The second company is Landscape Software (01753 740102) who, despite very little marketing to the outside world, has over the last couple of years built up an impressive portfolio of top 100 type firms using its electronic SDLT submission software. Effectively Landscape is one of the two big players is the SDLT forms market today – the other is SDLT.co.uk (there are also 12 other smaller players). But, whereas SDLT.co.uk has tended to focus on alliances and integrations with case management software suppliers, Landscape’s work has often involved bespoke integration projects with firms running document management software. When we asked Landscape’s Adrian Dixon which systems his company’s software could be integrated with, he replied “whatever the customer has, we haven’t anything that we couldn’t interface to so far.”
www.landscape-software.com

Quote, unquote
“Coming so soon after the Locus deal, the purchase of Axxia is astounding and makes LexisNexis, in our region, look like a car smash on the motorway to retirement for tired technology companies.” ...an Australian legal IT supplier on the activities of LexisNexis.

A nice place to work
Congratulation to Sweet & Maxwell for winning Computer Weekly’s ‘Best Places to Work in IT 2008’ award in the business and professional services category.

30 years ago today...
Last week Aderant celebrated the 30th anniversary of the founding of the original company that was to become the core of a practice management business whose software is now used by over 580 organisations worldwide. It was on the 12th March 1978 that Custom Management Systems Inc – later CMS Data, later part of PC Docs, later part of Solution 6 and now part of Aderant – first opened its doors to customers in Tallahassee.

Netscape RIP, age 14
With effect from 1st March this year, AOL has discontinued support for the Netscape Navigator browser. Launched in 1994, it gave many people their first experience of surfing the web. Unfortunately Navigator lost the subsequent browser wars with Microsoft Internet Explorer, with the result that its market share fell from 90% to 0.6% earlier this year. The nostalgic might like to know that you can add a Navigator style ‘skin’ to the Firefox browser.
   
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News in brief

SAS Daniels launches own Wiki
Cheshire firm SAS Daniels has launched
i-room – an internal wiki to help share information and support collaborative working between the firm’s 160 staff located in five offices in the North-West.

BLP pick Billback
Berwin Leighton Paisner has selected Billback to provide cost recovery systems for network print, copy and print room management at their London office.

Addleshaw to deploy Tikit/Metastorm
Addleshaw Goddard is to deploy a client matter inception workflow automation system. It is based on Metastorm BPM technology and uses a ‘process pod’ developed by Tikit.

RPost from Transam
Transam Microsystems (020 7427 2550) is now the primary UK reseller for the RPost registered email system – this allows users to receive a legally admissible receipt that a message has been read.

Identity checking with Zylpha
Case management technology consultancy Zylpha (01962 875475) has launched a new anti-money laundering compliance system. Called identityPlus, it integrates Callcredit’s CallML online identity checking and verification service with the file opening procedures of case management software such as Visualfiles.
www.zylpha.com

Firewall has StoneGate
McArdles has deployed a StoneGate firewall and virtual private network (VPN) from Stonesoft to link its four offices in the North-East over a secure telecoms and data network. The system will also deliver higher resilience for internet connectivity.
www.stonesoft.com

Lovells outsource RSA security
Having long recognised that passwords alone are not enough to protect access to extranets and their Citrix virtual desktop platforms, Lovells introduced an RSA SecurID two factor authentication system. (2FA typically combines a password with a token, USB device or a passcode sent to mobile phone.) But as demand for 24/7 access grew, the firm found managing RSA authentication becoming increasingly resource hungry. Lovells’ solution was to outsource the RSA operations to Signify (01223 472572) and use the company’s ‘in the cloud’ authentication service over encrypted connections, while the firm’s IT and HR administrators can still oversee the service through Signify’s identity management web portal.
www.signify.net

Ricoh now distributing Equitrac Pro 5
Ricoh UK is now distributing the Equitrac Professional 5 print tracking and cost recovery system in the UK legal market. EP5 will be available on Ricoh MFDs (multifunction devices) as either terminal based or embedded software systems

eCopy for everyone launch
eCopy last week launched a portfolio of document imaging applications designed to make it easier to transform paper documents into an electronic format using office scanners and MFDs.
www.ecopy.com

Skywire rebrands Whitehill One
Skywire Software, which last year acquired Whitehill Technologies, has rebranded Whitehill’s flagship workflow system BPI for Legal, giving it the new name of Whitehill One. Given that Skywire is not a well known name in the legal market, whereas Whitehill was, this must be one of the smartest rebranding exercises we’ve seen for a long time. Whitehill One will be distributed in the UK by Saturn 27.

