Headlines

Laserform enters HR market and wins first site
Laserform, which over the years has diversified from electronic legal forms into the case and practice management systems market, this month further widened the scope of its operations with the acquisition of Augment Systems’ HRnet personnel and HR management application in “a six figure deal”. HRnet will be sold by a new subsidiary Laserform HR Systems with Alby Smith, the founder of Augment, as managing director.

The acquisition is already on its way to paying for itself as Kendall Freeman, in London, has just become the first firm to place an order for Laserform’s HR system. The firm’s IT director Mark Gorringe said that after reviewing the alternatives “we opted to purchase HRnet rather than simply upgrade our current PWA system.” Gorringe said the attraction of HRnet is that it is “totally focused” on the needs of law firms (including a CPD records facility for fee earners) and offers ‘self-service’ so staff can observe and update their own records.

Laserform, which celebrates its 16th birthday later this year, has just reported a turnover of £4m for last year – a 25% increase on its 2003 figures. The group’s chairman Barry Hawley-Green says he “aims to grow turnover to £6m within two years” through a combination of innovation and further acquisitions.

Lexis moves into software with CRM and case management deals
The legal publishing giant LexisNexis has cranked up its attempts to dominate the legal desktop and move “beyond research” into the wider legal systems market with the announcement of two fresh initiatives.

The first, which came just before the Christmas break, saw LexisNexis acquiring Interface Software, the company behind the market leading InterAction client relationship management (CRM) system. The managements of both companies are talking about “synergies” that will benefit all their customers but for the time being it is business as usual, as the current managers and staff of Interface will continue to operate as a separate unit and there will be no change to existing reseller channels, which include ResSoft and Tikit in the UK. In fact Tikit is already talking to Lexis about a joint venture that would see Tikit’s know-how system being combined with Lexis legal content.

The second new initiative, to be launched this spring, will see LexisNexis staff in the UK reselling a conveyancing system, complete with integration to Lexis legal forms and content, based on Pilgrim Systems’ LawSoft case management software.

Tikit buys Solution 6 network integration biz
The AIM-listed Tikit Group has bought the Solution 6 Network & Integration Services (NIS - the division was previously also called MICL) from MYOB for approximately £1 million in cash. Tikit say NIS will augment the group’s skills in a number of infrastructure specialisations, including Microsoft Active Directory, Terminal Service and Citrix solutions, with the result that Tikit will be able to provide a broader range of technical services to its customers. In the year ended 30 June 2004, NIS had revenues of £3.48m, pre-tax profits of £195k and net liabilities of £1.1m. However the net assets of NIS at completion will be zero, net cash balances are expected to be £250k and tax losses of £850k will transfer to Tikit.

In a pre-close trading statement issued to the Stock Exchange earlier this month, Tikit said the “outlook for the group is encouraging... with a healthy backlog of implementation business” and revenues and margins from consultancy and support services continuing to grow. However the company also warned that because of increased competition “margins on some third party (software) products were under pressure”. Latest Tikit deals include Halliwell Landau selecting the InterAction CRM system and Taylor Wessing ordering both InterAction and the Interwoven WorkSite DMS.

Inhouse legal departments and IT - survey results
Ascertus (020 7360 6028), which specialises in providing IT solutions to inhouse legal departments, has published the results of a survey it conducted in the autumn on the IT issues facing inhouse lawyers, corporate counsel and their supporting IT staff.

Asked what technology had the highest priority, 50% of the sample of inhouse legal departments said adopting document and email management systems and 29% said case and matter management systems. E-billing and document collaboration received the lowest priority, with nearly 40% admitting that they had never reviewed their workflow and collaborative processes.

Over 75% of inhouse legal departments already have specialist IT systems over and above email and standard Microsoft Office applications and 68% said IT was critical in helping them achieve their goals – in fact there was no negative feedback on the value of IT. Contrary to the popular belief that legal departments have systems foisted on them by a corporate IT department, 75% said IT purchasing decisions were made internally, with only 11% having decisions made for them by an IT department. There was however a wide variation on expenditure, with 32% having an annual legal IT budget of more than £100k last year, 29% had budgets of between £50-£100K, 25% had budgets of under £25K and 7% had to scrape by with an IT budget of nothing!

