ISSUE No.120 - 11.12.2002 - Bevan Ashford chose Meticulus as DMS supplier - SCL announces shortlist - Ark has another crack at Europe - Lovells go for BigHand DDS - Major win for Keystone in US - All change at LawZone - Metawall against MetaData - Lit Support: iConect is most wanted - News in brief

BEVAN ASHFORD CHOSE METICULUS AS DMS SUPPLIER
Bristol-based Bevan Ashford, ranked number 32 on our chart of the UK's largest law firms, has upset the cosy world of document management systems by rejecting both Hummingbird and iManage as the supplier of its new DMS and opting instead for the Meticulist DMS from Meticulus Solutions (012497 00052). Bevan Ashford has initially commissioned Meticulus to implement a proof of concept demonstration based on Meticulist however the four phase project will eventually culminate in a practice-wide rollout to nearly 400 users.

Bevan Ashford's chief information office Dick Sayers said "Meticulist offered an opportunity to deliver the well understood benefits of DM in enhancing productivity, quality and profit without incurring the high costs in systems integration and training associated with more traditional systems. Our DM project team was particularly impressed that Meticulist offers a high level of integration with our standard desktop applications. The team was also impressed with the intuitive and logical feel of the product that we expect to speed the implementation and rate of adoption across the firm." www.meticulus.com

SCL ANNOUNCES AWARD SHORTLIST
The UK's Society for Computers & Law has announced the four entries shortlisted for its annual IT award. The four are: the RTL (Automated Registration of Title to Land) from the Registers of Scotland Executive Agency; easyconvey.com's Electronic Conveyancing Solution; BigHand's TotalSpeech digital dictation product; and the Visualfiles next generation case management system from Solicitec.

ARK HAS ANOTHER CRACK AT THE EUROPEAN MARKET
After having to cancel its planned European legal IT conference earlier this year, the Ark Group is having another crack at the international market with a new event called LEX Connect which will take place at the Amsterdam Hilton on 10 & 11 March 2003. The event is described as "a by invitation only management forum for managing partners and other senior executives from Europe's leading commercial law firms. Attendees will learn how to apply management strategies to the structure of their firm, and discover how judicious use of key technologies can significantly improve firm efficiency and profitability."

There will be no formal supplier presentations or exhibition however vendors have told us they are being offered the opportunity to make appointments for one-to-one meetings with law firm representatives. In other words it sounds like an IT version of The Lawyer's Monte Carlo event. We wish Ark well with the event however it remains the perennial problem with IT events that you only get the IT people there, not the lawyers. Add to that the fact that, as one supplier put it: "the only people who turn up to European events are penniless Polish lawyers who want to pay in potatoes" and a general concern that there are already too many legal IT events and Ark could be facing an uphill battle. For details contact Caroline Searle of Ark on +44 (0)20 8785 5930 - www.lexconnect.com

LOVELLS GO FOR BIGHAND DDS HAVE EXTENSIVE SELECTION PROCESS
London-based Lovells has chosen BigHand's TotalSpeech 2 digital dictation system after an extensive selection process. Through the implementation of digital dictation technology, coupled with a speech recognition option where appropriate, Lovells' objectives are to further improve the efficiency of the fee earners and secretaries and enhance service to clients. This will be achieved by decreasing the turnaround time for documents, providing more options for the transfer of dictations between secretarial and WP resources, and providing a dictation capability for the increasing number of fee earners working away from their offices.

Lovells opted for TotalSpeech 2 after assessing all the leading digital dictation workflow technologies on the market. After a rigorous product appraisal procedure TotalSpeech 2 was seen to be the system that best fulfilled all of Lovells' stringent stability, scalability and functionality criteria. (TotalSpeech 2 is the DDS workflow management system BigHand developed inhouse and the successor to an earlier BigHand product, based on Philips technology, that Lovells ran on a pilot basis a couple of years ago.)

Lovells will initially implement the technology in the London part of the international property practice. The team of nearly 150 users will be able to use TotalSpeech 2 for all dictations currently done using analogue dictation devices, whether fee earners are in or out of the office. It is envisaged that the system will be rolled out worldwide allowing fee earners to make efficient use not only of the secretarial services in their own offices, but also to have 24 hour access to resources available in London and elsewhere.

MAJOR WIN FOR KEYSTONE IN US
Solution 6 has just announced that Howrey Simon Arnold & White LLP has selected Solution 6's Keystone Professional PMS software as the key technology platform for its 'one firm' global strategy. Howrey Simon is implementing the full suite of Keystone applications, running on an Oracle platform. In addition to automated time and billing, the new system will deliver client and matter management on the desktops of all attorneys across the firm. Solution 6 CEO Neil Gamble, said "This new contract with Howrey Simon represents another important breakthrough for Solution 6, being the first major new sale of our Keystone Professional software in the US market. Howrey Simon is one of the most prestigious US-based global firms, with leadership in intellectual property, antitrust and complex global litigation, and will provide us with an entree into many other firms."

ALL CHANGE AT LAWZONE
Joe Reevey, the founding editor and community director of the LawZone legal portal/community web site since early 1999, last week stood down so he can focus on his other business interests. Reevey's departure is entirely amicable and he will continue to be involved with LawZone on a part-time basis. Taking over from Reevey is Rebecca Seeley Harris, a tax and employment law consultant and lecturer. Seeley Harris told the Insider Newswire that she was "looking forward to the challenge" and has a number of plans for enhancing the LawZone offering. These include moving into the provision of free legal content and current awareness materials - in effect providing a free alternative to Lawtel - and pay per view documents.

