Aderant has just announced that US national law firm Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP (and long-time Aderant user – the firm has been a customer since 1999) has become the 150th firm to go live on Aderant Expert Release 7.5. This means that on average just over seven firms every month have implemented or migrated to Expert Release 7.5 since the it introduced in October 2007.

“We originally thought that the migration would be more involved than it actually was, especially given the new capabilities of the software,” said Edward O’Connell, Chief Financial Officer for Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP.  “In reality our upgrade went very smoothly. We were able to easily switch over to the new version of Expert. Our operations did not miss a beat.” The firm did two test conversions to ensure a seamless transition. The first conversion focused on testing upgrades the firm had done to its hardware infrastructure, including switching over to a clustered environment to gain additional performance improvements. Hinshaw then performed a second test conversion to ensure that the customisations it had done over the years to meet its unique business requirements worked with the new version. The firm also used actual production data from the prior month allowing them to fully test their month-end process, including reporting. This gave Hinshaw the ultimate confidence in moving to Expert Release 7.5 as it was able to see that the results of its month-end close were exactly the same.
 
Michael Kohlsdorf, President & CEO of Aderant said: “Hinshaw is a wonderful example of our ‘No Client Left Behind’ strategy, especially since this is the fourth time they have successfully migrated to a more current version of our practice management suite. We continually introduce new functionality, new capabilities, and new technologies without forcing our clients to re-implement or, more importantly, re-purchase software. This approach gives our clients the best long term value for their technology investment.”

* Comment: We love this 'no client left behind' name for the Aderant upgrade strategy – a stroke of marketing genius.

June saw visitor traffic for the Orange Rag blog hit a new monthly high of 19,800 distinct URLs served (up from 15,500 in March) while the number of page views increased by over 100,000 from 240,000 to 348,000 – which is the equivalent of 17,000 page views every working day.

The Neil Cameron Consulting Group (NCCG) is currently carrying out an IT survey that aims to go further into the breakdown of the IT Department and IT spend than any other survey that has been done in the past. It will provide law firms with anonymous comparative information such as:
 
• average size of IT dept in relation to the total number of users, and the total number of fee-earners
• average relative size of the different functions within the IT dept
• various ratios of the number of full time staff versus the number of contractors
• the ratio of PSLs to fee-earners
• the average IT staff overhead per office
 
Plus the usual information such as:
• average IT spend per fee earner
• average IT send as a proportion of turnover
• average annual IT staff turnover
 
Already 25% of Top 200 law firms have participated, as well as smaller firms, and more results are coming in all the time. The results of this survey will be available in a few months and should you wish to participate please contact Jill Bazalgette at NCCG on jill@neilcameronconsulting.com for a copy of the spreadsheet.
 

Just been contacted by a solicitors practice asking if anyone has heard of a legal accounts package called SoliAcct ? A Google search has found nothing – and even Orange Rag editor Charles Christian's files (which go back to 1979) can find no mention. Any suggestions welcome...

If you caught Insider editor Charles Christian doing his surprise stand-up performance at the recent Tikit Word Day in London and want to hear more, then make a date for the Buxton Fringe Festival in July. Starting a three day run on Sunday 12th, Christian is performing his new one man storytelling show The Boy with the Bomb beneath his Bed at the Underground Venues beneath the Old Hall Hotel in Buxton town centre. Don’t worry, each show only lasts for 60 minutes!

The Legal Technology Insider/Orange Rag office will be closed this week – however we will still be dealing with email plus any breaking news stories on this blog.

Acerbic comment from our friends at the Janders  Dean management consultancy on the recent Legal Week Strategic Technology Forum in Spain...

"For those of you who could not make the event in Spain (which is pretty much everyone given that only about 80 people attended – of which half were suppliers)."

Oh, dear – maybe more will make the Lexis show on the rolling heaths of Bagshot in September?

