Legal IT London - all visitor records broken
Is the UK legal technology market showing signs of recovery? Does it look as if this country will also enjoy a Y2K03 boom, on the lines of the one getting underway in the United States as firms begin to review their late 1990's infrastructure? On the evidence of last month's Legal IT 2003 exhibition at the Business Design Centre in Islington, which not only attracted the biggest audience in the event's history - just under 2600 visitors - but also proved to be the busiest legal technology event the UK has seen since the mid-1990s, the answer is a definite 'yes'.

In fact had London's transport system not been giving its impression of a third world country on a bad day, there would undoubtedly have been a lot more visitors. This is illustrated by the fact that on the second day alone the organisers received 168 emails from would-be visitors requesting copies of the show guide because travel problems meant they were unable to attend.

Of the visitors attending the event, just over 60% were from private practice - the rest were from the public and commercial sectors - and 53% of law firm delegates were from practices with 11 or more partners. A total of 590 delegates attended the five keynote seminars organised by Legal Technology Insider - the biggest audiences were for Derek Sturdy on knowledge management for smaller firms and Nicola Webb's internet marketing session. For more Legal IT reviews click HERE
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LITIG to focus on four areas
The Legal IT Innovators Group (LITIG), which has now begun to evolve as a useful independent forum (its membership excludes consultants and suppliers) for the IT directors of larger law firms, has set itself four issues to pursue over the next quarter. These are: to identify and understand the 'key influencing bodies' in the legal sector and then to work with them on e-government initiatives, the adoption of e-billing standards and the development of best practice standards regarding email use. The next, invitation only, meeting of LITIG will take place at Shoosmiths' Northampton offices on 10 April. For details contact LITIG co-ordinator David Robbins on robbinsdj@hotmail.com
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Pilgrim take on Net Results with Analytics
Pilgrim Systems has moved into the business intelligence reporting market with the launch of its Analytics product, which the company's CEO Benny Placido describes as "a programming free toolkit for analysing information graphically."

Analytics is based on Orenburg's widely used 'Board' technology however Pilgrim, which has secured the sole UK legal market distribution rights, is positioning the system as one step beyond the rival Net Results product. No doubt Solution 6 will strongly contest this claim but what is interesting about Analytics is that it can access data from multiple sources including not just Pilgrim's LawSoft product but also third party practice management and even client relationship management (CRM) systems.

Money laundering - warnings and upgrades
Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw has become one of the first UK law firms to upgrade its compliance systems to take account of the new Proceeds of Crime Act, which imposes stricter, more proactive reporting requirements on firms where 'reasonable grounds' may exist for suspecting money laundering is taking place. The firm has installed the CIRAS system from Semagix (020 7832 3251), which uses a data 'enhancement' technique to also verify 'non obvious' facts about prospective clients

Meanwhile, with the new Assets Recovery Agency opening its doors for business last week under the aegis of the Proceeds of Crime Act, IT consultant Neil Cameron recently gave a timely reminder of the complexities of the money laundering regulations. Speaking at one of the keynote sessions at last month's Legal IT exhibition in London, Cameron said it was heartening to see that so many solicitors practices now had elaborate measures in place to ensure they complied with money laundering regulations, when it came to taking on and vetting new clients.

However he went on to warn that he "didn't know any firm on the planet" whose systems also extended their precautions to include a situation where cheques are received from a client but a third-party rather than the client is the actual payer. Cameron said most firms are so keen to bank cheques they never stop to think that by accepting payment from an unknown third-party, they could be running foul of the money laundering rules.
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Enjudica - linking case management to the web
Compared with some previous events, this year's Legal IT exhibition was relatively quiet on the web front however one new e-business company with a novel and potentially useful offering was Enjudica Online (0117 962 6119).

The company's eponymous software can best be described as middleware technology providing the extranet mechanism between a law firm's core internal case management systems and its clients seeking access to matter progress reports via the web. Although there is nothing new about this concept, Enjudica has given it a different spin by making it an open system that can talk to most third-party case management products, not just those already web enabled, thereby offering extranet functionality to firms that do not want to upgrade or replace their current case management systems. The system is available now and by the end of this month three firms - Martin Elliott in Colchester plus Berry Redmond and 35-partner Thring Townsend in the South-West - will have gone live with the system.

