Latest reports from Halsbury Towers, the hallowed UK home of LexisNexis, suggest that the company is about to embark upon yet another reorganisation of the management of its legal software businesses.
The story so far is that... immediately prior to the Axxia acquisition, there was a plan (devised by Kate Holden) to combine the Visualfiles and Interaction businesses into some kind of software + consultancy division. Then along came the Axxia deal and Kate Holden's new global domination plan, with Axxia and Visualfiles providing the core of a global law firms strategy and Interaction back out on its own. Then Holden (Kate) left and Axxia and Visualfiles became the UK arm of the LexisNexis Practice & Productivity Management division, with other geographical regions having their own products in their respective P&PM divisions. Now, there are rumblings of appointing a new software supremo responsible for the Axxia + Visualfiles + Interaction businesses on a UK (or even possibly EMEA-wide) basis.
We hear that Tim Cheadles, currently the general manager of LexisNexis Practice & Productivity, is the front-runner for this poison chalice prime appointment. There again, in two years' time (if they haven't been bought by Bloomberg or Google by then) LexisNexis will probably do a HotDocs and sell the whole software business off to someone else.
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Monday, November 30
LexisNexis UK looking for new legal IT head honcho
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 30 Nov 2009 10:45 GMT
Thursday, November 26
Baker Robbins to lose Baker
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 26 Nov 2009 06:40 GMT
Baker Robbins & Company (BRCO) has just announced that co-founder and chairman David Baker will retire on January 1, 2010. Baker has worked the legal technology sector for over 30 years, founding BRCO in 1984. (In January 2007 the consultancy was acquired by Thomson Reuters.)
Baker is leaving the legal industry to accept a role with the University of Wisconsin in an initiative involving best practice development in small and mid size farm operations management. The effort is funded by the USDA's Risk Management Agency and comes at a critical time in which local, sustainable food sources must be more heavily emphasized across the country in light of growing challenges such as global warming and carbon footprint, water supply, food transportation costs, and food quality. Co-founder Brad Robbins will remain in his position of CEO at BRCO. Tuesday, November 24
Another liberating win for Linetime
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 24 Nov 2009 14:49 GMT
Field Overell, based in Coventry & Leamington Spa, has invested in Linetime's Liberate legal accounting suite and Liberate Signature Edition case management system. The case management system will be used throughout the firm's various departments including civil litigation, employment, family, notary public services, personal injury, probate, property, and wills. It was the expansion of the firm coupled with the recent incorporation of Richard Lemberger & Co that led Field Overell to updating their IT systems.
Tories say HIPs will be scrapped 'in a matter of weeks'
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 24 Nov 2009 09:54 GMT
In an interview with The Times newspaper, Conservative Party shadow housing minister Grant Shapps (nope, never heard of him either) said after coming to power, his party would scrap home information packs (HIPs) "in a matter of weeks". (Apparently they can be suspended almost immediately under emergency powers.) The announcement follows claims by estate agents that HIPs are impeding a housing market recovery as potential sellers regard the £300-£400 cost of a HIP as another disincentive. (Yes, we know, sellers probably also regard the huge fees estate agents charge for sending out inaccurate particulars, fouling up viewing appointments and generally doing bugger-all for their money as a disincentive.)
Monday, November 23
CSI Burgoynes buy SOS
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 23 Nov 2009 13:14 GMT
Burgoynes, a scientific and engineering consultancy that specialises in the forensic investigation of fires, explosions, engineering failures and other incidents, has selected SOS Connect from Solicitors Own Software for
streamlined and integrated case, workflow and customer relationship
management. The firm operates from eight offices in the UK and others in the USA, Singapore and Hong Kong. As probably the largest such organisation in the UK, the firm has investigated many disasters including the explosion and fire at Buncefield in 2005. The organisation provides expert witness services to the legal, insurance and commercial sectors.