On the fee billing side of things, although 18% of inhouse lawyers said law firms failing to adhere to their billing guidelines was their single greatest challenge in managing legal spend, the most frequent complaint, from 50% of the sample, was lack of inhouse resources and tools. And, while 57% said firms were instructed primarily on their track record, 14% said price was the key factor, with work going to whoever produced the most competitive quote. Interestingly, 93% said they should receive a discount if they paid law firms in less than 30 days, with 32% suggesting it should be more than a 5% discount.

Turning to extranets, only 4% of the sample said they enjoyed visiting law firm extranets, 29% said they would prefer some form of global extranet that law firms had to subscribe to, another 29% said they would prefer everything to be handled via email – and 11% asked ‘what is an extranet?’

What is on the IT shopping list in 2005?
What are law firms going to be buying over the coming year? After speaking to a sample of firms and vendors, the Insider is predicting that email management systems – particularly in the wake of some expected new product launches during the first quarter of the year – will be appearing on many firms’ IT shopping lists.

It also looks like being another good year for digital dictation suppliers, especially as DDS becomes a viable system on thin client/Citrix platforms, which should appeal to smaller, multi-branch practices who have so far been unable to take advantage of this technology. That said, we are heading towards a shakeout and, with the exception of Crescendo, other DDS suppliers are unlikely to win much business in 2005 in the face of competition from market leaders BigHand, Nflow and WinScribe.

However it would seem the biggest item of expenditure on the IT budget will be infrastructure upgrades and replacement, as firms clear out their legacy, fast approaching end-of-life Windows NT technology and replace it with newer Microsoft .NET framework compatible servers, networks, applications, systems and hardware. Although many larger firms are already taking steps in this direction, we are also going to see an element of supplier push, as more and more suppliers start rolling out their next generation .NET systems. In fact it is probably fair to say that any major case or practice management suppliers that do not have a clear .NET migration strategy in place by the autumn can kiss their long term futures – and users – goodbye.

As to who the winners will be, we expect the usual suspects (Aderant, Axxia, Elite, Hummingbird, Interwoven and Visualfiles) to continue to dominate the top end of the market but we also think we will be hearing a lot more from FWBS, Mountain and Workshare. But, as the MD of another vendor recently put it, with a definite tone of envy in his voice, “the three companies that will really make money out of the legal market this year are Microsoft, Dell and Tikit”.

XoVox release networked speech to text via Dragon
Sheffield-based voice technologies specialist XoVox Communications (07767 222621) has released XoVox Voice Server 3, a new speech-to-text creation system built around Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 speech recognition software.

Unlike earlier speech recognition software, which attempted to handle transcription in real-time on the desktop, with XoVox fee earners dictate on their PCs or portable recorders, send the files to a server based speech recognition engine for speech-to-text conversion and then on to a secretary to correct and format the document. The XoVox system can also be used in conjunction with digital dictation, with speech recognition running in the background to reach an acceptable level of accuracy before a user switches on the speech-to-text conversion.

XoVox, which was formed by sales director Chris Ford and dictation/speech recognition industry veteran Joe Murphy, who is now the company’s head of business development, has also integrated Voice Server 3 with the WinScribe digital dictation system.
www.xovoxspeech.com

Westlaw UK using Epoq in electronic forms service
Westlaw UK, Sweet & Maxwell’s online legal information service, has launched a new electronic legal forms facility – called Rapidforms – on its Civil Procedure service. This will provide users with access to interactive copies of official court forms which they can complete onscreen and then submit, where appropriate, by email to a court in a PDF format.

The technology platform Sweet & Maxwell is using is the Rapidocs document and form automation system from the Epoq group and one of the main innovations it brings is users can now save, re-edit, add continuation sheets and return to work on a form at their convenience, whereas previously forms could be edited and printed but not saved for re-editing.

