Bar IT shock - ACE bought by Meridian
After years of intense and frequently bitter competition, last Friday (8 November) a deal was struck by Meridian Law to purchase Applied Computer Expertise (ACE), its arch-rival in the Bar legal systems market.

According to the statement issued by Meridian "ACE has been losing market share for some time and it has become apparent recently that a substantial amount of investment in ACE was going to be required. Consequently ACE started looking for potential buyers to salvage the situation and approached Meridian Law.

"Meridian Law is ideally suited to take on the role of acquirer, having some 10 months ago become a part of the Mountain Software Group and is in a financially strong position, with a wealth of experience in the Group to succeed where many other possible suitors may have failed."

Ian Knox, the managing director of the Mountain Software Group added "This is a fantastic opportunity and a step nearer to our goal of providing excellent software in every chambers throughout England and Wales. I strongly believe the acquisition will result in a solution that will reap many benefits for the Bar in both the short and long term."

Meridian Law says it intends to continue to work very closely with the Bar, chambers and the user groups to further develop its products and services and is now planning to combine the best elements of both packages in a single system.

ACE was formed by Rod Voyce in 1984 and very quickly established itself as the market leader in the supply of fee note billing, accounting, diary and case management systems for barristers chambers. However a diversification into practice management systems for solicitors, with its Infinity software, was less than successful and culminated in ACE announcing in December 1997 that it was pulling out of the market. In the years that followed ACE also saw its user base within the Bar erode away. Latest figures indicate Meridian Law is now the largest supplier with a 65% share of the chambers market.
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Another new face enters the digital dictation market
There seems to be no let up in the digital dictation systems goldrush with this month seeing yet another new player set out its stall. The company is Lexacom (0870 777 3336) and it joins the legal market after cutting its teeth in the medical field. Its core products are Lexacom Talk for dictation and Lexacom Type for transcription and they can operate over a network or remotely, with dictation emailed in for transcription as file attachments.

In common with the competition, Lexacom also offer a workflow management application and there is now a new Lexacom Mobile module that allows you to use a PDA (running PocketPC 2002) to record and submit dictation without the need of a dedicated digital voice recorder. www.lexacom.co.uk
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LITIG to go it alone
At a meeting in London at the end of last month, the Legal IT Innovators Group (LITIG) decided to go it alone and set itself up as an independent, non-commercial body for senior IT professionals, such as IT directors, partners in charge and department heads, involved in the implementation, use and support of legal IT systems in the UK.

LITIG, which will focus on the strategic rather than operational issues facing mid-to-large sized law firms and inhouse legal departments, aims to campaign for standards, compatibility and ease of use of systems within the legal IT market place. And, although it envisages collaborating with other organisations, such as LSSA, in order to maintain its independence suppliers will not be eligible for membership.

The October meeting also agreed LITIG would be self-funded by subscription fees, currently set at £500 per person, and that "as a final statement of independence and to make it reflect the revised purpose," the group should select a new name. The next meeting is scheduled to take place in late January at Eversheds offices in Birmingham. IT directors interested in learning more should contact LITIG coordinator David Robbins on 07803 281868.
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Thomson Snell sign up for business continuity
Thomson Snell & Passmore, one of the oldest firms in the country, has become the first to sign up for a new business continuity and disaster recovery service called Office-Shadow.

Office-Shadow, which was formed earlier this year, offers a range of services including crisis management planning, data security audit, off-site data backup, data replication, IT recovery and immediate access to fully equipped emergency office space. However according to one of its directors Mike Quinn (ex-AIM and more recently with Guardian IT) the key attraction is the company's focus on the SME market, whereas rival services aimed primarily at financial institutions have traditionally been too expensive for smaller organisations such as law firms.

Along with Thomson Snell & Passmore, three other solicitors practices have also signed up for Office-Shadow within the past couple of months. Quinn says that as well as the obvious intrinsic benefits of crisis management planning, more and more firms are reporting that their insurers are making business continuity plans a precondition of renewing insurance cover.

Office-Shadow is running two half day seminars on business continuity and disaster recovery at the Selfridges Conference Centre, in London, on 5 December. For details call 07004 742369. www.office-shadow.com
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Hopkins use Seneca to manage white finger cases
Hopkins Solicitors, which has offices in Nottingham and Mansfield, is now using the Emis (0870 122 5525) Seneca contact and file management system to provide the IT framework for managing over 650 'vibration white finger' (VWF) industrial disease personal injury compensation claims. The firm has also integrated its digital dictation system with Seneca.

