The WS Society has partnered with Solcara, experts in connecting people and information, to create The Signet Online, a new online service that will provide subscribers with streamlined access to multiple sources of legal information.
The WS Society, Scotland’s independent association for lawyers, is providing this revolutionary new service for legal professionals worldwide. Underpinning The Signet Online is an innovative partnering and revenue sharing model between Solcara and The WS Society. It is this that has enabled the Society to provide this new service worldwide, to members and non-members alike.
SolSearch, Solcara’s federated search technology, is well established with larger law firms where it is used to simplify access to internal and online information. With the launch of The Signet Online, firms of all sizes and across all geographies will be able to access multiple online legal resources using SolSearch.
Robert Pirrie, Chief Executive of The WS Society, commented: “Our objective with The Signet Online is to give lawyers a convenient desktop tool that supports their research needs from within their own office. This is all part of our transition from a hard copy lending model to a contemporary and comprehensive knowledge services approach. We are delighted to be working with a market leader like Solcara. The service will be available to lawyers everywhere on a subscription basis. Our own members and WS law firms will benefit from a significant discount.”
Rob Martin, Managing Director of Solcara, commented: “In creating The Signet Online, the WS Society is opening the lid on services and technology that was previously only available to larger firms. Central to this is the shared revenue model Solcara and the Society have put in place. This is a further endorsement of Solcara’s strategy to develop market leading software delivered through innovative business models. The Signet Online will be available to all, from the high street solicitor to medium sized firms. The service is unique within the UK legal sector and could form the basis of additional services that we offer in partnership with The WS Society targeted at the UK and other legal jurisdictions.”
* The interesting feature about this deal is the revenue sharing approach which means the WS Society and its members get to enjoy search technology they would otherwise be unable to afford – and Solcara gets established in a sector of the market it would never otherwise be active in. Full marks to Solcara for being prepared to take a punt and explore alternative pricing models.
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Friday, September 12
The WS Society partner with Solcara to launch The Signet Online
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 12 Sep 2008 10:05 BST
Thursday, September 11
Check out these people
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 11 Sep 2008 16:00 BST
We always like to give a plug to organisations whose hearts are in the right place and are offering something of value and interest to the market, so please check out these people – the organisation has been set up by Rob Ameerun...
Legal IT on LinkedIn Social networking is still gaining popularity. One of the leaders in this field is LinkedIn. Millions of people actively maintain their professional profile and connect to business partners, colleagues and friends around the world. Recently LinkedIn polished up their group functionality. It has become easier to find and join groups aimed at specific expertise or interests. Also the legal IT community links together via the “Legal IT Professionals” group, a rapidly growing community of IT specialists and managers who have experience in the legal industry. If you’re already on LinkedIn and would like to join this community, you can directly go to www.linkedin.com/e/gis/43630 and hook up with your colleagues around the world. Also nice to visit is the associated website that has been setup at www.legalitprofessionals.com on which you can find a selection of the latest legal IT news and events, a summary of relevant legal IT links, columns from legal IT specialists*, and relevant job openings. * Orange Rag editor Charles Christian has just signed up to write a regular column.
Lawyers say why they like speech recognition
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 11 Sep 2008 10:27 BST
We're often accused (by speech recognition software vendors) of being hard on speech recognition software by pointing out that most UK law firms prefer digital dictation technology (talking of which Howard Kennedy has just announced that it has implemented a Bighand digital dictation system over VMWare's Virtual Desktop Infrastructure – full story in this month's Insider newsletter) however to set the record straight, here is a speech recognition story...
