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Friday, January 29
Something for the weekend - Terminator meets David Cameron
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 29 Jan 2010 15:43 GMT
Time for a couple of cartoons/time-wasters...
 By way of balance, we should just point out that we think all current English political parties are worthy of ridicule – and if you'd like to create your own variations on this poster (feel free to send over JPEGs of your efforts, we'll publish the best and/or least defamatory ones) follow this link... www.andybarefoot.com Next, another of Tom Fishburne's e-discovery/lit support cartoons courtesy of CaseCentral... 
Tom Jones leaves Aderant to form business intelligence consultancy
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 29 Jan 2010 14:05 GMT
Tom Jones has left his position at Aderant to launch Iridium Technology, a consulting firm focused specifically on business intelligence (BI) for law firms. Jones has worked with Aderant Expert’s BI applications for over 13 years, including Expert Analytics Foundation and Expert Profitability. His roles have included Developer/Architect, Development Manager, Product Manager, and Director of Product Marketing.
“Firms are eager to find a consultant specifically focused on how to get the most out of Aderant’s business intelligence applications,” said Jones. “Having worked for Aderant as the Product Champion for their Business Intelligence products for 13 years, I saw this as a great opportunity to get back into consulting. I have the combination of product knowledge and technical skills to assure that firms can successfully implement Aderant’s BI products. Additionally, I am probably the only consultant in the world who is both experienced with Aderant’s BI products and certified as a Microsoft Certified IT Professional – Business Intelligence Developer". Iridium has already signed up three UK law firms as members of the Expert Analytics Initiative – a coalition of firms that is using Iridium as a shared resource to simultaneously move all of their Aderant Expert business intelligence implementations forward. “This is a very exciting initiative,” says Jones. “The member firms are able to share the costs for customizations, training, new reports and new web parts. Plus they have access to a consultant that is living and breathing business intelligence applications 50+ hours per week. I am discussions with additional firms in all regions and hope to have six or more firms participating going forward”. • Prior to joining Aderant, Jones co-founded Icon Technology, a consulting and BI software firm based in San Francisco. Icon developed the original versions of the Aderant business intelligence applications and successfully marketed them for several years before being purchased by Barrister Information Systems in 1998. Barrister was acquired by Keystone, who were acquired by Solution 6 and subsequently merged into Aderant. www.iridium-technology.com
Calling all London Marathon runners
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 29 Jan 2010 11:38 GMT
We're starting to get messages in from would-be participants in this year's London Marathon (which takes place on 25th April). We plan to give all runners – and their charitable causes – a plug in the March issue of the Insider, so please get in touch with your details by 15th March latest. To-date we only have two confirmed participants – David Thorpe of Aderant and David Bason of Shoosmiths – or have the rules been changed so only people called David can run?
And don't forget to let us have your times, placings & how much money you raised after the event. Thursday, January 28
CT TyMetrix identify 10 trends for US legal IT in 2010
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 28 Jan 2010 14:36 GMT
US company CT TyMetrix, part of the CT/Wolters Kluwer business – and a provider of web-based legal management solutions for corporate law departments and claims organizations – has identified what it sees as the key trends that will impact the legal industry in 2010.
