Headlines

Laserform enter KM market
Laserform, now part of the CS Group, has just announced what is potentially its most exciting new product launch for several years. Called LitPro and developed in association with Oxford University Press, this is a range of 38 litigation checklists in an interactive, digital format.

The checklists cover everything from pre-action to trial, complete with chronological to-do lists and references to the Civil Procedure Rules, relevant practice directions, case law and fees. But, where LitPro comes into its own is each checklist has tick boxes and comments sections, so progress on the file to be noted, plus fields available for local know-how to be added, and full integration with Laserform’s electronic forms series, so users can be certain they are completing the right form at the right time. Add in the facility for supervisors to monitor progress and make their own comments and endorsements on checklists, and you have a system that is both a training aid and a best practice framework. In otherwords, pretty much everything that non-top 100 firms have been wanting for years in terms of a practical knowledge management system.
 
The first of the autumn's PMS deals come in
After the summer slow-down, we are now starting to receive details of the first of the autumn’s new practice management systems deals. Chronologically first off the blocks was TFB who are to put their Partner for Windows system in at Fisher Jones Greenwood. The firm, which previously ran an old Stukeley system, has three offices in the Colchester area and the system will have 105 users. Prices have not been released for this software-only deal but we suspect there won’t be any change from £100k. TFB have also won orders from Now Legal LLP in Fareham and Goldinghams LLP in Stroud. Next up was Videss, now part of the CS Group, who won an order worth £120k from McMillans Williams in Croydon for a case and practice management system. We have also heard that both Taylor Wessing and Boodle Hatfield (respectively on JHC and Axxia) have selected Aderant Expert as their new PMS. Wessings came down to a three horse race between Aderant, Thomson Elite and Intalec/SAP.

Clifford Chance to shift IT jobs to India
As part of a cost-cutting exercise expected to save £30 million over the next four years, Clifford Chance plans to move 300 support staff jobs from the UK to a new office in Delhi. The firm has begun consultations with staff to identify which jobs can be moved and, while the initial focus will be on finance and IT posts, a spokesman for the firm said the criteria will be ‘does this job need to be done in this office?’. The firm, which began outsourcing document production work to third-party supplier Integreon in India last year, admits the latest moves will result in redundancies at the London office.

• At a recent conference the IT director of one large firm said that while IT could in theory be outsourced, she felt that as long as partners retained their ‘I want my PC fixing and I want it fixing now’ mentality, it would remain difficult to replace inhouse IT staff with outsourced support operating on service level agreements.

White label deal could be worth £8 million
Conveyancing case management software specialist ConveyanceLink has signed a distribution deal with legal IT vendor Opsis that the two companies believe will generate £8 million in combined additional turnover over the next five years. The deal will see Opsis selling a ‘white label’ version of ConveyanceLink’s ‘pay-as-you-convey’ software to users of the Opsis Millennium legal accounts system. Opsis users will still have the option of using the supplier’s conventional case management software.

Sales & marketing director Malcolm York said Conveyance Link is currently installing about 12 new systems a month but sees white labelling as the next phase in its growth, working with suppliers who don’t want to reinvent the wheel writing their own pay-as-you-go products. York expects to be able to announce two more white label deals in the near future, as well as a new product launch.

In related developments, ConveyanceLink has recruited two new staff: Gary Wootton, who will be looking after the North West region and Manisha Desai, who will focus on the South West. The company also signed up 13 more user firms during August and September including Harland & Co, one of the oldest law firms in York.
www.conveyancelink.com

New suppliers enter criminal defence arena
At a time when some suppliers are wondering if they should leave the criminal defence systems market, it is heartening (amazing is probably a better word) to find two suppliers that have just joined it. They are Understanding & Learning (01422 882566) which began life as a general business consultancy and software supplier but moved into legal IT after the managing director’s wife – the senior partner of Brimble & Co in Halifax – asked if they could devise a better solution to those being offered by existing LSC suppliers. And Livingstone Brown IT (0141 778 9657), an offshoot of one of the largest legal aid firms in Scotland.

Understanding & Learning’s solution – called CrimeWorks – has the modest brief of automating legal aid billing while simultaneously cutting unnecessary administration and providing sufficient data to allow practitioners to analyse the effectiveness of their business. The company says the first implementations of the system suggest CrimeWorks can reduce the time spent on billing by up to 75% and reduce admin costs by 25%. Livingstone Brown’s system is Ceartas, a file and case management application with extensive accounts and billing facilities for both privately funded and legal aid work. Ceartas, which is already in use in a number of firms including Livingstone Brown, was originally sold by Pace Professional Systems. Crimeworks has an entry-level price of £1995 for a single user licence while Ceartas costs from £1500 per user, including induction and training.
www.crimeworks.co.uk

And then there were 70
The Insider has published its latest buyers guide listing of UK & Irish vendors of legal accounts, practice management and case/matter/workflow management systems, complete with contact details and web links. In total there are currently 70 companies serving the market and, even after excluding specialist vendors – such as those selling to the Bar and inhouse legal sectors – this still equates to about one supplier for every 175 law firms. So how do the smaller ones make a living? The guide, which is updated on an ongoing basis, is available free of charge as a spreadsheet on the Insider website – just click on ‘buyers guides’ in the know-how resources section.
www.legaltechnology.com

Lockyer to head SRC's new consultancy division
Dictation industry veteran Paul Lockyer has joined SRC to head its document creation consultancy group, as the company broadens its operations from digital dictation and speech recognition to encompass other document production and management technologies. According to Lockyer typical focus areas will include: reviewing the true cost of firm-wide document creation, maximising RoI; and evaluating how new and complementary technologies could increase efficiency. “We are receiving a lot of interest for these services from large and medium size firms. A major firm already working with SRC,” says Lockyer, “has identified potential additional savings of between £350k and £500k as a result of the consultancy process, savings many more firms have the potential to achieve.”