Nuance Communications – the company that now owns the Dragon NaturallySpeaking product – has just announced the UK-based winners of its 'I Speak Dragon!' contest, which invited Dragon users to share their experiences of using speech recognition software on a PC. There were two winners in the 'I Speak Dragon to Improve My Work' category and here are their winning entries: Carl Rohsler – Solicitor Specialising in Gambling Law About six months ago Carl was contacted by a publisher to see if he would write a work about the UK's new gambling legislation. The book was to be approximately 2,000 pages, of which Carl would be responsible for 250,000 words of analysis. A big task, and one that Carl would have to complete at the same time as his normal day job. Carl decided to experiment with Dragon NaturallySpeaking and within an hour he was hooked. “After only a few days I had started to develop my own commands for citations, abbreviations and numbering. But it was the speed and the increase in stamina that was most impressive”, said Carl. Normally, after about 10 or 11 hours, Carl gets too tired to type accurately (his typing rate is about 40 words per minute). Dragon has allowed Carl to do everything more quickly and more accurately than manual typing. “I was sometimes able to produce more than 15,000 words of finished text in a weekend! I finished the whole project in six months.” Dragon's ability to change Carl’s working life did not stop there. A few years ago, he met his wife, who is French, and began to learn to speak a language that he had not used since schooldays. He is now fairly fluent as a speaker, but had never read or written in French, and so his spelling and grammar was poor. Carl had the idea of using the French version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking to dictate e-mails and messages in French. “I knew what I wanted to say and Dragon did the grammar, accents, genders and spelling. I still can't get over watching French text appear like magic on the screen, which I could never possibly write myself!” Now Carl can email his family in France. “I cannot think of anything else which has had such a profound effect on my working life - a really, seriously, seriously amazing piece of kit, and for the same price as a pair of theatre tickets,” said Carl. Jonathan Silverman - Founding Partner, London City Law Firm Jonathan’s firm Silverman Sherliker LLP has been providing legal services to both UK and overseas clients for approximately 28 years. The company was introduced to Dragon in its very early days and was immediately able to demonstrate that the software was a very cost-effective tool for its practice. “I started back in the days of version 1, dictating word by word diligently, and progressed through to the most recent release, which is simply stunning and beyond anyone's expectations!” said Jonathan. The traditional company structure was that it had one secretary between two lawyers, meaning when new lawyers joined, they had to find the space and the resources to cater for more secretaries. Dragon NaturallySpeaking cuts out the middle-man, saving the company £250,000 a year, which is a significant saving for a firm this size. “Dragon has enabled us to grow as a firm without being a burden to the overhead of secretarial support and all the consequential costs. Gone are the days of recording a dictation, giving it to a secretary and waiting for it to come back. Our competitiveness stems from our ability to respond quickly and effectively, whether by e-mail or in correspondence and Dragon is central to that capability. We couldn’t have reached our level of turnover or profitability without using Dragon; it has quite simply revolutionised our practice.” Wednesday, September 10
Consultants fired - dancing in the streets
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 10 Sep 2008 17:10 BST
The UK Government has just announced its decision to terminate its contract with PA Consulting, the private sector contractor which it had engaged to carry out a research project on tracking offenders through the criminal justice system. This follows an inquiry by the Government into the circumstances surrounding the loss (which became public nearly three weeks ago) by PA Consulting of a memory stick containing the unencrypted personal data of all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith indicated the Government's inquiries showed PA Consulting to be in breach of the data security provisions of its contract, in that data held on a secure site was downloaded by the contractor to an insecure memory stick which was then physically lost.
* Reports suggest the memory stick was placed in an unlocked desk drawer. Presumably at the next IT event they sponsor, PA will not be handing out memory sticks as freebies. Stop press: PA has now responded to the Home Office... As is appropriate in these circumstances, PA Consulting has avoided making any comment on this incident until publication of the report of the Home Office to the Information Commissioner. This report has been published today. We have not yet had the opportunity to review the report in detail. However, we accept PA's responsibilities in this incident. As indicated in the notification, PA has a comprehensive system of security procedures and practices in place in order to protect, in addition to government information, sensitive information from commercial clients. The loss of data on this project was caused by human failure, a single employee was in breach of PA's well established information security processes. We deeply regret this human failure and apologise unreservedly to the Home Office. We have cooperated and continue to cooperate fully and willingly in the immediate reporting, ongoing investigation, and resolution of this incident. We reported the potential loss of data to the Home Office at 16:30 on 18 August 2008, the day that the loss was discovered and less than two hours after it was reported to PA's management. We then confirmed the loss to the Home Office at midday on 19 August. PA has conducted an examination of every one of our government and private sector projects that handle personal, sensitive or protectively marked material against recognised best practice and government-approved processes. Our review has confirmed that, apart from in this isolated incident, we are fully compliant with robust policies and procedures and are achieving high levels of information assurance across all of our work. In addition, several government departments have carried out their own extensive audits of PA projects and in all cases have found them to be fully compliant. PA has safely handled sensitive government information for over 60 years and this is the first incident of such a nature that PA has been involved in. It is clear from the events of recent weeks that the challenge of managing necessary confidential information held by government, and in particular of eliminating human error, is industry-wide. We are engaged in dialogue with our clients and competitors to address, and find solutions to, this challenge.