New consultancy down-under
Janders Dean International (+61 (2) 8003 6710) the new Sydney-based law firm management and IT consultancy formed by Justin North (ex-Elite, ex-Baker Robbins) and others last year, has recruited Bevan Read as a director. Read, was originally with Visualfiles Australia and later an associate director of the LexisNexis total solutions group, following the acquisition of Visualfiles. North says he sees Janders Dean becoming the “mini Baker Robbins” of the APAC market.
http://janderdeanleadership.blogspot.com

Manchester prefers Converge-IT
Coverge-IT (0870 770 0790) has been appointed preferred IT services partner by the Legal Buying Group, which the Manchester Law Society runs on behalf of its members.

TFLP says hello to SOS VP
The newly formed Towcester Family Law Practice (TFLP) has opted for the Virtual Practices SaaS service from SOS to handle its accounts requirements rather than install and run an inhouse IT system.
www.virtualpractices.co.uk
     
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Opinion ... ... ...Randy Henderson, Moddocs, www.moddocs.ca

Opinion: Do embedded systes make the grade?
As cost recovery and office equipment vendors try to trigger upgrade cycles of older products and differentiate themselves from their competitors with new ‘embedded’ solutions for multi-function devices (MFD), law firms are faced with new factors to consider when evaluating their cost recovery control terminal options. All the largest MFD manufacturers, in cooperation with major cost recovery vendors, offer some level of cost recovery functionality through the control panel of their newer models. The challenge for firms is to cut through the hype and understand the benefits and challenges of implementing an embedded cost recovery terminal solution versus a traditional hardware based solution. The following questions will help...

• Will existing control terminals work with the new MFD?
Why bother with the time, cost and disruption for users of an upgrade if existing terminals are compatible – often all that is necessary is a new interface cable.

• Will there be issues with other embedded solutions such as eCopy? Cost recovery vendors typically get certified by an equipment manufacturer for their solution. Rarely are the various embedded solutions certified in tandem with each other.

• Is the embedded solution backward compatible? It may not make sense to go the embedded terminal route with a new MFD and introduce a new interface for users to deal with, if the majority of other equipment still uses traditional terminals.

• Can existing card-based user authentication devices be used? If your existing system uses card readers, are they compatible with the new embedded solutions?

• What are the terms of the embedded licence? Ensure the licence is portable between compatible models from the same manufacturer in case a loaner is used or a model is upgraded. Get your cost recovery provider to specify in writing the terms of portability between equipment from different vendors. A small fee for reconfiguring the system may be justified but not an entire licence fee.

• Will the embedded solution cost less than a traditional terminal? Since there is not any ‘cost of goods’ for an embedded licence (other than perhaps a small fee from the equipment manufacturer) and the firm does not retain ownership of the embedded licence, the cost should be significantly less than a traditional terminal.

• As there is no potential hardware failure cost for a vendor to factor into their pricing, is the rate for support less than was charged for hardware-based terminals?

• Does the embedded terminal offer complete terminal functionality? Verify all the functionality (such as search, history, favourites, next job and interrupt) that your users currently employ is available with the embedded solution.

• Is the user interface common across all hardware? If your firm uses MFDs from different manufacturers, the last thing you want is the chaos of multiple user interfaces. Even within the product lines of a single manufacturer there may be a variety of control panel interfaces.

• Is the functionality common across all hardware vendors? As there is no standardisation among equipment manufacturers, it is possible that not all of the functionality available in one MFD is available in another.

• If your firm is planning to implement scanning at
walk-up MFDs and scan tracking is critical, ensure the embedded solution can accommodate not only the scanning of a document but also the destination (email, network folder) if this is necessary.

• Will the smaller screen pose problems in terms of accessibility for employees? There is a major difference between the user interfaces on hardware based terminals and the new embedded solutions not only in terms of lighting and onscreen character size but also in mounting options to accommodate different levels of user mobility.

The best advice is to walk before you run. Do a proof of concept to ensure that vendors can deliver what they promise and aren’t selling futures. A proof of concept will also let you gauge user acceptance in a controlled environment. Caveat emptor.
 
