Story removed at the request of Outerin at the request of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

In response to user requests, we have changed the Recent Comments section on this blog so it now lists the last 10 comment postings. Previously it only displayed the last five.

Have a good weekend.

Here's another webinar readers may find of interest...

End Email Downtime For Your Firm
from simple maintenance outages to technology failures and site-wide disasters

Email outages are the bane of an IT team’s existence. Electronic communications drive law firm activity 24/7, across time zones and continents. Productivity drops, opportunities are lost, and revenue is affected when people cannot communicate within the firm and externally with clients. Join Teneros and David Clark, from Jones, Waldo, Holbrook & McDonough, to learn how Teneros' cost-effective email continuity solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2003 or 2007 can help assure uninterrupted email communications to support business success.

Date: Friday 14 November, 2008
Time: 5:00pm (UK) - 12noon (EST) - 9:00am (PST)

To register for this LIVE webinar please click on the link below. Space is limited, so please register at your earliest convenience to ensure a spot at this event. Once you have registered, you will receive an approval email with details on how to join the live and audio portion of this event.

https://teneros.webex.com/teneros/onstage/g.php?d=573157495&t=a

• If you are unable to attend the live presentation, we will be recording the webinar and will send out a link shortly after the event.

After all the coverage and comment Aderant has been receiving in recent weeks, we thought we'd redress the balance with an Elite story. Last week we had a phone conference with Elite's president & CEO Steve Buege and this is what he had to say...

As to suggestions that 3E may have originally been launched prematurely (although this was before he joined the company) Buege said the product had "long since crossed the threshold of being immature and was now a solid, stable system." He added that version 2.0 was now available and running live in 15 organisations – with the next major milestone being the Allen & Overy release (version 2.4) scheduled for early 2009. He also said that a lot of the original "noise" generated by the fact 3E was marketed by Elite as a new product rather than merely an upgrade to the Enterprise system had now gone away, as customers came to appreciate it really was an entirely different system, representing a quantum leap (our words not his) from what had gone before.

So what about the reports that 3E is difficult to implement? Buege said the issue here was that because a lot of the power of 3E derives from the data model, anyone planning to implement 3E needs to spend a lot of time on that model, including cleaning up their old data – whereas other systems that don't use data so precisely are a little more "careless" and forgiving. That said he said that while he felt good about the progress of the software as a product, he believed Elite could still improve both the 'packaging' of 3E (in terms of installation and documentation) and the implementation methodologies, so it wasn't such a steep learning curve for some firms. To this end the company is now investing a substantial resource in improving packaging, delivery and implementation so that "the reaction is 'Wow' – the system is as good as we were promised".

We also asked about the issue of 3E's inbuilt workflow and business intelligence functionality versus the use of 3rd party workflow and BI products. Buege said there had been a lot of misunderstandings and FUD spread by some competitors but the basic strategy had always been to provide users with much more native capabilities than were available in Enterprise. And that while for many firms that would be enough, it was always recognised that a lot of firms would want more and prefer to go for 3rd party systems, which was why Elite still wants to keep and encourage its '3rd party ecosystem' of compatible vendors.

As to the 'why doesn't Elite use industry standard products like the Microsoft Workflow platform?' debate – apart from pointing out that Microsoft workflow is a proprietary platform – Buege said 3E actually does build on top of industry standard open web technologies. It just adds to them so users have the choice of either developing their own workflows in VisualStudios natively OR they can use the 3E toolkits and avoid having to do it themselves. "What would take 5000 lines of code natively, you can do in 350 lines within 3E," said Buege.

He also confirmed that Elite is continuing to invest in the Enterprise product (release 3.8 is due in December) and said the company is "not even planning a sunset date yet". The net result, he said, is that Elite "is in a good place". For new customers or existing users who want to move up a level, there is the 3E product, while for existing users who understandably may want to stay where they are until the economic outlook improves, there remains Enterprise as a vibrant rather than legacy product. "We can offer users the full spectrum of options from staying with the current market leading product to leapfrogging to a next generation system," he added.

Just for the record, because of the erratic nature of supplies over the past 12 months, the Legal Technology Insider newsletter has ceased distributing copies of the Legal Technology Journal to its subscribers. Sorry about that but it's another publishing group and we have no control over their operations.

We also will not be supporting (either through sponsorship or editorial coverage) next January's Legal Technology Awards on the, admittedly puritanical, grounds that we think expecting vendors and law firms to splurge thousands of pounds on tables at an award ceremony that honours – as one Orange Rag commentator once memorably put it – the 'Deputy Knowledge Officer for January in a firm of between 1 and 5 partners based in the North West excluding Manchester' in the middle of a recession is ludicrous and – given the lay-offs being reported – in bad taste.

