Do As I Say
| Author | Ed Finkel |
| Pages | 34-35 |
34 || ABA JOURNAL JULY 2018
Business of Law
that were socially r esponsible, and more than half say they
are influenced by key sust ainability factors, such a s a company
being environmental ly friendly or being known for its com-
mitment to social va lue. Personal values were more important
to them than persona l benefits, such as the cost of the serv ice
or the convenience .
But while more than two -thirds of senior executives say their
companies are more comm itted to corporate citizen ship than
they were three yea rs ago, the public doesn’t agree, skeptically
saying that about one-thi rd is doing better, according to Nielsen.
It takes a third par ty to justify the eor ts.
“It’s important for me to be valued and to w alk the walk,”
says John Montgomery, founder of Lex Ultima, a law fir m and
consulting company in Point Reyes S tation, California, ded icated
to helping businesses tran sition more seamlessly into B Corps.
His oce is energy-e cient—using 100 percent renewable
power. He has an on-demand water heat er, LED lights and a low
environmental foot print. Being a B Corp simply verifies his e orts.
“As a startup lawyer, the ec onomic data shows that businesses
that adopt principles of sust ainability outperform their c onven-
tional peer s,” Montgomery says.
“Not only did this make sen se from a social and environmenta l
perspective but it als o made sense from a business perspect ive,”
he says of his one-man firm .
PROS VS. CONS
Still, being a B Cor p isn’t good for every firm, says Regina
Robson of boutique law firm Robson & Robson just out side
Philadelphia. The firm s tarted the process to be come a B Corp
but elected not to proceed .
She says being a B Corp presents s ome unusual challenges,
particula rly for small or midsize firms. “Assessing per formance
requires a continua l time commitment and attention to opera-
tions,” Robson say s.
An annual repor t rating performance in a number of cat egories
is required, and fi rms can earn points in va rious assessments
either via their own work (doing pro bono work is a plus) or
servicing client s who are benefit entities or who are engaged
in socially res ponsible endeavors, Robson says.
“Consequently, a firm whose clients a re engaged in water
conservation, sus tainable sourcing or serving under served
communities might be able to c onsider the client’s activities
in their own asse ssment,” Robson says. “Firms with a more
traditional client ba se would not have such an advantage.”
Also, she says, firm s that rent oce space may have little or no
leverage in ensuring t heir oce isn’t harmful to the envi ronment.
Still, for those who have been a ble to get certified as a B Corp,
the pros outweig h the cons.
“Some clients sought the firm out be cause of its status,” says
Doug Singer, whose former firm, Falcon & Singer, had been
certified as a B C orp.
He says his new firm, Singer Law i n White Plains, New York,
is going through the cer tification process. “Most importa ntly,
it communicated to ot her businesses that the firm didn’t just
talk the tal k: The firm lived it every day,” he says. Q
Do As I Say
Good news for lawyers who
hate transcribing by hand—
there’s a growing list of
automatic tools on the market
By Ed Finkel
When legal technolog y
company Everlaw announced
in December it was add ing
automatic transcr iption for
audio and video to its cloud-
based e-di scovery platform, it became the
latest in a grow ing crop of transcription tools
for lawyers to use in t heir day-to-day work.
Everlaw automatically conver ts depositions,
voicemails and other multi media to text,
analyzing fi les as they are processed and
removing the ne ed for litigation support
teams to play back enti re files or send them
to outside service s for transcription. Instead,
they can quickly s earch, annotate and navigat e
the transc riptions.
The 8-year-old cloud-based prov ider of
e-discover y tools has “a whole team watching
lawyers in the w ild, seeing what they do,” says
Jon Kerry-Tyerman, vice president of business
development at Everlaw, adding that the
company spent a lot of time looking into
what lawyer needs st ill had to be addressed.
In developing the automatic transc ription
tool, he adds, Everlaw reali zed “if you have a
case with 10,000 voicema ils and you have to
figure out what they’re ta lking about, it’s a
nightmare to have to sit t here and listen to it.”
TRANSCRIPTION SERVICES ABOUND
For many in the legal field, the most popula r
option continues to be Nuance’s Dragon soft -
ware. Nicole Black, a law yer and legal technol-
ogy special ist at MyCase, says lawyers have a
number of options for transcript ion. But she
hears about the Dragon sof tware the most. Most
often it’s used for dictat ing memos or letters.
“It’s designed for that purpose: speech t o
text,” she says. “When I wa s practicing, that’s
what I used it for, to dictate a memo or let ter.
It makes the most sense to dic tate, especially
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALI MAZRAIE SHADI/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
Technology
To continue reading
Request your trial