ISSUE No.115 - 21.08.2002 Epoq claim succeeds against Claims Direct - Divorce coming soon to a washroom near you - AI within the law firm - New web site award launched - Westlaw gets KM foot in the door - Hummingbird sings for Allen & Overy - News in brief - Context launches case citator - Planet Lexis on way - The Times they are a changing

EPOQ CLAIM SUCCEEDS AGAINST CLAIMS DIRECT
The Epoq Group (previously Epoch Software) has obtained judgment on a claim of £430k against the legal claims handlers Claims Direct. The lawsuit arose out of a contract signed in early 2001 under which Epoq was to develop a Desktop Lawyer-type online legal service for Claims Direct. Epoq is also suing Claims Direct for a further £1.2 million on a second contract involving a marketing deal to use Claims Direct's law firm franchisees to distribute a commoditised legal services product for small businesses. Epoq say the real issue is not liability but how much money they will eventually can get out of Claims Direct's receivers.

DIVORCE - COMING SOON TO A WASHROOM NEAR YOU
Divorce-Online, the web site that enables people to obtain information about all aspects of divorce, is to begin promoting its services in bars across London's City and West End areas. Unusually the ads will be appearing in loo washroom frames, strategically placed above urinals, hand dryers, and the back of cubicle doors. On average, a woman will look at the advert for 105 seconds, and a man will look for 55 seconds, a much higher time than most other media. Because of the long impact time, this enables the advertiser to include detailed information that will be read, such as phone number, address or web site.

The www.divorce-online.co.uk web site offers not only online divorce packages from £80 but also a huge amount of free information about divorce procedure from changing your name, to finding a solicitor, to making a will and prenuptials. The creative for the men's washroom asks "Question: What's the difference between a divorce lawyer and Divorce-Online? Answer: About 288 pints of lager - Save money with Divorce-Online." The women's creative runs with the same money saving theme, with the strapline "Free Lippy! Don't waste your lipstick on him!" Divorce-Online carried out a survey of 20 London law firms to obtain a price comparison and have used the lager and lipstick to show the money that could be saved by the consumer by divorcing online. You can find a preview of the ads as JPEG files on the Bookmarks & Downloads page on the Insider web site.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WITHIN THE LAW FIRM WHITE PAPER
Earlier this year we reported on how Lawson West, a mid-sized firm of solicitors in the Midlands, had been using artificial intelligence to more effectively manage its data and clients. The firm has now produced a white paper explaining how theÊtechnology works, asÊwell as the benefits its offers to clients. The document is too long to include in this ezine however you can download it as a Word DOC file from the Bookmarks & Downloads page on the Insider web site.

INSIDER TO LAUNCH WEB SITE OF THE MONTH AWARD
Legal Technology Insider is looking for the best legal web sites. Every month we will highlight our web site of the month according to judging criteria based on content - quality, quantity & topicality, usability - ease of use, navigation, download times, accessibility; design - use of colour, graphics, multimedia, frames, aesthetics; focus - does the site address the needs of its target market; and USP - are there any special features that differentiate the site and make it stand out from the crowd.

The award is open to both law firms (and of course barristers) and commercial organisations, including legal publishers and legal portals in the UK, Europe, US and Asia-Pacific markets. To submit a site for consideration, just email us here at websites@legaltechnology.com and, where possible, provide some information about the type of technology used (Flash, database links etc); who built it & who supports it; what were the business objectives behind the site; who is the target audience; why did the firm adopt this approach; what have been the results to-date in terms of benefits, winning new clients, ROI etc; and, what was the budget?

WESTLAW GETS KM FOOT IN CLIFFORD CHANCE DOOR
West, part of the Thomson group, has just announced that Clifford Chance is to implement its West km knowledge management system. use intellectual assets from across the organization. Jeff Rovner, Clifford Chance knowledge management director of for the Americas Region, said: "West km gives Clifford Chance transparent access to one of its most valuable assets - the collective knowledge and expertise contained in the briefs, memoranda and other expert writings produced by the firm's lawyers around the globe. With West km, these intellectual assets can be researched as part of a Westlaw session. Firm documents pertaining to the legal issue appear as part of a Westlaw search result."