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The Insider web site

For the latest legal IT news, jobs, events and information, visit the Insider web site - www.legaltechnology.com, described by The Times newspaper as "the definitive online resource for legal technology information". And don't forget our breaking news blog The Orange Rag.
 
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People & places
 
New board member at nFlow
Alison Fish has been promoted to the board of digital dictation specialists nFlow Software, where she will take up the role of new projects director.

Microsystems appoints Breen for Europe
Microsystems has launched a European operation and appointed Matt Breen as European Business Manager. Breen will lead Microsystems’ sales operations for D3, Knowledge Partnership and precedent clean-up projects. Breen joins from Tikit where, among other things, he was the business development manager for Microsystems sales.

New appointments at Saturn 27
Recently formed Saturn 27 consultancy has appointed Sarah Worsfold-Smithies as business group manager for CRM. Worsfold is a veteran of the legal CRM scene, most recently as business development manager for Interface Software’s Interaction system. The Saturn 27 CRM team also includes Interaction specialist Sarah Thomas and former Farrer & Co database manager Sandra Clare Day.
• Saturn 27 has also opened an Edinburgh office, to be headed by Paul Ryan, who joins from Simpson & Marwick. He can be contacted on 0131 247 7425.

New consultant at Opsis
Rachel Speed has joined legal systems vendor Opsis as a legal consultant. She has extensive experience of conveyancing, most recently with EAD Solicitors in Liverpool, and one of her first tasks will be to add commercial and plot sales case types to the Opsis conveyancing system.

Promotion at TM Property
Online search provider TM Property Service has promoted Paul Albone to its board as commercial director. Since joining the company in 2002, Albone has managed the development of TM’s IT system, which has seen search volumes increase from 150 to 1500 per hour. Albone is also a non-executive director of the PISCES board.

Secure in a new home
SecureOffice, who supply hosted off-the-peg intranet and client portal systems, have moved to new offices at The Abbey, Preston Road, Yeovil BA20 2EN. The phone number is 0870 486 1906.
www.secureoffice.net

Cross town traffic
Lightspeed Systems Europe, the UK outlet for the Total Traffic Control system, has moved to new offices at Longcroft House, 2-8 Victoria Avenue, London EC2M 4NS. The phone number is 020 3206 1240.

PureTech expands staff and services
PureTech Marketing has taken on two additional consultants – Briony McKenzie, previously marketing manager at Phoenix Business Solutions, and Vidushi Patel. The agency has also launched a new graphics service to help with brand development and website design.

Browne Jacobson takes gold
Browne Jacobson has become a gold member of the Help Desk Institute (HDI). The firm joined HDI in 2007 to support its introduction of ITIL and set standards and best practice within its service desk.
www.hdi-europe.com
 
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Digital dictation news in brief

Dickinson Manser integrate nFlow DDS with Axxia
Dickinson Manser, which has two offices along the South Coast, has rolled out an nFlow digital dictation system. The rollout included linking the firm’s satellite office to the nFlow DDS via Citrix and a joint development project with LexisNexis Axxia to create a live matter look-up integration between the DDS and an Axxia unix PMS. The latter allows fee earners to simply and accurately attach live and validated matter information to each dictation.

New hardware – Grundig
Hooray, a choice. You are no longer limited to digital recorders that are only black, blue or silver in colour. Grundig has just launched a limited edition version of its Digta 415 recorder that harks back to the first summer of love with a floral pattern on a mellow yellow and orange casing. The pricing is the same as for the regular edition.

New hardware – Philips 9500
Philips has launched a new recorder – the Digital Pocket Memo 9500. This is a professional device that, in terms of pricing, comes in below the flagship 9600 and is being pitched by Philips as the ideal recorder for analogue users looking to switch to digital “at an appealing price”.

