Are UK firms missing the profit motive ?
According to a new study conducted by the management consultancy Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, the UK's larger law firms are falling behind their US counterparts by focussing on growth - typically through mergers and acquisitions - at the expense of profitability.

Thus while the eight largest UK firms grew by 92% during the period 1998/2001, the eight largest US firms could only manage a 43% growth rate. Yet when the same firms are ranked by profit per equity partner (PEP) only one UK firm makes it into the global top 10, with the other nine located in the US.

Although conceding that the challenges firms face are "as much cultural as operational,"CGE&Y vice president Bob Scott suggests a number of performance 'levers' could help improve profitability. These include better cost management (for example why in some firms is only half of their overall expenditure attributable to direct costs and overheads whereas in other firms it is over 80%) and changes to client billing. Recommendations here include introducing different pricing models, adopting new technology so the delivery of legal services can be speeded up through increased automation, and billing all the hours worked - according to CGE&Y over 40% of US firms bill more than 45 hours a week, which is probably 50% more than most UK firms.

A PowerPoint presentation on the Cap Gemini study is available on the downloads facility on the Insider web site.
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Virik out at Lexis after 18 months
LexisNexis Butterworths Tolley has confirmed that its CEO Paul Virik left the company at the end of September. Virik had been with the Reed Elsevier group for more than 30 years in various capacities before joining the LNBT legal division in April 2001.

He took over from long-time legal publisher Stephen Stout who last year quit Butterworths to join an Australian legal expert systems company. Now, after just 18 months in the Halsbury House hot seat Virik has left the legal publishing world and is also "looking forward to doing something completely different."

LNBT's PR agency said Virik "left by mutual consent" and that it would be business as usual until a permanent successor is named. In the meantime senior managers at LNBT will report directly to Judy Vezmar, the CEO of LexisNexis Group Europe.
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Will LITIG bite the hand that fed it ?
Next week IT directors from around 20 mid-to-large-sized firms (defined as practices with annual fees in the £3m-to-£300m range) are planning to hold a meeting in London to discuss the possibility of turning an informal IT networking body - the Legal IT Innovators Group (LITIG) - into an independent industry organisation capable of lobbying legal systems suppliers, as well as regulatory bodies and quangos such as the Law Society, the NLIS channel providers and the Land Registry, on technology related issues.

What concerns LITIG is not only the perennial complaint about the prices legal systems suppliers charge and the relatively poor service some offer in return but also the fact there appears to be no co-ordination on the formulation, timing or implementation of the various electronic data interchange (EDI) standards law firms must now comply with.

Ironically, if LITIG does take off as an independent body, this could be an example of biting the hand that fed it, as the group was originally set up and funded as part of an initiative by a supplier - Solicitec - to gain a closer appreciation of the strategic concerns facing law firm IT operations today.
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Insider launches top 100 firms IT systems watch
You can keep track of which legal systems the UK's top 100 law firms are using by visiting the Insider web site and downloading our Top 100 Chart as an Excel spreadsheet. It currently covers practice, document and case management systems, plus digital dictation and CRM products and we plan to include further categories of products over the next few months.
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Over 11,000 votes cast for LOTIES awards
Over 11,000 votes have been cast by for the law firms, products, services, companies and people short-listed for this year's LOTIES legal office technology innovation awards. Voting has closed and the votes received (including one from a Hampshire vicar voting for an online conveyancing service he used to buy a house) are now being audited to weed out any blatant attempts at spamming. The winners will be announced at a gala dinner to be held at the Cafe Royal in London on 14th November. The LOTIES are organised by In Brief magazine and sponsored by the Insider.
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Looking for IT staff ?
This week's top job: Intelligent Resources is looking for a professional support lawyer/knowledge expert with corporate restructuring & insolvency experience. The salary offered is between £65,000 to £95,000 base + benefits according to experience. For full details of this and other vacancies visit the Insider Jobs Board at www.legaltechnology.com

OpenHand seeks to open up mobile data
With Zed for Business dead in the water and the RIM Blackberry failing to repeat its US success and set the UK legal world alight, the hunt is on again for an effective data communications solution for lawyers on the move. The latest contender is 1eEurope (020 7569 2658) which is piloting its OpenHand system at a number of City firms. Along with accessing email plus any attached files and Outlook style contact and calendar information, the current pilots have involved the development of interfaces to access inhouse databases and applications, such as Hummingbird DMS and Carpe Diem billing.

