IN THIS ISSUE
Child abuse & privacy - Tikit to float - New head of CMS Europe - Bailey in Whitehill deal - ResSoft in Docs/Autonomy integration - Electronic filing starts in asbestos class action - Midware want to handcuff clients - Ernst & Young to sponsor LegalTech - Oppenheimer opt for Net Results - EU Mo Req electronic records management code on its way - free online advice service extends to Ireland

CHILD ABUSE AND PRIVACY ON THE POLITICAL & LEGAL AGENDA IN THE UK AND US
This week saw both the main parties in the UK general election - Labour and Conservative - promise new measures to curb the risk of the internet being used by would-be child abusers. Home Secretary Jack Straw said he would introduce paedophile prevention orders - in effect cyberspace injunctions - to curb child abusers from using chat room to make non-sexual approaches to children which then led to a sexual assault. Meanwhile Ann Widdecombe, for the Tories, said her party would create a new crime of child enticement that would enable charges to be brought whether or not there was a subsequent assault.

Both policies were criticised by civil liberties groups on the grounds that they appeared to sanction the use of the lesser civil court "balance of probabilities" test for liability and be making it an offence merely to use the internet to lie about your age and gender (where paedophiles pretend to be the same age and sex as their intended victims). Meanwhile over in the United States, the US Supreme Court said it will hear the Justice Department's appeal in Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union to reinstate the controversial 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA) law aimed at preventing children from viewing pornography online.

The court said it will schedule arguments during its October 2001 session to hear whether the Act should be reinstated or overturned. The ACLU claims the law violates the First Amendment right to free speech - to see sexually explicit words and pictures - whereas the Justice Department says the law correctly targets only material that is inappropriate for children. COPA was itself the second attempt by Congress to tackle the problem of children and pornography after a Supreme Court ruling in 1997 invalidating a key provision of the earlier Communications Decency Act. The 1998 law requires commercial web sites to collect a credit card number or an access code as proof of age before allowing internet users to view online material deemed "harmful to minors."

In a separate development, on the US Supreme Court ruled - in a 6 to 3 majority decision in Bartnicki v. Vopper - that the First Amendment protects the news media (a Pennsylvania radio programme) even when they broadcast private mobile phone conversations that were illegally intercepted by someone else.

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said: "A stranger's illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern." However it has been noted that the court avoided making a broad ruling on the constitutionality of all restrictions on publication of truthful information and instead focussed on the narrower issue of whether a publisher who came by useful information legally may be punished because the information was gathered illegally.

TIKIT HEADING FOR AIM
Legal systems integrator-to-consultancy and best of breed solutions provider Tikit has announced plans to float on the London AIM market. The company, which made a profit before tax of £876,000 on a turnover of £9.3 million in its trading year to 31 December 2000, expects to raise £2 million for the company and £1.5 million for existing shareholders.

Assuming the stock market remains stable the admission is expected to take effect in early June. The company will use the funds to provide additional working capital and repay indebtedness. Tikit's directors believe the flotation will help the company take advantage of existing opportunities for expanding its business and will also enable it to attract and retain key employees.

Tikit's target market is the top 200 law firms in the UK, which currently spend between four and seven percent of their gross annual fee income on IT products and services. Last year the top 100 firms alone had a total fee income over nearly £6 billion, suggesting the City end of the legal market could be spending as much as £300 million a year on IT - although this figure does also include staff. Last year Tikit customers included 9 of the UK's top 10 firms.

HOAD NEW CMS EUROPE HEAD
Chris Hoad, the former head of financial systems at Clifford Chance, is joining Solutions 6 on 25th June as the group's new general manager for CMS Europe. During his five years at Clifford Chance Hoad held a number of posts, including head of IT architecture, however prior to that he worked in both sales and consulting roles within the IT industry for companies such as Wang and CAP/Sema.

Within Continental Europe, CMS distributor Timesoft Hansco is rapidly sewing up the top end of the Dutch legal systems market with five of the country's largest firms already running implementing CMS Open and a sixth - Stibbe - in the final stages of making a choice between CMS and Elite. Although Timesoft is offering CMS as an upgrade path for its own, now ageing AS/400 system, the company has also been winning business from other Dutch legal IT suppliers such as PS Systems/Fizan who recently lost AKD Prinsen Van Wijmen, the Dutch arm of Deloitte & Touche, to CMS. The other two main Dutch suppliers are Fidura, with a DOS system for smaller firms, and Klaus Van Bruug with an Access based title transfer system for notaries.

BAILEY BACK WITH WHITEHILL DEAL
Mike Bailey, who until last year was the UK director of operations for CMS and, as such, largely responsible for getting the CMS Open product on the map in the UK, is back with a new company and a new product.

The company is Aurra Consulting (020 7861 9740), which was founded by Bailey along with David Gallagher and Karen Bailey earlier this year. The services on offer include training, project management, implementation and consultancy - thereby pitching Aurra directly into competition with Baker Robbins and Tikit.

Aurra is already offering a range of services in conjunction with products such as CMS, Elite, Carpe Diem and InterAction. In addition, Aurra has now concluded a reseller deal with Canadian software house Whitehill Technologies that will see the company providing sales, implementation and support services for Whitehill products in the UK.

