Jeremy Hill, best known for his involvement with the In Brief/Loties awards and the Legal Technology Journal/Legal Technology Awards, is planning a comeback with a new publishing and virtual exhibition project.
Scheduled to launch in April, the first part will be a weekly legal IT email news round-up called the Legal Technology Times – this picks up from his old LTJ/LTA era Legal Technology Update zine and looks like giving the "Tweedles" – Legal IT News and LSN on IT – a run for their money. The Times is however only a part of the story as this will develop over the coming year into a virtual exhibition/online product directory project called the Legal Technology Gateway. Hill says he appreciates the Gateway faces an uphill battle as recent attempts by other organisation to run virtual exhibitions – including Virtual LegalTech in the US and the Virtual Legal IT Show in the UK – have met with a lukewarm reception.
Hill – who will continue to work in his business development role at LexisNexis and will be working on these projects in his spare time – did not say whether he might also try to revive his legal technology awards.
www.legaltechnologytimes.com
|
||||
      Recent Comments
Who's there?
Search
Month Archive
  |
Friday, March 19
Jeremy Hill hoping for 3rd time lucky with comeback
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 19 Mar 2010 10:54 GMT
Thursday, March 18
Latest Asia-Pacific News Round-up
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 18 Mar 2010 21:00 GMT
• Case management system win
Australian national law firm Thomson Playford Cutlers (TPC) has successfully piloted the latest version of the Caseflow Enterprise Product 8.6 for Will Creation in their Melbourne Office. The firm, which has offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, has selected Caseflow’s Enterprise product for a 360 user, firmwide roll out in 2010. The next phase of the rollout – into the Mortgage Recoveries area – has already begun user acceptance testing. Tim Miller, TPC’s technology director said "The Workers Compensation department in our Melbourne office had been successfully using the Caseflow Desktop Client for several years and it made sense to explore the possible application of other parts of the product line throughout the firm. Caseflow Enterprise had the added advantage of its ability to integrate with our core systems (Aderant Expert, Outlook and Autonomy iManage). The Enterprise product provides us with the ability to automate documents directly from iManage and then seamlessly profiles and saves the resultant document back into the DMS. These factors together with the knowledge that Caseflow’s Enterprise product presented a commercially viable Clause Library were all key factors when making the ultimate decision to go with Caseflow." www.caseflow.com.au • New search technology partnership UK-based Solcara today announced a new business partnership with InfoXpert Pty Ltd of Australia. The partnership enables InfoXpert to licence and sell Solcara's market leading search technologies within the Australian and New Zealand (and also African) markets. Solcara's search technology – SolSearch – will be integrated with InfoXpert's own products and solutions to deliver an effective, reliable and scalable solution to the problems of enterprise search. Rob Martin, managing director at Solcara, said “Our two development teams are currently integrating Solcara SolSearch with InfoXpert’s eDRMS, ECM and Knowledge Management products and we look forward to offering users of these products an intuitive and comprehensive search solution. InfoXpert are well established in the Australian and New Zealand markets and with a distributor already established in South Africa we see significant opportunity for both businesses and look forward to a long term and successful partnership.” Trevor Dykstra, managing director, InfoXpert, added “Solcara’s search technology will enable InfoXpert customers to expand their content discovery with the ability to use a one-stop-shop to search across their existing information systems and online resources combined with the content located in their InfoXpert/KnowledgeXpert solution. The web based .NET technology utilised by Solcara complements the web based .NET technology used in our products. We are very impressed with the Solcara search technology and the benefits that result from this partnership to our customers!” www.solcara.com + www.infoexpert.com.au • TechShare visitors go away happy Finally, delegates attending last week's TechShare event in Sydney appear to have gone away happy. Swerdlove created TechShare event after identifying a gap in the market for a highly collaborative technical workshop for law industry staff. “Having been to many law technology conferences in the last few years it became clear that the focus was on showcasing new technology rather than discussing current experiences of technology” said Swerdlove director Derek Giles. Feedback from TechShare’s intensive day of workshops was positive, with all of the delegates gaining an insight from their peers and also from Keynote speakers Tom Jones (Iridium Technology), Luke Kean (Clayton Utz) and Jon Short (Moray & Agnew). www.swerdlove.com
Eclipse launching latest software in May
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 18 Mar 2010 10:34 GMT
Eclipse Legal Systems has announced the date for its next national client event – 13th of May – when the company will unveil the latest version of its Proclaim Case & Practice Management system, v3.2, for an anticipated 250 delegates at the Leeds Royal Armouries.