The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), an industry group created to develop and establish practical guidelines and standards for electronic discovery, has announced the project leadership teams for its 2009-10 session. The teams, who are leading eight EDRM projects, including the new Jobs and the Information Management Reference Model projects, comprise
e-discovery veterans from throughout the industry, including:
 
EDRM Evergreen
•    Julie Brown – Vorys Sater Seymour & Pease LLP
•    Babs Deacon – Integreon Managed Solutions Inc
 
EDRM XML
•    David Baskin – Recommind
•    Kurt Leafstrand – Clearwell Systems Inc
•    Will Matos – TCDI, Technology Concepts & Design Inc
•    Fritz Mueller – i365, a Seagate Company
 
EDRM Metrics
•    Greg Buckles – Reason-eD LLC
•    Jack Halprin – Autonomy Corp
 
EDRM Model Code of Conduct
•    Kevin Esposito – MetaJure Inc
•    Eric Mandel – Zelle Hoffman Voelbel & Mason LLP
 
EDRM Search
•    Venkat Rangan – Clearwell Systems Inc
•    Jason Robman – Recommind
•    Karen Williams – CT Summation Inc
 
EDRM Data Set
•    Vipul Rajpara – Legal Discovery LLC
•    John Wang
 
EDRM Jobs
•    Kathy Murray – Fios, Inc.
•    Jeff Scarpetti – Kennett Group LLC
 
EDRM Information Management Reference Model
•    Reed Irvin – CA Inc
•    Sandra Song – H5
 
“With over 500 individuals and over 150 organizations who have actively participated in the EDRM effort, the support and advancement of the EDRM framework has become central to the e-discovery industry,” said George Socha, principal of Socha Consulting and co-leader of EDRM with Tom Gelbmann. “We are extremely pleased with the caliber of industry professionals that have signed on to work with us this coming year and are looking forward to continued advancements on each of the projects.”
 
• About EDRM – Launched in May 2005, the EDRM Project was created to address the lack of standards and guidelines in the electronic discovery market – a problem identified in the 2003 and 2004 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery surveys as a major concern for vendors and consumers alike. The completed reference model provides a common, flexible and extensible framework for the development, selection, evaluation and use of electronic discovery products and services. Expanding on the base defined with the Reference Model, the EDRM projects were expanded in May 2006 to include the EDRM Metrics and the EDRM XML projects and in 2009 to add EDRM Jobs and EDRM Information Reference Model. Information about EDRM is available at www.edrm.net

Autonomy today announced that its document management solution – iManage WorkSite – is now integrated with Autonomy’s workflow solution, enabling customers to leverage a single unified approach for document and process management. Built on Autonomy’s meaning-based technology, the new iManage Workflow Manager significantly enhances WorkSite’s document management by providing customers with the ability to automate and streamline their document-centric business processes, such as document review and approval, correspondence tracking, accounting engagement workflow, contract management, new client intake or conflicts check. By allowing customers to exercise tighter control over their key business process, the new Autonomy module delivers improved compliance and governance, while driving greater time and cost savings.
 
“As a long-standing WorkSite customer, I am excited to see that Autonomy is providing an integrated workflow module,” said Pat Morris, Director of Project Implementations at Torys LLP, a leading Canadian law firm. “Automating key processes, such as new client intake and conflicts check, is critical from a risk and efficiency point of view and requires significant interaction with our core document management system. This integration will enable us to address these and other process automation challenges via a single platform in which we already have a significant investment.”
 
The Autonomy iManage Workflow Manager is an intelligent process automation module with rich capabilities for modeling and simulating business processes via visual tools, rules-based routing, real-time activity monitoring, secure connectivity into other business systems, electronic forms and digital signatures. In addition, by understanding the meaning of the information in the repository, iManage Workflow Manager can intelligently route documents or raise alerts. The module provides out-of-the-box integration with all WorkSite clients, including FileSite, DeskSite, web, as well as mobile devices.
 
Autonomy iManage Workflow Manager enables legal, accounting, and government customers to address many of their critical business processes. For example – Processes for Law Firms:

• New Matter Intake: The new matter intake process is one of the most critical processes for a law firm. The firm needs to ensure that new matters are free of ethical and business related conflicts of interest, and the matters must be initiated in multiple enterprise systems and approved by the appropriate individuals. With Autonomy iManage Workflow Manager, this process can be reduced from weeks to hours.
 
• Approvals of High Risk Documents: Frequently, law firms create documents that represent significant potential liability to the firm, such as opinion letters that are created as part of corporate M&A, tax and other types of transactions. The iManage Workflow Manager automates the processes for the creation, review, and approval of these documents, creating better management visibility and reducing risk to the firm.
 
The iManage Workflow Manager is available as an optional add-on product now. For details visit www.autonomy.com/iManage
 

The latest (June 2009/issue #211) edition of the Legal Technology Insider newsletter is out now. Top stories include a look at the growing resurgence of interest in speech recognition technology – although it does look as if Nuance may have to bite the bullet and reconsider their server pricing model if they are ever to gain a critical mass – and stave off the inevitable competition by Microsoft. And watch out for the new look print edition of the Insider from next month – out July 23.

