Well done systems house Contesto AS of Norway who has just won the 2011 OpenText eDOCS Partner of the Year award for its efforts on behalf of eDOCS DMS communities inside the Nordic region and across EMEA. Contesto has been a premier partner of OpenText in the Nordics for over 10 years and now supports over 70 customers on OpenText solutions, with a strong position within Oil and Gas, Legal and Energy sectors. Contesto also develops modules and add-ons on top of OpenText products to comply with requirements from the Norwegian market.
www.contesto.no
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Wednesday, November 30
Unlike Eurovision, Norway doesn't get 'nul' points
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 30 Nov 2011 08:59 GMT
Tuesday, November 29
New Cloud Computing guide - or why not every cloud has a silver lining
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 29 Nov 2011 11:16 GMT
Here's a handy little 10-step 101 guide (see attached PDF) to cloud computing prepared by Arlene Adams and the Peppermint Technology team. The subtext of the guide is that cloud may be a useful solution in some situations but not every cloud has its silver lining and you could find your data lost in the datacentre from hell.
The 10 points covered in the guide are... 1. Make sure you are clear about the terms being used 2. Understand in detail the company you are contracting with 3. Understand the ownership structure and tier of the datacentre 4. Understand your risk exposure to data security 5. Qualify who owns the infrastructure and what they can do with it 6. Review in detail the technical infrastructure 7. Review in detail the process of what happens if things go wrong 8. Don't focus purely on contractual SLAs 9. Beware of consultants (we like that one ..CC) 10. Enjoy the benefits  1 AttachmentsMonday, November 28
Bighand user conference report: Dragon takes off
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 28 Nov 2011 11:12 GMT
We couldn't attend last week's Bighand UK user conference in London however one of our elves was there and took this note for us...
Hosted at the newly refurbished 5-star Renaissance Hotel in St Pancras, London yesterday [celebrity watch in the foyer quickly became a conference sport with Sophie Ellis-Bextor spotted early on] the 260 delegates at the BigHand European Legal & Professional User Conference witnessed the unveiling of BigHand4.2, and with it – it seems – the genuine restoration of speech recognition as a practical business solution for law firms. Just as the breakthroughs in art and literature sparked a cultural revival in the 15th century from which the conference venue took its name, a seriously improved engine from Dragon gracefully leveraged for lawyers and secretaries by BigHand appears to have now led us to a moment of enlightenment for speech recognition in legal. The conference heard that since the last release of its server-based speech recognition integration with Dragon, BigHand has surveyed a pool of 2000 server-based speech recognition users in legal (out of 145,000 BigHand software users in total) and have introduced several user-led advanced recognition features (see last week's Orange Rag blog and newsletter coverage for more details) that have the potential to make the technology as ubiquitous a choice for law firms as digital dictation workflow has now become. A key note from Peter Mackinnon, SVP & GM at Nuance (manufacturers of the Dragon engine) on the future of voice highlighted that Dragon now has 21 million desktop users worldwide and that, alongside the rise of Siri on the iPhone which Peter was more than happy to reference, is proving that the quality of the technology is not now the barrier “but it is all about adoption”. Several early adopter firms present reported the recent leap from Dragon version 10 to version 11 has proved significant, and a case study by a partner at Hammonds profiled his use of Speech Recognition technology to write all 250,000 words for his new legal book within 6 months. The mid-morning Speech Recognition Panel discussion saw Kay Oliver at Maxwell Winward and David Bason at Shoosmiths discuss success rates within their own server-based speech recognition installations. The consensus was that while BigHand’s treatment of the engine is now making it the transformative legal technology it has long been promising to be, a minority within any firm will still resist its usage and that widespread uptake will pick up momentum over a period of 12-36 months. Transformation and innovation were as ever a central theme for Ari Kaplan in both his CIO Forum and his post lunch Conference sessions [a book signing during the coffee break was so popular it saw Ari run out of copies of his new book]. Ari’s dynamic themes led perfectly into a lively Panel discussion on the changing mobility landscape within law firms, and specifically the challenges of supporting increasing numbers of personal devices within the work environment. Karen Jacks at Bird & Bird outlined their approach to a new fleet of iPads, and Angela McMahon of Mishcon de Reya outlined her belief that the increased interest in smartphone and tablets from partners should be embraced, wherever possible, given how long we have been trying to get them interested in technology full stop. Downloaded apps rather than device choice, it was concluded, now presents the next significant challenge in fleet management and security. A post-conference Speech Recognition and SpeechMike3 promotion is being offered by BigHand, those interested were invited email accountmanagement@bighand.com before the end of December for more details. Sunday, November 27
APAC New round-up - and a new publication on its way
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 27 Nov 2011 22:26 GMT
Here's our latest round-up of Asia-Pacific news...