Seneca differs from most conventional case and matter management software in that along with workflow automation, it also handles document assembly, document management and offers scope for expanding into a knowledge management system, by linking through to both a firm's own precedents and external know-how sources, such as the personal injury law titles produced by the Emis group's electronic publishing division. www.emisit.com
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Looking for IT staff ?
This week's top jobs include: Smith Bernal Wordwave is looking for a new sales director. And a "leading London firm" is looking for a Hummingbird applications developer, two legal applications developers, a legal business analyst and an operations support analyst on salaries ranging from £28K to £45K. We also have some new job vacancies for librarians and KM specialists. For full details of these and other vacancies visit the Insider Jobs Board at www.legaltechnology.com

Bill formatting - Whitehill gets some competition
For the last five years Whitehill Technologies' software has dominated the bill formatting market for firms wanting greater control over the way their invoices and financial reports are generated by their accounts systems. But, is this about to end?

SoftDesign (020 8293 3123) - the company was last in the news in February when it took over the old MIL/Management Interface business - has just reported two more sales for its own Bill Formatting & Reporting system to Berrymans Lace Mawer and Hextalls (previously Hextall Erskine). Both firms will be running the software, which was developed by SoftDesign in conjunction with Lewis Silkin in conjunction with the Axxia accounts systems.

Phil Heath of SoftDesign says that along with greater control over formatting, the simplified routines for the maintenance and creation of bill packs means firms should be able to bill their clients in a more timely manner, which in turn benefits cash flow.

The rival Whitehill Technologies' systems are available in the UK through Axxia and Tikit's Aurra Consulting subsidiary. Recent implementations of Whitehill by Aurra include Ince & Co and Allen & Overy on Elite and Ward Hadaway on CMS Open.

Aurra, which now positions itself as a "back office legal technology consultancy" has revamped its web site which now carries a lot of useful advice about that currently very hot topic: how to get the most out of your practice management system. www.aurra.co.uk
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Peapod survives near death experience
Peapod Solutions, best known in the legal market for its solicitors accounts and PrintaFORM electronic forms software, but now also starting to make headway in the digital dictation arena with the DigiScribe system, has survived a corporate near death experience after it was reported that its parent company, the E-Initiative Group, was going into administration on 16 October.

In fact Peapod's management successfully negotiated a buyout from E-Initiative a fortnight earlier (on 4 October) when they acquired the name, business, goodwill, assets, contracts and liabilities of the old Peapod company. Other than a change of address (see below) and company registration number, there have been no changes to the management or personnel who remain the same.

In a businesses for sale notice that was published in the Financial Times, E-Initiative, which also had a internet firewall and security systems distribution division, was described as having a turnover of £7m and recurring revenues of £2.5m pa. E-Initiative's problems are widely reckoned to have been caused by over-ambitious expansion plans for the firewall arm in Continental Europe.

Peapod Solutions' new address is: Unit 1, Castle Business Village, Station Road, Hampton, Middx TW12 2BX. The new phone number is 0807 380 1122.
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News in brief

In other developments at MSS, the company has released Version 1.7 of its AlphaLaw-vantage practice management system - new features include a new credit control module, HotDocs document production and support for the latest CDS criminal legal aid system requirements. The latest version of the MSS conveyancing case management system now also supports the NLIS channel provider TM Property Services.

Workshare forms alliances
Workshare Technology, best known as the developer of the DeltaView and Synergy document content comparison and collaboration applications, has just formed distribution partnerships with two legal systems suppliers - Kramer Lee & Associates and the Anglo-Irish software developer Opsis, which has offices in Dublin, Belfast and Stamford.

KLA will be adding DeltaView and Synergy to the portfolio of products and services it already supplies to larger firms, while Opsis will, in the words of CTO Mike Butler, be using the Workshare products "to complement and enhance our Solicitor case management software to more fully meet our client's document management requirements."
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Law firm gets in 2 txt messaging
Scottish law firm Digby Brown, which has offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Glenrothes, is to install a new SMS text messaging system that will allow staff to send messages to their colleagues, clients and other offices. The firm will use 'group txt' software, part of the txttools range of SMS applications from Cy-nap Limited (0113 234 2111). Interestingly, the software is available free of charge and the only cost relates to sending text messages, for which Digby Brown will pay a standard rate.

