Tinderbox Weekend: Summary Judgment

Another terrific segment at Tinderbox Weekend Boston (and yes, registration for London May 8-9 is now open) was Steve Winnick’s introduction to Summary Judgment. Winnick is a litigator with a diverse practice that he describes as “everything except truly specialized areas like bankruptcy”, and he’s been looking for a comprehensive case management tool for ages. Tinderbox lets him build a framework for developing, resolving, and billing, for organizing the workflow of his practice.

A core idea here is that, while each case is unique and is bound to develop unexpected information demands, the overall structure of a firm’s workflow can be represented systematically. The firm may offer a variety of fee arrangements, but those can be anticipated; the fee arrangements might change for a specific matter, but the changes, too, can be readily represented as an adaptation of standard practice. Similarly, while each case has its own schedule, statutes of limitations wait for no one, and we can anticipate from the first client meeting what those critical dates might be.

Summary Judgment will shortly enter beta testing and is expected to be commercially available in 2010.