1eEurope managing director Graham Higginson says a factor distinguishing OpenHand from earlier rival offerings is that it is totally platform independent. OpenHand will therefore run on PDAs such as the Palm and Compaq iPAQ, on mobile phones like the Nokia 9210 Communicator, via Bluetooth links to laptops and in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes servers (Groupwise is on its way) so firms can make use of existing IT rather than have to invest in a fresh set of gadgets. Higginson is also keen to talk to other software suppliers about integrating their applications with OpenHand.

Pricewise, the average user can expect to spend around £7.50 a month on mobile call charges. In addition there is a server charge for running OpenHand which works out to about £150 per user per year. 1eEurope's ROI (return on investment) argument to cost justify the system is that if the efficiencies of having anywhere, anytime access to information allows a lawyer to bill just one extra hour of time each year, the the system will have paid for itself. www.openhand-mobile.com
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Laserform rolls out web and matter management
This week sees the first practices go live with the new web enabled version of Laserform's CaseControl case management software. Firms with the facility will be able to offer prospective clients online quotations and requests for information via their web sites, while a simple 'export & upload' utility means existing clients can access progress reports via a secure extranet.

Laserform has also incorporated a matter management system within its accounts and practice management software. This is designed to provide diary, workflow, document and file management facilities for day-to-day work that does not lend itself to being handled by a dedicated case management system. Features include close integration between the Outlook diary and matter to-do lists and the ability to add both incoming and outgoing emails to the matter history.

Laserform sales director Mike Boynes sees the system having a role both as a productivity enhancer for individual fee earners and a risk management system (looking after Rule 15 letters and conflict of interest searches etc) for the firm as a whole.

News in brief

Leeds Legal IT show a success + Review
The volume of visitors attending the Legal IT exhibition at the Leeds Armouries earlier this month effectively scotched rumours that the legal market is in the depths of a recession and nobody is interested in IT systems. With nearly 800 people visiting over two days, this was one of the largest audiences seen at a legal IT event outside of London for many years. The seminar programme (organised by the Insider) was also a success with over 200 unique delegates and an average of 80 attending each session. Exhibition organiser Cordial Events is now finalising plans for next year's show, which is provisionally booked for 15 & 16 October 2003.

New products and services on show included: a CDS/criminal billing system from Carydan (01606 333 333). The software has already gone live at two firms and later this month the company will be rolling out a new probate system. Carydan is also planning to decouple its accounts software from the case management element so organisations such as local authorities, who do not need a full solicitors accounts system, can still have case management and time recording.

JCS Computing Solutions (0121 543 6996) was previewing its WebCase extranet which allows clients to access their case management files, progress reports and billing data via the internet. WebCase, which will be shipping from December, also includes a useful feedback feature giving clients the ability to post their own comments and file notes to matter records. Still with online services, Norwel (0161 945 3511) used the event to launch its new Desktop Online system. This was developed in conjunction with Cobbetts in Manchester and lets both lawyers and clients access matter data remotely via a web browser. Users can drill down into accounts records and export data into Excel via Norwel's NRGView system and, like WebCase from JCS, Desktop Online also has an electronic 'Post-It' notes facility.

Finally TFB plc (01489 609010) launched an NLIS link for its Partner for Windows system, giving users access to any of the three NLIS local search services directly from their conveyancing matter files. TFB also unveiled its LMS integration package. This automates the posting of milestone information directly into the STARS (Solicitors Tracking & Reporting System) for firms belonging to the Legal Marketing Services network.
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Web site of the month award - Ollerenshaws
This month we were bombarded by nominations for some complete dogs that broke all the rules of good law firm web site design. It was therefore with great relief that we lit upon the new site for Ollerenshaw Solicitors in Leamington Spa.