Issue #2 of American Legal Technology Insider out now
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 10 Sep 2008 15:42 BST
The second issue – September '08 – of the American Legal Technology Insider newsletter is out now. Click on the link to download your free copy as a 360k PDF file. You can also register to receive it direct to your desktop as an email file attachment – just email to altisubs@legaltechnology.com with the word subscribe in the subject line. The next issue will be published on Wednesday 6, October.
 1 Attachments
More news on Elite 3E
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 10 Sep 2008 10:23 BST
Just following on from Neil Mackay's comments about Elite 3E going live at Maurice Blackburn, we're grateful to Justin North at the Janders Dean consultancy in Australia for drawing our attention to this posting on their corporate blog at http://jandersdeanleadership.blogspot.com
...and here we go...Maurice Blackburn Cashman have migrated off Elite Enterprise and onto the Elite 3E platform making them the first in the region to do so. We extend our congratulations to the hard working team from MBC who faced sleepless nights of extensive testing and re-testing in this innovative project. The team from TressCox will most likely be next cab off the rank followed by Gadens' Sydney office. The conclusion of these three early adopters' projects may allow the region's PMS new sales market to awaken again after a stagnated year caused primarily by the "wait and see" purchase philosophy of many firms - in addition to investment funds and attention being focused on greater return, fee earner and client facing projects.
Random news from Chateau Insider
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 10 Sep 2008 09:06 BST
Well they've successfully switched on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and 15 minutes on Europe has not yet been sucked into a black-hole, so I guess we'd all better resign ourselves to another day in the office. Lot of news stories coming up later today. We're still pondering over the headline of a press release we received yesterday 'Try before you buy Funerals' – don't they mean 'try before you die funerals' ?
Also, after some gitches - due to our search engine provider forgetting to tell us they'd changed the HTML coding and us forgetting we'd moved our content over to a different server – our site search engine at www.legaltechnology.com is once more working again. Tuesday, September 9
Tikit releases its interims
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 09 Sep 2008 11:06 BST
The AIM-listed Tikit Group plc has just published its latest interim results. Here is chairman Mike McGoun's statement in full...
"The Group is pleased to report performance in the first half broadly in line with the Directors’ expectations. The acquisition of TfB at the start of the second quarter has enabled the Group to report continued growth in revenues, profit and earnings per share*. Our continued focus on winning and retaining recurring, managed service and support revenues combined with the increase in revenues from Tikit-owned software has resulted in improved margins and a stronger business in the face of tougher economic conditions. Total Group revenues of £13.64 million in the first half of 2008 represent growth of 3.4% compared with the first half of 2007. As indicated previously, the introduction of subscription-based pricing for certain software products will hold back top-line revenue growth in the short-term, in return for contracted longer-term revenues and profits. The Group has again increased its operating margins, achieving 13.7% in the first half (2007: 12.1%), resulting in an increase in operating profits before amortisation and share-based charges of 17.7% to £1.88 million. I draw your attention to the cash management of the Group during the period. Your Board decided to utilise the Group’s cash resources combined with a new loan facility from its bank to finance £5.3 million of the TfB transaction rather than the issue of dilutive new shares. The cash-generating nature of the business should, in the absence of other transactions, result in a net cash position for the Group in 2009. Cash generated from operations in the first half was £2.95 million, representing 147% of operating profit**. At 30 June 2008, the Group had net debt of £753,000. Good progress has been made in many areas of the business, with continued growth in recurring, contracted support revenues. In addition, customer response to the release of new Tikit-developed software, particularly the enhanced version of Tikit e-marketing suite and the Tikit Template Management System (TMS) for Microsoft Word indicates potentially higher sales of these products in the second half. *before amortisation and share-based charges **before depreciation, amortisation and share-based charges Results Turnover for the period was £13.64 million (2007:£13.19 million), representing a 3.4% increase on the same period last year. The introduction of subscription-based pricing where revenues are recognised over a number of years rather than up-front, has had a small impact on headline revenue and profit