Seeley Harris rides horses in her spare time, so she immediately gets our vote. As for Reevey, he will be spending more time with his CPD accredited practice management and marketing training consultancy BestPracticeOnline.com and his wife's business Words4Business.com, which produces B2B content for corporate and law firm newsletters and web sites. Reevey deserves maximum credit for LawZone's success as without his unflagging enthusiasm LawZone would have probably sunk without a trace - as was the fate of countless other legal portal/community web sites that were launched in the UK during the heady days of the dotcom boom.

METAWALL AGAINST METADATA
Workshare Technology has launched Metawall, a new product designed to address the problems of hidden metadata within Microsoft Word documents The first version of Workshare Metawall (1.1), is designed as an enterprise solution to clean documents of unwanted metadata, stripping it out before the document is sent out via email to external parties. The product fully integrates with Microsoft Outlook. In future modules of Workshare Metawall, the product will focus not only on cleaning metadata but also the problem of document control. The next version of the product, to be released at the beginning of 2003, will allow the movement of a document to be restricted so that it cannot leave the firm network or DMS without permission. Alternatively, the document can be tagged so that approval by certain designated recipients is necessary before it can be sent externally by mail, ensuring only completed works are circulated outside the firm's network.

If you are interested in this then you may also be interested in Out-of-Sight 2.0 from SoftWise Consulting in the USA. This can erase metadata from Word and Excel 97, 2000 and XP documents and integrates with Outlook 97 and 2000 so it will automatically remind users to erase metadata before sending any emails containing Word or Excel file attachments. Pricing starts at $42 for a single user version of Out-of-Sight, including a 12 month product updates, upgrades and technical support contract, which with volume discounts the price for a 500+ organisation falls to $15.60 per workstation. The software can be downloaded directly from the web at www.softwise.net

LITIGATION SUPPORT - iCONECT IS THE MOST WANTED
According to a recent survey conducted by the US based Litigation Support Newsgroup, the iCONECT system is now the most-widely used web-based litigation support product. iCONECT (with 35.2%) topped the list of web-based litigation products, earning double the votes of second place CaseCentral (18.1%), and beating out 11 other competitors, including CaseVault (11.4%), Ringtail (8.6%), Steelpoint (5.7%), InfoEdge (2.9%), Quorum RedDoc (1.9%) and Merril's URLaw (1.9%). iCONECT was also placed highly in the categories of most widely-used electronic discovery product and the most widely-used database management system.

The concept behind the iCONECT is that a firm or authorized service provider sets up a secure in-house web site linked to case data. From anywhere in the world, at any time, authorized staff can instantly search and retrieve case-critical documents. In addition to comprehensive litigation support tools, iCONECT provides access to calendar events, contacts, documents, notes, transcripts, e-mail with attachments, TIFF images, and Acrobat PDF files. www.iconet.net Further information about the Litigation Support Group can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/litsupport/

NEWS IN BRIEF

BIRD & BIRD PARTNER TO HEAD IPC - Bird & Bird partner Jane Mutimear has been elected to the position of President of the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) - the body within ICANN with responsibility to protect the rights of IP owners within the domain name system. Muimear is the IPC's first female president and the first to be elected from outside North America. She takes over at a time when ICANN is in the process of major restructuring.

DIVORCE ONLINE RESULTS LEAP - Divorce-Online, the UK online divorce service, said revenues during 2002 leapt by 58%, thanks in part to a positive contribution by the recent acquisition of willyouever.com, an online will making service. Divorce-Online founder Mark Keenan says the company is now considering further acquisitions. The web site, which now accounts for one in fifty divorces in England & Wales, intends to use a mix of online and offline media in the New Year to generate further interest in its services after the success of its controversial advertising campaign earlier in the year. This involved placing ads in the washrooms of various bars in London's West End and Square Miles pointing out the difference between its £80 service and the price of lawyers charge.

NET RESULTS NOW AVAILABLE IN UK - Solution 6 is now shipping its Net Results reporting and forecasting tools in the UK. Net Results comprises two modules: Net Profit, which allows firms to measure client value and where their business is most profitable, and On Budget, which automates the planning and budgeting process.

HONG KONG PHOOEY - Some clarification on the story in the last issue of this Newswire about the Asia-Pacific firm Deacons. Although the Australian offices are to implement CMS Open from Solution 6 as their new practice management system, the Hong Kong office of Deacons has purchased and is currently installing the rival Elite PMS.

WHEN IN LONDON - US law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel, which specialises in hedge funds and international investments, used Baker Robbins & Co to develop and implement voice and data communications integration between the firm's New York network and its new London office which opened earlier this autumn.

NEW ARRIVAL IN HUMMINGBIRD NEST - Hummingbird has announced the appointment of Liz Maloney as UK Country Manager. The new UK role will give Maloney responsibility for Hummingbird's UK business, reporting to Tony Heywood, Senior Vice President for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Maloney's appointment signals a new phase at Hummingbird according to Heywood. "Today we are a $200 million organisation but have our sights set on entering the global software top 50. Senior appointments of Liz's calibre will significantly impact our business performance."

CLIFFORD CHANCE USE ISIS TO TRACK MOBILE PHONE USAGE - Clifford Chance is to use Isis (0870 163 5000) to provide mobile cost analysis and reporting through its MoBill (nice pun) billing system, as well as stock management for quick response to new product requests and advice on identifying effective mobile telecoms strategies. The firm's telecommunications manager Neil Munro said key issues in the decision to move to Isis were the need to improve management of the firm's mobile fleet and to enhance the accuracy and content of the mobile invoicing. www.isistelecom.com