Commenting on the project, the firm's systems manager Fraser Ewing said "We know from experience that a lot of communication is unnecessarily involved. Sometimes you need to simply impart a small piece of information to everyone in the firm. Using conventional means, this can be a laborious process. Text messaging very elegantly solves this problem for us. We had a case recently where over a period of days we had been trying to contact a client by every means possible, bar smoke signals. Then we sent him a text message and within four minutes he had called us." www.txttools.co.uk
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Keep up with the news
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Solo software supplier dies
The Insider has just learned that Jim Strachan, the developer of the Strongbox accounts and time recording system for sole practitioners and very small firms, died a fortnight ago. Although Strachan's company, James Strachan & Co, sold the rights to the Windows version of the software to Peapod Solutions, who subsequently redeveloped it on a 32-bit platform and now sell it as part of their LEGALOffice suite, Strachan continued to support a number of users of the original DOS version of his system up until his death.
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New product & services launches

nFlow's technical manager Jim Park said "The new server came about as a result of listening to the issues raised by firms that have been reviewing the digital dictation technology market. For example, we were told that one of the biggest IT costs for law firms, with two or more offices, is the WAN. The Enterprise server will mean dictation sound files travel over the WAN only when they absolutely have to. This is opposed to some other systems where dictations travel to or from a single server for every transaction. The benefit is the system can be presented and managed centrally as a complete enterprise solution across multiple geographical locations whilst optimising the cost of sound file transport around the network."

Lovells is currently using CAFM in conjunction with its help desk operations but is investigating further applications, as are Davies Arnold Cooper, Withers and Clyde & Co. CAFM runs on an Access database (a SQL Server version is available) controlled by a Windows Explorer 'tree' view. Prices start from £500. www.cafmexplorer.com

According to Kcentrix founder David Cornwell, the software "automates the creation, maintenance and delivery of decision trees to encourage a self help knowledge sharing structure" by interacting with the user through standard web pages. Using Kcentrix's Q&A style advice sessions, firms should be able to give their fee earners, staff and clients access to the information they need without searching through reams of FAQs (frequently asked questions) or relevancy ranked search results. www.kcentrixsoftware.com
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Email management news in brief

OurBase KM system has granite foundations
The Granite & Comfrey KM consultancy (now part of the Tikit Group) provided the design and advisory services needed to help build Richards Butler's new and highly rated 'ouRBase' knowledge management system.

Commenting on his involvement with the project, Granite & Comfrey managing director Derek Sturdy said "Richards Butler's ouRBase is an original project in the sense that it was never driven by the technology but instead harnessed technology alongside paralegal skills, PSL skills and information skills to deliver a knowledge service to the lawyers. This interdisciplinary approach has had some clear benefits, especially in two areas: good buy-in from both users and those who contribute alike, because all were involved; and harnessing the lawyers' knowledge (including PSL knowledge) to data structures which facilitate updating - the key issue for ongoing value in a legal knowledge management system."
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Osborne Clarke crack down on email abuse
We are all familiar with the problem of external email abuse, such as spam, but what about internally generated junk mail? One firm that has tackled the problem is Osborne Clarke, which recently implemented the MailMeter email management system from Waterford Technologies.

Head of technology Nathan Hayes said the firm had wanted a non-invasive system that would enable them "to enforce our email usage policy from a position of knowledge rather than guesswork, stamping out both internal and external email abuse." He cites as an example a situation where MailMeter highlighted some conversation pairs within the firm who were sending as many as 80 non-work related emails to each other during a day. "Before implementing MailMeter, we were not in a position to take any action to prevent the abuse. However we now have demonstrable evidence of misuse which means that, if necessary, we can challenge offenders who are not adhering to the guidelines stipulated in our email usage policy."

Hayes adds that MailMeter is a non-invasive system as it does not actually read the content of emails but instead generates summary information on email headers, attachments and the domain names to which emails are being sent and received from "enabling us to enforce email best-practice without alienating our staff or infringing their rights."

