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changes. The Indian lawyers review the changes and assess which are accept- able or where additional information or steps are required. When they complete the work, the system generates either a report to the client's business unit or a finished document, which is uploaded to the Legalwise system or e-mailed directly to the business unit. For most of its current clients, these processes involve little or no direct contact between the client and the law- yers in India, although there are pro- cedures for escalating anomalous cases that can't be handled by the automated process. But the technology also allows Legalwise to develop more complex, collaborative processes with "approval points" at which a client's legal staff or the business unit can review and sign off before the Indian lawyers proceed to the next step, notes Birer. The Legalwise system often replac- es "massively manual" processes, says Traub. Most legal departments, he argues, are too close to their processes to see opportunities for making them more efficient. That is part of what Legalwise provides. "There are always ways to improve processes using tech- nology." The result, Birer claims, is greater consistency and accuracy in the fin- ished product, and faster time to com- pletion. So why aren't more legal depart- ments, or firms, using such services? The stigma of using offshore lawyers of dubious qualifications is clearly still a barrier, but concerns about secu- rity and confidentiality are another. It's a major issue for virtually every prospective client, concedes Traub. He argues the concerns are ill-founded. "The security we provide is far in excess of what most have in their own facilities and processes." All communication over the Internet use SSL (secure sockets layer), a proto- col used by banks and other commer- cial enterprises to protect online finan- cial transactions. Client portals and the areas specific to a particular matter are protected by authentication technolo- gies that prevent unauthorized people on either side from accessing them. And the Indian lawyers are assigned "permissions" that only allow them to make certain kinds of changes. No prospective client has walked away because he or she wasn't satisfied when these measures were explained, Birer adds. In the meantime, though, virtually all of Legalwise's clients and prospects are corporate legal departments. No matter how efficient and effective the company's processes and no matter how high-quality its work product and how secure its systems and processes, that is unlikely to change any time soon. Gerry Blackwell is a freelance technology writer based in London, Ont. Read his blog at http://afterbyte.blogspot.com. Untitled-4 1 www. C ANAD i AN law ye rmag.com APRIL 2010 27 3/18/10 9:58:49 AM