From this April the service will be extended to include 100 of the most widely used Civil Court forms and also be available to subscribers to Sweet’s White Book CD-Rom service. Commenting on the launch, Sweet’s legal online director Jitendra Valera said “we felt that taking out the bottlenecks and potential glitches in the process is vital if the use of online forms is going to take off. This service addresses all the outstanding technology issues that previously put lawyers off using digital forms.”

In a related development, Epoq has launched an online service to help victims of ‘identity theft’ (such as someone who has had their driving licence stolen and the perpetrator has used it to obtain credit cards or take bank loans) prepare all the necessary documentation to ‘recover’ their identity, including creating appropriate dispute, correction and disassociation notices to submit to credit reference agencies. It is available to customers of the insurance company More Th>n’s family legal service and online via www.desktoplawyer.co.uk + www.epoq.co.uk

Recommind widen system to include 'tacit' KM
Recommind, the developers of the MindServer Legal knowledge management system, have substantially widened the scope of the product with the launch of a new Legal Matters & Expertise module. Whereas the original system provided KM search and retrieval facilities to documents (or ‘explicit’ know-how), the new module extends the searching capability to lawyers, client contacts and matter information, including billing data and other forms of ‘tacit’ know-how.

In an exclusive preview of the new module, Recommind CEO Bob Tennant demonstrated how MindServer can now interrogate not only document management systems but also billing, practice management and CRM systems, such as InterAction, to provide a complete, matter-centric view of all aspects of practice-wide KM relating to a particular project.

Tennant believes this will particularly appeal to larger, multi branch and, in some instances, multinational firms where there is a need to retrieve information on the lawyers who have worked on a particular type of matter before – and how much time was billed – as well as more traditional KM information, such as documents and precedents. Tennant says the new system could also be used for conflict of interest checking.

MindServer Legal is currently being installed in its first UK law firm site (a top 200 firm in the Fleet Street area of London) and is also used by the US arm of DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary. Recommind’s UK partners are Phoenix Business Solutions and Baker Robbbins. Recommind will be showing the new module at Legal Tech New York next week. www.recommind.com

Staying with the subject of knowledge management systems at LegalTech, OpenSource will be showing version 2.0 of its Sanitze application, which strips out client/matter sensitive information from documents when creating precedents for future use. Version 2.0 now offers full integration with Word. And, the company is launching OpenSource Profiler 1.0, a new tool that ‘mines’ legal documents to create an XML report that can be used to automatically populate the document profile in a Hummingbird or Interwoven DMS.
www.opensourceinc.com

Legal IT 2005 - two weeks to go
It is now a fortnight to go until Legal IT 2005, the UK – and Europe’s – largest legal technology exhibition opens its doors to visitors at the Islington Business Design Centre in London. In addition to the product launches mentioned elsewhere in this issue, highlights are likely to include the first public showing by Axxia (stand 15) of its next generation web and .NET practice management software, The Visualfiles (stand 19) launch of its new M2 matter centric document assembly plus risk and email management system – the company describes this as a ‘non-invasive’ approach to file management which, as far as users are concerned, will appear as just an extension to Microsoft Outlook. And, in the digital dictation arena, the Grundig (stand 32) launch of ProMike 840, its competitor to the Philips SpeechMike. The Insider will carry a full report on the event in the next edition.