They say "The business side of the legal industry has reached a turning point. Technology has enabled corporate law departments to take more control over critical processes but it is up to them to optimally utilize these tools in a way that is best suited to meet their unique needs. Corporate law departments have the power to more effectively analyze data and control legal spend using technology-enabled tools such as predictive modeling, business intelligence (BI) and alternative fee arrangements (AFAs). The convergence of various factors, including market globalization, changing regulatory landscapes and availability of specialized technology solutions, will enable the widespread adoption of these tools in 2010." CT TyMetrix identify 10 specific trends... • The Rise of the Corporate Law Department: The down economy has shifted the balance of power from large law firms to corporate legal departments. In 2010, corporate law departments will assert more control over billing. There will be a heightened demand for “tools of empowerment” that provide them with the knowledge, transparency and real-time technology to take control. (Autonomy made a similar prediction in its announcements yesterday.) • The Re-Tooling of Big Law: In addition to some big-time law firms failing in 2010, there will be increasing pressure to allow the incorporation of legal services within corporate entities. This is already happening in the UK with the Legal Services Act and the trend is likely to become prominent in the US as well. This fundamental change in the structure of the legal service delivery industry will accelerate the adoption of new models that incorporate legal process outsourcing. • Globalization of Corporate Law: Corporate law departments will start to leverage systems and knowledge across the world. In the past, the practice of law has been global, while the business side of it has not. This trend will be accelerated by the implementation of cloud computing within the legal community. The adoption of single standards for the transmission of electronic documents within EU countries will also drive this trend. • Acceptance of BI and Predictive Modeling: 2010 will be the year in which corporate legal departments truly tap into the wealth of data available to them. In addition to billions of dollars of legal invoice data and hundreds of thousands of matter management records, corporate law departments can now access the record systems of their entire enterprise. • Unified Platform Management: Law departments and law firms will begin buying into next-generation management platforms that enable all of their key solutions to collaborate on a single platform, which will be global, open and highly intuitive. • Adoption of New AFAs: Law departments will fully buy into AFAs as they come to realize there is no more effective way for them to predict and control outside counsel costs than devising and enforcing alternatives to the billable hour. The primary type of AFA will be flat fees and merit arrangements. (Richard Susskind writes about this in today's Times newspaper.) • Convergence 2.0: A more efficient method of convergence will come to prominence in 2010. Companies will increase the amount of work assigned to law firms who provide the highest quality work with billing models that are most closely aligned with corporate law departments’ objectives. (This is echoes Autonomy's comments about 'chaining')
Harry Townsend comes out of retirement to join Chrome River
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 28 Jan 2010 11:53 GMT
UK legal IT sales veteran Harry Townsend (who The Orange Rag last encountered at his farewell party in Las Vegas – watching two pirates ships, crewed by half-naked women firing canons at each other on an artificial lake outside the Treasure Island Casino & Hotel in 2007, while an Elvis Presley impersonator sang in the background – or was that all a dream?) has come out of retirement to join Chrome River as regional sales manager for the UK.
Harry Townsend began his career in the legal IT sector in 1977 with Kienzle (later Axxia, now LexisNexis) and most recently concluded with Elite in 2007. A winner of one of the LOTIES Legal Vendor Personality of the Year awards, he now reemerges at Chrome River to expand on the fast-growing company’s international client base, which already includes two prominent UK law firms. "Like Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, Pele and Romario, all the great ones come out of retirement", said Dave Terry, co-founder & COO of Chrome River. "We are delighted to have Harry back as part of our team which also demonstrates our commitment and desire to serve the needs of our expanding international markets." Townsend told the Orange Rag that "there is only so much golf you can play and gardening you can do before you start to miss the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd." He added that while Chrome River's approach came as a surprise, it made him realise he did miss the challenge of working in sales. Townsend joins fellow regional sales managers Jim Whitmore and Serge Merkin, both part of the early Chrome River team, and two later hires Scott Brinkerhoff and Karen DeLucia-Goldstein. While Serge Merkin hails from Thomson West, the rest of the sales lineup previously worked at Thomson Elite with Chrome River’s management team of Alan Rich, Dave Terry and Anne (Eddings) Becknell. Chrome River Technologies Inc provides the only online expense reporting and spend management solution designed specifically for law firms and professional services organizations. Utilising SaaS technologies, Chrome River Expense delivers immediate payback via a service delivery model that requires no hardware, no software and no long-term commitment. Since the launch of Chrome River Expense 24 months ago, in the middle of a challenging economy, 13 of the Global Top 50 law firms have subscribed to the service, with now more than 50,000 individual users accessing Chrome River from 13 countries around the globe. Wednesday, January 27
Autonomy in legal - and there's more
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 27 Jan 2010 19:00 GMT
Just come off the phone from a telco with Autonomy + there is another wrap up release from the company. What the company is keen to stress is that whereas many vendors can still only offer point solutions (or at least combinations of best-of-breed software) Autonomy has always been a believer in end-to-end platforms. For example its new e-discovery appliance is the only product out there that can deliver an easy-to-use, plug-and-play solution that also handles ECA and legal hold.
