Aderant announced that Carroll & O’Dea Lawyers, with offices
in Canberra, Sydney, Parramatta and Wollongong, has selected
Aderant Expert. The firm will implement the comprehensive practice management
suite of integrated applications in all five of its Australian offices.Carroll
& O'Dea specialised in employment, industrial, commercial, litigation, compensation
and property law, and employs more than 120 people across its network of
offices.
“We undertook our own research and Aderant was
the standout leader with their reputation for product innovation, successful
implementations, and industry leading support,” said George Anderson, General
Manager of Carroll & O’Dea. “We couldn’t be more confident that we have
made the right decision for the firm."
Comment: In light of the battle for market supremacy currently taking place between Elite and Aderant in the APAC market (which both vendors claim they are winning, as well as trouncing the competition) Aderant say 70% – or 21 – of the top 30 firms
across Australia and New Zealand now run their software. Aderant also claims to represent half of Australia's
ten fastest growing firms and several major firms in Singapore, as recently
published by ALB. Carroll & O’Dea Lawyers is the seventh firm to select
Aderant Expert Release 7.5 in Australasia since December 2009.
For those of you who didn't make the Janders Dean Law Firm KM Conference in Sydney on Thursday (12 August) here is a round-up of the latest APAC news...
• Minter Ellison has deployed the InterAction for Smartphone application from Calvis. The solution, developed by Calvis, enables fee earners and mobile workers to conveniently access client, prospect and mandate intelligence stored within LexisNexis InterAction via their BlackBerry and iPhone smartphones while out of the office. Walkers, one of the largest offshore law firms with offices in the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dubai, Hong Kong, Jersey, London and Singapore, has also implemented the Calvis system.
• Australian law firm Freehills has selected Recommind's MindServer Search to deliver next generation information access across the firm. Based on Recommind's CORE (Context Optimised Relevancy Engine) platform, the MindServer Search deployment will form the backbone of Freehill's knowledge infrastructure. Implementation of the solution across its network of 2000 lawyers and support staff, will provide Freehills with capabilities to instantly crawl, index and access information from its Autonomy Worksite document management libraries, Microsoft SharePoint, Aderant Expert PMS and additional sources, as well as Matters & Expertise. Freehills will deploy MindServer Search as the primary search technology making firm information and work product exponentially more usable and actionable across the organisation.
"Our first priority will be to utilise the benefits of MindServer Search across our intranet and knowledge repositories, thereby maximizing the significant investment that we have made to date in these areas," said Janet Young, COO/CFO at Freehills. "We believe the ability to find the right information just when you need it is essential for delivering a high quality and timely service to our clients."
Freehills will also implement Recommind's QwikFind search bar which provides instant access to MindServer Search from within Microsoft Office applications (Word, Outlook, Excel) or from the Windows desktop toolbar, negating the need to launch a separate window or application in order to perform a firm-wide search.
• According to a study in ALB Magazine, Aderant remains the legal industry’s top technology vendor in the region, boasting 70%, or 21 of the top 30 firms across Australia and New Zealand. Aderant also represents half of Australia’s ten fastest growing firms and two major firms in Singapore as recently published by ALB. Since December 2009, seven firms across Australasia have selected Aderant Expert. Allens Arthur Robinson recently completed a major migration from Keystone to Aderant Expert. The project was completed on time and under budget in one year and was implemented across the firm’s global network of offices. Aderant has successfully implemented Expert 7.5 in several additional high profile APAC firms, including Slater & Gordon and Rajah & Tann in Singapore.
Following on from last week's story about the Blake Dawson/Elite 3E win, Elite have been in touch to clarify the position in the Asia-Pacific market – this is what they say...
