ISSUE No.121 - 08.01.2003 - Elite signs up Withers - Treasury solicitors go with Solicitec - Good news & bad for Butterworths - Pisces launches residential working party - News in brief - Bird & Bird implements Net results - Relaunch for Perfect Information service

ELITE SIGNS UP WITHERS
Elite has just announced that City of London law firm Withers has signed contracts to replace its current Norwel practice management system with a new system from Elite. According to the Insider chart (accessible via our home page) of what the UK's largest law firms are using, this makes Withers the 27th firm in the top 100 to go with Elite.

TREASURY SOLICITORS TO GO WITH SOLICITEC CASE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION
The Treasury Solicitor's Department, which provides a range of legal services to over 600 UK government departments, agencies and organisations, has awarded its PRACAMS Contract (Practice & Case Management System) to Solicitec Ltd for a solution based on its Visualfiles product after a tendering process involving "a close competition between a number of leading suppliers".

Implementation will start later this spring and will see the system rolled out to around 350 staff at the department's London offices. The contract is valued at £2.5 million over 5 years and it is intended that PRACAMS will modernise the Treasury Solicitor's litigation operations through: integrated case working, the generation of bills and tracking payments, electronic records management facilities and automatic workflow making it easier for caseworkers to process cases.

GOOD NEWS & BAD FOR LEXIS BUTTERWORTHS
The good news is that the LexisNexis Group, the legal and business information division of Reed Elsevier, has announced plans to acquire FactLANE, an online news service in the Netherlands, from leading Dutch publisher PCM Uitgevers. FactLANE aggregates and distributes Dutch news online, carrying exclusive content from PCM including prestigious titles such as NRC Handelsblad and de Volkskrant.

The bad news is that according to the latest issue of the Infolaw Newsletter "Just in time for Christmas, Butterworths (the UK arm of LexisNexis) announced that it was making up to 100 members of staff redundant - estimated at about 10 percent of their workforce. Commissioning and production staff are reported to have been hardest hit." Infolaw editor Nick Holmes asks "Could this explain why customers found telephone calls to Butterworths between Christmas and the New Year remained unanswered? Only a skeleton staff can have been left holding the fort."

PISCES LAUNCHES RESIDENTIAL WORKING PARTY
PISCES, the electronic data exchange standard for real estate, has moved into new territory with the formation of a Working Group to define the standard data needed to complete residential transactions. The brief of the Residential Working Group encompasses the data necessary to record the whole transaction cycle from marketing to completion, including both mortgage and re-mortgage. The group will focus first on owner occupied property and then address the buy-to-let market.

The Residential Working Group, representing 16 separate organisations, met for the first time in November and elected Richard Dinning of Enact as chairman. It has agreed a demanding timetable to deliver the Standard. The group includes representatives from: HM Land Registry, the Council for Mortgage Lenders, the Direct Conveyancing Association, the Legal Software Suppliers Association, the RICS Residential Faculty, conveyancers, insurance sector, independent software suppliers and estate agents.

The development of the PISCES Standard is entirely public. The Standard is operated by a not-for-profit company supported by membership, but it is not exclusive. The proceedings of the Working Group will be posted on the PISCES web site at www.pisces.co.uk and the group is obliged to respond to any comments from whatever source. The Working Group is open to applications from others wishing to become involved. Anyone interested should contact either Richard Dinning rfd@enact-online.co.uk or Vida Godson vida@ipdindex.co.uk

NEWS IN BRIEF

WORDWAVE ASIA APPOINTS NEW MD - WordWave Asia, part of the world's leading audio-to-text transcription and searchable multi-media provider WordWave International - and the company behind the LiveNote realtime transcription system, has appointed Charlotte Pache as its new managing director. Pache, who was previously director of sales for WordWave UK, joins WordWave Asia this month. Though based in Hong Kong, she will also oversee WordWave's Singapore office which opened in 2001.

LEGAL LIBRARY SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES TAKEOVER BID - EBSCO Industries, the US-based provider of periodicals subscription services for law libraries, has announced plans to acquire the European operations of rival subscription service RoweCom. EBSCO is proceeding with a definitive purchase agreement however the transaction does first require French regulatory approval.

MICROSOFT INTERACTION KILLER DELAYED - Microsoft has delayed launch of its much-anticipated CRM product. Originally planned for late 2002, the company has issued a statement saying the product was still in final testing and "will be available in North America in early 2003." The international version is now slated for the second half of 2003. Although there have been mutterings that a Microsoft CRM (client relationship management) system would hit the predominance of Interface Software's InterAction product in the legal market, it seems the more likely victims will be primarily sales management CRM packages such as Goldmine and ACT!

BIRD & BIRD IMPLEMENTS NET RESULTS
Bird & Bird has become the first UK law firm to implement the Solition 6 Net Results reporting and forecasting tool. The On Budget module of Net Results will be installed in January 2003 across Bird & Bird's seven offices. The On Budget module extracts current data from general ledger, time & billing, human resources and payroll systems and loads all historical budget information into a central data warehouse, the foundation for the queries and analytical reports. By providing report translation and instant updates of budget data, those involved in the budget process will now be able to quickly plan, track and re-forecast fee income, employee headcount, expenses and capital expenditure information.

Commenting on the move, Bird & Bird chief financial officer Paul Colvin said: "Historically the budgeting process was based on spreadsheet created systems requiring extensive maintenance. Using the Net Results On Budget module, we will be able to re-forecast and complete various 'what if?' analysis scenarios much more quickly and easily than within a traditional spreadsheet environment. Furthermore, the product's ease of use will enable us to increase the number of people involved in the budgeting process without affecting accuracy".

PERFECT INFORMATION RELAUNCHES RESEARCH SERVICE
Perfect Information has relaunched its Research & Bureau Service with extended hours, improved customer service standards and a wider service portfolio. Research now operates extended hours of business from 7:00am to 11:00pm GMT; the recent appointment of two additional experienced multilingual researchers has bolstered the team; frequent feedback and status reports are provided for every request, with initial feedback being delivered within the first 30 minutes as standard, to provide the most timely and cost effective service to clients and a new customised report writing service completes the new service portfolio.

Perfect Information will soon operate a 24-hour Client Services Helpdesk and Research & Bureau Service. A team of Perfect Information helpdesk analysts and research specialists will be available 24 hours, Monday to Friday working from Perfect Information offices to handle client services and research enquiries. To further strengthen the service, a partnership has been developed between the Research & Bureau Service and CCH Washington Service Bureau in the US, to offer clients comprehensive coverage of US company documents and information. The Perfect Information Research & Bureau service now provides SEC Research, including Non-Edgar documents, Brokers Dealer Disclosures, SEC Regulatory News announcements and Document Retrieval services which include precedent research on US companies and historical document research. Clients now have access to the latest US public company filings and archived filings dating back to 1966. Perfect Information is a a subsidiary of Centaur Communications. The Research & Bureau Service has researchers work in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Japanese.