Tricostar in DDS move
Tricostar, one of the leading suppliers of legal IT systems to the public and corporate sectors, has formed a partnership with BigHand that will see the company offering digital dictation as part of its Tricostar Legal case management system. Local authorities already running BigHand DDS include Cambridgeshire and Essex county councils, and Swansea and Leicester city council. Tricostar (01992 442800) is also offering LinkPoint to enhance two-way integration between Lotus Notes Mail and Novell GroupWise with Tricostar Legal and Sage CRM.
www.tricostar.com

Legal IT spending on the rise says ILTA
The US-based International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) has published its annual technology survey for 2006 and one of the key findings is that legal IT spending is on the rise. Compared with 2005, when only 44% of firms taking part in the survey said their capital budgets had increased, this year 53% reported an increase, 31% said their budgets stayed the same and only 15% said they had decreased, compared with nearly 20% last year. ILTA found a similar story with operating budgets, with 57% reporting an increase, compared with 50% last year and just 37% in 2004.

The survey also found that the march of the PDAs continues unabated, with them now being used by 58% of lawyers – although interestingly there has only been a marginal decrease in laptop usage by (or perhaps more accurately laptop purchase on behalf of) lawyers. Blackberrys remain the most popular device, used by 77% of firms, followed by Palm-type devices (49%) and Windows Mobile/Pocket PC (34%). Incidentally, while 47% of firms now support multiple PDA platforms only 30% require passwords to be used on all PDAs. The survey also reveals that the most widely adopted replacement strategy for PDAs, used by 55% of firms, is “as they break”.

Other findings included: that in 2 years the number of firms supplying 18” + LCD displays for desktop PCs has increased from 5% to 20%; 61% of firms now provide wireless connectivity in their conference rooms for the benefit of visitors; 26% are using VMWare virtual server technology; and, while only 16% currently work in a matter centric interface (as distinct from the traditional application centric desktop) 37% are working on matter centric projects.
• The ILTA survey is based on responses from just under 500 law firms – 90% were in the US.

Quote, unquote
“How do you tell a room full of millionaires they are not running their business properly?” ...a speaker at a recent conference points out one of the problems encountered when trying to persuade law firm partners to adopt more modern management methods.

LSSA to lobby LSC
In an attempt to get the Legal Services Commission to understand that changes to legal aid funding regulations should allow sufficient time for IT companies to rewrite the systems firms use, the Legal Software Suppliers Association is to make a formal representation to the Carter committee, which is currently going through a consultation process on its plans to cull criminal defence firms.

Nothing but the net continues to deliver
The Law Society of Scotland’s annual nothing.but.the.net IT conference and exhibition had its seventh outing in Glasgow last week, attracting nearly 200 delegates, as well as 26 exhibitors. The conference programme, covering everything from the future of legal practice to VoiP, the WEEE directive and the new Scottish civil and criminal court systems’ initiatives on the use of IT in courtrooms, also provided delegates with a range of formats including conventional presentations, court technology demonstrations, debates and a series of roundtable sessions.

As well as being one of the Scottish Law Society’s best attended events, this year’s NBTN was also the venue for the Society’s first foray into podcasting. Regular podcasts will now become part of the Society’s portfolio of high tech CPD training options for solicitors, which already includes online and DVD courses.

Explaining the move, the Society’s director of IT Gordon Brewster said “It’s all part of making CPD more accessible. While it’s important to attend seminars and conferences, the technology now available offers huge benefits for busy solicitors trying to maintain a better work/life balance.” The first podcast features a panel discussing some of the issues raised at NBTN. The podcast is available for download now from the Scottish Law Society’s website.
www.lawscot.org.uk

• Following the adoption of the PDF file format for electronic document submission to Scottish Courts, with commendable initiative the Law Society of Scotland has negotiated with Adobe for its members to receive a 40% reduction in the retail price of Acrobat Professional.

This is the way to network
This year’s By Legal For Legal at the end of September, may have been the biggest yet in terms of delegate numbers, with the heads of IT (or equivalent) from over 60 top-200 firms attending, but it lost none of its character and remains an object lesson on how a legal IT networking event should be run. In fact there seemed to be an even greater degree of openness and willingness to talk and discuss issues of mutual interest than in previous years.

The formal agenda (governed by Chatham House rules which really does work in terms of getting people to open up and say what they think) included panel sessions on best of breed versus integrated enterprise solutions, outsourcing and the future of law firm IT departments. Unlike many events, where the content of conference sessions is forgotten the moment the presenter switches off the PowerPoint, delegates continued to discuss these subjects informally, in many instances far into the early hours of the morning. Other topics encountered during the social and networking side of the programme included the implications of Clementi for larger firms and that old favourite: how do you convince partners that unless they change their business management methods, they will never realise the full benefit of investments in technology.

Yes, there were representatives of IT vendors present, as well as a smattering of consultants, but they were very much kept in the background. The result was By Legal remained true to its original brief of being an event where the interests of delegates come first and are not hijacked by the commercial interests of the sponsors