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
Friday, November 27
Kay Betts going from Elite
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 27 Nov 2009 09:00 GMT
Kay Betts, who has headed EMEA support operations for Elite for 10 plus years, has been made redundant.
Wednesday, November 25
Times is still hard - redundancies continue
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 25 Nov 2009 08:12 GMT
Forget those green shoots of recovery, times is still hard, with law firms still making cutbacks. The latest casualty is Richard Drew, the IT manager of Midlands law firm Challinors, who has just been made redundant. The firm's chief executive will now also look after the practice's IT systems. Richard can be reached at richard at rwdrew.org
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.
Insider revising its top 250 chart
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 23 Nov 2009 10:25 GMT
Legal Technology Insider is giving its Top 250 chart, of which systems the UK's largest law firms are running, its annual makeover to reflect the changing fortunes of law firms. We'll also be dumping some of the legacy vendor brand names from the listings and adding two new columns: for Records Management (both offline & email) and for a new category of Document Production Tools (DPT) – namely all the utilities, such as metadata strippers and document comparison software, firms are running in conjunction with their WP and DMS platforms.
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
Print edition of the Insider running late
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 19 Nov 2009 09:42 GMT
The print edition of the November issue of the Legal Technology Insider newsletter is running approx 24 hours late – technical problem at our printers, a minion fell into a bath of orange ink and had to be de-tangoed, possibly. Should be on your desktops by Friday morning. The digital edition will be out later today.
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