To quote another Orange Rag comment posting "I've got my own views on how awards should be run – or not run – and there is a clear distinction between awards that are meant to reward – and awards that are run primarily as a money making venture by the organisers. However unless enough people stand up and say 'Bollocks, we aren't playing and are not buying a table at the ceremony' – they will keep trundling along."

It's time to say bollocks.

Earlier this autumn nFlow Software ran a highly successful webinar on the topic of how to be a good (digital) dictator. This How to Dictate training session has now been recorded and the whole thing made available on a drop box for people to download for free. If anyone uses Windows Media Player they will need to have mpeg-4 codecs installed. nFlow have included some freeware versions of these in the package for people to install if they need them.
 
The link is: https://www.yousendit.com/download/Y2orak94ZEtCTW52Wmc9PQ

We're grateful to the finance director of a well-known legal IT vendor for drawing out attention to this posting on the AltAssets private equity news website – www.altassets.com ...

California-based mid-market private equity firm Vista Equity Partners has closed its third fund on approximately $1.3bn. Vista Equity Partners Fund III (VEPF III) is the firm's first institutional fund. Vista focuses on mid-market enterprise software companies and technology-enabled solutions businesses.

Since the first closing in January 2007 for an undisclosed amount, VEPF III has already completed four private investments valued at $757m: Sunquest, which provides laboratory information and management systems for hospitals and commercial laboratories, acquired in October 2007 in a deal valued at $382m; Accero (formerly Cyborg), a provider of human resources and payroll software, acquired in January in a deal valued at $47m; Petroleum Place, a provider of software, data and property marketplace solutions to the oil and gas industry, acquired in June in a deal valued at $217m; and Aderant, a provider of business management applications for law firms and other professional services organisations to efficiently manage operations, attract and retain clients and maximise profitability, acquired in October in a deal valued at $111m.

Robert Smith, managing principal, Vista, said, 'We are extremely pleased to close this fund with strong support from a wide range of investors. Despite widespread problems in the financial markets, we found our investors' appetite remains strong for experienced investment teams with differentiated approaches and proven strategies.'

Pilgrim Systems plc has announced new faces and organisational changes to support its growth strategies. In order to build on the 19% annual growth of the last financial year (ended 30th September 2008) the company has made some key appointments.
 
Colin Kennedy has been appointed Chief Operating Officer. Kennedy joined the company a year ago after leaving LexisNexis Visualfiles where he held the same role. His role touches all areas of the business, but in particular business development and overseeing Pilgrim’s continual drive to refine and improve how Pilgrim delivers successful projects, on time, with maximum ROI and customer satisfaction.
 
Kennedy will work closely with the sales consulting team which, as of 3rd November, includes Matthew Fiske-Jackson, who Pilgrim describe as "one of the most successful new business sales consultants operating in legal technology circles today". He was central to Visualfiles’ dynamic growth of 2000 to 2007. Since leaving LexisNexis Visualfiles he has worked with Zylpha, a legal IT consultancy. Pilgrim say that during this period he had an opportunity to fully assess the new shape of the legal technology market since the recent spate of consolidation and is confident that Pilgrim and its LawSoft technology are best placed to cater for the complex technology needs of today’s legal profession.
 
Pilgrim also welcomes Brian Dudley to the company to head up its Installation Team. Dudley has worked in legal technology circles for many years, most recently as IT director at Gillespie MacAndrew, a 200 people firm in central Edinburgh.

Comment... Is the sub-text here: will the last person to leave LexisNexis Visualfiles please turn out the lights? Company chairman Jim Cummings also told the Insider that Pilgrim has a healthy pipeline for the coming year.

The fourth issue – November '08 – of the American Legal Technology Insider newsletter is out now. Click on the link to download your free copy as a 477k PDF file.

Just over 30 minutes ago, the directors of the KM and search systems vendor Solcara announced that Solcara Limited is now part of the Access Intelligence Plc group. Rob Martin and Ray Jackson will continue as managing director and chairman of Solcara respectively. Ray Jackson has also been appointed as a non-executive director of Access Intelligence. No financial details have been disclosed.

The announcement goes on to say "As a result of the agreement Solcara customers and stakeholders will benefit from the significant expertise of Access Intelligence’s executive chairman, Michael Jackson, former chairman of Sage Plc and current chairman of Elderstreet Investments Ltd, a leading UK based venture capital firm."

Solcara's Rob Martin added "The agreement to become part of Access Intelligence is a significant milestone in the continued development of the Solcara business. We will maintain our focus on delivering high quality software products and solutions that address the unique problems associated with Reputation Management, Corporate Communications and Information Access. We will also maintain our commitment to our existing customers whilst continuing to expand the number and range of solutions that we offer as a service. There are considerable synergies with other companies in the Access Intelligence group and our customers will see significant benefits with even more comprehensive solutions becoming available from Solcara."

• Orange Rag readers will recall that Elderstreet Investments is probably best known in the UK legal market for the activities of another of its directors – Vin Murria.