It is short - only five pages, sharp and to the point. While its typography is far from leading edge, it does load quickly, there are no unnecessary gimmicks and, most importantly, it has been developed from the point of view of its visitors - the typical small business/private client of a High Street solicitors' practice. No legal jargon - talk of 'moving home' instead of conveyancing, the terms of business and range of services are spelled out clearly and it is sympathetic to the fact most people find using a solicitor intimidating. Also, as the site was developed using the Website IT self build system we suspect the firm paid only a fraction of the cost that most firms spend on web site projects. www.ollerenshaws.com
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Keep up with the news
Keep up with the latest news between issues of the Insider by subscribing to our free ezine the Legal Technology Insider Newswire. It is delivered directly to your desktop as a plain text email. To be added to the distribution list send a note of your email address to: news@legaltechnology.com and include the word 'News' in the heading.

Washed away on a tide of spam and quorn
To verify complaints that email users are being bombarded with growing volumes of junk mail and viruses, the Insider last month conducted an audit of its incoming message traffic.

Just under 20% were what we classified as pure unsolicited spam. These included porn site invites, health schemes and outright attempts at fraud - typically variations on the Nigerian 419 scam. However by far the largest number of spams, constituting over 10% of all email traffic, were sales pitches from the IT industry trying to sell us new PCs, web site search engine services and, ironically, email security software. Get rich schemes were the next most popular spam with, surprisingly given the hype, porn the least frequently encountered.

We also monitored self inflicted spam or, to keep with the meat substitute analogy, what we called 'quorn'. (Not to be confused with Quorn (TM) which our editor lives on.) As quorn we included out-of-the-office automatic responses to emails - just under 5% of the total. While we appreciate law firms need to keep their clients informed, none of the messages we sent actually required a response and it would be interesting to work out just how much of the internet's bandwidth and law firms' server capacity is taken up by these largely redundant messages. However by far the largest amount of quorn stemmed from ezines - 20% of the total - that we had once subscribed to because they occasionally carried an interesting story and had never got around to cancelling. Although the 20% figure for spam might be acceptable, once quorn is added to the equation we are looking at a situation in which 45% of all email is junk. And that is not even taking into account internal junk mail.

For the record, we also detected virus attacks coming in at a rate of one virus for every 52 emails received. This suggests that even for small firms anti-virus software and related security methods are now a day-to-day necessity rather than a luxury.
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Speech technology news in brief

Email management & security news in brief

Insider event - Digital dictation question time
Digital dictation may be the hot topic at the moment but just how do you get lawyers to give up their personal secretaries in exchange for what is in effect a virtual typing pool? Can digital dictation be fully integrated with practice management systems? And will speech recognition ever take off? Legal Technology Insider is holding a Digital Dictation Question Time on Thursday 28 November at the offices of Reynolds Porter Chamberlain in London, when readers will have an opportunity to put these and other questions to a panel of experts, including Julie Berry, the head of IT at RPC, Berwin Leighton Paisner IT director Janet Day, Rooks Rider finance director David Higdon and Baker Robbins consultant Andrew Levison. Insider editor Charles Christian will chair the event which is being sponsored by nFlow Software, developers of digital dictation workflow software for the legal market. The event starts at 6:00pm for 6:30pm. Refreshments will be available and admission is free. Spaces are limited so you need to book in advance either online at www.nflow.co.uk/events or via email questions@legaltechnology.com - you can also submit your questions in advance by email to the same address.
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People & Places
SV Technology, developers of the LawPort system, has appointed Jay Moeller as vice president of sales & marketing.ÊMoeller joins SV after founding Icon Technology in the early 1990s. Icon specialised in financial management and data warehousing and developed the system now sold by Keystone and now through Solution 6 as Net Results.
Thompson Moore Associates has moved from Bagshot to new offices at Cedar House, Cedar Lane, Frimley, Surrey GU16 7HZ. The new phone number is 01276 692260.
BigHand has expanded its development, training and support operations with the recruitment of Martin Hughes, Emma Naji, Gill Sadler and Jason Pawson.
The correct phone number for Access Legal Systems is 01270 766774.
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Legal software pioneer dies suddenly
John Bridge, one of the pioneers of legal accounts software design in the UK, died in his sleep earlier this month. Ironically Bridge, who was 64, had been due to retire from his post as senior product consultant at Axxia Systems only a few days later. Bridge began his career with Kienzle Data Systems, as Axxia was then known, in 1968 as a trainee programmer. He went on to specialise in the design of packaged solicitors' accounts software, starting with visible record card systems and moving on with each new technology platform right up until AxxiaÕs latest generation of web enabled practice management systems.