Legal IT takes place on Wednesday 9th and Thursday 10th February. The doors are open from 9:30am to 5:00pm and admission is free. There is also a full programme of free keynote seminars on both days.
www.legalitshow.com

Beta testers wanted for new case software
Brighton-based Anya Designs, whose Case Keeper case management system is widely used by legal aid practices, are looking for two firms in the South-East who would be willing to beta test their new ilaw software. The new application is based on Microsoft SQL Server and designed for firms with anywhere up to 150 users, who are either not using case management or are dissatisfied with their current systems. ilaw is intended to automate and streamline such tasks as time keeping, billing and document and email management. In return for beta testing, Anya will provide the firms with a free copy of ilaw when it is launched in May. For more details, call Anya’s CEO Christina Grzasko on 0870 402 9939 or visit www.anyadesigns.co.uk

Clarke Willmott moves to Elite
Clarke Willmott, which now has 325 fee earners based in Bristol, Southampton and Taunton, is to replace its legacy Civica Galaxy system with the Thomson Elite practice management suite. On the technology front, Thomson Elite has announced the release of WebView 5.0, a redevelopment of its WebView browser interface to make it “100% native .NET”. Elite has also announced Citrix server support for Microsoft Windows 2003 Server.

Major Scottish firm switches to CMS
One of the largest practices in Scotland, Shepherd & Wedderburn, has become the latest firm to order the CMS.Net practice management system from Aderant. As well as being one the first large Miles 33 sites to switch to another supplier for some time, the Scottish order is also the 8th all new order Aderant has won in Europe since the company restructured in August. Other recent wins include Northampton-based Franklins Solicitors and Van Mens & Wisselink in The Netherlands.

New Eclipse to witness
Copitrak is launching an all new range of cost recovery products – called the Eclipse Series – this spring. Eclipse is based on a Microsoft .NET platform and will include a new biometric and touch screen terminal range, plus clearer user interfaces accessed via a new web portal design. Copitrak believe Eclipse is the most advanced and innovative suite of cost recovery products available today and are launching it at the Legal IT 2005 event next month. Copitrak is also holding a reception at HAC in London on 17th February, for details call Debbie Hunt on 020 7621 2350.

AvMA selects Emis as IT partner
The charity Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA) has awarded Emis IT the contract to deliver a new fully integrated contact, file, activity, knowledge and relationship management system. The AvMA will use the Seneca software from Emis both to help with its core activity of providing advice to those affected by medical accidents, as well as with its other roles, which include acting as an accreditor of specialist solicitors, provider of references to exports and in its educational activities, including publishing and seminars.
www.emisit.com

LegalDocs moves into case and email management at KSB
KSB Law, recently rated by The Lawyer as one of the UK’s ‘Rising 50’ firms to watch in 2005, has become one of the first practices to upgrade to the new version 3 of the LegalDocs system. As before, LegalDocs offers its combination of file management and document assembly/production facilities, with a strong emphasis on digital dictation integration, but in addition it can now also offer full case management and email management.

Because LegalDocs is fully compatible with Microsoft Office and Outlook, as well as third party software, it typically runs in the background so all users see are a number of extra icons in an existing application’s button bar. The new email management facility, incidentally, stores messages as encapsulated files, complete with any attachment, in a central matter store, thereby bypassing Outlook’s own storage limitations. Pricing starts at £500 per seat and the software is available from LegalDocs UK (020 7501 8516)
www.legaldocs.uk.com

TFB + Fraser Brown on e-storage
TFB, in conjunction with Fraser Brown Solicitors, is holding a seminar in Nottingham on 22nd February to look at the way the firm has been using ZyLab technology to manage the electronic storage of archived files and the impact this has had on file storage and retrieval costs. For more details call Sarah Cox of TFB on 01489 609687.

Shulmans Solicitors in Leeds has published a case study looking at the way the firm has used TFB case management software to create QCAS, a high volume conveyancing offshoot that includes a 24/7 telephone service for clients. The case study can be downloaded as a PDF from the case studies page of the Insider web site.

Also now available is Software on a Shoestring, a guide to low cost (with an entry level price of £1000 or less) accounts, practice management and case management software suitable for sole practitioners and very small firms. This is a PDF version of a special report the Insider prepared for the Solo and alt X magazines.
www.legaltechnology.com

Dumb and dumber
A lot of competition for this month’s dumb and dumber slot, including: the UK software company that told the Insider its staff would be spending the next couple of weeks cracking the US legal market but then admitted they had never heard of the LegalTech event (see page 6) and the managing director of one of the UK’s largest legal publishers, who sent out his Christmas cards without any postage on the envelopes. However first prize goes to the digital dictation salesman (not with one of the larger suppliers, we are relieved to say) who, when asked by a law firm IT director if they could carry out a ‘quiet install’ on the firm’s network, said there would be no problem as they could do it over a weekend, so fee earners would not be distracted by the noise. The salesman did not get the order.

