Minutes from June 21 Task Force Meeting

MINUTES - UTBMS TASK FORCE MEETING

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, IL

SUMMARY

The latest meeting of the UTBMS Task Force took place in conjunction with the 2005 CLT Super Conference. Moderated by Brad Blickstein, and attended by a representative sampling of industry veterans, the Task Force agreed to establish Work Groups to address three priorities:

1. international standards

2. intellectual property standards

3. updates of extant standards

The three Work Groups will be chaired by Jeff Hodge, Domenic Leo, and a team consisting of John Kelly & Ron Denton, respectively. The immediate tasks for each WG are:

· determine first of all, is there a need?

· if so, how extensive?

· draft & submit an Action Plan at October’s Task Force meeting

· complete “draft solutions” Q1 2006, with final versions nlt CLT 2006 (June)

Volunteers for each Work Group were solicited and received (see list below, which also doubles as an attendees list):

Name	Company	Email	Working Group			Note
			Int'l	IP	Upgrades
Bjarnie Anderson	Barclays (Former)	bjarnieanderson@aol.com	x
Bob Mullen	Bottomline Technologies	rmullen@bottomline.com			x
Bob Steffel	American Family Ins	rsteffel@amfam.com			x
Brad Blickstein	Blickstein Group	brad@blicksteingroup.com
Brian McCorry	DataCert	brian.mccorry@datacert.com
Domenic Leo	DataCert	domenic.leo@datacert.com
Jane Bennitt	TyMetrix, Inc.	jbennitt@tymetrix.com	x
Jeff Hodge	DataCert	jeff.hodge@datacert.com	x			(non-attendee)
John Etchells	AT&T	etchells@lga.att.com		x
John G. Kelly	The Litigation Management Report	johngkelly@rogers.com			x
Keith Brown	TyMetrix, Inc.	kbrown@tymetrix.com		x		(non-attendee)
Mike Haysley	Waste Management	maysley@wm.com			x
Paula M. Uscian	Tripoint Systems	puscian@tripoint.com		x	x
Rich Seleznov	Huron	rseleznov@huronconsulting.ca		x	x
Richard Wendelken	Johnson & Johnson			x
Rob Vosper	Corporate Legal Times
Ron Denton	Conoco Phillips	ron.r.denton@conocophillips.com			x
Steven Lauer	Integrity Interactive/OLSP	slauer@carolina.rr.com			x
Steven Levy	Microsoft	slevy@microsoft.com			x
Todd Pedwell	Standard & Poor's	todd.pedwell@sandp.com		x

The next meeting of the Task Force is to be held this October, in conjunction with the ACC Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Working groups will set their own meetings as the deem appropriate, including one for the Internationalization Working Group in London this September, exact date tba.

GENERAL

• John Kelly gave an excellent overview of the history of the original UTBMS initiatives, along with a handout, “UTBMS Backgrounder” which was distributed to participants.

• There was a fair amount of discussion about the need to “broaden involvement and participation,” rendering the Task Force’s activities more collaborative and democratic. Specifically, the dearth of law firm participation was noted as a major area of improvement. Jane Bennitt volunteered to spearhead a survey of law firms to solicit their participation on both the UTBMS Task Force and the various Work Groups & committees created. Rich Seleznov also agreed to solicit LF participation as well as that of the time & billing vendors.

• A number of participants stressed the need for uniformity, coordination, communication and avoidance of “recreating the wheel” and “over compliance.” Emphasis in the Work Groups is to be placed on simplicity and review/solicitation of existing code sets as well as industry associations’ input.

• Brad Blickstein brought up the question of funding of the Task Force, suggesting an optional fee of perhaps $100 per participating organization. After some discussion, the TF decided to enact an optional fee of $100 per participating organization.

• Rob Vosper, Executive Editor of Corporate Legal Times, sat in on around half of the meeting. He later agreed to do a short story on the effort to help in recruiting and to build credibility

• The group agreed that Brad Blickstein should continue to act as the group’s administrator and webmaster, at least for the time being.

• Ultimately, we agreed that this is a three step process: (1) Deciding what should change (2) Getting the amended and new codes to be considered a standard (3) Selling the standard, and UTBMS in general, to the marketplace.

• In terms of timeframe, our goals are:

• By next Task Force meeting (October) – Each Working Group will have an action plan and meaningful report for the group
• By the following Task Force meeting (probably early February 2006, coinciding with LegalTech) – Each Working Group will have a complete recommendation for the entire group for approval
• We hope to be done with this project by the end of 2Q 2006, although the plan is to create an ongoing organization for reviewing the UTBMS.

NEXT STEPS

• Recruitment – all Task Force members in attendance agreed to recruit other, appropriate, people onto the task force and the working groups. Jane Bennitt and Rich Seleznov agreed to spearhead this effort for law firms in particular
• Working Groups, led by Jeff Hodge, Domenic Leo, and John Kelly & Ron Denton, will reach out to their respective groups and start determining how to proceed.
• Brad Blickstein will figure out how to handle the banking, accounting and billing of the optional $100 annual charge.
• Bjarnie Anderson will reach out to his contacts at ACCA to try to get their input
• The following were tabled until the October meeting
• Should we do more to show the value of the codes in general?
• Do we need a more “professional” web presence? (Consensus is not yet, but we will when we go public with our findings.)

NOTABLE QUOTES

“The power has shifted because the data has shifted.” – Steve Lauer

“Our objective is to set things up so that when more low-hanging fruit becomes available, there’s an apple picker around!” – Brad Blickstein

The meeting began shortly after 2 p.m., and ended at approximately 4:30 p.m.

Details on this Fall’s meeting are still pending and will be made available at a later date.

SPECIAL THANKS

To Corporate Legal Times for providing the venue, Jane Bennitt and Tymetrix for providing the projector, screen and soft drinks, and Brian McCorry of DataCert for volunteering as scribe.