ISSUE No.123 - 19.02.2003 - Solicitec sets its sights on Australia - Axxia makes moves on Australia/NZ - Keystone founders gone - Solution 6 wins AMC/Citrix deal - KM high on the shopping list - New library system for Pinsents - Watching the legal web - The House of Butter blog - Success for SMS graduate recruitment scheme - Special report: the spammers are watching you - the Loties awards are back - New guide to email law

SOLICITEC SETS ITS SIGHTS ON AUSTRALIA & THE PACIFIC RIM
The UK's market leading case management supplier Solicitec has just incorporated Visualfiles Australia, a new subsidiary that will target corporate/government legal departments as well as the Top 100 law firms throughout Australia and South East Asia. Solicitec chairman Neil Ewin commented "With our continued growth and success in the UK market, the next logical step was to widen our horizons and look to expansion. The interest shown from the Asia/Pacific region over the last few years has most recently resulted in the successful implementation of SolCase in Hong Kong based Johnson Stokes & Master.

Visualfiles Australia will be headed up by Bevan Read, who originally qualified as a solicitor in Queensland and joined Solicitec UK in 1998. According to Read "Extensive market research indicates that the Asia/Pacific marketplace is now beginning to look for more sophisticated systems than traditional case management applications can support. Solicitec offer products combining traditional case management with knowledge management and the latest B2B communications technology. Also, on the plus side, I get to continue doing the job that I love in a much nicer climate!"

AXXIA APPOINTS A DISTRIBUTOR FOR AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND
Meanwhile one of the other big names in UK legal technology - Axxia Systems - has just announced its overseas expansion plans with the appointment of its first international distributor. The distributor is Verax Consulting (+64 (21) 440 453) which was set up by former Keystone director Mike Clements, and the company will handle Axxia's case and practice management systems in the Australia/NewZealand markets.

As part of its expansion plans, Axxia has also appointed one of its original founding directors Doug McLachlan to the new post of international operations director, where he will have responsibility for developing the company's international network. Axxia is currently also examing the US and SE Asia/Pacific market sectors. Back in the UK, Axxia's support director (and another of the company's founding directors) Bob Hadingham has taken over McLachlan's former role as development director, while Hadingham's deputy Barry Robson has been promoted to head of support services.

Axxia managing director Stuart Holden told the Insider this was the start of the company's strategy to establish itself as a global player and followed on from extensive research that suggested there was a gap in these markets for good, modern case and practice management systems suitable for mid-to-large sized firms.

KEYSTONE FOUNDERS DEPART
Mike Clements (see previous story) is not the only member of the old Keystone Solutions team to have left the company after its acquisition by Solution 6 last year. Along with product strategy director Neil Cameron, who went back into IT consultancy last summer, the company has now also seen the departure of its co-founders Kaye Sycamore and Graeme Frost. Elsewhere within Solution 6, following the recent restructuring which saw the creation of its new Professional Solutions division (this includes the Keystone, CMS Open and Net Results product ranges) Roy Stew, the European general manager for CMS Open, has now left the company.

SOLUTION 6 WINS MAJOR AMC CITRIX DEAL
Solution 6 has just announced that its infrastructure division MICL has won the contract to install a Citrix thin client network at Ashurst Morris Crisp. The Citrix implementation will allow the firm to deploy the full functionality of its CMS Open practice management system and securely share live data between its Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Milan, Munich, New York, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo and New Delhi offices.

Chris White, Global IT Director, Ashurst Morris Crisp, said, "Our decision to implement a thin client solution will provide us with a centralised database to fully support all of our offices and provide seamless access to a range of software applications and live data. All our CMS Open users worldwide will be able to directly input information into the system, including invoicing and time recording, saving time and increasing the efficiency of our firm. It makes life much easier working with just one vendor who understands both our software and hardware requirements."

KM HIGH ON THE SHOPPING LIST
According to the results of a survey conducted by iManage at its recent CIO forum, knowledge management is now the top priority for many law firms with 67% planning to implement solutions within the next 12 months. The survey also revealed a trend away from basic document management towards matter-centric collaboration. Or as Kevin Connell, the IT director at Masons put it "Document management has changed the way we work but legal firms now need to take the longer view. The more we can improve our communications and collaborate both internally and externally, the better the service we'll offer our clients. With the iManage technology underpinning our systems, this kind of integrated approach is exactly what we can achieve."