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News in brief

Cherwell go electronic
The Legal Services Unit at Cherwell District Council has moved over to an all-electronic file management system after installing SolCase case management software from Visualfiles. The system was developed by the unit in conjunction with Visualfiles and Rod Charles of Helmsmen Business Consultants (01730 895307). Over 40 local authorities now run Visualfiles systems.
www.visualfiles.com
www.helmsmen.com

More wins for Osprey TM
Five more firms – Arscotts in Sussex, White Ryland in London, Davies & Simmons and Pearsons in Kent and Pollard Bower in Lancashire – have ordered the Osprey .TM web based practice management system from Pracctice. Pracctice will be launching major upgrades to Osprey .TM and the accompanying Groupware email system at next month’s Legal IT Exhibition in London.

Enhancements proclaimed
Eclipse Legal Systems has announced a number of enhancements to its ProClaim case management software. These include a conveyancing quote calculator, for firms wanting to provide online quotes via their web sites, and automatic case opening for firms prepared to accept new instructions via the web. ProClaim’s workflows can now also support SMS text messaging, so clients can receive alerts via their mobile phones at predetermined stages in a matter’s progress.

Lees Lloyd gets triple A rating
Lees Lloyd Whitely has become one of the first law firms in the UK to achieve the ‘Bobby’ standard’s AAA rating for making its web site accessible to visually impaired users. The firm achieved this by replacing Flash with pure HTML code and by speech enabling much of the site so that, with a simple download, the text content is available as spoken word.
www.llw.co.uk

Workshare expands channels
Workshare is expanding its distribution channels and has appointed Tikit as its latest partner. As a result of the new relationship, Tikit has already secured its first Workshare deals with Wragge & Co and TLT Solicitors.

Two more Top 250 buy into AIM
Two more top 250 law firms – Darbys in Oxfordshire and Wilkin Chapman in Lincolnshire – have ordered Evolution case and practice management software from AIM Professional. Baker Robbins acted as the consultants at Wilkin Chapman, who were looking to replace their legacy Linetime system. Talbots, in the West Midlands, have also recent installed an AIM Evolution case and practice management system.

Crime spree for LawFusion
The last couple of months has seen three more firms – Tanfields in Dudley, Yates Arden in Ashton-under-Lyne and Jones Knowles Warburton in Stockport – order Select Legal’s LawFusion accounts, practice management and integrated crime time recording, billing and forms production software. All three firms also contracted Select to supply and install new hardware and associated IT infrastructure.

Lewis Silkin backup first
Lewis Silkin has become the first firm to select Datashare’s new Cerberus data backup and remote systems availability managed service. This provides a backup of all the firm’s operational data and makes critical systems, including DMS and email, available over the internet in the event of a disaster.

Pisces signs 100th member
TLT Solicitors have become the latest law firm – and the 100th organisation overall – to join the PISCES property data exchange standards group.
www.pisces.co.uk

Property centric DMS seminar
Calvis is holding a seminar next month looking at the way property management systems can be integrated with document management. The event takes place at the Montague Gardens Hotel near the British Museum, on Thursday 10th February, from 9:00am to 1:00pm. For more details call Claire Kneller of Calvis on 01748 813916.