• WESTLAW LAUNCHES IN AUSTRALIA Thomson Reuters has launched Westlaw AU offering extensive content from case law and journals, legislation and commentary to precedents, encyclopaedia and news, as well as legal and tax information. The technology behind the intuitive search capability within Westlaw AU helps point users to precise points of law and offers a new level of confidence that information is authoritative, current and the results are comprehensive. Westlaw AU is developed specifically for Australian customers and is modeled after Thomson Reuters online legal information services in the United Kingdom, United States, Asia, India and South America. Jackie Rhodes, CEO for Thomson Reuters legal businesses in Australia & New Zealand, said Westlaw AU also features FirstPoint, the first and most comprehensive case digest and case citator service in Australia, as well as the only digest service that allows browsing by subject. Additional features of the service allow for the creation of alerts for new content, and the ability to create and customize folders to organize, store and retrieve information efficiently. "This launch represents a big step for Thomson Reuters by significantly enhancing our leadership position in the legal market in Australia," said Rhodes. "It represents an outstanding example of what can be achieved when we listen to our customers and apply local knowledge and expertise to a globally developed platform." • HOLMAN WEBB SELECTS BIGHAND DDS Holman Webb, with offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, has switched from its incumbent digital dictation system to v4 of BigHand's digital dictation workflow application. Since upgrading from their old digital dictation system to BigHand, Holman Webb’s Brisbane office has been able to centralise and control all digital dictation workflows, maximising the productivity of staff across the board. The firm had selected BigHand based on the ease of set-up, administration, the limited IT overhead required to maintain the system on an ongoing basis, and its market leading Mobility Suite. The firm has successfully introduced BigHand for iPhone, resulting in a more mobile workforce and increased productivity on-the-go. Christine Guy, Practice Manager at Holman Webb’s Brisbane office commented on the benefits of BigHand "As a dynamic law firm, it is integral to our strategy to deliver best of breed service. BigHand provides innovative features that enhance the productivity of our firm. After a very smooth upgrade from the old system, the benefits of BigHand were immediately obvious across the board – advanced workflows now allow legal assistants to work-share, security has been increased as authors can mark dictations as confidential, pop-ups allow legal assistants and lawyers to prioritise workload, and management can address turnaround times, peaks, and bottlenecks through the analytics reporting module. All of which has greatly increased efficiency and control. As a result lawyers are getting transcriptions back ahead of time and documents to clients more quickly. "Introducing the smartphone solution has also been a huge hit withwith the Partners who greatly appreciate being able to dictate anytime and anywhere on their mobile device. This has enabled them to increase their output and to provide a higher level of client service. Our next plan is to increase the smartphone usage within the firm and to look at integrating BigHand with our FileSite platform." • CLAYTON UTZ GOES WITH HIGHQ Clayton Utz has become the latest APAC firm to sign up for HighQ Solutions secure extranet and collaboration portal. • AUSTRALIA's No #1 & #2 LAW FIRMS GO WITH DOCSCORP Minter Ellison, one of the largest law firms in the Asia Pacific region, has abandoned its legacy comparison application in favour of pdfDocs compareDocs and pdfDocs OCR Desktop with its “anything-to-anything” document comparison capability. Commenting on the decision to go with compareDocs, Garry Meikle, Minter Ellison's National Applications Manager, said the firm had undertaken extensive testing and comparison of various products. "In the key areas of stability, accuracy, presentation consistency and handling of Chinese documents, compareDocs was as good as or even better than the others. The clincher for us was the compareDocs UI and the way it integrated with Autonomy iManage and MS Word out of the box. The product was much easier to use, and could be deployed with minimum training and disruption to our users. Feedback from our lawyers and