On the APAC front, we are clearly taking market share as you will see from the list below. Not only are we winning the deals from other systems, we are also taking Aderant clients. Below are the Elite 3E APAC clients. It’s an impressive showing. As listed: Hesketh Henry – NZ, live, ex Aderant Crown Law NZ – NZ, live, ex Aderant Buddle Findlay – NZ, going live September, ex Aderant Crown Law QLD – NZ, going live November, ex Aderant M+K – AUS, going live October, ex Aderant A&G (Allen & Gledhill) – Singapore, just starting Enterprise to 3E project LHAG – Malaysia, live Thynne Macartney – AUS, June 2010 deal Blake Dawson – AUS, July 2011 deal, ex Aderant Aderant have had a few wins. DAS (Dibbs Abbot Stillman) is a firm that gave a preliminary look at 3E and never engaged with us beyond that. Their other recent wins have been small firms: Holman Webb, just over 40 lawyers and Wotton Kearney, just over 30 lawyers. Neither of these firms looked at 3E. In the end, there is some back and forth between the vendors but the results speak for themselves.
Legal software developer FWBS is launching an office in Australia. FWBS sales & marketing director Mark Craddock said "Launching an office in Australia strengthens FWBS as an international supplier. Our continued alliance with Aderant in the APAC region will also be better supported by having our own resources on the ground.
"FWBS is pleased to be building on significant MatterCentre wins that Aderant have spearheaded in the territory, including Victoria Legal Aid (VLA) and Slater & Gordon. FWBS are providing productivity gains to fee earners firm wide through MatterCentre, and this expansion into Australia will allow FWBS greater scope to support more law firms and fee earners in more territories."
Craddock added "With Aderant continuing to increase their PMS client base in the region, the fully developed integration between MatterCenter and Aderant Expert, provides a market leading end-to-end matter and practice management solution."
The territory opportunity will be managed by FWBS new recruit Marin Sardelic as Australasia sales manager. Sardelic has extensive experience of the Australian legal IT scene having worked with companies such LexisNexis and Leap.
Australian commercial law firm Holman Webb has selected Aderant Expert as its new financial management system. Holman Webb has multiple offices and clients include major insurers, national and multi-national corporations, SMEs, NFPs, NGOs and State Government departments operating in a range of industries around Australia.
The firm will implement the Aderant Expert business and financial management system including Expert File Opening and Expert ClearView for role-based, graphical dashboards and advanced profitability analysis and reporting. The real-time access to key performance metrics will empower decision makers and enable the firm to better meet its strategic objectives.
“Our decision to partner with Aderant was based on their reputation for successful, on time and on budget implementations and their focus on product innovation,” said Holman Webb CEO Greg Malakou. “The increased information visibility that we’ll gain using Expert ClearView will give us a strategic advantage and enable us to make more informed business decisions as we grow the firm.”
Thynne & Macartney, a 70 fee earner firm based in Brisbane, has selected the Elite 3E financial and practice management platform to efficiently meet critical business imperatives.
“Most of the legal solutions on the market today are based on legacy client server applications built on out-dated 1990’s technology, which provided no business case to switch from what we had been working with,” said Mike Hindle, general manager of Thynne Macartney. “After seeing several 3E presentations, it was clear that 3E was a true next generation platform, highly customisable and included sophisticated reporting and metrics capabilities that could easily meet our needs. We rely heavily on comprehensive business intelligence and analytics to provide insight into business performance, as well as track and report on important client information. 3E is able to essentially automate this entire process for us creating enormous efficiencies and a real-time view into the health of the firm.” .
Thynne & Macartney is a member of nationwide legal network the Kennedy Strang Legal Group. The firm joins the Melbourne and Sydney Kennedy Strang offices as an Elite customer.
Janders Dean has now finalised details of its upcoming Law Firm Management Conference taking place in Sydney on 12th August – see attached file for full programme
•New win for Aderant Australia-based insurance law firm Wotton + Kearney has chosen Aderant Expert as its new practice management system. The firm will implement the Aderant Expert practice and financial management system including Expert File Opening workflow and the new ClearView Performance module for advanced profitability analysis and reporting. "After considering all options, Aderant was a stand-out due to their
reputation in the market for high quality products, rapid
implementations, and excellent customer support," said David Kearney,
managing partner of Wotton + Kearney.
ClearView Performance shows partners, practice group leaders, CFOs, and other senior staff exactly how they are performing, helping them see where they are operating according to plan and where they need improvement. It combines business intelligence capabilities with a full-featured business planning and profitability analysis tool. ClearView Performance presents critical data and metrics in a role-based graphical format, increasing information visibility and improving decision making.