The firm, which was founded in 1968, decided to replace the existing disparate systems used for recording case instructions and marketing with an integrated solution to improve efficiency and client service. Initially the view was that a CRM (customer relationship management) system would best meet the requirement. However as Burgoynes partner Peter Jowett said: “On further examination these systems didn’t really hit the mark. Many of our clients are solicitors so we decided to look at the systems that they use. This led us to SOS Connect.” Jowett said there were many parallels in Burgoynes’ working practices with those of law firms including taking and recording case instructions, assigning a fee earner to a case, standard business processes, workflows and the use of template letters. “We chose SOS Connect because we found the software more closely aligned to our business needs than any CRM system, it offered far better value for money as well as the flexibility to create a more tailored solution”. SOS Connect will be rolled out to Burgoynes’ eight UK offices and is expected to be implemented by summer 2010. Burgoynes will then review extending the use of Connect for accounts and other requirements. Friday, November 20
PISCES and OSCRE complete merger
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 20 Nov 2009 09:41 GMT
The e-conveyancing standards groups PISCES and OSCRE Americas have completed their merger – and ahead of schedule. Retaining the name Open Standards Consortium For Real Estate (OSCRE), and their not for profit status, the organisation says it can now 'fully realise the vision of maximising value in the real estate industry through open interoperability among real estate information systems; an effort founded on common business interests and internationally accepted information technology standards'.
Drawing on the past experience of the PISCES and OSCRE Americas, OSCRE will be governed by a nine-person Board, supported by Strategic Advisory Groups led by principle Executive Members to align OSCRE to critical industry issues within and across real estate business domains. Over the next few weeks OSCRE will be making a series of announcements, including introducing a new Board of Directors, announcing re-aligned staff positions, priorities and 'exciting initiatives to support improved exchange of data for our industry'. Thursday, November 19
November Legal Technology Insider (digital edition) out now
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 19 Nov 2009 16:23 GMT
The November digital edition of the Legal Technology Insider newsletter (UK & EMEA edition) is hitting desktops just about now.
One story causing a lot of interest is the report on the Law Society of Scotland's recent 12 -week trial of speech recognition software using Dragon Naturally Speaking. The Society had previously rejected this technology but following the launch of the latest version of Dragon (v10), believed it was sufficiently advanced, along with required PC processing horse power, to revisit it and explore the potential applications. Gordon Brewster, director of central services at the Society, said “We identified five members of staff to participate following a successful live demo at the Society’s offices. The software and set up was installed by Paul Amery, of Database Design & Development. Amery highlighted the techniques and approaches to successful voice recognition noting only those key tools needed at the start as part of the one hour training session to ensure a sound start for those taking part.” The initial trial period has since led to a full pilot involving a further five staff who have all reported it as transforming their document production processes, with one commenting that the costs for her would be recovered in a month. All staff report that accuracy is excellent, with a key feature being the ability to review immediately what has been produced, offering users a streamlined approach that results in significantly shortened document turnaround times. The new system has been thoroughly tested in a range of situations, including using a portable Olympus digital device remotely to record dictation and then push that dictation through Dragon. This had excellent results at around 10 words per second. The system was also tested in various offices located around the Society in central Edinburgh, from shared offices – where the results were not so good – to those exposed to a lot of external traffic noise, while others are much quieter. Both worked very well. Brewster said “We have not used Dragon to replace our nFlow digital dictation solution. It is seen as complementary with staff using direct typing, digital dictation or voice recognition depending on the material to be produced, the timescale, and complexity. I am now persuaded this technology does have an application in a legal environment and a business case can be made for it.” Paul Amery can be contacted at paul.amery@ddd-3.co.uk
Microsoft launches Azure 'cloud' platform
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 19 Nov 2009 10:15 GMT
Microsoft has announced the availability of the Windows Azure platform at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC). In his opening keynote address, Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft, described Windows Azure and SQL Azure as core elements of the company’s cloud services strategy. The company also announced a set of new Windows Azure features, Windows Server capabilities, and marketplace offerings that will make it easier for developers to build profitable businesses from their Microsoft-based solutions.
