New law is a term that has become synonymous with legal innovation and legal technology. It is a catchall industry term that encompasses all the different initiatives and strategies that firms are undertaking to transform their businesses and deliver better service to clients. It includes the adoption of technology, collaboration with non-lawyers and non-legal professionals on the business side of the legal department, working with underserved communities and creating innovative strategies that have never been a part of legal practice in the past.

The accelerating pace of change and significant global challenges that cannot be mastered by any single person, function, enterprise, stakeholder group or nation require a level of collaboration that is unprecedented. The legal function has the opportunity and the responsibility to be a leader in this new paradigm of collaborative problem solving.

DRAGNET is an organized list of free law-related Web resources for conducting research, including links to general legal information and databases on treaties, administrative laws, and legislative history; a comprehensive search engine for finding online legal articles and cases; and free legal video tutorials.

As the legal industry changes from provider to customer-centricity, it will focus on delivering value that produces net promoter scores and not self-congratulatory awards or profit preservation. This paradigm shift will change the focus of the legal industry from its legacy delivery models and outdated legal education, regulation and dispute resolution mechanisms to delivering innovative solutions for the benefit of customers and society at large.

Legal providers will rely on an integrated platform-based delivery structure from which agile, fluid and on-demand resources with verifiable, material expertise and experience will be sourced. They will collaborate with the allied legal professions and enterprise colleagues on the business of law side to integrate their services, erasing artificially lawyer-created distinctions between provider sources and removing the artificial barrier that prevents collaboration for efficiency, risk mitigation and cost savings.

During the course of a year, a legal department must handle all manner of complex matters that are unique, time sensitive, costly and/or confidential in nature. To effectively manage these matters, legal departments must develop and implement an effective legal project management system. This includes identifying legal risks, defining project goals and requirements, assigning tasks to team members, monitoring and measuring progress, identifying the best solution for the matter at hand, and ensuring compliance with relevant legislation. The legal project management system must be continuously updated and enhanced to reflect current technology and the needs of the business and its clients. The eDiscovery platform is the ideal tool to enable these critical activities. It helps legal teams achieve operational excellence and create a world-class legal organization. It helps them be proactive in identifying, eradicating and mitigating legal risk and capturing business opportunities, produce more informed and timely risk assessment and decision driving and drive higher quality legal work that is value-based rather than volume-based. It also improves the efficiency and effectiveness of legal operations by eliminating manual and repetitive activities and automating processes that were previously manual, error-prone and labor intensive.

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