Robert Ambrogi

The cloud-based practice management application MyCase announced this week that it has  been acquired by AppFolio, a company that creates software for use in residential property management. MyCase founder and CEO Matthew Spiegel announced the acquisition in an email to subscribers this week, saying that he will…

Any site that sets out to become an exclusive online community for lawyers has a tough row to hoe. Lawyers are happy enough with LinkedIn and Facebook and do not seem all that interested in legal-vertical sites. We saw the ABA’s social networking site, LegallyMinded, shut down…

In 2010, a series of 15 workshops were held across the country to explore the idea that primary U.S. legal materials should be readily available to all and that government institutions should make these materials available in bulk as distributed, authenticated, well-formatted data. Public.Resource.Org,  together with Point.B Studio and Foolish Tree Films, created a 15 DVD set…

Reverse-auction websites where lawyers bid on cases posted by potential clients are nothing new. I’ve written here before about sites such as Shpoonkle and the now-defunct sites Tip-Mart.com and LawyerQuotesFast.com. Now there is a fledgling new entry in…

Coming Oct. 26 and 27 in Washington, D.C., is the annual Futures Conference presented by the College of Law Practice Management (of which I am a fellow) and the Georgetown Law Center. The conference focuses on the leading edge of law practice…

How has technology changed the practice of law and what does it suggest about the future of law practice? These are the slides from a presentation I gave Oct. 1, 2012, at the FirmFuture conference in Boston.

…

What is like to defend one of America’s most notorious serial killers? In 1979, having just left the Illinois Office of the Public Defender to open his own practice, Sam L. Amirante was retained to defend John Wayne Gacy, who was charged with the horrific murders of…

Users of Clio, the cloud-based law practice management platform, now have the ability to add custom fields to matters and contacts, the company announced today. That means that users can add data-entry fields of their own in addition to the pre-defined data fields provided by Clio.

Clio’s new custom fields feature…

Here is an interesting iteration of the standard law dictionary — one designed specifically to help legal professionals who are not native speakers of English. Available as an app for iPhone and iPad, TransLegal’s Law Dictionary not only provides the definitions for more than 3,000 legal terms, but…

A long time ago, I was the founding editor of Lawyers USA (when it was called Lawyers Weekly USA). I’ve had nothing to do with it for years, but I was interested to note that it launched a new podcast for lawyers yesterday. Called Lawyers in…

If you are anywhere near Boston, mark your calendar for Monday, Oct. 1, when the FirmFuture conference kicks off at the Copley Marriott. Focused on law practice management and legal technology, the conference features a great line-up of speakers and programs covering topics that range from IOLTA account management…

Last week marked the second phase of implementation of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. patent law signed into law on Sept. 16, 2011. Several key provisions of the law took effect last week, most notably new procedures for third parties to challenge patents after they have been issued and new…