Crazy busy October, starting with Above The Law‘s awesome Academy for Private Practice, held Oct. 2 at the Westin Times Square in New York City. The day-long event targeted small firms, and attracted an eclectic group, including everything from newbie lawyers to legal veterans. There were beginners, start-ups, would-be vendors—as well as lawyers with tons of Big Law experience who want to go boutique, and capitalize great tech.

Among the coverage:

Joe Borstein, “Life Imitates ALT: Big Law Habits Die Hard at IP Startup, ALT Legal.” Borstein interviews legal entrepreneur Nehal Madhani, who “rebranded his alternate legal company from Plainlegal to ‘Alt Legal’ “to better reflect his philosophy and vision of the future of the industry.” The intellectual property software automatically updates IP case statuses and deadlines, collects key details and generates IP filing, Borstein notes.

Madhani, CEO & founder of Alt Legal (www.altlegal.com) and Stephen Kane, CEO & founder of ArbiClaims (http://www.ArbiClaims.com), will be presenting at today’s CodeX meeting at 4:30 Eastern time. (Room N102 at Stanford Law School or via Bluegeans link.)

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Gaston Kroub, in “Beyond Big Law: The Importance of Good Visuals,” notes that he participated the “First Things First,” panel, along with CuroLegal’s Nicole Bradick, John Balestriere of Balestriere Fariello, and Rochelle Washington, law practice management advisory of the D.C. Bar Association (She totally rocked, btw.) Kroub is the founding partner of Kroub, Silbershere & Kolmykov, as well as a founding member at Markman Advisers.

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The “Cybersecurity and E-Discovery” panel, featuring Jeff Bennion (of counsel, Estey & Bomberger) and Roe Frazer (Co-founder and CEO, Cicayda) focused on key issues faced by small firms. Read Bennion’s article, “Cybersecurity—Sometime the Problem is You,” to get a taste of the discussion.

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Attorney  Sean Doherty, who writes a weekly tech column for ATL, discusses the “Break the Bottleneck: Managing Workflow” session in this week’s report. The panel included Nicole Black, Carolyn Elefant, Jennifer Ellis and Jared Correia. “When Ellis brought up using fax technology to communicate with clients, fellow panelists showed little support and no sympathy,” writes Doherty. “But fax remains a secure point-to-point (P2P) communication and a technology that is, out of the box, HIPAA-compliant,” he wrote, then diving into the nuances and security risks.

Questions from the audience segued his discussion into info about LexisNexis’ Time Matters, Amicus Private Cloud, Legal Workspace, Uptime Legal Systems, LibreOffice or Open Office and HoudiniEsp.  He even manages to get WordPerfect into his column.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

• The keynote by Ed Walters, CEO and co-founder of Fastcase, was one of the best I’ve ever experienced. Walters was passionate, funny and gave great concreate advice about how to market your practice and succeed as a lawyer. His PowerPoint was perfect! Understated, elegant, witty and powerful. So few people can do effective PPTs—his was the gold standard.

 

• Clio’s Joshua Lenon (who has a great title: “Lawyer in Residence,”) discussed tech integration.

• Watch for podcasts with many of the speakers by the Legal Talk Network.

• Check out the numerous tweets: #atlapp to get a great sense of the energy at ATLAPP.

Finally, a warm thank you to David Lat, founder and managing editor of Above the Law, and Hsiaolei Miller, vice president of business development at the parent company, Breaking Media, and the entire gang for inviting me to participate on the luncheon panel, with editors Elie Mystal and Joe Patrice.