Legal Technology Insider Newswire

ISSUE No.117 - 02.10.2002 - What the top 100 firms are running - Survey: how much spam is out there - Solution 6 launches its little brother - Digital dictation event & competition - News in brief - Butterworths launch new integrated service - Litigation support link up for Ringtail - BP selects document assembly system - Web site of the month.

WHAT THE TOP 100 UK LAW FIRMS ARE USING
Legal Technology Insider has compiled a chart of what the UK's top 100 law firms are using by way of IT systems. The chart covers practice management, document management, case management, digital dictation and CRM systems and is available free of charge as an Excel spreadsheet on the Insider web site at www.legaltechnology.com

SURVEY - JUST HOW MUCH EMAIL SPAM IS OUT THERE?
A number of recent reports have suggested that as much as 35% of all internet email coming into the workplace is non-work related or spam. To put this figure to the test, the Insider has been monitoring its inbox for junk emails during the course of September. We received a total of 1300 messages - 18% contained one or more attachments and 25 separate virus attacks were detected. This works out at a rate of one virus in every 52 emails received which is pretty dire and suggests that virus scanning software and related security methods are now a day-to-day necessity rather than a luxury.

A total of 259 messages (or just under 20% of the total) were what we would classify as pure spam. These included the predictable porn site invites, health schemes (Do I look like I need viagra? - Ed), get rich schemes and outright attempts at fraud - all variations on the Nigerian 419 scam. However by far the largest number of spams (140 messages or 54% of all spam and just over 10 percent of all email traffic) were sales pitches from the IT industry trying to sell us new PCs, web site search engine services and, ironically, email security software. Get rich schemes (50 messages) were the next most popular form of spam and, interestingly given the hype surrounding the issue, porn scored the lowest rate with just 15 messages. We also received no spam of a religious/spiritual or racist nature - and nobody sent us any jokes.

Although a 20% figure for spam might seem enviable, we also monitored what might be termed self inflicted spam or, to keep with the ersatz meat/meat substitute analogy, what we christened as 'quorn'.

As quorn we included out-of-the-office automatic responses to our emails - we received 57 of them. While we appreciate that law firms need to keep their clients informed, none of the messages we sent actually required a response and it would be interesting - as well as frightening - to work out just how much of the internet's bandwidth and law firms' server capacity is taken up with these frequently redundant messages. However by far the largest amount of quorn stemmed from ezines - a total of 266 messages - that at some point we had once subscribed to because they occasionally carried an interesting story and had never got around to cancelling. Added together, quorn accounted for 25% of all incoming email traffic and when we combined that with pure spam, the figure rose to an appalling 45%.

As a small office, we do not have an internal messaging system generating more traffic on the network but even if we take a conservative estimate of the volumes of internally produced junk mail being copied around most organisations, once the quorn is added to the spam we are looking at at least half of all email traffic being destined immediately for the trash folder.

SOLUTION 6 EUROPE LAUNCHES SIMPLY CMS OPEN
Solution 6 Europe has launched Simply CMS OPEN, a new practice management and time/billing system for small-to-mid sized law firms. Simply CMS OPEN is a revised version of the CMS OPEN system for larger firms, including the centralised 'hub' concept to provide one-time data entry for pertinent client and project/matter information.

We hope to have further news on this project shortly but with Solution 6 already well established in the 'tier 1 and tier 2' sized law firms sector with its CMS and Keystone products - currently 16 of the top 100 UK firms use Solution 6 systems - it was almost inevitable that the company would follow Elite and begin targeting smaller 'tier 3' sized law firms. What remains to be seen is how the suppliers that have traditionally dominated this sector - AIM, Axxia and TFB - respond to this new challenge.

DIGITAL DICTATION EVENT - AND COMPETITION
Digital dictation may be the hot topic at the moment but just how do you get lawyers to give up their personal secretaries in exchange for what is in effect a virtual typing pool? Can digital dictation be fully integrated with practice management systems? And will speech recognition ever take off?

Legal Technology Insider is holding a Digital Dictation Question Time on Thursday 28 November at the offices of Reynolds Porter Chamberlain in London, when readers will have an opportunity to put these and other questions to a panel of experts, including Julie Berry, the head of IT at RPC, Berwin Leighton Paisner IT director Janet Day, Rooks Rider finance director David Higdon, Winckworth Sherwood IT manager Steve Jardine and Baker Robbins consultant Andrew Levison. Insider editor Charles Christian will chair the event which is being sponsored by nFlow Software, developers of digital dictation workflow software for the legal market. The event starts at 6:00pm for 6:30pm. Refreshments will be available and admission is free. Spaces are limited so you need to book in advance either online at www.nflow.co.uk/events or via email questions@legaltechnology.com - you can also submit your questions in advance by email to the same address.

AND THE COMPETITION... If there is one thing the legal IT world really enjoys, it is a good TLA (three letter acronym) for a piece of technology - PMS, KMS, DMS, CRM take your pick. But what about digital dictation systems, any advances on DDS? We want you to tell us what else you think would make a good TLA. The Insider is offering a bottle of champagne, courtesy of digital dictation workflow specialists nFlow Software, for the most original digital dictation TLA and another bottle for the most amusing TLA relating to digital dictation. The closing date for entries is 31st October and the winner will be announced in our November issue. Email entries to tla@legaltechnology.com

NEWS IN BRIEF

ELITE IN STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP FOR GERMAN MARKET - Elite Information Systems has formed a strategic partnership with AnNoText gmbh, a leading developer of notary, debt collection and case management software for the German legal market.

