Donna Seyle is an attorney and consultant who helps small firms and solo lawyers with innovative law practice strategies. She has established herself as a thought leader in the field and was kind enough to discuss these topics this week for the NetDocuments blog.

Q: Thanks for joining me Donna. First off, can you tell me a little bit about what you do?

A: My business, Law Practice Strategy, is all about the evolution of the legal profession resulting from technology and the recession. Given the nature of the job market for lawyers, I developed a strategy that enables solos and small boutique firms build successful practices based on the principles of cost-containment and project management, and the integrated use of content marketing, technology and fixed pricing. I work with lawyers, individually and in groups, helping them to develop a proactive mindset, understand the principles of the strategy and use the tools to start or redesign their practice.

Do your friends call you a "techno nomad" or a "21^st century minimalist"? If all you need to run your legal practice is any web enabled device, than you've probably been labeled by one of these terms.

You see, in the 90s, the prevailing trend was bigger is better: bigger cars, bigger hamburgers, bigger houses and bigger technology. But with a downturn in the economy, more fuel conscience consumers and the rise cloud computing, consumers and businesses alike are learning how to do more with less, including their technology needs.

It's that time of year again, kids are getting ready to go back to school, the snow cone stand outside NetDocuments HQ is packed with sales and support staff and the annual ILTA technology conference is about to begin.

This year, the ILTA Conference is being held in Las Vegas and will get underway on August 22nd and run until August 26th. We'll be there all week at booth #809/811. The theme for this year is Strategic Unity and should cover a number of relevant topics such as mobility, cloud computing and more.

This week I discussed the current trends in UK legal technology with Jason Plant, who is an IT manager at a large UK law firm and also writes a popular legal technology blog titled No Option for Law Firm!.

Q: Thanks for your time and sharing your knowledge with us Jason. First off, what do you see as the most important current trends in legal technology in the UK?

A: I posted on my blog what I thought were the top 5 legal technologies in 2010 at the start of the year. I stand by them although I probably would reorder them a little to give the following as the top three.

Part I: SaaS for Lawyers; Part II: SaaS for Financial Advisors; Part III: SaaS for Accountants

JFK's goal was to send a man to the moon; Bill Gates wanted to put 'information at your fingertips'; and Sun Microsystems claimed that the computer was the network. JFK's dream was realized by Neil Armstrong, Bill Gates's dream has been realized by the iPhone and Blackberry, and Sun Microsystems dream is now truly being realized by anyone with a Facebook, Pandora, or Google account through cloud computing and SaaS.

OREM, UTAH - June 2^nd, 2010. NetDocuments, the leading global Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) content management provider, today announced that Quintec International has become a primary UK Business Solutions Partner and Authorised Training Centre.

Since its inception, Quintec International has worked with law firms, corporate legal departments, government, insurance and financial institutions providing specialist consultancy in multi-layered collaborative environments, including document and content management systems, and advanced network monitoring, control and security software.

James Linehan uses NetDocuments to run a cloud based legal practice.

James Linehan runs a solo law firm in Oklahoma City. He is a pioneer in legal technology and has been running a virtual paperless firm for over 10 years. With the emergence of cloud technologies, James has eliminated his need for servers and software and now runs his practice from the cloud.

Problem

Although James Linehan had been running a virtual law firm for 10 years, he wanted to eliminate the stress caused by local servers and file backups, as well as the difficulties he was having in being able to work from anywhere.

The NetDocuments legal team is excited about their trip to Los Angeles in June for LegalTech West Coast, which will take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center on June 23rd and 24th.

During the show, the legal team, consisting of Matt Duncan, Keith Schneider and Kirsten Walker, will be hanging out at booth #325 and will be talking SaaS, cloud computing, document management and legal technology all week. Commenting about the event, Matt Duncan said, "LegalTech West Coast 2010 represents a great opportunity for us to meet with many of our existing law firm customers in the region, as well as connect with other firms that are growing increasingly interested in cloud computing and SaaS."

Tomorrow in New York, Microsoft is releasing its latest edition of Office 2010 Web Apps which, in my mind, will mark Microsoft's full acceptance of the SaaS software delivery model. Furthermore, Microsoft's development of web applications for the cash cow that is MS Office, officially shifts the standard from legacy software to SaaS.

In an interview with USA Today, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com said, "We're entering an entirely new paradigm." This new paradigm is one where businesses and consumers alike are no longer bound to physical locations or forced to use complex technology to manage networks and files but freed to move about freely in the clouds. About this paradigm shift, ECM chief executive Joe Tucci said, "We're now going through what I believe is pretty much going to be the biggest wave in the history of information technology.''

The NetDocuments legal team is getting excited about their trip to Boston for the Association of Legal Administrators' (ALA) Annual Conference & Exposition from May 3-6 2010. We will be represented by Keith Schneider, Matt Duncan and Kirsten Walker who will be hanging out at booth #306 talking legal technology and SaaS, as well as giving out a free iPad. Stop by the booth for more details.

ALA has done a fantastic job this year preparing for the event and providing ways for those that can't make it to participate. They have already created some informative videos about the show and have an interactive Twitter account at @ALABuzz. Furthermore, the Twitter #hashtag for the show is #ALAConf and you can find everyone that will be tweeting from the show at the ALA Conference Twitter List.