Centaur Media, the B2B publisher best known in the legal market for The Lawyer magazine, has issued a profits warning, following falling recruitment advertising revenues. The company says they are down by one-third on last year however Tempus in today's Times Online suggests the real figure may be in excess of 60%. Having turned in profits of £18m last year, one analyst has revised Centaur's profit expectations for this year down from £10.4m to £3.5m.
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Saturday, February 21
Centaur Media issus profits warning
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 21 Feb 2009 10:49 GMT
Friday, February 20
Is that daylight or an oncoming train at the end of the tunnel?
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 20 Feb 2009 13:35 GMT
According to today's Times newspaper, Allen & Overy is planning to shed 450 jobs (including about 240 partners and fee earners) or about 9% of its total workforce by 30th April. The firm is also seeking to raise a further £11milion in working capital from equity partners. We'd estimate this means the total number of UK lawyers to have lost their jobs since the start of the recession is now approaching the 3000 mark.
Not sure how the current situation will impact upon the long delayed Elite 3E implementation at A&O however over the last couple of weeks we've been detecting some quite desperate measures by law firm services departments to save even a few pounds here and there. We're also hearing of firms where departments are trying to reallocate responsibilities to other departments in an attempt to protect their budgets. Apparently digital dictation (DDS) is one area where IT departments are now suggesting this should be reallocated back to the offices services departments – despite having spent the previous couple of years arguing DDS is a strategic technology because of its integration with DMS. Thursday, February 19
Another Aderant site goes live - hello, is there anybody else out there?
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 19 Feb 2009 15:53 GMT
Aderant has just announced that New England law firm of Burns & Levinson LLP has successfully gone live on Aderant Expert. The firm completed its implementation project in 10 months, successfully rolling out Aderant's application suite to more than 120 attorneys across four offices. Burns & Levinson implemented Aderant Expert's core applications for time and billing and financial management as well as the software suite’s business development, business intelligence, and performance management capabilities.
"Our implementation of Aderant is by far the most successful conversion of a practice management system with which I've ever been associated,” said Marybeth Celorier, chief financial officer for Burns & Levinson. "Professional firms can ill afford time delays and cost overruns these days when implementing a mission critical business system." "Rapid implementations are becoming increasingly important to law firms, especially in these uncertain economic times," said Michael Kohlsdorf, Aderant's president & CEO. "Firms must have confidence that they will be able benefit from their technology investments in a timely manner and not worry about having projects drag on for months or costing more than promised." Hello? Is there anybody else out there? Or is Aderant now the only global vendor capable of rolling out larger PMS projects in timescales measured in months rather than years? (And 'yes' it's true we've now been waiting over a week for another large PMS vendor to confirm whether or not some of its board members are about to leave the company.)
LegalTech New York - an alternative view
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 19 Feb 2009 12:20 GMT
Our friends at InsideLegal in the US have sent us their perspective on this month's LegalTech New York show...
Another year, another LegalTech under our collective belts. This year was our 9th trip to NY for LegalTech and everyone was waiting to see how the "hold your breath because of the economy" scenario would play out. Overall attendance appeared to be down quite a bit from previous years (compared to a reported 12,797 in 2008) which was not surprising with the current business climate. Also, there were a few less exhibitors than in 2008 according to Incisive Media. With that said, it seemed that overall attendee quality was up and there was more eagerness to get business done. Ironically, the smaller crowd allowed for more indepth talks in the booth without the prospects being pushed away by the crowd. New for vendors in 2009 was expansion of the exhibit space into the 3rd floor ballroom and the removal of booths from the dreaded back hallway. I was not sure how this would play out but the hall seemed to have traffic each time I went in and the space looked like it belonged with the show. This was a creative way to add space but also did add to the disjointed nature of the exhibit space. 2009 was the year that LegalTech embraced Twitter. There were quite a few firm contacts, consultants and less so vendors that twitted about LegalTech and in particular the session on Twitter that was held on Monday afternoon. According to Matt Homann, LegalTech NY made it to the top 10 twittered topics during the session.* Also very noticeable this year, was the abundance of legal industry job seekers, brought to a whole new level with resumes being circulated en mass. Seems like an ideal time to pick-up great talent with so many folks in active job search mode. One particular complaint of ours (and vendors, consultants and media attendees, etc) is the lack of meeting space. Part of the culture of a tradeshow (especially of this size) is that companies have meetings on-site - whether it is with clients, media, industry consultants, potential partners or employees, etc. LegalTech has all but made this impossible with the sale of about the only meeting space that is available in the Hilton. The Bridges Bar area (by escalator on floor 1) is sold for thousands of dollars for the duration of the show and only a handful of vendors actually shell out that much money to have the privilege to sit at a table for 4 behind a velvet rope complete with security guard. We know first hand of a few media editors and a consultant that have stopped coming to LegalTech because of the lack of space to meet with vendors. Hopefully this will change for 2010. * The Insider's next readers poll would be looking at the rise of Web 2.0 media, including twitter, and asking if anyone cares or wants it.