Charles Christian says... Yes, I know it was only last month I said 'sod Twitter, it is completely pointless' but now I'm back – at the request of some of my digital nomad friends who say that actually it is a useful way to keep in touch if you live a peripatetic 24/7 lifestyle – although admittedly this is using the technology as more of a group SMS texting facility. I can be found at @ChristianUncut – and this time I'm going to try to concentrate on quality rather than quantity.

International legal practice Norton Rose Group has just  announced that Deacons Australia* will join Norton Rose Group. The decision follows the completion of successful votes by the respective partnerships on 22 June 2009. The new international legal practice will be called Norton Rose Group and will take effect from 1 January 2010.

The new Norton Rose Group will have a turnover of more than GBP420m (AUD864m) and in excess of 1800 fee earners in 29 offices worldwide. In the Asia Pacific region, it will bring together more than 700 fee earners operating from 12 offices in Bangkok, Beijing, Brisbane, Canberra, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Melbourne, Perth, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo.

From 1 January 2010, Norton Rose Group will be led by Group Chief Executive Peter Martyr, the current Norton Rose LLP Chief Executive, and Deputy Group Chief Executive Don Boyd, the current Deacons Australia Chief Executive Partner. Norton Rose LLP Chairman, Stephen Parish, will be the Chairman of Norton Rose Group.

Norton Rose Group will be a significant global player in legal services bringing together the heritage, strength, scale, and capabilities of two highly successful firms. The Group will have a common global ambition, quality of service to clients, values, systems and procedures.

Peter Martyr, Chief Executive Officer, Norton Rose LLP commented: “We share the same global ambitions to develop our business and improve the depth and breadth of service to our clients. This move will enhance our international reach and in particular create one of the best resourced legal practices in the Asia Pacific region. The economic influence in the world is moving eastwards and in order to develop our business we needed a significant expansion in our resources in Asia Pacific. The increased capability of the group throughout Asia Pacific will lay the foundations for further regional development and expansion.”

Don Boyd, Chief Executive Partner, Deacons Australia commented: “As soon as the initial discussions were underway it became clear that there was a common global ambition, particularly in the predicted growth markets of the future, namely Asia Pacific. We have shared aspirations regarding strategic growth, both in practice area terms and geographic expansion. The business case is compelling and the synergy of working together is convincing.”

* Deacons Australia will join Norton Rose Group after its arrangements with Deacons Hong Kong come to an end later in the year.

Had an interesting report in from a UK vendor marketing honcho saying he had received three approaches in as many days from organisations trying to resurrect a version of the Legal Technology Awards and/or the LOTIES. Apart from the obvious jumping on the bandwagon to take advantage of a perceived hole in the market, what is not always made clear is that if run properly (note the word properly) – awards are potentially huge money-spinners for their organisers. In fact it is an industry in itself.

All of which is great for the organisers – but possibly not so good for the attendees who frequently get hit with tripple dipping... They have to pay to enter for the awards. They have to pay to attend the awards. And they will frequently get hit with sponsoring something – something really useful and meaningful like balloons or an ice sculpture – at the awards. So great fun when times are good (if your idea of fun is sitting in a monkey suit for 4 hours surrounded BOFs*) but not so good in a recession.

* Personal note: I once got trapped by a woman who insisted in showing me her photos of the Auschwitz concentration camp she'd taken on her mobile phone. Needless to say that immediately got me in the party mood.

Winscribe is hosting a live webinar in just under two weeks' time on the topic of the efficiency benefits to be gained from building digital dictation and workflows into the document creation process. The webinar, which will feature Insider/Orange Rag editor Charles Christian as guest speaker and facilitator, will also include a preview of Winscribe’s new version 4 DDS software. The webinar takes place 12:30-1:30pm (UK time) on Monday 6 July. To register email events@winscribe.com or visit
https://winscribe.webex.com/winscribe/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=710622250

Our thanks to reader who mailed in this posting from eBay – purporting to show that the Criminal Defence system for England & Wales is up for sale to the highest bidder. Sadly eBay decided it was a hoax and removed the posting however we saved a PDF of the auction details.

Although we first reported its demise back on 7th April this year, Peter Garner of the English Law Society has now confirmed that the 2009 edition of the Software Solutions Guide will be the last for the forseeable future. In an email sent out at noon today he writes...

