SCL award goes to BigHand TotalSpeech
The Society for Computers & Law has presented its 2003 award "for the most outstanding application of information technology to the law" to BigHand for its TotalSpeech digital dictation workflow system. Baker Robbins consultant Andrew Levison, who chaired the award's judging panel, described the winning entry as "easy to use, easy to deploy and the type of application which, in a difficult climate for lawyers, will really make a difference".

The award was presented on Monday evening (20th January) at a reception at the Law Society in Chancery Lane. The runners up for the SCL award were: the Automated Registration of Title to Land system from the Registers of Scotland Executive Agency, easyconvey.comÕs Electronic Conveyancing Solution and the Visualfiles case management system from Solicitec.
top

Tikit and nFlow in DDS initiative
With 2003 likely to see no let-up in the legal market's enthusiasm for digital dictation systems, nFlow Software, the developers of the DictaFlow DDS, have upped the ante by forming a strategic relationship with the systems integrator and consultancy Tikit.

Under the deal, nFlow will focus on software development while Tikit becomes the exclusive reseller for DictaFlow, with responsibility for marketing, selling and supporting the product. Commenting on the move, Tikit business development director Liam Flanagan said "Digital dictation technology has come of age and we plan to work with nFlow to broaden their software's market reach."

Flanagan added that Tikit was particularly impressed by the way DictaFlow can be integrated within the broader law office automation environment. Recent DictaFlow projects have included integration with the CMS Open practice management and Hummingbird document management systems at Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, and integration with the iManage DMS at Masons.
top

Beecham out at Sweet & Maxwell
Last Friday evening, at 9:30pm London time, Sweet & Maxwell announced that Peter Lake, previously in charge of Thomson Legal & Regulatory's business development activities in Europe, had been appointed its new managing director "effective immediately". Lake succeeds Wendy Beecham who is leaving the company.

Sweet & Maxwell is not the only legal publisher currently experiencing interesting times. In September Butterworths' CEO Paul Virik quit after just 18 months "to do something completely different" and then, just in time for Christmas, the company announced plans to make 98 redundancies, primarily among its commissioning and production staff.
top

Law Society to launch latest guide at Legal IT
The Law Society is to officially launch the 2003 edition of its Software Solutions Guide which effectively provides small-to-mid sized firms with a practice management systems buyer's guide, at next month's Legal IT exhibition, which takes place on 12th and 13th of February at the Business Design Centre in Islington, north London.

The Society's director of membership services, John Miller, will announce the names of the suppliers who have passed the Society's increasingly rigourous selection process, which this year was extended to include auditors vetting company accounts, to secure a place in the latest Guide. Alan Richardson, the chairman of the Legal Software Suppliers Association, will also be on hand to explain why LSSA is supporting this increasingly influential publication. The presentation will start at 12 noon on Wednesday 12th in the conference hall - admission is free but you are advised to book places in advance.
top

Legal technology - what's going to be hot in 2003 ?
Time for the Insider to stick its neck out and predict the hot technologies in 2003.

Digital dictation continues to go from strength to strength, particularly following the boost the SCL Award will give the technology and the fact that Tikit and Mountain will now be distributing and implementing the systems.

We also think risk management systems to help firms both limit their exposure to professional indemnity claims and satisfy clients (as well as PI insurers) that they have appropriate quality standards in place will be high on the agenda. We expect most will take the form of enhancements to existing case and practice management systems.

With the increase in email traffic volumes showing no signs of slowing down, another big trend will be email management systems. In fact there are two distinct sets of problems here: the technical issues associated with storage and bandwidth, which products like KVS Vault seek to address, and the management issues associated with ensuring email messages and conventional documents are all integrated within one matter centric location. DMS suppliers such as iManage - see separate story - are now starting to address the latter problem.

Finally, 2003 will be the year we start to say good-bye to TINA and the prevailing wisdom that There Is No Alternative to 32-bit Microsoft Windows client/server software with everything. As reported elsewhere in this issue, Mountain Software has become the first supplier to publicly announce a next generation system based on Microsoft .NET architecture however at least four others will be launching .NET systems before the year is out. In addition, we can expect to see more suppliers offering open source alternatives to Microsoft. TFB has already put its head above the parapet with Linux solution and Axxia is rumoured to be going the Java route.
top

Looking for IT staff ?
This week's top jobs include: law firms in London, Cheshire and Manchester looking for new IT managers plus vacancies in sales, project management and training at Solution 6, Solicitec, SOS, Copitrak and Laserform. For full details of these and other vacancies visit the Insider Jobs Board at www.legaltechnology.com

Bevan Ashford picks Meticulus for new DMS
Bristol-based Bevan Ashford, ranked number 32 on our chart of the UK's largest law firms, has upset the cosy world of document management systems by rejecting both Hummingbird and iManage as the supplier of its new DMS and opting instead for the Meticulist DMS from Meticulus Solutions (01249 700050). Bevan Ashford has initially commissioned Meticulus to implement a proof of concept demonstration based on Meticulist however the four phase project will eventually culminate in a practice-wide rollout to nearly 400 users.