Mahmood Panjwani, iManage president and CEO, added: "The outcome of our CIO forum underlines the importance of listening to our customers and meeting their requirements. It also reveals we must exceed these by staying in touch with the sector to predict future needs and trends. "We have already delivered on our clients' current vision of matter-centric collaboration, and we will continue to develop our product with our customers at the forefront of our minds."

PINSENT CURTIS BIDDLE ROLL OUT FRETWELL DOWNING FOR NEW LIBRARY SYSTEM
Library systems specialist Fretwell-Downing Informatics has just announced the successful deployment of its OLIB7 library management system at Pinsent Curtis Biddle. OLIB7 was chosen to operate in a multi site environment and cover all aspects of library management from serials control to financial management.

The firm's national information manager Vicky Foster said three features were identified by the firm when choosing OLIB7 over other short listed systems: ability to easily personalise the look and feel, financial reporting and analysis, and FDI's ongoing development. "The financial reporting and management modules will allow us to have greater control over our library budget and greater accuracy in analysing our purchasing trends. The look and feel of the software was particularly important to our firm. We wanted a package that we could configure to our own house style with minimal assistance from IT or the appointment of a dedicated systems librarian. We have already configured our Web OPAC to mirror our corporate image so when users log on they see a Pinsents interface."

Foster adds: "We believe that the ongoing development of the product is particularly important. FDI proved to us their commitment to software development through recent improvements made to the serials module. Like an increasing number of law firms we have chosen to use FDI's database administration service to manage the Oracle database, therefore freeing up time internally and removing the need for internal Oracle skills." Other firms already running OLIB7 include Eversheds, Morgan Cole and Osborne Clarke. www.fdgroup.com/fdi

WATCHING THE LEGAL WEB
It has become commonplace to hear the complaint that lawyers are now being swamped with digital information however short of disconnecting your modem or cancelling all your subscriptions to online news services, there have been no obvious solutions to this problem. One service now hoping to come to the rescue is Legalwebwatch (LWW), which describes itself as an "online professional support lawyer" LWW provides the busy lawyer with a weekly email containing headline links to all relevant legal content published during the previous week. The content is defined by the individual and includes legal updates and reviews in their chosen sectors, published on the web sites of a wide range of law firms and organisations across the world. Users are also able to search for archived headline links via the LWW web site.

Asked to provide an elevator pitch for the service, LWW editor Lucy Pease told the Insider "No longer do lawyers have to receive email newsletters from dozens of legal sources to keep themselves well informed. No longer do lawyers have to trawl a host of web sites to ascertain whether there is any content recently published that may be of interest. Instead they can now rely upon Legalwebwatch to inform them of, and link them to, all relevant content that has been published in the previous week on their chosen web sites."

Pease says LWW also assists PSLs by sorting and categorising the huge amount of legal information that is published on the net and making it readily available to them and to the lawyers they support. Users can choose to receive a weekly email containing headline links to content that matches their profile. Via the web site, they are also able to search the extensive database of articles and legal reviews that have been published by legal organisations and leading law firms over the last 8 months. All information in the LWW database is categorised by source and by specialism.

Since LWW first launched in early 2002, the company now has lawyers from over 250 major law firms and 100 FTSE companies regularly accessing the service and is now planning to expand both its range of services. "We are amazed at how well Legalwebwatch has been received by law firms and in-house legal departments and at the exponential growth of lawyers who are now using Legalwebwatch as a primary source of legal information. We are now looking to build on Legalwebwatch's recent success to turn the company into the premier on-line distributor of legal information in Europe," said Pease. www.legalwebwatch.com

NEW WEB LOG CHRONICLES TALES FROM THE HOUSE OF BUTTER
Sean Hocking, the Australia-based publisher of the Law Librarians E-Newsletter, has launched a new web log - the House of Butter - on the Practice Source web site. Hocking says the blog "has fun with legal publishers" - could that be possible? www.practicesource.com

SMS GRADUATE RECRUITMENT PROGRAMME TARGETS THE MOBILE GENERATION
CMS Cameron McKenna has successfully introduced SMS text messaging as part of its graduate recruitment programme, in what is believed to be a first for a law firm in the UK. The SMS message campaign targeted a select group of law graduates across the country and received an astonishing 88% response rate. The messaging was used to invite future trainees to the CMS Cameron McKenna's annual Trainee Ball, which brings together current and future trainees, Partners and other lawyers in an informal setting. The firm used agency Grasshopper to implement the campaign.