Axxia managing director Stuart Holden said Bridge "was a good man taken well before his time" but felt "it is some small consolation that his memory will live on through the technology he helped pioneer."
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Pisces - no longer a fish out of water ?
Two weeks ago the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors held a meeting to kick off a domestic conveyancing working party for the PISCES electronic data interchange standard. Although PISCES has enjoyed some success as a nascent standard in the commercial property field, the purpose of this meeting was to test the water for its expansion into the broader market by, firstly, allaying any fears on sharing data - the message here is PISCES is just a means of describing data in a computer understandable format and does not lay down new business procedures as to who tells who what or require changes to existing procedures. And, secondly, outlining potential business benefits, such as the time saved in re-keying data, improved accuracy and the ability for all parties to improve their business process automation.

During the panel sessions, some delegates put forward the view that because mortgage providers are effectively at the "top of the food chain," unless they adopted PISCES, it was doomed to failure. This was countered by the news that the Council for Mortgage Lenders is already looking into the standard. And, by the argument that even if all the mortgage lenders did all go their own way and create their own EDI standards, the fact the information was in a digital format meant instructions could still be transferred to and from a PISCES format automatically through conversion software. This was echoed by a delegate from a volume conveyancer who said his firm already had to develop different interfaces for different lenders but if a PISCES standard was available, it would at least provide a uniform starting point for all subsequent data exchange projects.

The audience, in the words of one delegate "was pretty much a who's who of the conveyancing world" including volume conveyancers, panel managers, lenders, the government, the Law Society and service providers such as the Legal Software Suppliers Association, NLIS channel providers and title insurers. According to Neil Ewin of Solicitec, who was also there with his LSSA hat on "The feedback was generally supportive although with recognition that there is still a long way to go to before it becomes a de facto standard. Nevertheless, if we can continue the momentum and bring a good cross section of the audience into the initiative, PISCES has every chance of succeeding."
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Have we got standards for you
Our story in the previous issue of the Insider about the growing number of EDI standards with which law firm IT systems need to be compatible, prompted a number of requests for further and better particulars. Excluding web sites that are currently under construction, further information can be found at these locations:
Amtool www.amtool.com
Appareo www.appareocorp.com
Bridgeware www.bridgeware.com
Legalgard www.csc-fs.com/MARKETS/litadv/litadvsvcs.asp
Serengeti www.serengeti.com

Bridgeware and Serengeti are probably the most useful sites however Appareo is used by English Partnerships and John Hokkanen, of Latham & Watkins, suggests another key player, at least in the United States, is DataCert www.datacert.com
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Just close your eyes and jump
The Insider award for bravery above and beyond the call of duty goes to Louise Hamilton, the marketing officer at Solicitors Own Software, who last month took part in a charity parachute jump that helped raise over £5000 for the Solicitors Benevolent Fund. Also taking part in the jump, which coincided with the Law Society's annual conference (SOS sponsored the conference) was Nick Gurney-Champion, the president of the Hampshire Law Society. His jump was a little hairier as his main canopy failed to open properly, so he had to rely on his reserve chute.
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All our yesterdays
This month the Insider celebrates its seventh birthday. Reading through the stories in our first issue is like a visit to the computing galleries at the Science Museum. Hot topics in October 1995 included the news that Sinclair Roche & Temperley was upgrading from WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS to version 6.1 for Windows and that Dundas & Wilson was sticking with Novell NetWare because it did not think Windows NT was a stable enough network platform. There again, given the criticisms we are hearing about the latest incarnation of NT - Windows XP - perhaps things have not changed that much after all?
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Competition: find the best TLA for digital dictation technology
Finally, there is still time to enter a competition to find the best TLA (three letter acronym) for digital dictation systems. The Insider is offering a bottle of champagne, courtesy of digital dictation workflow specialists nFlow Software, for the most original digital dictation TLA and another bottle for the most amusing TLA relating to digital dictation. The closing date for entries is 31st October and the winner will be announced in our November issue. Email entries to tla@legaltechnology.com
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Legal Technology Events Diary

Publisher & Editor: Charles Christian

Tel: 01379 687518 - Fax: 01379 687704
Videophone: 01379 687690 (both channels)
Email: news@legaltechnology.com