Enjudica pricing is based on the number of users and case management applications modules (conveyancing, matrimonial etc) selected, with pricing starting at £5,500. This includes not only the interface with the case management software but also the first year's maintenance, as well as the development and hosting of the web site. Annual maintenance from the second year onwards starts at £750 and includes free version upgrades along with ten hours of web design services. To further simplify the Enjudica offering, the system is supplied complete with software server, security and firewall protection on a dedicated Linux appliance that is ready to plug into the firm's network. www.enjudica.co.uk
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Looking for IT staff ?
This week's top jobs: Digital dictation specialist BigHand is looking for a senior sales rep, Baker Robbins has a vacancy for a principal consultant to join its London office and an international law firm is recruiting for a senior IT trainer and troubleshooter for its Cayman Islands branch. For full details of these and other vacancies visit the Insider Jobs Board at www.legaltechnology.com

Wedlake Bell rollout TotalSpeech DDS
Covent Garden based Wedlake Bell has rolled out BigHand's TotalSpeech digital dictation system to all practice groups - and a total of 130 users - in just one month.

Wedlake Bell's IT manager Linda Webster commented, "the rollout, which was handled by in-house trainers, has been swift and painless and feedback from users has been very positive. TotalSpeech is simple to use and has made a marked difference to the speed at which work is turned around. It has the exceptional quality of being popular with both fee earners and secretaries."

BigHand director Gordon McAlpine added "TotalSpeech's architecture, workflow engine and user interface make it flexible enough to bring value to all firms. Small and medium sized law firms can draw the same productivity and efficiency improvements many of the global organisations have enjoyed over the past year."
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Argue out at ALT
Case management specialists Alternative Team last week announced that Bruce Argue had "been dismissed as an employee and removed from the board of directors." ATL development director David Rich said "the dismissal is the subject of a legal challenge and cannot be commented on further."
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News in brief

Freshfields to roll out workflow practice wide
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has purchased a practice-wide licence for the eWork business process management system from Metastorm. Following an evaluation of the leading BPM tools, eWork was selected to form the platform for a series of business process automation projects including client/matter inception, matter review and billing.

ResSoft has been engaged as a development partner to integrate eWork with the firm's FirmWare financial management system (also a ResSoft product). The new web-enabled system will be rolled out to lawyers and secretaries during 2003 and make Freshfields one of the first major firms anywhere to deploy automated processes in key operational areas.

Elite extends Scottish market share with Ledingham Chalmers
Elite has extended its share of the Scottish legal IT market - it now has 11 customers including eight of the top 30 firms - with the signing of Ledingham Chalmers. The firm is implementing Elite's practice management system to support its three Scottish offices in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness, as well as its international operations in Istanbul, Baku (Azerbaijan) and the Falkland Islands.

In another international deal, Rouse & Co - the global intellectual property consultancy - has selected Elite's PMS as the basis for its new time, billing and financial management platform. Rouse & Co, probably best known in the UK for its legal arm Willoughby & Partners, will run the 'globalisation release' of Elite. This supports global reporting and analysis, as well as multi-currency and multi-jurisdiction accounting.

Keep up with the news
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Outsourcing at Charles Russell
Charles Russell is outsourcing its IT infrastructure to InTechnology's Managed Data Services in a move intended to assure continuous, reliable IT services for day-to-day operations and guarantee business continuity. Charles Russell is already using InTechnology's VBAK service for its managed backups and has now taken on secure hosting services. The firm's IT servers are now held in a secure InTechnology data centre.

Commenting on the project, Charles Russell IT director Jon Gould said: "Rather than spend on business continuity services that we may never need, we are putting in a smaller amount of money and getting all the security, resilience and flexibility we need for both business continuity and normal operations." explains Jon Gould, IT director at Charles Russell.

The other two support companies are: MWR Info Security (01962 891 111) who specialise in online security, including testing networks against penetration and vulnerability; and Plan-Net Services plc (020 7353 4313) who specialise in network and infrastructure design, implementation and support.
www.intechnology.co.uk
www.mwrinfosecurity.biz
www.plan-net.co.uk
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Copitrak teams up to capture scanning costs
Costs recovery specialists Copitrak Systems has teamed up with eCopy Inc to create a new system that should make it as easy for firms to track, manage and assign costs associated with scanned paper documents as it currently is for photocopying. The system links to a scanner or digital copier and automatically logs cost recovery data regardless of whether the scanned document is subsequently distributed by fax, email or stored in a DMS.

