The University of Texas School of Law Wins
2010 AAJ Regional Championship

The University of Texas School of Law won the Regional Championship at the 2010 American Association for Justice Student Trial Advocacy Competition held February 25th-28th in Phoenix, Arizona. The team will now go on to compete in the national rounds in New Orleans, Louisiana, March 18-21, 2010.

Two teams represented UT at this year's AAJ regional mock trial competition. Team members Katherine Hacker ('10), Tiffany Larsen ('10), Nicholas Taunton ('11) and Stephen Schifrin ('10) progressed to semifinals. Team members Cedric Allen
('11), Austin Barton ('10), Rachel Gilbert ('11), and Adriana Rodgriguez ('11) beat the University of Houston in the final round to win the regional title. The University of Texas School of Law was the only school to have both teams advance past the preliminary rounds. Both of UT Law's AAJ teams were coached by Jay Ellwanger ('01) of DiNovo, Price, Ellwanger & Hardy, LLP, Michael Golden ('01) of Boulette & Golden, LLP, and Stefanie Scott ('08) also with DiNovo, Price, Ellwanger & Hardy, LLP.

The American Association of Justice's National Student Trial Advocacy Competition is a large and prestigious competition. Over 200 teams across the nation compete in the fourteen regional competitions with only the top team from each regional advancing to national rounds.

For more information, please contact cbrandt@law.utexas.edu.

Read more here: http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/advocacy/AAJReglChamps10.html

Top Austin Intellectual Property Attorneys Join DiNovo Price Ellwanger & Hardy

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Firm Experiences Dramatic Growth

Austin, TX -- Austin-based DiNovo Price Ellwanger & Hardy LLP, a leading intellectual property and commercial litigation boutique law firm, announces the addition of two leading intellectual property litigation specialists. The former managing partner of the Austin office of Jenkens & Gilchrist, Bill Parrish, and a former partner with the international law firm DLA Piper, Ray Mort, have both been named as the firm’s newest partners.

"Bill and Ray represent two of the state’s most recognized experts in intellectual property litigation. They are certainly key additions to our team and we are very excited to have them on-board. They bring both the talent and experience to provide our clients with world-class representation," said Jay Ellwanger, managing partner, DiNovo Price.

Bill Parrish joins DiNovo Price from Winstead where he served as a shareholder for the past two and a half years. Prior to Winstead, Parrish served as managing partner of Jenkens & Gilchrist’s Austin office and on the firm’s board of directors. With more than 30 years of experience in a wide range of intellectual property and complex commercial litigation matters, he has repeatedly been recognized as one of the "Best Lawyers in America" by the peer reviewed publication Best Lawyers and as a "Texas Super Lawyer" by Texas Monthly Magazine.

Ray Mort joins DiNovo Price from Kansas City, Missouri-based Shook, Hardy & Bacon where he served as a partner in the firm’s intellectual property practice. Prior to joining Shook Hardy, Mort was an intellectual property partner in the Austin office of DLA Piper—the world’s largest law firm. He has overseen all aspects of intellectual property litigation and counseling throughout his career. With more than 15 years of experience, his practical expertise extends to an array of complex, technical subject matters.

"I was drawn by DiNovo Price’s incredibly talented team of attorneys and strong client-base, and by the fact that they have been involved in such sophisticated litigation involving giants in the industry. Additionally, as a boutique firm, DiNovo Price provides me with the opportunity to focus on IP and commercial litigation, and create more flexible, alternative and contingency fee structures designed to meet clients’ specific needs," said Parrish. "I look forward to shaping the firm and contributing on numerous levels."

DiNovo Price is currently involved in or has recently resolved litigation against Microsoft, Dell, Google, Yahoo!, GE Healthcare, Siemens, Philips, HP, Kodak and Epson. Serving domestic and internationally based companies, public corporations, privately held businesses, high net worth individuals and emerging technology ventures, DiNovo Price represents both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide variety of disciplines, venues and forums.