INTERACTION CONFIRMED AT SHOOSMITHS - Interface Software has confirmed earlier reports that UK firm Shoosmiths is to roll out InterAction as its new CRM system. InterAction replaces a bespoke CRM system the firm had been using but which "fell short on a few critical requirements - namely ease of use and integration - and therefore had begun to lose credibility".

iMANAGE PARTNERS UP FOR BENELUX & NORDIC MARKETS - The DMS supplier iManage last week announced it is partnering with Morningstar Systems, a US based developer of knowledge management and workflow systems, to expand its sales activities within the Benelux and Nordic regions.

CYBER RISKS NEWS TAKEN OVER - Rupert Kendrick's UK newsletter Cyber-Risks News is to be incorporated in Managing Risk, a soon to be launched new monthly publication from Web4Law Limited.

QUESTER INVESTS £2.9M IN WORKSHARE TECHNOLOGY - UK venture capital group Quester has invested £2.9 million in Workshare Technology, the software company best known for its DeltaView red lining and Synergy content collaboration applications. Workshare reported a turnover of £10.5 million for the year ended 31 March 2002, with pre-tax profits of £1 million. 

BUTTERWORTHS LAUNCH NEW INTEGRATED SERVICE
LexisNexis Butterworths is launching a new integrated online legal information service at www.lexisnexis.co.uk/law that for the first time will bring together all Butterworths' services under one umbrella with a common interface, one point of access and unified search facilities. By the end of this year it will encompass most areas of legal practice however we think the aspect that will most appeal to smaller firms is the Legal Updater current awareness service.

The annual subscription is from just £295 per user and along with the service's own extensive content and summaries also links through to the full Butterworths resources on a subscription or pay-as-you-go basis. Other features of Legal Updater include: full access to 'easy search' case law and SI archives; aAccess to an index of 100 journals with links to the full text of 30; an email alerter service offering specialised selection from more than 300 subject areas; a review of legal stories in national and regional newspapers as part of email alerter service or separately if preferred; a transcript alerter service that tells a customer when a transcript has become available and a simple 'pass-on' procedure that allows users to email stories to colleagues. 

BP CHOOSES DOCUCORP DOCUMENT ASSEMBLY SYSTEM
BP Supply & Trading, a division of BP, has installed the Docucorp document assembly and automation system in its London and Chicago offices to help with contract generation. The Docucorp installation is a part of BP's NextGen program that is replacing a variety of decentralised legacy systems by implementing new trading systems and processes. BP wished to eradicate manual data reconciliation and duplicate data entry processes, and to reduce the number of manual checks and analyses. An additional requirement was to introduce software applications that can communicate information electronically and to reduce risks from reliance on spreadsheets, end-user constructed systems and manual processes.

The Docucorp contract generation system operates by receiving XML deal messages from BP's Deal Entry System via TIBCO's EAI software. Docucorp's Transall data translator gathers additional deal information from the Oracle-based Reference Data system and feeds it to Docucorp's Documaker. Documaker then automatically selects a contract template and associated clauses, enters the deal parameters and suggested addressees, and sends it to the contracts team for checking. Completed contracts are dispatched via telex, fax, or email and archived for online retrieval. For more information contact Sue Bertram at Docucorp EMEA (+44(0)1372 366200). 

WEB SITE OF THE MONTH - INFOCUS
Although the Infocus web site, set up by the IP and e-business division of Trethowans in Southampton, was only launched in June, so it lacks the extensive content of older sites, it already provides an object lesson in how to design web pages. Plenty of white space, a modern minimalist look, simple navigation - the colour coding of the different practice areas is a nice touch, no irrelevant multimedia and a strong corporate image.

In terms of content, material is divided into three distinct types: guidelines providing brief summaries of broader subjects, articles providing more in depth information, and archives of older materials. All content is searchable on a full text basis and we also liked the fact the firm has not lost sight of the full scope of their clients' legal requirements. Yes, the site is designed for clients in the IT and creative industries but, in the words of partner Owen Santry "the service is not just about IP/e-business specialisms, but also about other needs for this sort of client - so it covers standard legal practice areas such as property and employment but in a high-tech or sector-relevant way." www.i-infocus.co.uk

To submit a site for consideration for next month's web site of the month, just email us here at websites@legaltechnology.com 

LITIGATION SUPPORT - RINGTAIL LINK UP WITH DISCOVERY CRACKER
Ringtail Solutions, the developers of web-based litigation support systems, and Advocate Solutions, who specialise in electronic discovery software, have announced a strategic link between their products. Advocate's Discovery Cracker Suite can create complete litigation databases with associated images, full-text files and metadata from email systems and virtually any electronic file. By utilizing Cracker's new Ringtail Designer facility, an electronic discovery database export is created that is compatible with Ringtail's litigation support software. Electronic documents, such as email repositories, can also be extracted, if required, into a standard format, such as tiff, along with the metadata for each document. These documents can then be pre-filtered or 'deduplicated' then automatically imported into Ringtail. Ringtail is available in the UK via litigation support specialist G3 Consulting (+44 (0) 20 7787 2740).