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Canada’s largest legal information technology conference, Legal IT 3.0, will kick off next week. Speakers at the conference include Brett Burney, Dominic Jaar, Ross Kodner, and Kevin O’Keefe.

For readers of this blog, a session of particular interest will be “10 Things Every Lawyer Should Know about Software-as-a-Service“, delivered by Clio’s co-founder and President Jack Newton.

Lawyers have been becoming increasingly exposed to Software-as-a-Service, as web-based applications such as Google Docs, Salesforce.com and Zoho have become increasingly pervasive. New web-based practice management applications such as Clio finally bring the benefits of Software-as-a-Service to the legal market. The focus of Jack’s talk will be ten aspects of Software-as-a-Service that every lawyer should be familiar with, including cost analysis, security, data privacy and protection.

Thank-you to Dominic Jaar and the rest of the LegalIT planners for the opportunity to speak, and we look forward to seeing you all there. If you’re not already on planning to attend, we encourage you to register and attend LegalIT 3.0.

We’re honored that Clio has been selected as one of TechnoLawyer‘s “Best in Show” from the ABA TECHSHOW 2009.

Congratulations to the other honorees:

• Web-based Practice Management: Clio
• Automated Backup and Storage: Mozy
• Managed Law Office Services: Total Attorneys
• Automated Activity Tracking: WorkTRAKR

Thank-you to TechnoLawyer, and specifically TechnoLawyer’s intrepid TECHSHOW reporter Mazyar Hedeyat for the honor. Read Mazyar’s complete list of ABA TECHSHOW 2009 Best of Show picks.

Mazyar has also posted his personal take on the hot trends at TECHSHOW on his pm blog.

This week’s Lawyer2Lawyer podcast, courtesy of the folks at Legal Talk Network, focuses on Software-as-a-Service as it relates to the legal profession.

Lawyer2Lawyer’s hosts, Bob Ambrogi and J. Craig Willliams, discuss Software-as-a-Service with guests Jack Newton, Co-founder and President of Clio, and Erik Mazzone, the Director of the Center for Practice Management for the North Carolina Bar Association.

The podcast takes an in-depth look at the advantages, disadvantages, risks and even ethical issues when it comes to legal Software-as-a-Service.

Listen to the podcast on the Lawyer2Lawyer Software-as-a-Service page, or download it directly

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Lawyer2Lawyer is the leading podcast legal podcasts, reaching over 69,000 lawyers every week, and was recently selected as the best legal podcast by the ABA.

TechnoLawyer‘s Seth Rowland, a legal technology consultant and practice management expert, has issued one of the most comprehensive reviews of Clio to date to the TechnoLawyer mailing list. Seth is a nationally known technologist whose company, Basha Systems, has helped many law firms build customized practice management and workflow solutions.

Seth’s review is both comprehensive and balanced. A small excerpt from the review:

All of [the training for Clio ] was done in a relatively leisurely one-hour — a stunning achievement. The tagline of Clio is “Practice Management Simplified.” This captures the essence of Clio. All of the basic tasks that constitute legal practice management are presented to the user in an elegant, cohesive, and intuitive system.

In reviewing the system I thought of my brother-in-law, Nathan, a solo practitioner with two paralegals. His
practice is a mix of personal injury, real estate, immigration, and criminal law cases — high volume, but
small documentation with an active calendar and extensive notes to file. Nathan has no time to learn, configure, and support a full-blown client-server system. Clio would be perfect for him. At $49/month for each attorney, $25/month for each paralegal, Clio would cost him $100/month. All he would need is three computers connected to the Internet; he would not need a network, a file server, or any software on his desktop other than Microsoft Office and an email client.

If you are still using Excel to manage your time sheets and Outlook to manage your calendar and tasks, you should look closely at Clio. If you have a “workgroup” with all your files shared in the “My Documents” on a “John’s Computer,” you should look at Clio. If your concept of automated backup is a USB attached hard drive, you should look at Clio. If you don’t want to pay for the services of expensive consultants like myself, you should look at Clio.

If you’re a TechnoLawyer subscriber you’ll have the review in your inbox; if you’re not, sign up for TechnoLawyer today and you’ll receive access to back-issues of the TechnoFeature (including the Clio review).

Thanks for taking the time to write the review and for providing us with great ideas on continuing to improve Clio Seth!

Kevin O’Keefe‘s team of intrepid journalists, Rob La Gatta and Colin O’Keefe, have just posted an interview with Jack Newton, co-founder of Clio, on their newly launched LexConference site. Topics covered in the interview include Legal SaaS, a broad overview of Clio’s features, a discussion of Clio’s iPhone interface, and the importance of Clio’s newly launched offline application, Clio Express.

Congrats to Kevin and the rest of the LexBlog team on the launch of LexConference.

ABA TECHSHOW 2009 Interviews: Jack Newton, Co-Founder & CEO of Clio from LexConference on Vimeo.

We just returned from an extremely busy and rewarding week at the ABA TECHSHOW. As usual, it was an engaging show with a variety of interesting vendors and talks.

Throughout the show the level of energy and excitement was palpable. Although we’re in the midst of a recession, it wasn’t evident given the vibrant tone felt during the sessions and on the exhibit floor. Many others at the conference shared the same observation – it was a heartening experience to see so much excitement around legal technology despite the difficult economic climate.

We were also pleased to note, both from the exhibit floor and from the CLE sessions, that Software-as-a-Service is clearly gaining interest and traction in the legal community. At last year’s TECHSHOW, where we launched our public beta program, Clio was one of the only Software-as-a-Service providers exhibiting. This year, we were happy to share the exhibit floor with many excellent new Software-as-a-Service vendors, and hope to see even more next year.

Likewise, Dominic Jaar, one of the conference’s faculty, observed that the legal technology business in the midst of a profound sea of change in a post titled Software-as-a-Service: Reshaping the legal software landscape on the ABA TECHSHOW blog.

Overall, as compared to TECHSHOW 2008, we observed a large boost in the number of talks that covered SaaS in the CLE sessions, with this year’s topics including:

• Software as a Service: Can You Say Goodbye to Upgrade Headaches with SaaS? by
  Catherine Sanders Reach and David Whelan
• Taking the Leap: Essential Technology for the New Law Practice by Bruce Dorner and Eric Mazzone
• Web JD: If You’re Not Serving Your Clients Online Someone Else Will Be by David Bilinsky and Steve Matthews
• Smart Ways to Work Together: Collaboration Tools and Technologies for Lawyers by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell
• Got Apple Envy? Macs in a PC World by David Sparks and Ben Stevens
• Lawyering in the Cloud: Creating a Virtual Firm by David Bilinsky and R. Andrew Smith

One of the highlights of the show was the keynote address by Richard Susskind, a legal technology expert with over 25 years of experience. In his address, which Dennis Kennedy did a nice job of liveblogging, Susskind argued that the impact that the Internet and technology is having on the legal profession has not peaked, as some lawyers think it has, but rather is accelerating. Susskind argued that to survive, lawyers will need to embrace technology to make themselves more efficient and effective.

The conference also offered a great opportunity to catch up with friends from last year’s show and to build some great new relationships. If you didn’t attend TECHSHOW this year, plan on attending next year – it’s a blast.