secretaries has been very positive." The Minter Ellison deal follows last month’s decision by the second largest law firm in Australia, Mallesons Stephen Jaques, to also adopt the pdfDocs compareDocs and OCR Desktop solution as its preferred document comparison solution. • AND FINALLY, COMING SOON TO A DESKTOP NEAR YOU  Finally, Legal Technology Insider Limited, the publishers of The Orange Rag are pleased to announce that in the New Year, we will be launching a new edition of our Legal Technology Insider newsletter for the Asia-Pacific market, including Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia as well as the emerging Chinese and Indian legal markets. Called Asia Pacific Legal Technology Insider, the newsletter will launch in February as a PDF digital zine and will be available free of charge to anyone registering at apac@legaltechnology.com (we are are starting to compile the distribution list now). The zine will also be published via this blog and promoted on Twitter at @ChristianUncut Friday, November 25
Something for the weekend: who said this & are associates getting younger?
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 25 Nov 2011 13:07 GMT
Quick quiz but we are not going to tell you the answer but which IT director said this about which legal IT supplier?
"You really are alienating the very people who will be making the decisions. The partners in law firms generally employ someone to head up IT as their main focus is doing legal work. Most of them wouldn’t have a clue what your platform does. And even for those who would bother to go to the website, it isn’t patently obvious to a non-technologist what it does/how it would work for them. "IT Directors simply cannot tolerate people who try to get around them – which is exactly what your mailing is intended to do. We have demands on us daily (if not hourly) for more stuff. My switchboard will tell you that they route on average 40 calls a day straight through to my voicemail from vendors. There are many tales told among my peers of vendors who, when not being awarded business, contact the managing partner to complain. They are always given short shrift. "So, no, your campaign didn’t offend me, I just thought it was very silly and not properly thought through. At worst you will have offended some of my peers and at best you’ve wasted marketing funds." And finally some thoughts on the use of associates in the ediscovery process... 
Headline keynote signed up for LawTech Futures event
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 25 Nov 2011 08:47 GMT
Gerd Leonard has been confirmed as the lead keynote speaker at next March's LawTech Futures 2012 event. The Wall Street Journal describes Gerd "one of the leading media futurists in the world". He is the co-author of The Future of Music (Berklee Press, 2005), as well as the author of The End of Control (2007) and Friction is Fiction (2009,).
Gerd's background is in the music business: in 1985 he won a Quincy Jones Award and subsequently worked 12 years as a professional guitar player, composer and producer. He then spent a decade as digital media entrepreneur and start-up internet CEO, based in San Francisco. In 2001, Gerd returned to Europe and started his career as a futurist and strategic advisor. He now travels around the globe and speaks at major conferences and business events, company retreats and think tanks on the future of business, media, content and entertainment, technology, marketing, branding, telecommunications and culture. Gerd is considered a leading expert on topics such as online commerce models, the tele-media economy, social media and social commerce, mobile content, innovation, leadership and entrepreneurship, consumer trends, copyright, licensing and IPR issues, next-generation advertising, marketing and branding, digital content strategies, and the development of next-generation business models for the content, communications and technology industries. Gerd’s diverse client list includes Google, Nokia, NSN, Amdocs, The Guardian, Sony-BMG, Telkom Indonesia, Siemens, RTL, ITV, the BBC, France Telecom, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, MTN, The Financial Times, DDB / Tribal DDB, Ogilvy, Omnicom, the European Commission and many others. Thursday, November 24
November Legal Technology Insider is out now
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 24 Nov 2011 12:03 GMT
The November issue of the Legal Technology Insider* newsletter (UK & EMEA edition) is out now. Top stories include...