"I am excited to join the team at DiNovo Price. They are doing exemplary work in the IP field," said Mort. "DiNovo Price’s focus and flexibility really presents an opportunity for me to hone in on my expertise with like-minded and experienced colleagues and partners."

Founded in 2007, DiNovo Price has more than tripled its revenue in the past 12-months and grown from three attorneys to 11. Over the next 12-months, the firm anticipates adding another two to three attorneys.

"We are working to continue our strategic growth in the area of intellectual property and commercial litigation, while maintaining the efficiency and flexibility that only a small firm can offer. The firm continues to position itself nationally as the premier ‘go to’ boutique law firm for high-stakes intellectual property litigation," continued Ellwanger.

Intellectual property litigation is a high-growth segment in the legal industry. According to Fulbright & Jaworski’s Fifth Annual Litigation Trends Survey Findings, 80 percent of respondents in the technology and communications sector with a patent infringement claim pursued litigation.

Read the Intellectual Property Today article here:  http://www.iptoday.com/news-article.asp?id=5138&type=misc

See a complete listing of winners here: http://www.austinunder40.org/au40/index.cfm/2009-winners/

By Phil Britt - Posted Feb 2, 2009

Law firms are using knowledge management tools to improve customer service, to ease the discovery process and to better manage client billing and communications when working remotely.

Reed Smith is a large law firm with more than 1,700 lawyers in 23 cities worldwide and with corporate clients in financial services, life sciences, advertising and several other fields. Due to the size of the firm and the needs of its clients, attorneys from different offices sometimes work on the same accounts, says Victoria Gregory, the firm’s systems manager for customer relationship management (CRM).

In most law firms, CRM systems are used primarily for contact management, handling names, addresses, phone numbers and the like. But to be an effective knowledge management tool and to deliver real benefits to the user, a CRM system must incorporate all client contacts from different lawyers and the results of those contacts, and must interface with accounting and financial systems, Gregory says. That provides authorized users with a single snapshot of the firm/client status, including current cases, billings, outstanding payments and other factors.

"This way you can go to the [CRM] system and get any information that you need, rather than searching around for it," says Gregory, who joined the firm at the beginning of 2007 to help turn the use of CRM into a true KM tool. "Time is money for attorneys."

The first step was to find a vendor that would not only provide a CRM system to meet technological needs, but also work with the firm as a business partner.

"We looked at it as a long-term thing," Gregory explains. "It’s not like when you buy an operating system—you install it and you are done with it. We wanted someone who would work with us and help us with any of the challenges that we might face. We wanted a flexible, adaptable system that would work with our processes. With some, you have to adopt your processes to work with the system."

The solution had to work seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook, which the firm’s attorneys use extensively for calendar and e-mail functions. Reed Smith found what it was looking for with Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the base program and CRM4Legal from Client Profiles providing the interface designed for the legal industry.

Installation started in September 2007, with a pilot in May 2008, and steady rollout started a couple of months later. The firm is implementing the system one client team at a time. Large, one-time rollouts don’t tend to be successful, Gregory says, because there aren’t enough training and support resources to meet the needs of hundreds of new users at a single time. The firm expects to complete the rollout by the end of 2009.

"Now our attorneys are able to serve our clients better," Gregory says. "It’s helping us identify gaps in our service."

The attorneys know when the client last spoke to the firm, what was discussed and what matters the firm is handling for the client. Because all of the information is available in a single system, a U.S.-based attorney can immediately see what an attorney in Asia worked on 12 hours earlier, rather than waiting until the end of his day (and the start of the next day for the attorney in Asia), Gregory says.

The system also helps identify potential areas of new business. For example, the firm might be handling U.S. matters for a multinational client, but may not have any of the European business. By having that information at his or her fingertips, the attorney can more easily make a pitch for the additional business.

Gregory expects the more comprehensive client information to lead to wider and deeper business relationships with clients, although the rollout is too early in the process to provide details about benefits.