Salary freeze at LexisNexis ?
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 19 Feb 2009 08:56 GMT
Our thanks to our friends on the Law Librarians News zine for drawing our attention to the following memo that was circulated last week by LexisNexis:
"In order to address what is shaping up to be a more challenging 2009, the senior LexisNexis management team, which includes the leaders of all business and functional units, has had to make some difficult decisions. These decisions include freezing salaries at 2008 levels across all of LexisNexis Group…Except for a promotion or when an increase is required by local law, no one in LexisNexis Group will receive an increase in 2009… "It is our sincere hope that these steps will enable us to otherwise minimize any job reductions to deal with the economic downturn. Of course, no one knows how the balance of 2009 will unfold." Wednesday, February 18
Sign of the times: Microsoft freezing some prices
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 18 Feb 2009 09:57 GMT
A sign of the times: Microsoft is freezing the price it charges customers that continue running legacy versions of its business software. Citing the global economic downturn Microsoft said the price for joining its custom support program would not be raised this year, and it will maintain the 2008 pricing.
Custom support applies to products that have exceeded their official support cycle (typically 10 years) and are no longer being maintained or fixed by Microsoft. "This price change provides cost savings to Microsoft customers and enables them to maintain support on older versions of Microsoft products until they have had the opportunity to complete their migration to supported versions," the company said. Of course cynics might suggest this move is also a recognition that a lot of customers have put their migration plans on hold and that by freezing prices, Microsoft is giving customers one less reason for cancelling their support contracts. Tuesday, February 17
Wales? Is that on the District Line?
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 17 Feb 2009 10:28 GMT
As we've reported many times before, government legal departments and IT projects don't mix – they always run late, are way over budget and its usually the taxpayers who have to pick up the pieces. The latest fiasco concerns the LIBRA system that is intended to centralise records in magistrates courts in England & Wales – and to issue summonses.
After taking the best part of a decade to develop (we know, they could have done it in Sharepoint in 6 months) the system went live in December – a bargain at £447m although the original budget was £187m but, hey, what's a £260m overspend when its not your money? But, now a problem has been spotted. Remember that original brief: to issue summonses in England & Wales? It seems someone in Whitehall failed to realise that a lot of people use the Welsh language in Wales and forgot to include in the contract a clause to provide a built-in translator for English-to-Welsh documents. The net result is that since LIBRA arrived, the Ministry of Justice has been forced to translate summonses manually on request, and officials there will continue to do so until the problem is fixed – hopefully in September. The cost of the upgrade work is expected to be another £4m. Monday, February 16
Latest Asia-Pacific news
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 16 Feb 2009 19:47 GMT
Westlaw China Goes Global
Our thanks to Sean Hocking for drawing our attention to this item: With the global launch of Westlaw China – http://west.thomson.com/westlaw/global/china/ – legal practitioners in the US and UK now have access to Chinese legal information and accurate translation on a familiar and effective legal research platform. “Westlaw China’s launch – and its potential as an important resource for global law firms, corporations doing business in China and law schools – is an important step in the growth of Westlaw as a truly global resource,” said Peter Warwick, president & CEO, Thomson Reuters Legal. In this short video interview, Stephen Yao – http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=fnpKVUhC1zo – president & CEO of Westlaw China, talks about the demand for information on Chinese law in the United States. Epiq Systems open Hong Kong office New York-based e-discovery and legal services company Epiq System has opened a new Asian presence based out of Hong Kong. The office will provide local and on-site e-discovery and support services across Asia. The company says its DocuMatrix review platform can support a wide range of South-East Asia languages including Bengali, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Khmer, Lao, Malay, Nepali and Vietnamese. www.epiqsystems.com
Help wanted - library systems
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 16 Feb 2009 10:33 GMT
The research librarian in the KM department of the London office of a Very Large Global Law Firm has written in with the following question...
"I am seeking any recommendations for business/news current awareness management software, similar to Magus. We are carrying out a review of our systems." Discuss Friday, February 13
Staff changes - the latest
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 13 Feb 2009 12:08 GMT
It's still 4:00am in the morning on the West Coast so its too early for a comment from Elite however we have had confirmation from LexisNexis that Aamir Yusuf (Head of Development) has resigned. He's got 3 months notice (or gardening leave) to work out and then he'll be joining IRIS.
The other name mentioned – Matt Gegg – is the new head of professional services (effectively in charge of customer delivery and implementation) who joined this week. His track record includes time with SAP. |
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