MailMeter software costs in the region of £8300 for a 900-user licence and is available on a free seven-day evaluation basis. www.waterfordtechnologies.co.uk
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Check in for a new web site at the Law Cafe
The Law Cafe is a new company that has been set up to design professional looking web sites for smaller law firms. Prices start at £500 and this includes one year's web site hosting, email forwarding and a site maintenance deal, so firms can update the content of their sites on a monthly basis. A .co.uk domain name is also included at no extra cost for those firms who have yet to register one. Firms can choose from over 260 different designs and colour-schemes, with new sites going online within one week of an order being placed. For more details email Lee Harris at info@thelawcafe.co.uk or visit www.thelawcafe.co.uk
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Brief Place aims to beat the crush at the Bar
This month saw the launch of a new online service - Brief Place - that is intended to improve the efficiency of barristers' chambers in England and Wales by providing them with a central forum in which to exchange court appointments information.

The concept behind the service is to provide a comprehensive a court listing (including Magistrates, Crown and County Courts) showing which chambers have barristers attending a particular court on any given day. So, for example, when chambers are trying to find counsel to cover a case at Highgate Magistrates Court, instead of making dozens of "have you got anyone to cover" calls to other sets, they can find counsel already at that court with one search of the Brief Place web site.

Brief Place began life as a phone based service but ensuring the information it contained was up to date proved problematic as chambers appointment diaries can change by the hour. At this point Meridian Law, the market leaders in Bar IT systems, became involved and redesigned the software so non-sensitive information from chambers diaries (such as court details, court numbers and contact information for chambers) could be collected automatically from chambers' clerking systems servers several times a day and uploaded on to the Brief Place site.

Meridian Law is planning further enhancements that will allow users of the rival ACE system - see also top story - to also automatically post diary information on to Brief Place.

Brief Place is one of three similar services. The first was FreeBar.com but this now appears to be moribund. The second, which also launched earlier this month, is CourtDiary from Law & World Wide Web Specialists, a company set up by Paper Buildings clerk Robin Driscoll. Unlike Brief Place, CourtDiary is free to use however clerks have to manually key in all the court and diary appointments data they want posting onto the site. www.briefplace.co.uk
www.courtdiary.co.uk
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New face in online news filtering
Software developer Solcara has launched a new news filtering system that it hopes will help firms keep on top of the growing number of online information services now feeding content into their offices. Called InTheNews, like the rival Vrisko NewsTracker system (now used by Linklaters and Baker & Mckenzie) it can access content from a number of specialised providers however Solcara's professional services director Robert Martin believes InTheNews is more flexible as it can also analyse and filter results and then cluster items from multiple sources around identified topics such as, for example, a particular merger story. The system is based on the company's press & PR software product Solcara Press Bureau which is already in use with three of the UK's largest police forces, including the Metropolitan Police. For details call 01895 820950. www.solcara.com
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Red letter day for email
Meticulus Solutions (01249 700050), the company behind the Meticulist document management system, has launched a new secure email system called RedLetter. In common with competitors such as DespatchBox DDX and the Deltaseal SoliciTrack system, RedLetter uses a poste restante architecture, with the message remaining on the sender's server and only being released after the intended recipient has responded with a password. There are however two important differentiators: RedLetter is based on a Linux platform and is being sold as an 'appliance' with the hardware and software bundled together in one box that just has be connected to a network.

Pricing starts at a guide price of £50 per seat, RedLetter requires no changes to either the sender or recipient's existing email infrastructure - it worked perfectly here on the Insider despite the fact we use Apple Mac hardware and Eudora as an email client - and it tracks not only when a message has been received but also when the recipient was first notified that there was a message waiting for collection. For details email info@redletteremail.com or visit www.redletteremail.com A white paper is also available via the downloads link on the Insider web site.
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Insider TLA competition - the result
Our recent competition to find an amusing TLA (three letter acronym) for digital dictation systems threw up DDT - as in 'digital dictation technology, kills all known secretarial ratios dead,' as well as the politically incorrect BRO - 'battleaxe removal option' from one lawyer (male) and the apt response from an IT director (female) who suggested EMU - 'even men can use it'. In the event we went for TTY - 'talk to yourself' from Steve Williams, the technical director at Perceptive Technology.

When it came to the best TLA to replace the widely used but rather lame DDS although a number of entries along the lines of S2P (speech to paper) were almost there, the clear winner, in that it could apply equally to speech recognition as well as digital dictation, was STM - 'speech transcription management' from Stephen Jardine, the IT manager at Winkworth Sherwood. Our thanks to everyone who participated and bottles of champagne, courtesy of our competition sponsors nFlow Software, will shortly be on the way to the winners.
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