American Lawyer rebrands
American Lawyer Media, which owns 35 legal newspapers and magazines in the US including The American Lawyer plus the law.com portal, has rebranded as ALM. ALM’s flaship IT event LegalTech takes place next week in New York (31st January to 2nd February).
www.legaltechshow.com

Axxia stregthens team
Axxia Systems has appointed three new account managers to look after existing sites. Andrew Woods and Beverley Grant, both previously with software publisher ILI, will be looking after small-to-mid size users in the North and South of England. Christine Carey, who has recently returned from Hong Kong after spending 10 years working in the professional services market, will have responsibility for Axxia’s major clients in London, the South East and Dublin.

Teksys Microsoft LAR reseller
As a result of the company’s work as a software asset management channel, Teksys has been appointed a Microsoft large account reseller (LAR). For more details call Paul Hoffbrand on 01923 247707 or email phoffbrand@teksys.co.uk

New mentoring service
David Riggall’s Rose & Bridge Associates consultancy (01904 720334) has launched a new legal IT advice and mentoring service called LITNEX. This provides firms with the services of a non-exec IT director, who can work with partners on an ongoing or project by project basis. This could suit smaller firms who have an IT manager to keep the network running but lack anyone who can provide longer-term strategic advice.

CCBC now £10 cheaper
As a result of the new fees order that came into effect this month, it is now £10 cheaper to issue a claim through the County Court Bulk Centre (CCBC) than through a local county court. For more details email Ken Fraser at ken.fraser@courtservice.gsi.gov.uk

Hillyer McKeown extranet
Cheshire law firm Hillyer McKeown has launched an extranet service offering clients 24/7 access to matter progress reports. The service is based around the firm’s Civica Galaxy Legal software and can also offer email and SMS text message alerts.

Qudos UK distribution deal
From this week Avanquest (01962 835000) is selling the Australian Qudos range of compliance and risk management software systems in the UK.
www.avanquest.co.uk

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The Insider web site
For the latest legal IT news, jobs, events and information, visit the Insider web site, described by The Times newspaper as "the definitive online resource for legal technology news".

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Fresh on the radar

Power tools for smart lawyers
The US-based e-discovery and litigation support company LIT Group Inc (0870 421 4091) has expanded its operations in the UK, with the recent opening of new offices in Sun Street in the City of London. The company has also recruited lit support industry veteran Mark Burrows as managing consultant. Burrows told the Insider that “when evaluating the opportunity to join LIT, what impressed me most was the quality of the technology partners they have selected to bring to clients”.

According to LIT Group UK director Julie Grantham “the amount of information required for disclosure in litigation is rapidly trending upward – and most of the information requiring review is in an unstructured format, such as email, voicemail or in PDAs. The technology we bring to law firms is what we call our ‘power tools for smart lawyers’. These are best of breed applications that we deploy to process information quickly, with precision and for less cost than standard
e-discovery service bureaux.”
www.litgroup.com

Sunbelt launches anti-spyware solution
Sunbelt System Software (01905 745 711) has launched CounterSpy Enterprise. The company’s sales director Ian Masters describes this as a “true enterprise-class anti-spyware solution” that can provide IT departments with a centrally managed system for detecting and removing a broad range of adware, spyware and other forms of ‘malware’ from practice networks. CounterSpy runs on a Windows 2000 Server or later platform, can output reports to Crystal and a free trial version can be downloaded from the Sunbelt web site.
www.sunbelt.co.uk

New outsourcing services for law firms
Richmond Green-based Perry Hay & Co has placed a contract with Guildford IT consultancy RAMSAC (0870 756 9001) to upgrade its IT network and take over the management of the firm’s servers, workstations and email system. RAMSAC, which describes its approach to outsourcing as being based on the concept that ‘prevention is better than cure,’ will also provide the firm with a help desk facility. And, Scottish lawyers Pagan Osborne, who have 120 staff and four offices in the Edinburgh and Fife regions, have awarded The Blue Group (0870 160 2583) a contract that will see the firm outsourcing the management and support of its comms, network and IT infrastructure to Blue.
www.ramsac.co.uk
www.blue-central.com

DOC assembly - SmartPrecedent 4 launched
SpeedLegal has launched Version 4 of its web-based SmartPrecedent document assembly system. Jamie Wodetzki of SpeedLegal says the main change is the technology has been moved to the back-end, so users work in plain Microsoft Word (with no macros or plug-ins to worry about) and the system then automatically handles the conversion to an XML format. Finished documents can be delivered in Word, PDF, XML and other formats. Web demos are available via www.speedlegal.com

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International news

Axxia site wins in Australia
Minter Ellison has won the award for innovation in practice management at the recent Australian Legal Practice Management Association (ALPMA) Awards. The firm won the award for its use of case management technology – in this instance based on Axxia’s case management software – at its Adelaide and Darwin offices.