• Copitrak/Nikec Solutions announce first NetBox Blue win with Taylor Vinters • LexisNexis Nimbus on schedule says Tim Cheadle • Egress is fresh on the radar • Ediscovery is in the news - and not hust for litigation • and we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the worlds first business computer - hello LEO - + the 40th anniversary of the first microprocessor - hello Intel 4004 you little 4 bit chip off the silicon block • plus all November's wins, deals & rollouts Coming soon... we have a round-up of Australia news on Friday 25th November - the next issue of American Legal Technology Insider is out on Thursday 1 December – and the next UK & EMEA Insider is out on 15th December. * The UK & EMEA Insider is a subscription only publication Wednesday, November 23
Bighand to release new versaion of its software
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 23 Nov 2011 16:08 GMT
Tomorrow voice technology specialist Bighand holds its annual user conference in London and on the agenda will be the launch of a new version software – BigHand 4.2. We've had a sneak preview of the software, which takes a step forward in making speech recognition accessible to all types of authors and for a much broader range of work. Here are some of the highlights...
• One Click Voice to Email – instantly launch emails within Outlook and pre-populate the subject and body with automatically transcribed text, all from a single icon in the BigHand recorder. • Formatting Control via Voice Commands – improve the formatting of transcription via voice commands including the ability to bold, italicise, underline, capitalise and bullet. • Instructions Mode – improve the speed of document production, instructional text is highlighted within the transcription and is easily identifiable during proofreading. • Enhanced Secretarial Proofreading Tools – ensure accuracy of automatically transcribed documents by instantly exporting text into Word templates and proofreading at high speed. • Advanced Speech Recognition Analytics – enable more sophisticated management reporting on the use of speech recognition to promote best practice and help resource planning. • Enhanced Smartphone support – increase mobile productivity with support for new smartphone platforms: iPhone iOS5 and Android 2.3, plus Bluetooth for hands-free dictation. According to Ben Mills, managing director, Bighand EMEA Legal & Professional Services "We are incredibly excited about the launch of BigHand 4.2. Our new software is the result of our experience in delivering successful speech recognition projects and extensive consultation with users through a series of customer focus groups. We have developed new features that make speech recognition technology available to a much wider group of authors. We have also developed new proofreading tools that will further improve secretarial efficiency. "We understand that having the right technology in place is just one part in the process. We believe BigHand project delivery makes the difference between a satisfactory deployment and a great deployment. Our expertise in managing projects and driving user adoption is backed up by the high levels of service and support that customers have come to expect from BigHand."