growth. Revenues in our services businesses, in total, increased by 9.6% to £9.72 million (2007: £8.87 million), with contracted recurring revenues showing strong growth of 17.7% to £5.85 million (2007: £4.97 million) contributing 42.9% of total Group revenues. Operating margins before amortisation and share-based charges continue to improve and were 13.7% in the first half (2007: 12.1%). Operating profit before amortisation, taxation, interest and share-based charges was £1.88 million, an increase of 17.7% over the first half of 2007 (£1.59 million). Share-based charges were £159,000 (2007: £118,000) and amortisation, which relates predominantly to intangible fixed assets acquired with TfB, was £115,000 (2007: £nil). There was a net interest charge of £37,000 (2007: interest received £31,000) during the period resulting from the use of the bank loan facility for the acquisition of TfB. The profit before taxation was £1.56 million, (2007: £1.51 million), an increase of 3.9% over the prior year period. Earnings per share before amortisation and share-based charges were 9.7p (2007: 9.0p), an increase of 7.8% over the prior year. Basic earnings per share were 8.0p (2007: 8.3p). Cash generated from operations was £2.95 million. In the first half, £680,000 of the Group’s cash resources were used to satisfy final earn-out payments due to Shamrock, its specialist data auditing and cleansing subsidiary, under the terms of an earn-out agreement; £4.3 million was used for the acquisition of TfB; £1.1 million was used to repay TfB net debt and £416,000 was used to pay dividends. Cash inflows came from the exercise of share options totalling £311,000 and £721,000 from the sale of shares held in treasury. A £5 million credit facility was successfully negotiated with our bank and at the end of the period £1.3 million of this facility was utilised, resulting in net debt of £753,000 at 30 June 2008 (2007: net cash £2.81 million). Interim Dividend An interim dividend of 1.9 pence per share (2007: 1.75 pence per share), an increase of 8.6%, is to be paid on 17 October 2008 to shareholders on the register at 19 September 2008. Operating Review The acquisition of TfB was successfully completed at the start of the second quarter with minimal impact upon the Group’s operations and has greatly contributed to the Group’s management strength, client coverage and recurring revenue streams. Since the acquisition, TfB has won a number of new clients, which, in part, can be attributed to the success of the acquisition. TfB has over 500 clients in the smaller law firm market and we are currently introducing some of Tikit’s more traditional services into this market. This was our largest acquisition to date and significant effort was expended by Tikit’s management team to ensure that the profile of TfB was complementary to Tikit’s strategy of increasing ownership of market leading software with good visible earnings. The TfB team has settled in well and their business made an important contribution to profits in the second quarter and is expected to continue to do so in the second half. The tougher economic environment in which we and our clients currently operate has led us to undertake some initiatives to help our clients and secure profitable business in such an environment. Our consultants are working with clients to help them analyse their business operations to identify operational efficiencies that can be obtained with minimal expense. We have introduced subscription-based pricing to reduce up-front capital expenditure for key applications and we have developed and introduced internet-based training on the leading software applications. This initiative allows law and accounting firms to reduce their expenditure when introducing new systems to staff by using Tikit’s training content in a hosted environment and we have already won our first client in this market segment. Our Managed Services team continue to deliver the high levels of service that our clients expect. This, in turn, has meant that we have maintained our high retention rate of clients and revenues from this area continue to grow. We have increased efficiency by continuing the rollout of our web-based self-service support. Our network and infrastructure support team has been particularly successful in winning business in the legal market in the first half, especially in the area of network performance work and we expect this to continue. Following a solid first quarter, sales of third party software slowed towards the end of the second quarter as uncertainty over the economic outlook caused some firms to defer their decisions to commit to capital projects. However, demand for our market-leading software, InterAction CRM and Interwoven Worksite DM, held up well. As part of our initiative to secure business that has a fast payback for our clients, we have written a number of small software applications to add to our existing portfolio. Since the successful launch of the Tikit-developed Template Management System (TMS) in late 2007, the software has been sold to 20 organisations and we have a good pipeline of further opportunities in the second half. We have also developed a