Whitehill specialises in added value reporting software that can transform text and numerical data from accounts systems into customised spreadsheet, wordprocessing or web documents. Since 1999 Axxia has been offering Whitehill's Wordflow bill formating software as an optional extra for its Arista and Eiion accounts systems.

AUTONOMY & DOCS INTEGRATION
Legal systems supplier ResSoft - another UK company making inroads into Continental Europe - has announced the availability of a new best of breed integration module for knowledge management applications. Called DOCS Open Fetch, it offers a seamless link between the Autonomy search engine and Hummingbird's DOCS Open document management system. ResSoft already has an Autonomy integration option for users of the iManage DMS. www.ressoft.co.uk

LITIGATION SUPPORT - E-FILING BEGINS FOR US ASBESTOS ACTION
The Duval County Circuit Court in Florida this week began the first electronic filing (e-filing) pilot project in the State to manage complex asbestos cases.

All parties in over 4,000 asbestos cases - the court's entire asbestos litigation caseload - will be required to file electronically with the court using the CourtLink eFile service. Attorneys using the service will now be able to serve, receive, review and retrieve copies of pleadings, orders and other documents from any computer via the internet or from the public access terminal located in Duval County Court's Law Library.

During the 90 day pilot period, in compliance with Florida Rules of Judicial Administration Rule 2.090, all attorneys involved in Duval County Court's asbestos litigation will be required to continue to file with the Court via traditional paper methods in addition to e-filing. An evaluation period is scheduled for the end of the e-filing pilot to determine Duval County Court's next steps. Upon successful completion of the pilot period, Duval County Court may request the Florida Supreme Court to lift the requirement of filing a duplicate paper copy.

FORMER CMS HEAD ENDORSES NEW e-QUINOX SYSTEM
North American legal systems developer e-Quisitions (the company has office in Canada and the United States) this week announced the release of e-Quinox, which it reckons is the first financial management product for law firms released this decade.

e-Quinox software enables law firms to manage all aspects of time keeping, billing and financial management through the latest tools, including XML output and a Windows environment. The company says its scalability can address the needs of law firms ranging in size from very small to very large. e-Quisitions is also actively looking for other legal systems vendors to buy, with a view to migrating their users from lkegacy systems to the new e-Quinox product.

Interestingly Doug Horton, the president/CEO of MeltingPoint North America and a former president of CMS Data, has endored the product saying "The timing of e-Quisitions release of e-Quinox is excellent. Many of the mid-sized and smaller vendors in this market have not been able to deliver an advanced product. The difference between e-Quisitions and the other vendors is that their product, e-Quinox, is ready to use now." www.e-quisitions.com

ELECTRONIC HANDCUFFS FOR YOUR CLIENTS
Midware, one of Australia's big three practice management systems suppliers, were in the UK last week talking to potential business partners. Although Midware is best known for its mid-range PMS software, managing director Mark Flack told Legal News Media that it was the company's other products he was hoping to launch onto the global market. These include the Consero web based client relationship management system and a new digital dictation product. Flack said he believes the future of legal IT lies in client focussed systems that add so much value to the professional relationship that they effectively create "electronic handcuffs' that will tie the client to the law firm. www.midware.com.au

ERNST & YOUNG IN LEGAL TECH DEAL
Ernst & Young LLP has become the lead corporate sponsor of American Lawyer Media's LegalTech conference in the United States. The firm's sponsorship of LegalTech kicks off with the LegalTech Los Angeles show next montt (13-15 June). Under terms of the sponsorship agreement, Ernst & Young's Litigation Advisory Services practice will have primary responsibility for leading LegalTech's large firm educational programs

"LegalTech is a perfect fit for us because it is associated with thought leadership for management and technology issues in the legal community," said Michael Emmert, managing partner of Litigation Advisory Services at Ernst & Young. "This alliance will also help us better meet the needs of our clients in the areas of dispute resolution and conflict management. Technology-based solutions for conflict management and risk minimization are the foundation for the future of services to be delivered to the legal community, and we have a reputation for being at the forefront of technology solutions."

OPPENHEIMER WOLFF BUY KEYSTONE NET RESULTS
Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly, a 300 attorney firm with offices in New York, Washington, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Orange County and Silicon Valley, has become the latest firm to purchase Keystone Net Results, an industry-specific business intelligence and financial analytics system for law firms. The firm's financial planning manager Shane Zindel said Oppenheimer Wolff would implement Net Results on top of its existing Elite time and billing system, as well as linking to its payroll and human resources systems.

ONLINE ACCIDENT ADVICE NOW AVAILABLE IN IRELAND
The Can I Claim? online accident advice and referral web site run by former personal injury solicitor Martin Davies has extended its activities so users in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland can obtain free legal advice from specialist personal injury solicitors in their own country. The site now receives about a 1000 visitors per week and, in its first seven months online, has responded to almost 600 requests for help and advice from those who have suffered some form of injury. www.caniclaim.com

DEALING WITH MO REQ SPECS
Next month in London (19 June) Conspectus Conferences (01923 287408) is holding a one day Electronic Document & Record Management Symposium looking at audit, data protection, industry regulation and ISO 15489 plus the launch of the European Commission's first guidelines for electronic records management - the so-called MoReq specification.

From the publishers of Legal Technology Insider. Click here for the latest legal IT jobs, events diary and additional law reports. Next issue - 31.05.2001