Other points to note include... • the new iManage ConflictsManager app is available both as part of the overall suite and as a stand-alone system – which will presumably take it into new territories previously the turf of BPM/workflow vendors such as Metastorm. • Autonomy is promoting its 'chaining' concept as the next big idea. By chaining it means the way technology must increasingly link processes & data within corporate legal departments with law firms' processes and data, whereas previously (or at least before the recession) there was a disconnect. • Autonomy say its approach to 'meaning-based' computing mean its e-discovery products have a natural fit with the recent Jackson report's recommendations on relevancy and proportionality in the UK litigation support/e-disclosure market. Here's some of the release... ...The advantages of the Autonomy legal technology platform are driving the company’s continued market-share growth, with several recent customer wins including BAE, Bingham McCutcheon, CVR Energy, McAfee, Mayer Brown LLP and Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP. “Autonomy’s legal technology platform is ideally suited to meet the challenges and realities of the modern day practice of law,” said Mayer Brown partner Michael E. Lackey. “I believe that Autonomy’s ability to enable law firms to seamlessly collaborate with corporate clients may allow us to speed timeframes and reduce costs in e-discovery, allowing us to offer higher quality service and better outcomes for our clients.” Corporate legal departments and law firms face significant obstacles to achieving a fast and effective e-discovery process. Corporations often depend on multiple, disconnected point solutions from different technology providers. Each step in the process requires a costly and time-consuming hand-off of information. Because these tools lack the ability to form a conceptual understanding of the data, they are unable to automate the process of quickly identifying and holding only relevant information for each case. As a result, in a process where speed and accuracy are of paramount importance to success, law firms are often left with their hands tied while they wait for access to their corporate clients’ data. Autonomy provides a unique 'chaining' capability that transforms a slow, reactive, manual and costly process to one that is fast, proactive, automated, and cost-efficient. With one platform that covers every step in the EDRM, Autonomy can transparently move the data through the entire e-discovery process, eliminating the need for inefficient hand-offs of information between technology and service providers... Autonomy’s legal solutions now consist of the following: • Autonomy iManage WorkSite • Autonomy iManage Universal Search • Autonomy Records Manager • Autonomy iManage ConflictsManager – a new solution that enables law firms to streamline the management of their conflicts of interest process, iManage ConflictsManager detects patterns and reduces the risk and time for new client vetting procedures. • Autonomy Digital Safe – a massively scalable, hosted archive service that enables customers to outsource the storage and management of email messages, rich-media files, audio files, instant messages, and web content. With over 13 petabytes under management, Digital Safe is the world’s largest private cloud. • Autonomy eDiscovery Appliance – another new solution and the industry’s only e-discovery appliance that combines early case assessment (ECA) and legal hold capabilities. • Autonomy Legal Hold – automates the legal hold process, data & custodian identification, notification management, preservation & collection, including industry-first hold-in-place capabilities. • Autonomy Investigator Early Case Assessment – enables early case assessment with the ability to analyze and categorize enterprise Electronically Stored Information (ESI) using the Autonomy IDOL platform. • Autonomy Introspect – a scalable review, analysis, and processing solution, Introspect marks, tags, annotates, redacts, and numbers all ESI. • Autonomy DSMail – another new product: a self-service archiving solution for email management, governance, and e-discovery.