How does West km work? West km does not require firms to introduce any additional codes or markup into a document collection. Instead, West km extends West's extensive indexing structure to a firm's private information collections behind the firm's firewall. West km effectively leverages a firm's existing technology platform by integrating with its document management system, providing new functionality designed to increase the value of work product repositories.

For example, when a researcher finds a case, statute, or administrative decision of interest on Westlaw that is also cited in firm documents, the firm's icon is automatically displayed within the case header and within the Westlaw citation list. The researcher clicks the firm icon to review the list of internal documents. The researcher can then retrieve a copy of any of these internal documents from the firm's DMS, which the researcher can then print, save or cut and paste to incorporate portions into a new document.

ALLEN & OVERY SELECTS HUMMINGBIRD
Allen & Overy has purchased Hummingbird Enterprise to support its global development plans. The agreement involves the latest versions of Hummingbird's Portal, Collaboration, Document Management, Knowledge Management, Web Publishing, Workflow and Imaging products. Hummingbird won out against a field that originally involved 12 competing vendors.

David Burwell, IT Director at Allen & Overy said "With 26 major centres worldwide and over 4700 staff, the fast, efficient exchange and integration of documents and information across borders is paramount to our success. Given the broad range of demands made by internal staff and external clients, we needed an integrated solution which was flexible, open, easy-to-use and administer. One of our main objectives was to deliver a matter-centric environment to every fee earner's desktop"

"We initially considered adopting a multi-vendor best-of-breed approach. However, the demonstrable integration of the functionality-rich components of Hummingbird Enterprise proved to be the winning advantage we were looking for. The implementation will simplify global working and improve internal processes, through the provision of a collaborative working environment for staff and clients alike. In addition, Hummingbird will substantially reduce Allen & Overy's projected implementation costs through the single vendor approach."

Allen & Overy will use Hummingbird Enterprise to create a web-based desktop environment for lawyers and support staff, integrating key applications such as email, case management, client management and HR systems into a portal. Allen & Overy fee earners will therefore be able to access all documents and information associated with a particular transaction or client irrespective of their location.

Comment - At the LawNet conference in the US earlier this week, Hummingbird's arch-rival iManage announced that it too was now committed to a matter-centric view of the world that would allow firms to create an electronic case file. This is the same message that Solicitec has also been promoting wirh its new VisualFiles system although this comes from a case management rather than DMS background.

NEWS IN BRIEF

INTERFACE & iMANAGE TEAM UP - iManage and Interface Software have announced that they are to integrate the iManage WorkSite document & content management solution with Interface Software's InterAction 5 CRM system. The resulting integrated system is intended to provide their joint customers within the legal sector was comprehensive relationship, case, matter and deal management capabilities.

VRISKO SIGNS LINKLATERS TO NEW ALERT SERVICE - Vrisko (020 7891 2628) has signed up Linklaters to its NewsTracker service. This is a news alert management system that allows law firms to manage the huge volumes of incoming email news alert messages fee earners now have to contend with. Vrisko claim that over the course of a year lawyers within a large firm could waste of £0.5 million in fee earning time sifting through email news bulletins.

SOLUTION 6 ADDS TO DOT NET OFFERINGS - Solution 6 Group has delivered three new applications for its web based business automation tool CiO OPEN, which has been designed for the Microsoft .NET platform. The new applications are CiO Conflicts, CiO Expenses and CiO File Opening.

INTERFACE & SV TECHNOLOGY TEAM UP - SV Technology, the developers of the LawPort legal specific portal, has announced its support for Interface Software's InterAction 5 CRM system. The resulting integrated system is intended to provide their joint customers within the legal sector was comprehensive relationship, case, matter and deal management capabilities. SV's latest release - LawPort 3 - will now be integrated with InterAction 5 to strengthen its 'contacts in context' facility.