Dear recipient

As you are all well aware the planning for the Software Solutions Guide is normally in full swing by this point in the year.

I know there have been rumours abound about the potential of not running the Guide for 2010 but this is the first formal word on the situation.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that there will not be a Software Solutions Guide for 2010.  The economic slow down along side the considerable reduction in the number of vendors eligible to enter the Guide means that the Guide is no longer viable in its current guise.

I hope that it will be possible to re-work the Guide as a whole, broaden its remit and freshen its approach in order to deliver an ongoing service to the legal profession.*  However this is not a possibility for 2009/10 as I'm yet to identify what and how.

I realise that you have all given a lot of time and energy to the Guide over the years - in many cases, many years - and I personally thank you from the bottom of my heart for your contributions.

Thank you again for your support.

Best regards


* In fact the Law Society has been talking about revamping the guide since about 2001.

OK, not strictly legal but you have to laugh at former technology minister and now culture secretary Ben Bradshaw having to spend £20 to call out an engineer to fit a scart cable into his Freeview box the right way round. Is it actually possible to plug a scart in the wrong way around?

IRIS Group chief executive Martin Leuw has issued a statement to legal market users, stressing that the division is successful, generating total revenues of £22.2 million in the year to 30th April 2009, with pre-tax profits of £3 million. He adds that during this period, the legal division attracted 282 new customers for is software, services and forms products and is now investing ‘in excess of 16% of revenues’ in R&D. NB IRIS have now clarified this statement to say that of these 282 new customers, 148 were for Laserforms and the remaining 134 were for case and practice management systems.

On the product front, Leuw admits that 12 months ago there were stability problems with the IRIS Law Business product (ILB – based on the Mountain system) but says these have been resolved and additional functionality is being added to ILB ‘to bridge the gap’ with the IRIS Law Enterprise product (ILE – based on the Videss system). The next developments with ILE – the post 1.9 roadmap – will the disclosed at the ILUA user conference in October.

• Click on the attached files link for a PDF of the full statement.

• In other IRIS Legal news, the company has also acquired the support contracts of AM Systems, who were the reseller for AlphaLaw software in Northern Ireland.

This story has already been covered this morning by Richard Susskind in The Times however here is the text of the formal announcement...

Rio Tinto today announced that it has entered into a legal services outsourcing agreement with CPA Global that is projected to save Rio Tinto up to 20% annually in legal costs.

Under the agreement, CPA Global are providing a team of lawyers in India to support Rio Tinto’s inhouse legal function on a global basis. Initially, the work undertaken by CPA Global includes contract review and drafting, legal research, and document review. However, it is anticipated that the scope of work will expand to cover other routine legal services work traditionally handled inhouse by Rio Tinto or shared amongst the company’s panel of law firms.

Rio Tinto’s managing attorney, Leah Cooper, said: “We took a long hard look at our internal costs and the amount we were spending with outside counsel and saw an opportunity to make significant changes to the way we deliver legal services to the group. We have developed a ground-breaking legal model with CPA Global that will generate tremendous savings and serve the business without compromising quality.

“By shifting work to CPA Global our internal team will be freed up to get involved in some of the more complex and challenging legal matters, which in the past might have been sent to outside counsel at significant cost. As more of our standard legal work is filtered though to CPA Global, we will have more time to lift our heads up from the day-to-day reactive delivery of legal services and focus on being more proactive. We will have more time to spend with the business, develop stronger relationships and understand what we can do to prevent legal issues developing in the first place with a stronger focus on prevention rather than cure.”
www.cpaglobal.com

Aderant has just announced that UK top 30 law firm Hill Dickinson LLP, has selected Aderant Expert to replace its legacy practice management system. (According to Legal Technology Insider records, the firm previously ran LexisNexis Axxia software.) The firm will implement Aderant Expert across its four UK locations as well as its international offices in Greece and Singapore. Hill Dickinson employs over 150 partners and more than 1100 staff throughout its offices in Liverpool, Manchester, London, Chester, Piraeus, and Singapore.

“We needed a truly global, next-generation business management system that could help us take our firm to the next level,” said Keith Feeny, Director of IT & Operations for Hill Dickinson.  “After examining many of the options on the market, we believe that Aderant Expert is the right solution.  We are confident that Aderant will give us the right combination of advanced technology, comprehensive functionality, outstanding service, and world-class support that we will need over the coming decade.”