“Customers want choice and flexibility in how they develop and deploy applications,” Ozzie said. “We’re moving into an era of solutions that are experienced by users across PCs, phones and the Web, and that are delivered from datacenters we refer to as private clouds and public clouds. Built specifically for this era of cloud computing, Windows Azure and SQL Azure will give developers what they need to build great applications and profitable businesses.” In his keynote address, Ozzie described the company’s three screens and a cloud vision, where software experiences are seamlessly delivered across PCs, phones and TVs, all connected by cloud-based services. Underscoring the IT industry’s shift toward a hybrid approach of online services combined with on-premises software, Ozzie described the programming model for a powerful new generation of applications for both businesses and consumers, enabled by new Microsoft development tools and technologies. Customers and partners can build and deploy cloud-based applications and services on the Windows Azure platform for free beginning now until 1st February 2010. Commenting on the announcement Lubor Ptacek, V-P of product marketing at Open Text said “With the exponentially rising amount of content volume and the reality of tight IT budgets, our customers are looking for cost-effective ways to store, archive and retain content. By utilizing our products with Windows Azure, our customers can now afford to run an enterprise-class electronic records management solution without the burden of an upfront capital investment in storage hardware.” Ozzie also unveiled the next evolution of Microsoft Pinpoint, an online marketplace for Microsoft partners to market and sell their applications. The company introduced a new information service, Microsoft Codename “Dallas,” also available through Pinpoint and built completely on the Windows Azure platform, that enables developers and users to access premium commercial and reference datasets and content on any platform. Bob Muglia, president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, detailed the company’s strategy and road map for extending the Windows developer platform to the cloud, which is the next-generation application model, according to Muglia. “Microsoft is converging on a common developer platform for both servers and services,” Muglia said. “Through this convergence, Microsoft will enable developers to continue using familiar .NET Framework and Visual Studio tools and technologies, as well as third-party tools such as Eclipse, to create and monetize applications that run on the server and as services in the cloud.” Muglia described Microsoft’s key investments to enable developers to move applications to the private, hosted and public clouds, enhance them with additional services, and transform them to take full advantage of capabilities unique to cloud computing. As part of these key investment areas, Microsoft is delivering Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1, a set of integrated, high-level application services that enable developers to more easily deploy and manage applications spanning both server and cloud. The AppFabric technology combines hosting and caching technologies (formerly known as Microsoft code-named “Dublin” and Microsoft code-named “Velocity”) with the Windows Azure platform AppFabric Service Bus and AppFabric Access Control (formerly referred to as .NET Services). Together, these technologies deliver a consistent set of application services to enhance both Windows Server and Windows Azure with a common, scalable foundation for running .NET applications. Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1 is available for download today at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/appfabric with final availability in 2010. Additional CTPs of Windows Azure platform AppFabric technologies will be made available in 2010. Muglia also announced the company’s plan to offer Windows Server virtual machine support on Windows Azure, enabling customers to more easily support virtualized infrastructure across the continuum of on-premises and cloud computing, and the release to manufacturing of Windows Identity Foundation, helping developers to provide more secure, simplified user access to both cloud and on-premises applications with open, identity-based claims. In addition, Muglia announced the new release of ASP.NET MVC2 beta, a free, fully supported framework that enables developers to rapidly build standards-based Web applications through rich asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) integration and enhanced extensibility. ASP.NET MVC2 beta is available today at http://www.asp.net/mvc Wednesday, November 18
Capsoft buys HotDocs business from LexisNexis
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 18 Nov 2009 11:00 GMT
Capsoft, the Edinburgh-based provider of document automation software and services, and LexisNexis have announced the sale of the HotDocs software business to Capsoft. Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed. Through retention of its Automated Forms group, LexisNexis will continue to provide HotDocs-enabled forms and precedents with solutions such as LexisPSL, LexisONE, lexis.com, LexisLibrary, LexisNexis Total Practice Advantage, and other LexisNexis Automated Forms sets.
