Here’s our latest round-up of Asia-Pacific news (a mere 24 hours later than scheduled)…The big story this week is that the US/Australian systems house Swerdlove (in Australia previously Timeframe) has secured distribution deals for two new products. www.swerdlove.com• Smart WebParts (SWP) has granted Swerdlove exclusive rights to sell Smart Time in Australia. Web-based Smart Time is a new on-demand time capture and entry application which will be officially released worldwide on September 15, 2009. Smart Time is ideal for professionals such as lawyers, accountants and consultants that bill hourly. The web-based software provides timekeepers with a detailed report of their daily work activities, answering the question: “What did I do today and is it billable?” By searching across various network applications which a timekeeper uses throughout an average day, such as Microsoft Exchange, document management systems, VoIP phone systems, and Blackberry Enterprise Servers, Smart Time captures, consolidates and reports on time spent. Then, a journal of time spent is sent to the timekeepers to allow them to assign project or matter codes to time entries, and to export the transaction to the accounting system. Smart Time simplifies the time-note construction process; finding missed or leaked time that may not otherwise get billed. The system actually increases a firm’s billable hours and increases profitability, rapidly yielding a total return-on-investment (ROI). www.smart-webparts.comAnd• PensEra Knowledge Technologies has entered into a partnership with Swerdlove to deliver the TimeKM enterprise suite of products to the APAC region. TimeKM offers an integrated time-tracking environment designed specifically to help the legal profession recover more billable time with less effort. It connects to key law firm business processes and lawyer work habits including systems such as email, mobility and VoIP as potential time capture opportunities, with the landing of time entries in the firm’s practice management system. PensEra said a key factor was Swerdlove’s experience with top tier practice management systems such as Elite and Aderant. www.timekm.comIn other news…• The Orange Rag is now working on an Asia-Pacific version of the Insider top 250 chart and will show the regions largest law firms plus the major legal IT systems they are running. More details to follow. You can find a copy of the latest version of the UK chart attached below.• The Legal IT Asia Conference will take place on 18 & 19 December in Beijing. Speakers we’ve heard of include Janet Day of Berwin Leighton Paisner and Marcel Henri of Salans. For more details email [email protected] or visit www.legalitasia.com• As previously reported on this blog, 70
lawyer M+K Lawyers, which has offices in Melbourne, Sydney and
Victoria, has selected 3E as its new practice management system. The
firm’s chief financial officer Len Methananda said the firm selected
Elite 3E because they needed “a practice management system that will
easily scale as our business grows and also allow us to meet evolving
and unanticipated client expectation.” Adding that “We have been
constrained by our current system’s dated technology and its ‘band aid’
approach to new functionality.” Orange
Rag sources say the firm currently runs an old Aderant CMS system but
had “stopped speaking to Aderant years ago” and that “the marriage had
been over a long time ans it was only a case of when the divorce would
be announced.”