• Copitrak breaks into China Cost recovery market leader Copitrak Systems has expanded its international operations with the opening of a new office in Shanghai. The move comes in response to 18 months of increasing demand across China with growth conservatively estimated at 40% for the 2010-11 financial year. Shanghai will focus solely on the mainland, while the long-standing Hong Kong office will cover the rest of Asia and the Pacific Rim.
For managing director Nicholas Child, the development was a logical one. "Having been in Hong Kong for the past nine years, we’ve been able to take advantage of the opening up of the Chinese market but we’ve reached a tipping point now that says we have to service it with a dedicated team and country presence. There is simply huge potential to be tapped and with our fully Unicode compliant system, we’re seeing interest not just from international law firms coming into the region but more importantly, from the Chinese law firms themselves. But to succeed there we know we have to respect the country and the culture; that means a local office, with local people, local support, a native on the ground resource that fully understands the commercial environment and client mindset."
• WindowLogic Announce Release of iManage Integration for CRM4Legal WindowLogic has announced the release of Logic4Outlook, an Outlook accelerator that provides seamless integration between iManage and Microsoft CRM4Legal. "Logic4Outlook is a perfect companion to CRM4Legal that will allow any or all of the information maintained within CRM4Legal to be displayed in the lawyers iManage workspace. Just click to record an email or document right into CRM4Legal from iManage or from CRM4Legal into iManage, all from within Outlook," said WindowLogic director Greg Brown.
"This product development delivers great benefits to law firm users," said David Blumentals CRM4Legal consultant & director, Asia Pacific. "CRM4Legal user adoption is greatly enhanced as CRM data is viewed each time iManage is accessed. Integration reduces the time it takes to navigate to your CRM4Legal data – just click the link to open your CRM records."
With the new Logic4Outlook product, users are able to view all CRM4Legal’s Contact, Organisation, Opportunity, Pitch, Matter and other information from iManage FileSite, and contact information for each recipient on an email. There is no need to go into CRM4Legal – all information required is displayed automatically unobtrusively. Configurable tabs and fields allow administrators to display any other information maintained within CRM4Legal, as required, even if the user does not have CRM4Legal installed locally.
• Paul Wyatt now with WindowLogic We first encountered Paul Wyatt at Linetime, then he moved to Solicitec (both legal IT vendors in the UK) and last time we heard of him, he was with Visualfiles Australia. He’s now taken over as Eastern seaboard sales manager for WindowLogic in Sydney, a company which he describes as "the Australian equivalent of Phoenix meets DocAuto meets Tikit."
He adds "The legal 'stream' at WindowLogic was established earlier this year and the business has attracted some key talent with considerable knowledge in this sector. Three of Alphawest’s senior Worksite consultants (with a combined 14 years experience in delivering Worksite projects globally) joined WindowLogic earlier this year and in the past 3 months they have developed a range of value add plug ins for Worksite.Logic4Outlook is getting some serious interest and we have the application in beta test at one of Australia’s Top 10 law firms as we speak. We are also receiving a lot of requests for assistance in Worksite upgrade projects and have just taken over Worksite support and maintenance for 220 users at Sydney based Spruson & Ferguson, one of the leading intellectual property firms in Australia." www.windowlogic.com.au
• Janders Dean turns 75 Justin North of Janders Dean has been in touch to say "this year Janders Dean turns 75! Well, not really...that just happens to be the combined ages of Bevan and Justin this year as they both hit milestone birthdays. (What 37.5 ...Ed). This year actually marks our third birthday here at Janders Dean Our fabulous new clients this year have included Vodafone, Willmott Dixon and BAE Systems, while we've also continued to work with a number of our existing loyal customers including Freehills, Sparke Helmore, King and Wood, Hall & Wilcox and Barlow Lyde & Gilbert."
Janders Dean has also published a preliminary registration form (see attached PDF) for their upcoming Law Firm Knowledge Management Conference (Sydney, 12th August 2010). Places are strictly limited and capped for this event, and delegate passes are provided on a first in basis. Please send all completed registration forms back as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. The full agenda with thought leaders and speakers representing international organisations will be announced over the next few days.