Bevan Ashford's chief information officer Dick Sayers said "Meticulist offered an opportunity to deliver the well understood benefits of DM in enhancing productivity, quality and profit without incurring the high costs in systems integration and training associated with more traditional systems. Our DM project team was particularly impressed that Meticulist offers a high level of integration with our standard desktop applications. The team was also impressed with the intuitive and logical feel of the product that we expect to speed the implementation and rate of adoption across the firm."

Unlike some DMS products, Meticulist's integral search engine means its retrieval capabilities are not dependent upon the amount of document profiling information keyed in by users. www.meticulus.com
top

Carydan acquired by Aonix
Carydan/JBA, the developers of the Carydan integrated case and practice management system, has been acquired by Aonix, an IT consultancy, telecoms, media and software company. Carydan managing director Jonathan Beck said the move would provide the company with the infrastructure, resources and services needed to accelerate development of both the Carydan software portfolio and into newer generations of technology in the coming months.

Commenting on the deal, Aonix chairman Graham Burton said "We had for a long time been looking at expanding into the legal software vertical market. Having seen many offerings, we were impressed by the simplicity yet sophistication of Carydan and felt that together the two organisations could really make an impact on the legal market."

Carydan has relocated from Northwich and is now based in Manchester. The new phone number is 0161 438 2618.
top

News in brief

New look Mountain to launch .NET in autumn
Mountain Software (01476-573718) has become the first major UK legal IT supplier to announce a next generation accounts and practice management system based on the Microsoft .NET platform. The new system, which involved a complete rewrite of Mountain's current client/server software, is scheduled for an autumn launch and will be followed by a .NET case management application. In keeping with the company's customer care policy, the .NET system will be offered as a free upgrade to all firms on support contracts - although there will be a minimum hardware requirement of a Windows 2000 network.

Sales director Steve Kendrick says .NET is just one of the "proactive initiatives" Mountain is currently working on following last year's management buyout, which saw the retirement after 26 years of the company's founder John Brewin.
top

Treasury Solicitors to go with Solicitec case management
The Treasury Solicitor's Department, which provides a range of legal services to over 600 UK government departments, agencies and organisations, has awarded its PRACAMS Contract (Practice & Case Management System) to Solicitec Ltd for a solution based on its Visualfiles product after a tendering process involving "a close competition between a number of leading suppliers."

Implementation will start later this spring and will see the system rolled out to around 350 staff at the department's London offices. The contract is valued at £2.5 million over 5 years and it is intended that PRACAMS will modernise the Treasury Solicitor's litigation operations through: integrated case working, the generation of bills and tracking payments, electronic records management facilities and automatic workflow making it easier for caseworkers to process cases.

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.

New online legal service enters the UK debt market
The e-Xecute online debt recovery service, which has been operating in the South African consumer credit market for a number of years, has now opened for business in the UK through Execute Law Ltd (01992 462001).

The basic concept is the e-Xecute client uploads the details of the book debts they wants to recover and the system then automatically generates a series of solicitors letters (there is a non-exclusive solicitor/client relationship between the client and the law firm Execute Law uses to draft the letters) to the debtors. Clients also have secure extranet access to management and progress reports and can revise their instructions at any time.

Managing director Peter Edwards says the service is most appropriate for companies with 1000+ debts or overdue accounts to handle each month. The typical charge for generating each solicitor's letter is around £15 however that is the only cost, as there are no set-up charges, collection commissions, monthly subscriptions or legal fees. www.executelaw.co.uk
top

AIM breaking away from legacy sites image
Latest figures from AIM Professional Systems reveal that since 1998, when the product was launched, over 40% of the 130 law firms that have ordered the company's Evolution Client/Server case and practice management system have been new sites. Managing director Steve Broadley says this competitive success effectively scotches the canard that the company only sells to existing AIM sites wanting to upgrade older legacy systems.