Guest article: Predicting the future of disclosure
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 23 Nov 2011 11:38 GMT
Here's a case study on the effectiveness of predictive coding technology to determine relevance in e-disclosure/ediscovery projects by Dominic Lacey and Jamie Tanner of Eversheds LLP and James Moeskops of Millnet Limited
What is Predictive Coding Technology? Predictive coding technology uses statistical sampling techniques to score the relevance of documents. A sub-set of documents are the subject of a human review. This human review creates a model that is then applied to the wider set of documents, each of which is scored against the model for relevance. In this case the software used was Equivio Relevance. Documents for review are loaded into the Equivio Relevance software whiche only looks at document text, not family relationships etc. Accordingly, families are separated and all documents de-duplicated at attachment level. The human review then commences. This is an iterative process. Initially random batches are presented to the reviewer by the software. Each document is scored by the reviewer as either relevant or irrelevant to the matters in issue. Over time a set of rules or a model is created. Once a threshold of stability is reached the software can be applied to all of documents whereby the software scores the relevance of each document. The technique is based on the text of documents, so does have limitations in respect of plans/ drawings, photographs and number only documents, eg spreadsheets. The methodology works to link associations and words in the text. It is much more than key word searching. The Case Study The initial harvesting of documents was done with reference to custodians, date ranges and key word filters. Predictive coding is a purely second stage process. In this case, in excess of 250,000 top level documents were harvested. These documents were then de-duplicated at top level and loaded into Equivio Relevance. The lead reviewer then started the process. The first step was to review 1000 documents selected by the software on an entirely random basis. Of the 1000 documents presented, the lead reviewer considered only 42 documents to have any relevance to the matters in issue. The next stage in the iterative review process was to review batches of documents. The software presented the reviewer with batches of documents, each documents being classified as relevant or not relevant. Each time a batch of documents was completed, the software applies statistical algorithms to analyse the text contained within the batch of documents reviewed against those documents classified as relevant and not relevant in all previous batches reviewed. In total the lead reviewer reviewed circa 2000 documents being the initial random 1000 documents and a further 1000 in multiple batches. Through the batch review process the software learns. The process could be seen to be working with the batches being presented for review towards the end of the process with roughly half of the documents being relevant (the software deliberately continues to present documents it classifies as irrelevant to ensure the reviewer is kept alert and consistent). Through the review process the model is refined until the consistency of review produces a stable model to apply to all documents. The application of the model to the whole set of documents takes a number of hours to run and in our case was done overnight. The software does not decide between relevance or irrelevance. The result is that each document is given a percentage relevance score between 0-to-100. The documents were presented grouped into ten percentile bands, eg X number of documents are shown to be in the 0% – 10% band, Y in the 11% to 20% band etc. Documents with a 0% score are documents without text, such as photographs. The decision is then where to make the cut. We carried out a sampling review of the extremes of the results. This confirmed that the 0-10% scores and the 91-100% scores were almost entirely irrelevant and relevant respectively. Documents in the middle ranges were then sampled to make a determination of where to determine the boundary. The cut made resulted in 7000 documents being considered relevant for further review and the balance being irrelevant. This was a conservative judgement, but significantly reduced the number of documents for manual review. The documents that made the cut numbered some 7000 documents. This was a manageable number to review compared to the starting pool of over 250,000. These documents were manually reviewed for privilege and relevance prior to disclosure. Sampling Results A quality audit process was also carried out on the results to verify the effectiveness of Equivio Relevance. This took place over a number of weeks. It was not a rushed audit under pressure but a proper and carefully considered review. Of the documents deemed irrelevant, a sample of 20% were manually reviewed. From the manual review, 1.7% of the documents manually reviewed were judged relevant, but incorrectly classified as irrelevant by Equivio Relevance. Put another way more than 98% of the documents deemed irrelevant were correctly coded as irrelevant. The standard for predictive coding is not perfection (ie perfect categorisation of documents as relevant/non relevant for a particular matter). The standard is whether the results can be shown to have been effective. Human review is not the gold standard for disclosure. A 2010 study* comparing the results of human review against computer review found that the computer review was at least as accurate as manual review. Rather, a study by Grossman & Cormack** concluded “the myth that exhaustive manual review is the most effective – and therefore, the most defensible – approach to document review is strongly refuted. Technology assisted review can (and does) yield more accurate results than exhaustive manual review, with much lower effort.” The particular