Metastorm moves into Poland
Metastorm has signed up the Polish IT company Lumena as a master distributor for its e-Work business process management (BPM) software. Metastorm is predicting substantial growth in Eastern Europe as states enter the EU and encounter international compliance regulations such as Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Winscribe's new Euro office
Digital dictation specialist WinScribe is expanding its European operations with the opening of a new office in Zurich, which will provide sales and marketing services for Austria, France, Germany and Switzerland. Pierre Corboz, who will be based in Zurich, has been appointed Sales Manager (Continental Europe) Call +41 43 268 5640 or email pcorboz@winscribeeurope.com

Three more DMS wins in Europe
Interwoven has won three more orders for its WorkSite 8 document management system in Europe. They were placed by the Finnish firm Hannes Snellman and two Dutch firms Lexence and Dommerholt van Dijk. The Finnish contract was secured by Tikit, as part of its further expansion into Europe after its acquisition of LECSoft in Paris last year.

Global order for Workshare
Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw LLP has purchased 3400 licences of Workshare’s document review and security suite for its network of 13 international offices.

DealBuilder in North America
Borden Ladner Gervais, one of the largest firms in Canada, has ordered Business Integrity’s DealBuilder document automation system. Business Integrity will be showing DealBuilder at next week’s LegalTech in New York.
www.business-integrity.com

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DDS news in brief

New 'wafer client' from Nflow
Nflow, in conjunction with a Tikit/Nflow customer, have developed a new solution they call ‘DDS wafer client’. The concept allows fee earners to take dictations stored on a memory card (the ‘wafer’) on a portable recorder and remotely submit them to an Nflow digital dictation system for transcription via any PC with an internet connection. Unlike thin client and even some web-based systems, absolutely no digital dictation software or device drivers for portable recorders need be installed on the PC. Instead it can all be done with standard Microsoft technology, so a fee earner could upload dictation via a hotel business centre or internet cafe.
www.nflow.com

WinScribe release version 3.5.3 upgrade
WinScribe has released Version 3.5.3 of its flagship digital dictation system. New features include simpler integration with third party case management software, enhancements to the management features, such as a web browser-based reports facility for system administrators and ‘intelligent’ author to transcriptionist job routing, a new PDA application and support for a wider range of recorder devices.

New reseller partnership for Nflow
DDS supplier Nflow has signed a new distribution partnership agreement with leading Manchester legal systems house JMC.IT (0161 925 7777). The JMC deal does not affect Nflow’s existing partnership agreements with Mountain Software and Tikit. In a related development, one of Tikit’s clients – Faegre Benson Hobson Audley LLP – is now implementing the Nflow digital dictation system at its London offices.

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Insider job of the week

IT Manager
Payne Hicks Beach, c£60,000 + benefits
Outstanding opportunity for an ambitious IT professional to join this thriving 27 partner law firm as IT Manager. This is a new position and carries significant responsibility for the delivery and management of the firm’s IT systems. Apply to Neil Cameron at the Neil Cameron Consulting Group for full job and application details at neil@neilcameronconsulting.com

Looking for legal IT staff, including positions in management, sales, development, support KM, publishing, marketing, online services, accounts or training? The Insider Jobs Board has the best choice of legal IT jobs available in the UK and you can post your vacancies free of charge by emailing the details to jobs@legaltechnology.com For full details of all vacancies visit the Insider Jobs board.

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