Headlines

Axxia breaks into the Australian market as local solutions fail to impress
We have become familiar with the Australian-based Solution 6 Group winning orders for its legal systems from UK law firms but now the boot is on the other foot, with one of the UK's leading legal IT vendors - Axxia Systems - winning an order from one of Australia's largest firms. Minter Ellison has just announced that its Adelaide operation is deploying Axxia's Artiion case & practice management software to support its defendant insurers and statutory compensation scheme departments.

As managing partner Nigel McBride explains "High volume, transactional-based work can be great - but only if you get the business model right. We can secure the benefits we need and forge a real competitive advantage in the process but only if we are structured properly. Having seen how leading regional UK law firms had successfully leveraged IT to that end, we naturally regarded an enabling IT system as fundamental to our success."

McBride adds "Amongst the systems available in Australia, we couldn't find one single solution that allowed us to meet the demands of our blue chip clients in areas of premium work and of our volume business model. Amongst the global players only Axxia Systems really gave us the required functionality with a single database. Perhaps not surprisingly, it has been the driving force behind many UK firms' successful development of transaction-based processing." Two of Minter Ellison Adelaide's volume departments - motor accident and workers compensation - have already gone live, the first department getting up and running within just five weeks of starting work.

Although the Minter Ellison deal is Axxia's first implementation in the Asia Pacific region, international operations director Doug McLachlan is reporting a lot of interest in the technology from other firms. And, in a related development, Axxia has announced the appointment of its first dedicated country manager for Australia. Former Axxia sales manager Andrea Pointing, who left in 2001 to join outsourcing specialists ITNet, is returning to the fold to take up her new post in the New Year. Commenting on the development Axxia managing director Stuart Holden said "This is a strong indication of our commitment to our ambitions in Australia and the Pacific Rim and we regard it as a strategically vital appointment. Expansion needs to be carefully managed and Andrea's brief will be to investigate all the potential methods to service this market including the feasibility of building an independent Axxia operation in the region".
www.axxia.com

Two new players throw their hats into the UK digital dictation ring
Competition in the already tightly fought digital dictation workflow management systems (DDS) market has just become even more competitive in the UK.

The first development is this week's announcement that Crescendo Systems Holdings of Canada, the parent of Crescendo Systems Corporation which designs, produces and markets DigiScribe DDS software has formed a UK subsidiary: Crescendo Systems Limited. Additionally, Crescendo has also acquired the client base of DigiVoice Limited, the exclusive dealer of the DigiScribe in the UK for an undisclosed sum.

Crescendo says it plans to aggressively build on DigiVoice's activities in the UK, with Crescendo managing director Costa Mandilaras commenting: "We see this evolving market in its infancy and we are making a strategic commitment to be the UK market leader. This expansion into the UK provides Crescendo with an international base from which it can broaden into continental Europe and beyond." The entire current DigiVoice management, sales and support team, headed by John Bendall, have transfered over to Crescendo Systems (0870 770 1717).
www.crescendo.ca

The second development is the announcement by the DictaNet Software Corporation, the DDS market leader in Germany, that it is poised for expansion into the British market and will be kicking off its marketing drive with a two day convention in London on 20 & 21st November. DictaNet is looking for partners, distributors and resellers in the UK - for further details about either these opportunities or the convention email the company's sales manager Lasgin Saydo on lsaydo@dictanet.com or visit www.dictanet.com

Magus Research acquires Vrisko
Vrisko Limited, a UK software company specialising in the knowledge management of external content for major UK law firms, including Linklaters, Eversheds LLP and Allen & Overy, has been acquired by Magus Research, a specialist supplier of content and information management products and solutions to FTSE100/250 and Euro Top 500 corporations and, more recently, to leading law firms.

Announcing the deal Simon Lande, the founder and managing director of Magus said "The acquisition of Vrisko brings us market leading skills in searching and integrating proprietary content, which complement our own skills in managing content on the public internet. The combination of the two makes for a powerful proposition to clients." Vrisko chairman Chris Knowles added "Magus is the ideal partner for Vrisko. This is great news both for us and for our clients. As part of a larger group we will continue to improve our existing products, and will be looking at developing an exciting range of new integrated products."