Company news round up

Two more firms order LegalKEY
Kramer Lee & Associates has secured two more orders for its LegalKEY records management system. The latest wins are at Norton Rose and Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw however KLA report that a growing number of firms are also showing interest in LegalKEY's conflicts of interest management product as a way of limiting their exposure to professional indemnity claims.

KLA has also won an order from Bedell & Cristin in Jersey to swap out the firm's current Hummingbird document management software and replace it with the rival iManage WorkSite system. KLA is currently rolling out iManage at Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw and implementing Interface Software's InterAction CRM at TLT and Ogiers, another Jersey-based firm.

What's hot? - InterAction
Interface Software's InterAction client relationship management (CRM) system has been enjoying a renewed boom in the UK since the launch of the more flexible Version 5 release last summer, clocking up new wins (recent signings include Browne Jacobson, TLT and Ogier & Le Masurier) as well as relaunches at a couple of larger firms who will now be rolling it out from their London offices on a European-wide basis.

There is also some interesting integration work currently underway, with workflow specialists Infographics involved in a number of "intelligent process-driven integration projects" designed to provide closer links between InterAction and different practice management systems. This includes one project that will use prospective client data from the CRM used to automatically populate the PMS when new client files are opened.

And what's not - CRM software
Ironically, while InterAction is going from strength-to-strength, the concept of client relationship management is still struggling to gain acceptance within law firms.

The first problem is the continuing confusion as to what actually comprises CRM software, with many firms apparently still thinking CRM is just another, trendier, name for a marketing department database. The second and rather more fundamental problem is that even where firms do appreciate the distinction, the pressure to record billable hours means few firms can develop a genuine relationship culture.

One marketing consultant told the Insider that in a recent survey of ten of the UK's top 25 law firms, only one had a CRM culture. The rest had CRM software but there was no relationship with their clients, merely the cross-selling of other services. This view was echoed by one Scottish merchant banker who told the Insider: "Law firms still think CRM means a partner phoning up one day to ask if everything is OK and the next day sending you a bill for £70,000 that you had not been expecting."
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Three suppliers in Keoghs deal
More information has emerged on the recent decision by Keoghs, which has offices in Bolton and Coventry, to move from Axxia to a new best of breed solution based on Elite's practice management system and Solicitec's Visualfiles case management software. Elite say a key factor was the firm had recently revamped its management team by bringing in a number of senior personnel, including CEO Paul Smith, who had not previously worked in the legal profession. This in turn led to a complete reassessment of the firm's IT infrastructure, including the recognition of the need for more detailed business analysis and the automation of both routine and more complex tasks by way of a business process re-engineering exercise.

The third legal IT supplier involved in the Keoghs' project is Ramesys who will be implementing a 350 user intranet based around Ramesys' Assimilate content management system.
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Axxia sans frontieres
Axxia has appointed one of its original founding directors Doug McLachlan to the new post of international operations director, where he will have responsibility for developing the company's international network. Axxia has already appointed Verax Consulting, run by former Keystone director Mike Clements, as its distributor for the Australia/New Zealand markets and is currently investigating the SE Asia-Pacific and US markets. Back in the UK, Axxia support director (and another founding director) Bob Hadingham has taken over McLachlan's former role as development director, while Hadingham's deputy Barry Robson has been promoted to head of support services.
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In Solution 6 we trust
Risdon Hosegood is implementing Solution 6 Trust Accounts software at three of its Somerset offices, along with companion TrusTAX and PerTAX systems to produce SA900 returns for trusts and estates and SA100 for individuals. The firm estimates the move will cut tax return preparation time by 25 percent.
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HotDocs 6 goes in at Berwin Leighton Paisner
Berwin Leighton Paisner has become the first firm in the UK to commit to a wide-scale roll out of the new version 6 release of the HotDocs document assembly system. Commenting on the move, Berwin Leighton Paisner IT director Janet Day said "We have been a HotDocs user in a limited manner for a number of years. This release convinced us to roll out the application to all desktops. Document assembly gives an excellent ROI." Day added that she was pleased at the flexibility of the HotDocs licensing arrangements which mean document assembly facilities can be offered both to internal staff and external clients.