January Insider out now
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 27 Jan 2010 16:23 GMT
The January issue (no.227) of Legal Technology Insider newsletter (UK & EMEA) is out now. The digital edition has already hit desktops and the print issue is in the post. Contrary to reports, despite the sudden interest in the Insider by vacuum cleaner manufacturers (don't ask) we will not be producing a new Vacuum Technology Insider supplement.
IT implementers & outsourcers beware: telling porkies could cost you millions - UPDATED
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 27 Jan 2010 12:53 GMT
We don't usually cover technology-related legal issues but anyone in the IT outsourcing, system development and implementation market should take on board yesterday's decision by Mr Justice Ramsey (sitting in the London Technology& Construction Court) in the case of satellite TV broadcaster BSkyB -v- EDS (now part of Hewlett-Packard & known as HP Enterprise Services).
The case arose out of an upgrade project at Sky's customer services centre in Scotland. Begun in 2000 with a budget to cost £48million, after delays, cost overruns and 'woeful performance', EDS were dumped from the project and ultimately the project cost £265m. EDS's contract capped its liabilities at £30m however Sky successfully argued that because EDS made false representations to win the contract, the limitation clause was invalid. BSkyB said that if it were not for the misrepresentations by EDS, it would have awarded the contract to rival bidder PricewaterhouseCoopers. It now appears that HP/EDS could be liable for £200m in damages plus £70m in legal costs. All of which is a very expensive lesson in showing that if you tell porkies to win a contract, they could come back to bite you on the bum. Law firms seem to have been remarkably slow off the PR mark in issuing any comments on this case (perhaps they are all too busy watching Goldsmith squirm at the Iraq inquiry) however Stephen Wares, a technology underwriter at Hiscox, had this to say "The judgment catapults sales misrepresentation to the top of the list of risks facing IT professionals today. A mis-match between what your business can deliver versus what was promised in a sales pitch can have – as this case shows – expensive legal implications. This landmark decision could lead to a heightened level of litigation against technology suppliers and almost certainly increases the expectations of aggrieved clients for the amount of compensation that can be claimed for sales misrepresentation." (Our italics.) And here's a comment from Michael Arnold, a partner at Eversheds: "The case has considerable importance for IT system suppliers who attempt to sell systems which are untested or in the course of development. Suppliers will have to be extremely careful about the pre-contract representations that they make regarding the state of the system which is to be provided. Further, in view of the judge's comment on the credibility of witnesses, IT suppliers will need to pay particular attention to the qualifications of their sales personnel. "The case is also of interest to those customers who have recently taken delivery of systems which have failed to perform. It is anticipated that the damages awarded to BSkyB will be more than £200 million as the limitation cap on liability in the contract, which was £30 million, was ineffective as it did not cover liability for deceit. The decision regarding the limitation of liability cap not being applicable to deceit is unsurprising and reflects practitioners' view of the law. Nonetheless, this possible consequence is well worth noting by suppliers."
New Workshare whitepaper on meta information
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 27 Jan 2010 10:59 GMT
Here's more information on Workshare's new CIO Thoughtshare whitepaper on the Seven Dimensions of Meta Information...
"Document production is the life blood of our industry. Yet for all the effort put into creating them, we ignore much of the information about the documents. This ‘Meta information’ some of it created but not all of it made available by Workshare can present some fascinating opportunities in terms of improving efficiencies, reducing risk and remaining competitive in a world of accelerating change. This paper not only presents these opportunities, but poses the question, ‘Is it not just an opportunity but a necessity for law firms to start mining business information and make use of it?’ Workshare is looking for feedback on this paper, either directly or via our Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. If there is an appetite for this subject we will look to hold a round table event in March." Here's the link to the blog – http://tinyurl.com/yaeh44f – and a copy of the whitepaper is attached.  1 Attachments
Autonomy roll out trio of new products inc iManage conflict manager
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 27 Jan 2010 09:00 GMT
Autonomy this morning announced a trio of new products for the legal market, including a new conflicts manager app for iManage...