Lande told the Insider that he was "genuinely fired up about the acquisition" as the two companies' operations both fell into the category of providing 'crucial information,' in terms of business intelligence and news aggregation, to their clients. Lande added that over the last 12 months Magus had begun to focus on the legal and professional services sector and during that time "we repeatedly found that we and Vrisko were talking to the same people in the same law firms about the same problems, so it was quite clear there was a complementary fit between our two companies."
www.magusresearch.com
www.vrisko.com

Westlaw acquisitions clarification
Peter Lake, the managing director of Sweet & Maxwell (part of the Thomson/Westlaw group) has asked us to clarify a report that appeared in the last edition of our companion publication, the Legal Technology Insider newsletter, regarding acquisition prospects. We reported him as saying that the market "could expect to see the Thomson/Westlaw group making further acquisitions within the legal IT sector, along the lines of the recent purchase of Elite, within the next 12 months." What Mr Lake actually said was "We and LexisNexis were looking to move into software and services. An example was the acquisition of Elite and I wouldn't be surprised if there were not more examples within the next 12 months." Apologies for any confusion.

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Document automation news

New Zealand's leading law firm selects SpeedLegal
Bell Gully, New Zealand's leading commercial law firm, has just announced that it is to roll out SpeedLegal's SmartPrecedent enterprise document automation solution. Bell Gully will use the system to create intelligent, automated precedents, initially for the lawyers in its financial services and property groups. "We're always striving to provide our clients with the highest possible level of service, and we see document automation as a key enabler for making this happen. Using leading edge technology, we're able to deliver high quality documents much faster than before. As a result, our lawyers can spend much more of their time focused on the business needs of our clients, and much less time cutting, pasting and proof-reading documents," said Don Staples, Bell Gully's commercial director. "After a careful search, we chose SpeedLegal because they have the only solution that solves both our short term and long term business needs. We get an immediate solution for internal precedent automation, plus a flexible enterprise system built on safe XML foundations. With the release of Office 2003, it's now beyond doubt: all roads lead to XML when it comes to document technology."
www.speedlegal.com

Dundas & Wilson go with Hot Docs
Dundas & Wilson, one of the largest law firms in Scotland, has announced plans to roll out HotDocs Online document assembly system on a firm-wide basis. Commenting on the order, Laurence Ward, a partner and Head of Technology at Dundas & Wilson, said "It is essential for us to implement the most effective IT solutions possible to enable us to continue to meet and exceed the increasing and varied expectations of our clients. The combination of HotDocs and the experienced staff at Capsoft UK (the UK distributors of HotDocs) gives us confidence that our implementation will be successful in saving money for the firm and for our clients."

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LegalWebWatch evolves into Linex
LegalWebWatch has launched Linex, a new service designed to distribute and market law firm information. There are two main aspects: The information service - Linex monitors the web sites of UK and international law firms, government organisations and major legal news agencies to provide lawyers with focused content from the sources of their choice. Primary content accessible via Linex includes information on legal developments within each practice area, legal opinions published by leading practitioners and information on the transactions and deals advised on by leading UK and International law firms.

And, secondly, the marketing service. By submitting opinion pieces and news into the Linex information exchange platform, law firms market their key messages, services and developments to lawyers in over 500 FTSE companies. Over the past six months the subscription based service has already signed up a number of major law firms, including SJ Berwin, Linklaters, Bird & Bird, Addleshaw Goddard, Dickinson Dees and Freethcartwright, as well as leading global corporations such as Vodafone, Morgan Stanley, KPMG, Shell and GE Capital.
www.l-inex.co.uk

Masons to Meter Mail
Masons has become the latest law firm to install the MailMeter email management system from Waterford Technologies. MailMeter is described as a "non-invasive" system in that it does not read the content of emails but does analyse and report on such things as email attachments, headers and the domain names that emails are being sent to and received from.

Commenting on the project, Masons IT Director Kevin Connell said "The use of email is growing exponentially and the biggest challenge facing us at moment in terms of system management is definitely email management. We know that a great degree of the volume of email on our network is due to the circulation of documentation due to inter-office communication however the ability to easily access data on the specifics of all email traffic places us in a position to better manage and plan our network bandwidth and storage capacity, as well as review how we use the system moving forward."

Masons will deploy MailMeter across a network of 11 offices in Europe and the Far East in order to provide IT and business managers with the ability to analyse the email traffic of 700 mailboxes. Connell added: "We need to ensure that we're in a position to protect ourselves from the risks surrounding email mis-use, such as corporate privacy and legal liability. Should a situation arise, MailMeter can provide us with demonstrable evidence of which employees are failing to adhere to the guidelines set out in our 'Acceptable Usage Policy' for email."
www.waterfordtechnologies.co.uk

The benefits of case management - see it really can work
Finally, a story for all those firms who still refuse to accept that case management systems really can transform their high volume/low margin business. The US-based legal systems vendor RealLegal has just published data on the impact of the introduction of its Practice Manager case management software at Newcastle-based Ward Hadaway, with the firm increasing its case volume by 4000% in under three years.