Over the past 13 years, Capsoft has been distributing and implementing HotDocs software in some of the largest law firms and financial institutions in the UK, Europe, Australia, and the Pacific Rim. (Capsoft began its relationship with HotDocs back in the days when it was still an independent company, before its acquisition by LexisNexis.) Russell Shepherd, CEO of Capsoft, said, “For Capsoft, this is a natural progression and one I am very excited about. As an established distributor of HotDocs, we know the product inside and out and are extremely well placed to invest in the continuous development of both the software and the support offered to new and existing customers across the world. I look forward to enhancing our longstanding relationship with LexisNexis through the ongoing provision of HotDocs software.” “As LexisNexis continues to transform its portfolio of offerings, we believe that Capsoft – as the largest distributor of HotDocs software globally – is singularly equipped to maintain and enhance HotDocs software and support for that product’s customer base,” said Alison Manchester, vice president of content management services at LexisNexis. Comment: This is an interesting development as we've been hearing mutterings for some time that many more law firms would invest in document assembly/automation systems if they could get hold of HotDocs and be confidant the product was going somewhere – as distinct from merely languishing at the bottom of the LexisNexis software toy cupboard. With Capsoft now owning the IP and responsible for ongoing development, it looks like HotDocs may now benefit from the TLC it deserves – which is bad news for all the other document assembly/automation systems players in the market. And, is does once again raise the question of whether legal publishers really are the best people to run software businesses. www.capsoft.co.uk
Tesco law draws closer - HMG issues consultation paper
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 18 Nov 2009 08:00 GMT
The Legal Services Board (LSB) is today (18 November) published detailed proposals for reforming the delivery of legal services in England and Wales. The publication is described as 'a major milestone in the process of reforming legal services regulation that began with the Legal Services Act 2007'.
Chairman of the Legal Services Board David Edmonds said: "This is the next stage of a process to make legal services more accessible. Many lawyers are already delivering their services in increasingly innovative ways. But they are operating in ways which mean that they do not have the organisational freedom available to other businesses. "When in place, the new proposals will enshrine and reinforce the essential protections that consumers - and citizens - require. Access to justice and the protection that society as whole has through the maintenance of the rule of law must not be put at risk. The provision of legal services in England and Wales must meet the legitimate demands of the society it serves. "We are proposing the introduction of a common and consistent licensing framework for those lawyers and firms – and those who would like to invest in legal service provision – which should promote wider choice and variety and which has robust consumer protection at its heart. "The new proposals give lawyers – and new business partners - much greater flexibility in how they organise and collaborate with each other and also other professionals. We want to encourage new entrants into the legal services market to bring new ways of working and new competitive pressures. These will increase choice for consumers, whilst offering better-tailored and better value packages of professional services. |So this is not the end of the process – we shall work closely with consumer bodies and the regulatory and representative arms of the profession to get the details right. The job of the LSB is to create a market with proper protections, not to prescribe the detailed rules. That is why this set of proposals is both a challenge and an opportunity to all those who want to innovate, to diversify and to offer consumers more choice." Summary of the paper The paper proposes removing restrictions that have, until now, prevented non-lawyers from owning legal service businesses. The new rules will mean that lawyers will have new freedoms to provide their services alongside services from non-lawyers, and for existing legal practices to attract new external investment. A robust framework of consumer protection, professional competence and commercial integrity is at the heart of proposals. The LSB is currently consulting on guidance to govern the licensing of these new models of service delivery. There are three key protections: • a test to ensure that non-lawyer owners and managers of new forms of legal practice are fit and proper; • the introduction of two new roles in every new firm: the Head of Legal Practice and Head of Finance and Administration who will ensure compliance with licence requirements; • a widening of the complaints handling system to deal with complaints about firms that do not deliver legal services in isolation but instead offer these alongside other services (for example, financial services) whilst ensuring access to the Office for Legal Complaints. The new framework aims to ensure that lawyers and non-lawyers alike have the commercial freedom to provide legal services to consumers in ways that harness commercial creativity, maximise business efficiencies, embed professional ethics and meet consumer demand. It has the potential to allow consumers to access their legal services in a variety of new different ways, for example as a part of a 'one stop shop' with other professional services such as insurance, tax advice and accountancy, or through existing legal practices diversifying and developing with the benefit of external investment. The guidance announced today sets out principles that new ‘licensing authorities’ will be expected to regulate in accordance with, anticipating that the first licences will be issued by mid 2011. The responsibility for ensuring the removal of current restrictions on individual lawyers preventing them from developing new forms of practice lies with the eight Approved Regulators overseen by the LSB. Click on the link for the ful consultation document...  1 Attachments |
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