HotDocs 6 - which its distributor Capsoft UK describes as "more than an upgrade from HotDocs 5, it is a complete rewrite" - also features a PDF module that allows the automation and generation of PDF documents and forms.
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Legal IT London - some of the new faces
Digital dictation systems, case/workflow management systems, particularly those addressing quality assurance and risk management issues, and email management were among the products attracting visitors at last month's Legal IT event. Axxia reported strong interest in its personal knowledge centre, which is the web generation's successor to the traditional fee earner desktop, while TFB says it was pleasantly surprised by the positive reception its new Linux/open source initiative received.

In addition to the debuts mentioned elsewhere in this issue, a number of other new faces caught our eye at Legal IT. These included the curiously named iDOiNK Technologies (01473 405000), who are workflow specialists with a portfolio of currently in vogue systems that should prove of interest both to law firms and the wider legal market. iDOiNK products currently available include the LegalFLO legal case management system (no relation to Infographics' FloSuite workflow management software), the LicenceFLO licensing management system for local authorities, a DMS called DocuFLO, the ClaimsFLO system for insurance claims and DictationFLO, a Philips based digital dictation and workflow management system.www.idoink.com

Another new system certainly worth investigating further is ContactPortal from Telephonetics (01442 242 242). This can best be described as voice mail meets speech recognition and provides a way of automatically answering and routing incoming calls to specific handsets purely by using the spoken voice rather than waiting for and reacting to instructions to press different keys on a touch-phone. The Telephonetics system is already in use in two major City firms but non-disclosure agreements mean the company cannot mention any names - however Telephonetics is also the UK market leader in the multiplex cinema sector, so if you have booked any tickets for an Odeon cinema in recent months, you will have encountered the ContactPortal.

Telephonetics sales director Paul Welham says the benefits of the system include the fact callers are presented with a natural, human sounding voice rather than an annoying voice mail response, while a firm is in a position to have 24/7 phone coverage at a fraction of the cost of employing receptionists and switchboard operators. www.telephonetics.co.uk

People & Places

Axtol - creating e-leaning courses and revenue
Axtol (020 8899 6012), the e-learning company formed by former Ashurst Morris Crisp IT director Kris Grabarczyk is running a 50% discount off the cost of its internet-based training courses (the price for accessing the 180 courses comprising the Microsoft MCSE package is now just £140 per end user) for firms and companies wanting to use up the last of this year's IT budget.

Courses are accessed via Axtol's KnowPort e-learning portal however along with the company's portfolio of pre-packaged courses (there are currently over 800 available) Axtol also offers a course authoring tool that allows organisations to create their own multimedia courses. The cost of an annual subscription to the Course Author software is just £150 and completed courses can then be hosted on a secure area of the KnowPort portal and accessed by users as and when required for £75 per user.

Along with providing the tools and infrastructure to support e-learning courses within an organisation, without a firm having to invest in its own internal learning management system, Grabarczyk says another advantage of KnowPort is it offers organisations an opportunity to recoup their investment in producing the courses by reselling them to other firms or individuals requiring similar courses. www.axtol.com
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Context in Solcara KM and Bliss construction law initiatives
Electronic publishing specialist Context (020 7267 8989) and Solcara (0870 333 2966) have announced a strategic partnership designed to make it easier and cheaper for law firms to develop knowledge management systems.

Context's contribution to the partnership is its Syntalex software which focuses on the conversion of references within the text of documents or web pages into hypertext links, without the need for any manual editing, while Solcara's expertise is in the design and delivery of know-how solutions.

Or, as Solcara sales & marketing director Charlie O'Rourke puts it "Our clients already benefit from the ability to easily assimilate and digest information from multiple internal and external content sources. The integration of Syntalex means that the manual tagging of references is a thing of the past. Firms that spend a great deal of their time manually processing references in documents, or use third parties to do so, can save thousands of pounds by automating this process."

Legal Technology Events Diary

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