According to Andrew Charlton, the firm's collection services manager "In early 2001, our collections department was handling 600 cases a year. Today, we handle around 2000 cases per month, or 24,000 cases a year, and expect to have a total debt under collection of close to $32 million in the next 12 months. Practice Manager has helped us to substantially increase the case volume by automating repetitive steps and processes, providing clients with services that surpass the competition and allowing us to proactively respond to our customer's needs."
www.reallegal.com
 
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News in brief

CMS win in Australia
Australian law firm Maddocks has chosen Solution 6's CMS.Net practice management and Net Results business intelligence solutions to support over 150 law professionals across two offices in Melbourne and Sydney. CMS.Net, billed as 'new generation practice management' by Solution 6, was chosen by Maddocks following a thorough evaluation process against other software and suppliers.

Bellis joins Hildebrandt
Jonathan P. Bellis, the partner in charge of PricewaterhouseCoopers' (PwC) Law Firm & Law Department Services Group, has joined Hildebrandt International as a senior level Director. Bellis for a long time worked with American Lawyer Media on the development of the conference programmes for their LegalTech events.

iManage to support Acrobat
iManage has announced fully integrated support for Adobe Acrobat within the iManage WorkSite DMS suite. While iManage has always supported Acrobat files, the new functionality allows users to open and save PDF documents directly to an iManage WorkSite repository from inside the Adobe PDF authoring tool.

Taylor Vinters go with Alcatel voice & data solution
Cambridge based Taylor Vinters has selected the Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise to support its new voice & data infrastructure. The OmniPCX sits on an IP (internet protocol) communications platform and will initially be used to support 200 'soft' phones, all offering integrated telephony and PC features such as direct dial, voicemail, caller display, voice processing and email support. Alcatel business partner Switch Communications handled the installation and training.
www.alcatel.com

Video links to the Old Bailey
The Central Criminal Court in London (better known as the Old Bailey) this week becomes the latest UK court to go live with a Prison Video Links (PVL) system. The PVL project allows preliminary hearings for defendants in custody via videoconference to the prison, saving time and money. All 18 courtrooms in the Old Bailey have been equipped with PVLs at a cost of £2.3 million. Currently PVL equipment is installed in 57 prisons around the UK.

Enhancements for ringtail CaseBook
Ringtail Solutions has announced the enhancement of its Ringtail CaseBook system to support electronic document discovery, as the company's president Eddie O'Brien comments "With the scale of electronic discovery becoming almost overwhelming - often measured in terabytes - Ringtail has worked to develop a system that provides the variety of tools that legal practitioners are looking for to search and organize these files for relevance and responsiveness." To this end, Ringtail has now added the dtSearch Text Retrieval Engine to its mix of search tools. The Ringtail system now allows the user to review and analyze large quantities of data quickly and efficiently using the following search techniques: Phrases searching. Boolean operators - such as and/or/not. Proximity searching finds a word or phrase within any number of words of another word or phrase. Phonic searching finds words that sound alike - such as Smythe in a search for Smith. Stemming finds variations on endings - such as applies, applied, applying in a search for apply. Numeric range searching finds any number between two numbers. Wildcard supports searches for single or multiple characters. Fuzzy searching. And Synonym/Thesaurus searching.
www.ringtailsolutions.com

Valid wins Parasol contract
Valid Information Systems, part of the Hummingbird, has just announced that the Welland Partnership, a Pathfinder group of five local authorities from four counties in England, has selected Valid's electronic document and records management solution R/KYV to enable the authorities to process and store all planning, building control and waste management information. Under the deal some 1300 council staff will be able to use the R/KYV system to share information securely regardless of location or department. All this data, which will be managed according to UK e-government guidelines and statutory legislation, can then be accessed directly by members of the public using community web portals. The Welland Partnership is one of the leading groups in the National Project for Planning and Regulatory Services Online (PARSOL). The group comprises East Northamptonshire Council - Northamptonshire; Harborough District Council - Leicestershire; Melton Borough Council - Leicestershire; Rutland County Council - Rutland and South Kesteven District Council - Lincolnshire.
www.welland-partnership.com
 
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