• Firstly, Autonomy announced the availability of iManage ConflictsManager. Powered by Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL), this identifies patterns in data and automatically acts on that knowledge to mitigate risk and accelerate the overall conflict screening process. Unlike legacy approaches, whose traditional keyword searches are limited to a finite number of data sources and laden with manual processes, Autonomy’s iManage ConflictsManager represents the first solution that automates time-consuming steps in the vetting procedure and thus minimizes the risk associated with this process. • Next up, Autonomy announced a new consolidated archiving solutions. Powered by meaning-based technology, Autonomy offers these solutions on-site, in the cloud or on an appliance, covering every size of organization, types of data and applications to meet the diverse needs of today’s legal market. Autonomy’s next-generation email archiving and management solutions automatically ingest, de-duplicate, index and extract metadata from all data types, including audio, video, web sites and SharePoint files. Autonomy IDOL automatically understands how to manage each piece of content, thus eliminating the burden of acquiring, implementing and managing local compliance grade storage, including the time and cost associated with backups, administration, software upgrades and technical support. The Autonomy solutions consist of: • Arcpliance – An on-premise digital archiving appliance that leverages the next-generation archiving capabilities of Autonomy Digital Safe to provide a turn-key and cost-effective archiving appliance. The appliance is ideal for mid-sized businesses or organizations seeking a simplified yet scalable solution for specific tasks – such as archiving application, divisional, or location-specific data. • Digital Safe – A cloud-based archiving solution which manages the world’s largest cloud-based archive at over 13 petabytes and currently archives at a rate of three million data objects per hour. • DSmail – A turnkey email archiving solution with end user web access (without stubbing) and basic governance and legal hold functions. DSmail is ideal for any size organization that is looking to start their investment in governance with affordable, cloud-based email archiving. • DSplus– Designed for companies in regulated industries as well as those embarking on a proactive governance campaign, DSplus offers advanced, meaning-based functions for monitoring, proactive policy management, ingestion of additional types of content, and advanced tools for compliance. • DSprofessional – Consolidated archiving and governance platform that applies advanced, meaning-based tools for search, eDiscovery, legal hold, classification and desktop collections to 400+ repositories and 1000+ file types. • Enterprise Archiving Solution (EAS) – A highly scalable on-premise solution that captures and preserves electronically stored information (ESI) for litigation readiness, information governance, and storage optimization. • WorkSite’s Email Management - Built on Autonomy IDOL, the solution delivers the industry’s first “suggestive filing” capability, allowing the computer to anticipate where the user would want to file the emails and recommend the appropriate location to the users. This helps to alleviate filing burdens for users and saves them time and increases their productivity. The iManage Email Management solution allows accessibility from multiple file formats and file types, including Microsoft Outlook, IBM Lotus Notes, the Web, as well as mobile devices, such as the Apple iPhone. • Finally, Autonomy today announced the availability of the Autonomy eDiscovery Appliance. Claimed to be the industry’s only eDiscovery appliance that combines early case assessment (ECA) and legal hold capabilities, the Autonomy eDiscovery Appliance arms general counsel and law firm partners with a powerful solution for quickly defining and executing an e-discovery strategy. Powered by Autonomy’s meaning-based technology, this highly scalable platform provides an extremely fast and effective on-ramp to the e-discovery process. The Autonomy eDiscovery Appliance delivers a broad set of unique capabilities including: • FRCP-complaint search capabilities – unlike legacy technologies which are limited to stemming, Autonomy provides true meaning-based technology • Analyze-in-Place – the only solution that can analyze data in-place, prior to collection, from more than 400 enterprise data sources • Advanced visual analytics – link maps, automatically generated concept clusters and message tracers provide legal counsel with a bird’s-eye view of the data corpus • All data types – ability to handle more than 1,000 file types natively, including audio and video • Petabyte scalability – the Autonomy Discovery appliance is the only solution able to handle petabytes of data • Extensive reporting and analytics – the only FRCP-compliant and defensible solution provides extensive reporting and visibility into the process. |
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