating the professional rules of responsibility.

MALPRACTICE VIOLATIONS BY TYPE

Type of Error	Percentage	U.S. Ranking
Legal Competency	11.3%	1
Planning Error	8.9%	2
Failure to Investigate	8.8%	3
Failure to File Documents	8.6%	4
Fail to Calendar	6.7%	5
Fail to know Deadlines	6.6%	6
Procrastination	5.9%	7
Fail to Obtain Consent	5.4%	8
Confilct of Interest	5.3%	9
Fraud	5.0%	10

* These are the top 10 violations reported by the American Bar Association. The complete chart listing all violations can be found at http://www.americanbar.org/publications/law_practice_home/law_practice_archive/lpm_magazine_webonly_webonly07101.html.

“Conflict of interest claims were down slightly to just 5 percent of all claims.  Computerized conflict checks, combined with standardized conflict resolution procedures, resulted in some improvements in this area.” 

* Randy Evans and Shari Klevens, How High Is Your Legal Malpractice Risk?, The Recorder, available at http://www.therecorder.com/id=12 02740408791/How-High-Is- Y our- Legal-Malpractice- Risk?mcode=0&curindex=0&curpage =2.

JOIN US TODAY!!!!!!

With our legal practice software we can lower the possibility of embarrassing, time-consuming, and potentially expensive risks associated with the failure to complete a comprehensive conflict check. With our highly efficient system we can lower the risk of an ethical violation for the failure to exhaustively complete a conflict check analysis. RION Corp. can offer affordable prices that will depend on the size of the firm. We also offer assistance in helping your firm successfully integrate our cutting edge software. 

Eric Fortineaux, Esq.
eric@rioncorp.com

Bridging the Gap Between IT and Legal

If you are reading this I'm willing to bet your career is in IT, law, or somewhere in between; and it is likely your job involves working with both of these groups. If you don't find yourself somewhere in the mix of the aforementioned groups, then you might just be a big nerd, like me. I have a legal background with tech experience and have spent many years working in roles that served as a liaison between legal and IT teams. I have always worked with legal technology, and because it fascinates me, I have a nice big "nerd" badge.

One thing that has really helped my career is embracing the fact that it is difficult to bridge the gap between lawyers and information technology professionals; as both groups tend to be a little stubborn. In this article, I will discuss three key points that have helped me build a bridge to lessen the gap between the two and ease the process of working together:

• First, know your audience. Don’t talk to a Senior Partner at a law firm or General Counsel at a corporation and expect them to know or care about the details of your error message. Keep your communications clear and concise with whomever you speak to (this advice is generally ubiquitous) and let them know you are working to solve the issue with the greatest expedience.  Lawyers do not like it when you: a) "talk down," for example, by explaining a very rudimentary feature in Microsoft that everyone knows about (such as: what “read-only” means); or b) use IT jargon. If you're talking to an attorney about “unhandled exceptions,” “resource contention,” “I/O," etc., which they probably don't understand, they will tune you out. DO be clear with your IT staff about technical jargon, but if you are in a role where you have both legal and technical experience, you are not likely responsible for running SQL scripts or checking the event handler for application errors / warnings / etc.  Communicate with IT as the end-user, and if necessary, insist that you get on the call with your IT staff and your vendor’s technical support staff to troubleshoot and escalate issues as need be.  

• Second, be prepared. This involves making sure that you have researched and tested the issues and / or problems you are working on prior to making your recommendation to your legal and IT teams.  Be sure to run a thorough QA of the results of your work before you send it on to the legal team, and test / troubleshoot / resolve what you can on your end before escalating issues to your IT Support Team. Before contacting anyone from Legal or IT - ask yourself "what questions are they going to ask me?" Make sure you have answers (or status on things you don't know the answer to yet).

• Third, do what you can to be pro-active. Let's say you're aware that your file server is running low on space, or your indexing service may have been disrupted because of that unscheduled but absolutely necessary mid-day server reboot, take some time each afternoon before you leave the office and each morning when you return to do a full system check to be sure that you have covered your bases.  Finally, document EVERYTHING and make sure all interested parties are being updated in a timely manner and before they'd think to ask you.

These key points will help you become a trusted advisor within both groups at your organization, as well as expert liaison in between IT and legal groups. If you have additional ideas that you've learned along the way please share them in the comments - I look forward to discussing this topic with you!

Ryan Vago
Founder & President
RION Corp.