Remote law exams returned this week in several jurisdictions, bringing the expected amount of angst related to screen freezes and other technical glitches. The company administering the tests, ExamSoft, says it is working with individuals who experienced difficulties, and there's good news for those worried about technical issues: The National Conference of Bar Examiners says its February exam in 2022 will be administered only in person.

After a "strategic business decision," the eDiscovery Point document review software is slated to ride off into the sunset, with its termination date set for June 30, 2022. Thomson Reuters recommends switching to Lighthouse for e-discovery needs.

Marketplace Priori Legal, where in-house departments can connect with outside counsel, is expanding its scope to include alternative legal services providers and legaltech solutions. The first new offerings: ALSPs QuisLex and Factor, along with LawGeex, which uses artificial intelligence to review contracts.

If you're tired of reading legal documents, Microsoft Word can read them to you, which could uncover typos or ineffective wording. The program has other skills untapped by many users, including the ability to solve formatting problems at the new-document stage.

The effectiveness of artificial intelligence in e-discovery shouldn't lead to an erosion of soft skills, writes Jim Gill. In this commentary, Gill lists five skills to foster, starting with communication within the firm, because "[a]ny good therapist will tell you communication issues are at the heart of any relationship problem."

Celebrity apologies offer a template for how we should show remorse -- and where so many public apologies go wrong. "Simply put, issuing an effective apology comes down to recognizing your mistake, taking ownership of that mistake and genuinely sharing your remorse to the audiences that need to hear it most -- without condition or the expectation of immediate forgiveness," says Red Banyan CEO Evan Nierman, a crisis-communications expert.

Small and midsize businesses with misgivings about security in the cloud should realize risk stems from employees, writes consultant Denny Cherry. "If you must pick which services to move to the cloud for the sake of security, focus on customer-facing ones first," Cherry notes.

Rapidly expanding research platform vLex is making another international foray, taking a minority stake in Irwin Law, a Canada-based legal publisher. VLex gains access to Irwin Law's content, and the company also reports developing natural language processing integrations to bolster its searches.