Winscribe OnDemand equals DDS means SaaS
We know, too many acronyms but Winscribe last week launched an OnDemand SaaS (software as a service) version of its digital dictation system (DDS). If this sounds of interest – and it should do – contact Winscribe for details of the free test drive offer, so you can try the service before you sign up for it.
www.winscribe.com/testdrive

Welsh and Irish go with Loasys
Sixty-user Neath, South Wales, firm Hutchinson Thomas has ordered a digital dictation and background speech processing system from LOASys to replace its existing Philips DDS. Cork solicitors Mcquire Desmond have also swapped out a DDS (in their case Winscribe) in favour of LOASys and its easy migration to speech recognition.
www.loasys.co.u
   
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Fresh on the radar

New comms provider targeting legal
NEC Philips Unified Solutions (01223 468254) is a provider of unified communications systems that can combine voice, data, mobile and video. Legal market customers include Simmons & Simmons, Browne Jacobson, Slaughter & May and Norton Rose, while the projects the company has handled include fixed telephony across multiple sites, IT virtualisation and Novell to Microsoft migrations. For further details email Rob Stirling on robert.stirling@nec-philips.co.uk

New products for document formatting and control
Nick Hilsden (blast from the past, used to be with Avenue Legal Systems) has been in touch to say that, after successful trials with a local law firm, Portsmouth-based DocumentGENie (0845 458 8548) has launched two new products. These are FormatGENie, which allows users to manage the format and house style of downloaded legal forms within Microsoft Word; and, ShareGENie, a simple document management system that lets users share and collaborate on documents without losing the version control you get when copies are emailed to other users.
www.document-genie.com

Bringing SaaS to the market
e-know.net (01952 236236), which has been in the hosted services business since the late 1990s, has now developed a number of SaaS (software as a service) offerings for small and mid-sized law firms. These include QuickStart, a hosted service over Citrix for breakaway and start-up firms that delivers Microsoft Office, Exchange and Outlook plus the firm’s choice of practice management system, for a starting price of £99 per user per month. QuickStart also has built in disaster recovery facilities, with data stored on mirrored sites, and additional applications can be added to the SaaS portfolio for a small increase in monthly charges. Michael Pickford of the e-know.net sales team says QuickStart would suit firms in the 5-to-20 user bracket.

The company also offers messageub, a complete email hosting services (everything from Microsoft Exchange through to unified messaging, support for mobile devices plus anti-spam and anti-virus utilities) that gives firms ‘corporate class’ email without the distraction of having to run their own email infrastructure. The company is now offering a ‘try before you buy’ option (call messagehub on 01952 236200 for details) to provide firms with a way of assessing hosted email as a real alternative to running an in-house email infrastructure. You can also find a price comparison chart on The Orange Rag blog.
www.e-know.net
www.messagehub.co.uk

Populaw launches FirstDraft
Populaw (020 7234 3627) – a company set up by former Ashurst lawyer Jason Cawley – has launched FirstDraft, a hosted service designed to provide law firms and business with a ‘highly affordable, smarter way’ to draft legal documents. Based on the DealBuilder document assembly system from Business Integrity, FirstDraft offers a range of online document templates and then captures the terms of the transaction via a simple online questionnaire before automatically assembling the contract. Customers have the option of using Populaw’s ready-automated generic content or having their own documentation automated on a bespoke basis.
www.populaw.co.uk

Another week, another search engine
Like London buses, new enterprise search engines arrive in pairs. This week we have two new offerings – the first is Sinequa CS, which harks back to the corporate sector and is described as a cost effective system ‘based on a patented semantic and linguistic technology, providing out of the box secured application connections and built-in high availability architecture for robust scalable deployments, providing the optimum platform for enterprise search and navigation’. (Phew!)

And we’ve also got Flax from Cambridge-based Lemur Consulting (08700 118334). This is an open source enterprise search system that will run on Windows, Linux and Mac platforms. Being open source and licensed under the GPL (general public licence) there are no software licence fees and the source code is freely available. Lemur has also released a corporate intranet search application, called Flax Basic, that is available for download free of charge from the web.
www.sinequa.com
www.flax.co.uk
www.lemurconsulting.com
 
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Insider jobs of the week

LexisNexis is recruiting for a Strategic Alliances Manager. The candidate will identify, structure and support LexisNexis alliances and partnerships throughout the world, exclusive of North America, for InterAction, Martindale-Hubbell & Redwood Analytics. They will be responsible for developing strategic objectives and programme requirements, delivering coordinated partnership activities and managing partner certifications. Applicants should have experience in alliances or third-party business partnerships, strong communications skills and the ability to effectively influence others. Applicants should submit their CVs via email to Daniel Von Weihe at daniel.vonweihe@lexisnexis.com

Full details on these and other vacancies can be found on the Insider jobsboard
 
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