Robert Ambrogi

I noted last week that legal publisher ALM — parent to Law.com, The American Lawyer, The National Law Journal, Law Technology News, and other national and regional publications — had announced that it would begin offering free digital memberships, effective Aug. 23. The free memberships would provide “bundled benefits”…

Every trial lawyer hopes to have the perfect witness. Now, a new website offers to help prepare your witnesses to become just that, through a 60-minute training video.

Called (of course) The Perfect Witness, the site aims to make witness training a “simple, effective, and efficient” process. Lawyers pay $119 for…

Lots of lawyers are using Dropbox to store files online and access them from multiple devices. According to the 2013 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, it is not only the most popular cloud storage platform among lawyers, but also the most popular cloud-based application of any kind among lawyers. Even so, many…

Legal professionals have lots of options for fee-based legal research services these days, but the most popular among them all is WestlawNext, according to the latest ABA Legal Technology Survey Report. Of all lawyers who use fee-based online legal research services, 28 percent say the one they use most often is WestlawNext.

And as if…

As the lifespan of a legal blog, 10 years is a long time. Thus, it was both notable and regrettable to read yesterday’s announcement by Pamela Jones that she would be discontinuing Groklaw, the legal news blog she has run since May 16, 2003. More disturbing than her decision to shut it…

A few days off the grid and I return to several notable announcements from companies that cater to lawyers:

A business development platform launched. Yesterday, Thomson Reuters Elite announced the release of Business Development Premier, a platform for customer relationship management and business…

On this edition of Lawyer2Lawyer, we speak with ABA President James Silkenat, on his first day in office, about his goals and initiatives for the ABA agenda.

James Silkenat has been working in international law for more than 40 years. He joined the ABA’s first delegation to China in the mid-1970s and since…

The number of lawyers who describe their practice as a “virtual” law practice declined this year to 5 percent, from 7 percent the year before, according to the 2013 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report. The number of virtual law practices is higher among solos, where 7 percent describe themselves as virtual, and among firms of…

A coalition of legal groups concerned about protecting courts from the influences of money and partisan politics launched a website yesterday, Fair Courts Litigation, that is intended to track litigation that could impact the fairness and impartiality of court systems. The site will serve as a…

What are the most popular legal and business smartphone apps among lawyers? According to the 2013 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, the most popular legal app by a long shot is Fastcase. The most popular business app is Dropbox.

The survey asked lawyers whether they had ever downloaded legal-specific smartphone apps and,…

The percentage of lawyers who say they use cloud-based software and services jumped from 21 percent in 2012 to 31 percent this year, according to the 2013 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report. Given that the percentage had held somewhat steady for three years — 20 percent in 2010, 16 percent in 2011 and…

Lawyers’ social media use continues to grow, but only modestly, according to just-released findings of the 2013 American Bar Association Legal Technology Survey Report. More lawyers and law firms blog, tweet and participate in social media sites this year than last, but the growth is far from dramatic — generally just a few percentage points.…