SPECIAL REPORT - THE SPAMMERS ARE WATCHING YOU
Eight out of ten spam emails contain covert tracking codes which allow the senders to record and log recipients' email addresses as soon as they open the message. These are among the findings revealed this week by OUT-LAW.COM, the IT and e-commerce legal service from international law firm Masons. The research was carried out for OUT-LAW.COM by network security experts iomart. Much of this unwanted spam is illegal under various regulations but as Shelagh Gaskill, a partner at Masons, points out: "The people sending it could not care less about the law."

Iomart set up separate accounts to receive spam, or unsolicited commercial email, and the team of investigators played dumb and opened up all spam that came into these accounts. They found that 83% were HTML emails with hidden tracking codes that notified the spammers as soon the messages were opened. After a two-week period, the volume of spam received on these accounts virtually doubled. Hundreds of worthless emails became thousands in almost no time at all.

Next, the team 'sterilized' the spam flowing into these accounts, removing the hidden tracking codes. During the next few weeks there was a slight but steady decline in the mountain of spam being received. Their conclusion was simple: that spam emailers respond to the hidden tracking codes by sending more email to identified accounts. For a third trial period, spam email was 'bounced' by means of an automatic email being sent to the spam sender, stating that the email could not be delivered, but not giving a specific reason why. Predictably, based on their earlier findings, there was a marked drop in the number of spam emails being received. The decrease in spam emails started almost immediately, and after about two weeks the volume being received had decreased by about 40%.

"The rule is simple: do not open spam if you want to minimise it," says Iain Richardson, a software developer with iomart. "A lot of spam is evident from the subject header and sender's name. If you suspect it's spam, the easiest thing to do is to delete it - otherwise you're letting the senders know that you exist and you will receive more." Richardson offers a few tips on reading e-mail, and explains how people get caught out. "Popular software, such as Microsoft Outlook or Express, lets the user read a section of the email in the preview window before opening the full email. Be warned that viewing a preview pane will activate the hidden tracker code - so don't use it if you want to minimise spam."

Another option is to apply spam filters. The problem with filters is that no system is perfect: there is likely to be an occasional loss of legitimate business communications, unless someone examines all filtered email. Iomart has developed a product, part of its NetIntelligence suite, which businesses can install in their system to give the option of filtering or sterilising only the hidden tracker mechanism in spam. There were a couple of points of note in the results of the tests conducted by iomart: most notably that the decrease recorded after spam was bounced was less pronounced than the increase noted when the accounts were newly set up and no action was taken to remove tracking codes or bounce emails.

So far, so good. Cutting down spam requires little more than ignoring the obviously tacky. Unfortunately, the iomart study suggests that the spammers have thought of that and are involved in a subtle form of electronic warfare to circumvent those who take the simple precautions outlined above. When the team began bouncing emails there appeared to be an increase in the amount of spam coming from different domain names. They concluded that this is likely to be an attempt by the spam senders to circumvent blocking mechanisms based on domain names.

THE LOTIES AWARDS ARE BACK
In Brief magazine has announced its plans for its 2003 Loties legal office technology innovation awards. These include revised categories and the introduction of a separate event - the e-Loties - for online, e-commerce, portal and knowledge management projects. Once again the Loties are being run in association with Legal Technology Insider.

Nominations for the mainstream Loties awards, which now include separate categories for best of breed and integrated products, close on 31 May, with the winners announced on 13 November. The closing date for the new e-Loties is 18 April, with the winners being announced on 18 September. As in previous years, the awards will be a two-stage event with users first nominating the companies, firms, products, services and people they want to see on the shortlist before going on to vote on who they want to win. Online voting forms are available via the In Brief web site at www.inbrief.co.uk

NEW GUIDE TO EMAIL AND EMPLOYMENT
To coincide with the new BBC 2 television series 'E-mails you wish you hadn't sent', SurfControl has launched a free downloadable guide to help clarify legal concerns surrounding the monitoring of communication systems in the workplace. 'The Legal Guide to Employee Monitoring' has been produced in association with Hammond Suddards Edge and is in response to further delays to the completion of the Information Commission's Code of Practice. This has resulted in additional legal uncertainty relating to the issue of staff monitoring. The guide gives simple, straightforward advice to anyone seeking assistance in this area. The free guide provides businesses with valuable advice on how to deal with the 'grey areas' that stretch across the Human Rights Act 1998, the Data Protection Act 1998, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 as well as the proposed Information Commission's Code of Practice. In addition to the guide, and in association with SurfControl, a legal hotline has been set up for UK businesses offering a free initial legal consultation relating to matters connected with internet use in the workplace. Any organisation is welcome to call the Hammonds hotline on: 0870 120 3042, To download a free copy of the guide visit: www.surfcontrol.com/go/pmlegal