In-House Counsel

Three specialized software packages: entity management, ethics compliance and IP management

By Rees Morrison

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) 2008 Law Department Survey at 11 reports on three kinds of specialized software for law departments. This post lists the packages and the percentage of the 45 respondent law departments, mostly large, that reported using them. The software with zero percent were probably on a multiple choice list but no respondent used them.

Entity management: Secretariat (Bridgeway) ? 20%; World Records (Transcentive) ? 5%; Two Step Software Corporate Focus ? 0%; and ?Other? ? 27% (See my post of Aug. 12, 2008: corporate secretary role with 21 references.).

Ethics compliance: LRN (Legal Research Network) ? 20%; Integrity Interactive ? 11%; and PLI/Corpedia, and ?Other? ? 2%. One out of three law departments in the survey had no such program and about the same percentage had developed one internally.

IP management (patents and trademarks): IPMaster (MDC) ? 14%; Patent Management System (CPI) ? 11%; Memotech/FoundationIP (CPA) ? 9%; Anaqua (5%); ipWorkflow and Pattsy (OPSolutions), and Innovator Enterprise Management System (MindMatters) ? 0%. Along with these seven, ?Other? garnered14% and ?None? 48% (See my post of April 1, 2005: IP databases and possible merger with matter management systems.). That half the departments have no system might be because a law firm maintains an IP management database on their behalf.

Full post as published by Law Department Management on February 15, 2009 (boomark / email).