In addition to finishing the deployment, Gregory expects to complete the integration of financial information, including fees billed and fees received. That should enable the firm to enhance its collections of outstanding receivables because the system will provide a single snapshot of the contact person, the amount outstanding and the length of time payments have been outstanding. Gregory says, "It’s all about saving time."

Faster document review

Time management is one of the primary benefits of outsourcing document review to a third party, says Jay Ellwanger, partner with DiNovo Price Ellwanger & Hardy in Austin, Texas. The small, five-attorney firm was involved in a trade secret case, representing a plaintiff against a much larger firm.

The major expense of such cases is the discovery process—reviewing printed and electronic documents that must be presented to the other side, which in this case involved millions of pages, according to Ellwanger. In such cases, larger firms have a distinct advantage due to their additional manpower.

With millions of pages of documents and e-mails to review in a three-week period, DiNovo Price Ellwanger & Hardy selected Tusker Group, a local firm with substantial intellectual property (IP) review experience and lower-cost, off-shore attorneys to help with the review process, including help selecting the right technology to identify the documents that had to be presented to the other side.

The law firm initially selected one application, but it didn’t interface with Tusker’s offshore systems in India, according to Mike Nolan, Tusker co-founder and CEO. So Tusker recommended the FileControl e-discovery solution, which enabled Tusker, with Jay Ellwanger supervising, to conduct keyword and target searches, correctly group documents, identify the source of the documents and eliminate ones considered "privileged" as client/counsel communications. Privileged documents don’t have to be turned over to the other side.

Read the full KMWorld article here: http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/Editorial/Feature/Law-firms-discover-the-value-of-KM--52385.aspx

Indians have long worked in call centers fielding requests for computer help or taking orders from American shoppers. Now some firms are tapping India's professionals, including lawyers and architects, for intellectual outsourcing that they hope will reduce consumer costs.

"You could call it 'Outsourcing 2.0' or maybe even '3.0.' Now firms are increasingly trying to leverage expertise," says Saikat Chaudhuri, an assistant professor in the business school at the University of Pennsylvania. Legal outsourcing is "growing very, very quickly."

Professional outsourcing jumped from a $260 million industry in 2001 to a $3.05 billion industry in 2007. It will reach a projected $11.2 billion by 2011, says a report from the India Brand Equity Foundation, a public-private partnership. Legal research, which the group didn't track in 2001, contributes about $95 million.

The Indian lawyers cannot give legal advice and must be supervised by a U.S. attorney but can handle duties that U.S. firms give to paralegals or first-year law associates. Among them: researching cases, managing contracts and preparing mortgage foreclosure documents. Some charge as little as $25 an hour for work that would cost more than $125 an hour in the United States.

The savings can help individuals and small companies sue large companies, which can cost millions, says Jay Ellwanger, an Austin lawyer. "You have to find ways to level the playing field," he says.

Yet some paralegals cite concerns about confidentiality, unauthorized practice of law and language barriers. "If work is to be outsourced, it should first be outsourced to qualified and competent paralegals within the attorney's local community," the National Federation of Paralegal Associations says in a statement.

The American Bar Association this summer formally acknowledged the practice in an ethics opinion. It emphasized that a U.S. attorney must supervise any foreign lawyer.

Examples of legal outsourcing:

• Lawyers in India employed by the Tusker Group in Austin reviewed about 400,000 documents for $25 an hour when Ellwanger's firm represented Bluecurrent, a small technology company that sued Dell over trade secrets. The case settled in October 2007 for an undisclosed sum.

• The New York law firm SmithDehn, which represents the Borat production company, outsourced research on contract law, privacy and publicity rights for the film to its Indian subsidiary SDD Global Solutions, founder Russell Smith says. SDD Global, launched in 2002, now draws more business than the law firm.

Firms are beginning to see the value of outsourcing as the economy dips, says Smith's partner, Frank Dehn. Clients "want to know why they are paying the associate $300 an hour to do something any smart person can do," he says.

Empirical ImpactKSR