• Jason Hulme now with IQPC Sydney Jason Hulme has been in touch to say "Thought you might like to know that I have left CPA Global to join the IQPC conferences group in Sydney. Although my role now sits over a number of conferences there will be a significant amount of work in law firm management inc outsourcing, IT, Leadership, KM etc. Gone are the days of the Legal IT Forum and By Legal For Legal but I am sure we can re kindle the quality events down under and create some high level controversy and debate here in Australia. Please give my best to the motley crew and speak soon." Jason.Hulme@iqpc.com.au
• Nuix powers KPMG Forensic to deliver Australia’s fastest e-discovery service KPMG has signed a deal with Nuix for high-end, powerful electronic discovery software licenses to enable them to provide Australia’s fastest, most thorough and most scalable eDiscovery service to its clients. KPMG Forensic’s team purchased the improved software to improve crucial data analysis and processing and selected Nuix for inclusion in its e-discovery service offering.
Eddie Sheehy, Nuix Chief Executive Officer, said KPMG required very fast, powerful processing and integrated into their service offering by adding Nuix to its official workflow. “In a world where many corporations face vast amounts of data, increasing regulatory requirements and litigation that demands immediate and thorough investigations of terabytes of digital information, speed is of the essence. Our software has been able to provide great results for KPMG’s eDiscovery product.” Sheehy commented. KPMG’s decision hinged on the results of speed trials conducted by KPMG and on Nuix’s ability to integrate with other technologies within the KPMG workflow. Rod McKemmish, KPMG Forensic’s Director said that during initial speed trials, KPMG Australia reported indexing a 59GB Exchange Database (EDB) file – including 1.8 million emails and attachments – in 1 hour and 24 minutes. “Performance improvements beyond this appear to be possible when we scale beyond a single hardware device and apply the power of our advanced infrastructure. When one combines the power of high end processing with the forensic precision and in-depth analysis capabilities of Nuix, the results are impressive,” said McKemmish. KPMG Australia has employed the Nuix electronic discovery desktop platform for the past three years. This latest deal marks a significant upgrade to KPMG’s Enterprise Discovery platform. This is the same platform recently purchased by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to handle their corporate discoveries and investigations.
• Trinogy Systems has become a reseller of the InterAction for Smartphone application from Calvis in South East Asia. InterAction for Smartphone is already widely used in America, Europe and the Middle East where firms are using the Calvis developed solution to enable their fee earners and mobile workers to conveniently access client, prospect and mandate intelligence stored within LexisNexis InterAction CRM via their smartphones, including BlackBerry and iPhone, while out of the office.
• Sinch is hosting its Innovation+IT for In-house Lawyers
Conference 2010 in Sydney on Friday 30 July (9:00am to 6:30pm) in conjunction with the Australian Corporate Lawyers Association (ACLA). Speakers include Derek Giles, Chrissy Burns, Adrian Dayton and Rees Morrison. For details click here www.sinch.com.au/seminars/siiilc10/
Here's the ad, we know who they are – and their claims of market leadership (in their market) are not hype. The GMail address is to delay being plagued by recruitment agencies for as long as possible...
National Sales Manager (ANZ Legal) A market leading legal technology vendor with a majority of the Top-25 Australian law firms as clients is seeking a dedicated National Sales Manager for the Australian & New Zealand legal sector. Suiting a Sales Manager who has consistently hit target in the legal or professional services sectors (Australian or UK) over the past three years and who is now looking to take the next step in their career, the role offers the chance to become a key part of the growth of the Asia-Pacific business and a member of the management team for the region going forward.
You will be expected to provide commercial leadership and expertise while rolling up your sleeves in order to grow revenue and win business. The ability to sell consultatively by listening to customer needs is key, regardless of whether they are a Top-25 prospect or 20-user firm. Offering a high degree of autonomy but as a result requiring a high level of energy, persistence and discipline the rewards will be both financial and career enhancing. Of graduate calibre, you will need at least 5 years experience selling software, ideally within the legal or professional services sectors. Based out of the Sydney office, a highly competitive compensation package (with significant earning capacity for those who exceed sales quota) is available for the right candidate.
