Today marks our one year anniversary.  In December, 2010, while attending the Georgetown Advanced E-Discovery Institute,  Judge Elizabeth LaPorte asked me a rhetorical question, “How will we train the 10,000 lawyers that appear before the Federal bar in San Francisco, much less the rest of the country?” 

A few minutes later, I approached my good friend, Larry Center, the Georgetown Law Assistant Dean who convenes the Institute each year, and made a promise that, by the beginning of the Spring, I would launch an online, on-demand, interactive, educational platform that would enable lawyers and non-lawyers to gain access to the objective, thorough learning required to manage digital information as evidence.  And we did just that!

Working with the tremendous talent of Alex Santos at Collabor8 Learning, the team at Blue Apple Technology, Dave Courvoisier (the “voice” of the Academy Courses), Scott Whitney at Podworx, and the input and help of many others, we dared to do something different, something better, something effective.  Putting my name on the work of these professionals does a dis-service to the value of  their contributions. 

Today is also marked by the morning news. The New York Times reported on the Harvard/MIT joint announcement to offer an online platform for “massively open online courses”.  Coursera is a new venture, with $16 million in venture funding, launched on the West Coast, pursuing the same capabilities of technology to transform how we learn, how we engage with learning, how we empower each individual to pursue the knowledge they seek differently.  Both pay tribute to the Khan Academy, the brilliant initiative to create visual, digital quality learning accessible to all.

What are the features touted by these innovations?  Perhaps it is no surprise they have many of the same features we worked so hard to embed into our offering, a year before either of these recent announcements!  For example:

• visual, engaging, interactive content.
• intentional, frequent review questions to reinforce the effectiveness of the learning process.
• modular components, serving content in smaller segments, thereby enabling “non-linear” exploration by the user to the content required to deliver the answers they need to do their jobs.

But when we look at these behemoths of innovation, we learn we are already doing things not yet incorporated into their offerings.  Adult professionals learn differently, and need to use what they learn differently, in order for their investment of time to be effective.  They don’t need to go back to college; they need learning that responds to their reality. 

All of our content reflects high quality instructional design.  That means every course, every lesson, is architected into a larger catalog. The result is a full curriculum, just like a real university.  Unlike virtually any commercial offering of CLE, our courses are not a hodge-podge of powerpoints and back-of-the-room videos, but are designed to build, grow, and enrich the learning and capabilities of our subscribers.

More importantly, in my personal opinion, adult professionals need to walk away with tools connected to the learning.  The biggest challenge we all have in exposing ourselves to new knowledge is to figure out how to translate that knowledge into the tools and work we do!  So, our RitterMaps and our Practice Tools that can be downloaded out of every course do the hard work of organizing the knowledge into tools you can use immediately.  The instructional designers call these “sidekicks”; I like to think of them as the weapons of war that empower our subscribers to be better warriors in their work!

There is one thing more we are capable of doing.  The Academy content’s modular content enables us to change the content to remain updated to current developments, or new technologies, legal rules, or business practices.  It’s easy to teach Algebra and other stable content; its more challenging to build an online, interactive environment that enables dynamic changes to be integrated into the content itself, and on a cost-effective basis.

It seems everyone today wants to create and sell a “certified” badge—take our courses and we sell you a “Cxxx” to put behind your name.  We are deliberately taking a different path.  The real challenges for any professional are to remain current, to be able to refresh their knowledge, and to acquire tools they can use.  We hope to be able to meet those needs, and to continue to create and deliver the tools and knowledge assets that keep our subscribers capable and prepared. 

So, its been just one year.  But there are still thousands of lawyers, in San Francisco and many, many other locations, not prepared to sustain the rule of law in a digital world.  Their clients are not well-served by their ignorance.  The rule of law is not well-served by their refusal to learn.  Pass the word—Ritter Academy is for real.  It works. 

On behalf of everyone on our team, our thanks for your business, and for your support of our vision.  Its been nice to learn from the announcements by others that we started, and are continuing down, the right path! 

At the end of last week, Judge Andrew Carter of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York upheld the decision of Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck allowing the use of computer-based technology to review millions of e-mail records for possible production in a gender discrimination lawsuit. Monique da Silva Moore, et al. v. Publicis Group, SA, et al, 11 Civ 1279.

When the sage and business-focused Wall Street Journal used the headline of this post, you can guess that I heard from a lot of people yesterday.  It got me to thinking—can we connect the dots and see a different picture?

One of the powerful ambitions we have in creating RitterMaps is to enable the legal professional to be more effective in communicating with the digital world about the legal requirements that exist, and how those requirements can be met through the effective design and management of IT.  Visualization is critical, not only to enabling the power of pShareThis

Recently, while participating in the planning of a major conference on e-discovery, the planning committee considered various topics.  One of the topics proposed involved addressing how electronically stored information (ESI) can be admitted as evidence.

Beginning  March 29, 2012, I will be joining 1SecureAudit in a new four part briefing series designed for in-house counsel on automating the management of legal risk.  This series focuses on four risk areas where technology and best practices in managing risk can be innovatively applied to reduce the likelihood of adverse events.  The remaining briefings are scheduled once per month during the next quarter.  Together, these briefings will introduce a model for building a legal risk management program that works in the 21st century.ShareThis

One of the truly fascinating dimensions of e-discovery is evaluating whether lawyers’ conduct which becomes the basis for sanctions imposed by a court is truly the result of the lawyer’s negligence or ignorance of what is required to find and preserve ESI, or involves, instead, a calculated gamble to not get caught. 

This blog presents the fifth of five steps to achieve a defensible process in managing digital information as evidence.  These five steps focus on the truly legal services that lawyers perform – and do not focus on the technical and procedural aspects actually processing filtering, and analyzing information as potential evidence.

Here is a summary of the first four steps:

1.  Identify the rules that govern.

2.  Assemble the resources and tools required.

This blog presents the fourth of five steps to achieve a defensible process in managing digital information as evidence.  These five steps focus on the truly legal services that lawyers perform – and do not focus on the technical and procedural aspects actually processing filtering, and analyzing information as potential evidence.

Here is a summary of the first three steps:

1.  Identify the rules that govern.

2.  Assemble the resources and tools required.

3. Visualize the work product you will create.

This blog presents the third of five steps to achieve a defensible process in managing digital information as evidence.  These five steps focus on the truly legal services that lawyers perform—and do not focus on the technical and procedural aspects of actually processing, filtering, analyzing information as potential evidence.