EASY TIGER - Sheffield law firm AMS Law has launched a new online debt recovery service called e-zeetiger.com and follows on from the launch earlier this year of its e-zeemoves. Clients can place new instructions online and there are extranet links providing access to matter progress reports. www.e-zeetiger.com

ONLINE MONITORING OF MEDICO-LEGAL CASES - LitComp plc (020 7400 7113 ) has launched a new web site, providing a live, web-based location or dealroom/extranet for solicitors and insurers involved in ongoing personal injury claimsand medico-legal claims to review the details and status of their cases. The facility, which allows solicitors and insurers access via a unique username, password and case number, includes the following information: case profile, case history, patient details, referral company details, progress report and history of medical treatment including pending examinations. www.legal-reports.co.uk

ENERGIS WINS CPS DEAL - The UK telecoms company Energis has won a five year contract worth £12 million with systems integrator Logica to provide a networking solution that will link up the Crown Prosecution Service's main sites onto one secure network. The Energis solution will underpin the new Compass case management system, which is being developed for the CPS by Logica and is due for an initial roll out in 2003. The new network, an IP virtual private network (IP VPN), is based on multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), which is designed to allow the prioritisation of network traffic so business critical applications can be given priority over other, less urgent, data traffic. One of the factors that helped Energis win the contract is that, unlike its competitors, Energis has UK Government clearance to carry traffic cleared at European Acceptance Level (EAL) 2 over an IP VPN. This means that Energis can guarantee the levels of network security required by government departments.

CONTEXT LAUNCHES LEGAL CITATOR
Electronic publisher Context Limited (+44 (0)20 7267 8989) has released a legal citator service. Called JustCite, it is a fully cross-referenced index to a collection of key UK and European legal and official information drawn from many authoritative sources and includes extensive links to full-text documents on Justis.com, Context's online legal research service. The sources currently indexed in JustCite include case law series from the Law Reports Index, transcripts from the Court of Appeal, Administrative Court and London's Crown Courts (from Smith Bernal Reporting) and UK Statute Law. Over the next few months, specialist case law series, European legislation and news and commentary on UK and European law will be added to the service.

Context's Projects Director, Bernadette Jansen Op De Haar, said: "JustCite represents an exciting new development for Context. For the first time, we have brought together metadata derived from numerous important legal resources and made them accessible via a single easy-to-use interface. The result is an extremely powerful legal research tool which perfectly complements Context's existing full-text databases."

REED ELSEVIER TO BUILD PLANET LEXIS
The publishing group Reed Elsevier has announced plans to spend more than £70 million on the development of a global electronic database to replace its current architecture which involves 11 separate services. The idea is to create a global, multilingual platform providing a single point of access for users wherever they are on the planet. Insider sources say Reed's Lexis legal division sees this approach as a way of meeting the demands of global law firms by providing a uniform interface to online legal information services and databases.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGING
Talking of Lexis (see above) we were interested to see that The Times newspaper seems to be investigating the possibility of creating its own online legal information portal to accompany its successful Tuesday legal supplement. A visit to the Law section of the Times Online web site throws a survey form asking visitors whether they would be interested in a legal portal provided by the Times that: provided a searchable database of current & archived Times Law Reports; an editorial section containing Times content from their newspapers free to those registered with the site; a jobs section; a legal sector chat room - shades of Link and Roll on Friday and a legal professional development section.

The survey also asks visitors which online legal resources they currently use and among those listed are 'Lexus' - could that be Lexis or a new legal motoring site? 'Billi.co.uk' - this is either a tribute to Chris Evans' wife (if you have to ask, you're too old) or our old friend BAILLI. And 'Delia Venerables' - true, the Delia Venables Legal Resources site is useful but calling her venerable is perhaps going over the top.