The Proclaim v3.2 Showcase event will provide Eclipse clients with an opportunity to see v3.2's raft of new features and enhancements in action. Given Eclipse's broad range of clients, the networking and business development opportunities will also prove to be a strong draw for delegates. Among the developments on show will be: ▪ Outlook integration, incorporating improved integrated fee earner calendars and a new email interface (including HTML functionality) ▪ Fee earner tools including a faster approach to 'commonly used' case actions ▪ Global document searching, and an all-new new precedent library feature ▪ A new Matter Management interface to assist practices with 'non standard' work areas ▪ New and improved graphical reporting and MI features ▪ New billing routines and enhanced Practice Management capabilities Eclispse say just four hours after distributing email invitations, 150 delegate places had already been reserved and the event now looks set to be Eclipse's best attended ever.
More jobs to go at Land Registry
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 18 Mar 2010 09:36 GMT
The HM Land Registry has announced another 800 jobs are to go – this is in addition to the 1500 job losses announced 6 months ago. Another 1800 jobs have gone since 2008 through retirements and voluntary redundancies so that within 5 years the HMLR empire will be reduced to just 4200 staff. The organisation is also is selling its central London office and closing 3 of its 5 regional offices. There remain rumours that the organisation will be privatised.
Wednesday, March 17
Henmans to swap out Axxia and Visualfiles for SOS
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 17 Mar 2010 12:54 GMT
Following an extensive review of its IT systems, Oxford-based Henmans LLP has opted for a unified technology platform and has selected SOS Connect from Solicitors Own Software to replace its legacy LexisNexis Axxia Arista practice management and LexisNexis Visualfiles Solcase case management systems. The new software will be rolled out to 130+ users.
Henmans say the IT selection process began in earnest at the Legal IT Show 2009 with the realisation that change would be necessary whether or not the firm chose to follow the LexisNexis product roadmap, following the acquisition of the Visualfiles and Axxia businesses. The starting point was to see which integrated systems were in use with other law firms. This led to a short list for more detailed evaluation of various systems including SOS. There were a number of factors which led to the choice of SOS Connect. Henmans LLP head of information management & technology Colin Paice said: “SOS Connect is based on modern, flexible technology giving us an expandable platform to compete with new business models including virtual practices, extranets, mobile and remote working. We liked the tight integration of accounts, case management and marketing which enables a golden copy of reference data and a completely unified system to be accessible by the whole team. SOS also has the advantage of close integration with Solcase and previous experience of converting data from Axxia systems which augurs well for a smooth changeover.” Initially Henmans LLP will roll-out SOS practice management and accounts enabling standardised business processes such as for file opening, together with performance and statistical data to be adopted by everyone. “We didn’t want a big bang implementation and with SOS we can introduce case management to areas not catered for currently, such as family and corporate before phasing in the other departments from Solcase,” added Paice. Monday, March 15
More events news
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 15 Mar 2010 18:35 GMT
Here are some more legal IT-related events taking place in the UK...
DocAuto Breakfast Briefing 22.03.10, London In conjunction with Tikit, David Kiefer, President of DocAuto will be in London on Monday, 22 March giving a presentation on how DocAuto solutions can add great value to your WorkSite environment. This presentation will allow you to get an update on some of the cutting-edge techniques and concepts available to implement, maintain and optimise your matter-centric architecture in WorkSite. See specific tools and examples for matter publishing and hybridisation, e-mail management in a matter-centric environment, importing legacy or unmanaged content directly into Workspaces, and reacting to events as they occur in WorkSite. We will also be showing how the native WorkSite architecture can be used to combine and display data from multiple data sources, for client/matter movements, staff transfers and terminations, legal holds, customised views, security and much more. For more information or to register for this event, please contact Tikit at Marketing@Tikit.com (+44 207 400 3737). Generals of the Revolution 27.05.10, London Half-day briefing for general counsel (9:00am to 12:30pm followed by lunch) at the Landmark Hotel featuring Richard Susskind. The event is hosted by DataCert - click on attachment for full programme. www.datacert.com/ResourcesEvents/SeminarSeries.asp  1 Attachments
Battens swap out Axxia & Solcase for Pilgrim
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 15 Mar 2010 14:52 GMT
Battens, which as offices across Somerset and Dorset, is to swap out its legacy LexisNexis Axxia Arista practice management and SolCase case management software in favour of Pilgrim LawSoft, which will provide a single, integrated solution across accounts and time capture, workflow, document management and customer relationship management.