Recent AIM wins include Ashton Graham in Suffolk, which has selected AIM as its preferred supplier for a 140 user practice management system and 90 user case management system. The firm's IT partner Jonathan Long said they had considered but then rejected best of breed solutions in favour of a fully integrated solution from AIM. Former AIM user Leeds Day in Cambridgeshire has returned to the fold following a demerger and replaced its Sanderson Galaxy system with a 60 user Evolution Client/Server implementation. Practice manager Janet Venn said the system's risk management features were a key attraction. And, Munro & Noble in Inverness is extending its AIM installation with the introduction of case management systems in its court and conveyancing departments.
top

Speech technology news in brief news in brief

The latter enables a firm to record the proceedings of a meeting as it progresses but then, at a predetermined time such as every 5 minutes, finish that recording and send the file to a secretary to transcribe. Simultaneously, a new section of recording commences but it also overlaps with the last 5 to 10 seconds of the previous session, so there is no risk of any part of the meeting being lost. The secretary also knows where to paste the report together and, within minutes of a meeting ending, a hard copy of the transcription is available. This suggests that in some circumstances this application could also be used as an alternative to a machine shorthand writer/stenographer.

New category added to Insider who-is-using-what chart
Legal Technology Insider has added a new category, covering Copitrak/Equitrac-style cost recovery systems - to its chart showing the IT products being used by the UK's 100 largest firms. The Excel chart can be accessed free of charge via the Insider web site at www.legaltechnology.com/Top100Chart.xls
top

Now iManage enters the email management market
Next week, at LegalTech New York, the document management systems giant iManage will mark its debut in the emerging email management systems market with the launch of its new iManage Communications Server for Email Management product.

Speaking about the new system, Dan Carmel, iManage's vice president for marketing and business development, told the Insider that there are effectively two dimensions to the email management problem. The first is primarily an IT issue relating to handling the sheer volume of message traffic, along with its subsequent storage and the implications that had for servers, mailbox sizes and bandwidth . This problem is already being addressed by products such as KVS Vault and is currently not on the iManage agenda.

Instead, iManage's new system is targeted at the second element of the problem, namely the management of information and the need for lawyers to be able to consolidate all client related correspondence within one file, whereas at present it is typically stored within two separate repositories - a document management system and an email system. Although iManage users can already manually drag and drop email files into the DMS, the idea behind the Communications Server is to automate this process to support the unified matter-centric file structure many firms are now trying to achieve.

Because any folder within the iManage DMS can already be given an email address, the new system deals with outgoing emails by automatically sending a copy to the appropriate folder. Carmel concedes that dealing with incoming email is a more complicated process however in the first release of Communications Server any incoming message that uses a specific client/matter email address will automatically be routed to the appropriate folder in the DMS. Subsequent versions should also be able to route emails by the client and matter details appearing in the 'subject' line of the message header.

Communications Server should commence shipping in the UK and Europe at the end of March and will initially be available in English, French and German language versions.
top

Exhibition preview: Legal IT 2003 London
Although the Legal IT 2003 London exhibition does not open its doors for business for another three weeks, the organisers Cordial Events say that on the strength of the advance ticket bookings they have already received (pre-registrations for the seminar sessions are nearly 100% up on last year) they are expecting a record attendance. And, with over 70 companies exhibiting, Legal IT London can now justifiably claim to be the largest legal technology event in Europe.

Along with the official launch of the latest edition of the Law Society Software Solutions Guide, -the event will also see a number of new products and systems making their public debut. These include the launch of SolCase 8 case management system from Solicitec. Suitable both for high volume procedural work, such as debt and personal injury claims, as well as high value non-procedural work, SolCase 8 also incorporates knowledge management features that automatically captures information during the life cycle of a case so it can be shared by other fee earners in a firm.

TFB will be giving the first public demonstrations of a new 'open source' version of its practice and case management system running on a low-cost Linux platform, as well a series of non-Microsoft desktop applications including Star Office, Open Office and alternative email products. And, staying in the realms of open source systems, Axxia will be showing its Java-based Personal Knowledge Centre - in effect a next generation fee earner desktop system that uses a web browser interface.

Also, check out the Civica (previously Sanderson) stand, which will be featuring the company's new range of managed services, as well as a chance to win a multimedia picture phone, and Timeslice, which is launching new client extranet access and document management facilities for its Lawman PMS.