processes found to be superior in the study are both interactive, employing a combination of computer and human input. The study considered whether manual reviewers would have had the same error rate had they reviewed the entire disclosure rather than batches, and found that reviewers would tend to miss “needles in the haystack” due to fatigue, inattention, boredom and other related human factors. Costs Implications & Limitations It is estimated that to carry out a human review for relevance of 250,000 documents would take many hundreds of lawyer days and cost well in excess of £1,000,000. The process of Equivio Relevance assisted review was completed for a fraction of this cost and in a much faster time frame. The obvious limitations of predictive coding technology are that it is a textual analysis. It is ineffective with drawings, photographs etc and has limitations with regard to spreadsheets. Best Practice The use of predictive coding software is downstream from the preservation, collection, processing and other initial review and filtering stages in the electronic disclosure process. Therefore, it is critical that the approaches, judgement calls and technologies used to identify the sub-set of documents against which predictive coding technology is applied are therefore robust and defensible. Predictive coding is lawyer led. The effectiveness of the process is determined by the ability of the person undertaking the sampling review. It is strongly suggested that this person should be the partner with responsibility for the conduct of the matter. There must be some degree of considered quality control checking. On large datasets this will involve sampling and document reviewing from the relevant/non-relevant categories and may involve iterative adjustments to improve the effectiveness of the predictive coding results. Court’s Approach to Predictive Coding Technology There has been considerable commentary and some case studies (particularly in the US) on the use of predictive coding, although to date there has not been a single judgment in any jurisdiction relating specifically to the use of predictive coding. However, in Goodale v The Ministry of Justice, Senior Master Whitaker endorsed the use of predictive coding “this [case] is a prime candidate for the application of software that providers now have, which can de-duplicate that material and render it down to a more reasonable size and search it by computer to produce a manageable corpus for human review – which is of course the most expensive part of the exercise. Indeed, when it comes to review, I am aware of software that will effectively score each document as to its likely relevance and which will enable a prioritisation of categories within the entire document set.” The New Practice Direction 31B CPR which applies to proceedings started on or after 1 October 2010 deals specifically with disclosure of electronic documents. It includes a general principle that “technology should be used in order to ensure that document management activities are undertaken efficiently and effectively.” In addition, parties are required to discuss the “tools and techniques (if any) which should be considered to reduce the burden and cost of disclosure of electronic documents” which includes the use of “agreed software tools.” These provisions make it clear that technology may be employed in the e-disclosure process, subject always to the overriding principles of reasonableness and proportionality. * Document Categorization in Legal E-Discovery: Computer Classification vs. Manual Review, Herb Roitblat, Anne Kershaw and Patrick Oot, January 2010 ** Technology-Assisted Review in E-Discovery Can Be More Effective and More Efficient Than Exhaustive Manual Review, Maura R. Grossman & Gordon V. Cormack Tuesday, November 22
LawTech Futures - a great new event for a new year
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 22 Nov 2011 11:24 GMT
OK, we're going commercial here but it is time to mention LawTech Futures, a new event (combining three conference/presentation stages and an exhibition) that Legal Technology Insider (the publishers of the Orange Rag) and NetLaw Media (probably best known for their Partners Club and Key Strategies for Law Firms events) have been jointly developing over the past few months. The speakers are now all signed up, as are most of the sponsors and stand spaces (still some room left), the website is filling up nicely and the programme is at the printers so here we go with the news coverage. Here are some of the key facts...
With LawTech Futures, we are setting out to deliver a new benchmark in legal technology events, shows and conferences in the UK legal sector. We are producing an event experience that delivers three stages, multi-stream conference sessions, keynote presentations, panel discussions, interviews, debates and interactive demonstrations, conducted by some of the most highly respected professionals from both the legal and commercial technology worlds. To-date we already have over 35 well known presenters exploring and unveiling new systems, processes and platforms that will drive law firms and legal businesses into the next decade and beyond. • LawTech Futures is taking place at the Victoria Park Plaza, London on the 15th of March 2012 and tickets are on sale from £245.00 now. For more information visit www.lawtechfutures.com and follow the #LawTechFutures #hashtag on Twitter. SPECIAL OFFER: To kick off our promotion of LawTech Futures to Legal Technology Insider and Orange rag blog readers, we offering 100 double passes (worth £490.00 + VAT each) free-of-charge to the first 100 law firms or inhouse legal departments (and only those people – vendors and consultants not involved in the event will have to pay their own way) to register for the event. The special offer registration code you need to enter onto the LawTech Futures website is LTicomp100 |
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