Keith Fullman, Battens’ Director of Finance, said “Battens has a strong pedigree when it comes to the use of technology supporting the business, and LawSoft meets all our needs. We particularly liked the user-friendly operation and the highly configurable case management system. Additionally, as a UK based independent supplier with a clear commitment to future development, Pilgrim is a strong fit with our business and offers the likelihood of a partnership which will enable Battens to grow and develop strongly over many years to come.” Peter Livingstone, Director of Battens’ Commercial Team, added “As a practice, we looked at a number of solutions and had the benefit of both internal and external expertise in assessing the various possibilities open to us. We found – in a decision which was confirmed by all the research we carried out – that Pilgrim represented by far the best fit with our firm and its requirements. We liked their approach, their people, their commitment to continuous development and of course their software” Comment: Readers may recall that during the last decade, a previous management team at Battens tried to develop its own accounts and practice management system based upon Microsoft Dynamics/Great Plains accounts. This was subsequently – but only briefly – offered commercially by the systems house Intervolve under the Exemplar brand name. Following a management change, Battens halted the implementation of the Dynamics product and went back to running Axxia.
Work now started on March Insider
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 15 Mar 2010 12:04 GMT
Work has now started on the March issue of Legal Technology Insider newsletter (UK + EMEA edition). The editorial deadline is 12 noon this coming Friday (19th March) – all advertising space is already fully booked.
Survey reveals still lack of enthusiasm for HIPs
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 15 Mar 2010 10:23 GMT
MDA SearchFlow has just conducted a survey looking at the current state-of-play of the conveyancing and Home Information Pack (HIP) market. The survey is conducted every year across conveyancing practices, large and small, to provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the current economic situation is affecting the conveyancing market, as well as market sentiment regarding HIPs, searches and thoughts about the future.
The majority of respondents – more than 70% – said their business had been affected by the recession, with 35% reporting that their business has been "significantly" affected. Clients are now placing professional fees under greater scrutiny, with 62% of respondents reporting that they have come under more price pressure in the past year. At the same time, firms are also facing a sustained increase in costs (ahead of inflation), with more than a third of respondents reporting that professional indemnity premiums had increased by between one and 10%. The MDA SearchFlow survey also highlighted that some 60% of High Street conveyancers are still not comfortable taking a risk and diversifying into other areas like litigation and probate. This is largely because they remain uncertain about the outcome of the general election, the future of HIPs, and significant structural changes like the Legal Services Act in 2011. HIPs were once again generally regarded negatively, with 81% of respondents reporting that their overall impression of HIPs has been poor. A large majority of those questioned said that HIPs have had a negative effect on the conveyancing process in general, as well as on relationships with agents/panels, on overall profits, and on the volume of instructions that they have received. For all of these reasons, 50% of respondents claimed that their business would benefit if HIPs were scrapped, with only 6% believing their business would be negatively affected as a result. Interestingly, if HIPs were indeed abolished, nearly half of those questioned reported that they would return to their pre-HIP practices. The ongoing duplication of searches was also highlighted by the survey, indicating that scepticism of HIP searches remains an issue. With more than half of respondents replacing personal searches in a HIP with official Local Authority searches, caveat emptor continues to prevail over HIPs in both principle and practice more than two years after their introduction. In a similar vein, most of those surveyed also seemed lukewarm about pre-sale packs which could be offered from the seller's side, with only 44% of respondents stating that it is a "good idea". In addition to these reservations regarding HIPs in their current form, the survey also revealed that virtually none of those questioned were optimistic about the future of the "Exchange-Ready HIP". When asked if exchange-ready HIPs would be suitable for exchange without further diligence for the buyer, 95% responded negatively and said they would continue to scrutinise it and follow standard processes. For a typical caseload, 50% of those surveyed reported that they currently receive property search information electronically, 39% receive a combination of electronic and postal results, and 11% receive it by post only. 64% of respondents would choose electronic as their preferred format for receiving property search information. Friday, March 12
The embargo has been broken
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 12 Mar 2010 14:45 GMT
And here's the sequel to last week's cartoon about embargoes – and yes this does happen – usually the culprits are law firm PRs called Rupert or Fiona trying to get a lame story into The Times or FT...
|
        Recent Articles
RSS Newsfeeds
Main Page RSS
Categories
Login
Twitter Updates Google Ads
|
||