number of key applications for legal clients that work with standard workflow software in areas such as anti-money laundering, matter inception and compliance. These small, low cost, application modules offer significant efficiencies for clients quickly and have been well received. We continue to provide business and technical consulting to the world’s largest law firms in the areas of practice management, document management and client relationship management systems, with a particular emphasis at present on operational efficiencies in these areas. The award of large scale consulting and implementation projects has enabled our professional consulting operation to improve utilisation levels during the period. Our overseas subsidiaries in France and Spain are also experiencing tougher conditions. However, they both continue to win new clients in their respective markets and also provide local expertise for the overseas offices of our UK and US clients. Costs were controlled well in the first half which resulted in higher margins and profits growth. The Board continually reviews costs to ensure they are commensurate with the activity the Group plans in the second half. A cautious approach on costs has be taken and wherever possible we have sought to concentrate on growing revenues where operational efficiencies are possible without additional costs, such as support and Tikit-owned software. Prospects The second half of the financial year for the Group has traditionally been stronger than the first half. With a healthy pipeline of consultancy and services, combined with a number of opportunities to secure major projects with some of our larger clients, we believe we are in a good position to continue this profile in 2008. The second quarter ended with a couple of clients deferring projects, reflecting the uncertainty associated with the current economic climate which has led to some clients taking a more cautious approach to capital projects. Our experience is, however, that any tightening of project spend by our clients will lead to greater managed services opportunities for Tikit. The Board continues to search for suitable acquisition opportunities to complement its organic growth. The Group has undertaken a number of successful acquisitions since its introduction to AIM in 2001 and we believe that tougher markets may produce good acquisition opportunities for the Group. In summary, the first half of 2008 has seen good progress for Tikit and has created a strong platform for the Group to produce another good set of results for the year as a whole. I look forward to updating shareholders on progress at the end of the year. Monday, September 8
SOS is safe bet after at 20 years
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 08 Sep 2008 12:29 BST
Assuming the course has not been washed away in the recent torrential rain, this afternoon (8 September) Solicitors Own Software is celebrating its 20th birthday as an independent legal software provider by sponsoring the SOS Legal Software Handicap Stakes at Bath Races – the race is scheduled for the off at 4:40pm.
David McNamara, managing director of SOS, said "2008 has been a momentous year for SOS with the management buyout which confirmed our resolution to maintain our independence in the face of consolidation of the legal software industry. In contrast to a market place where many law firms are left unhappy to find that their existing software may not survive the rationalisations, we are delighted to report that SOS clients remain both satisfied and loyal and that the take-up of our flagship product has been terrific from both new and existing customers." * September's issue of Legal Technology Insider will contain details of the latest SOS win at the expense of the IRIS Legal group. Friday, September 5
Elite and A&O issue progress report
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 05 Sep 2008 10:30 BST
Elite and Allen & Overy (the A&O spokesman is Campbell McIlroy) have issued a progress report on the status of the Elite 3E implementation. It reads...
Elite 3E implementation at Allen & Overy progressing well. Go-live re-scheduled to take place following financial year-end. As a $2 billion firm with 29 offices located throughout 21 countries, and with over 2600 lawyers, the Elite 3E implementation at Allen & Overy represents one of the largest global law firm financial & practice management roll-outs of its kind, and with its ‘big bang’ approach is both complex and impressive. Both parties are pleased with progress, however have mutually agreed to re-schedule go-live to allow Elite more time to fine tune some of the highly complex functionality required by a large law firm such as Allen & Overy, as well as to avoid any disruption during the last four months of the financial year. Added to this fact, Elite Enterprise is working well at Allen & Overy and there is therefore no rush as the goal remains to ensure roll-out is a seamless success from day one. The project will deliver significantly improved functionality and Allen & Overy partners and accounts staff are excited by what they have already seen. |
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