Time for a mega roundup of Australian legal IT news including new products, new offices, new deals plus the key events and developments from… Nikec Solutions + GlobalX Legal Solutions & PEXA + LexisNexis & Microsoft + Papersuit + Janders Dean + Phoenix Business Solutions + Red Rain
• Nikec Solutions, a provider of technologies to enhance business efficiencies, continues to expand internationally with the opening of a new office in Sydney. To manage the new office, Nikec Solutions has hired James Kenney who assumes the role of Regional Manager ANZ. Kenney brings over 6 years of experience in the professional services sector, most recently as a Business Development Manager at Law In Order, a supplier of hard copy and electronic document processing services. Nikec Solutions’ office is situated in the heart of the CBD with the new contact details as follows: Nikec Solutions, Level 12, Plaza Building, Australia Square, 95 Pitt Street, Sydney NSW 2000. Tel: +61 (0)2 8079 5208.
• GlobalX Legal Solutions has released its next generation practice management solution for Australian law firms: Open Practice 8. Open Practice currently supports over 7400 legal professionals across 500 firms nationally, including Gadens Victoria and Western Australia, Kemp Strang, CBP Lawyers, Thynne and Macartney and Coleman Greig and was recently awarded the contract to support the Solicitor for the Northern Territory, a division of the Department of Attorney-General and Justice. GlobalX Chief Operating Officer Peter Maloney said “This latest version release of Open Practice will be the most advanced on the market, and will create greater workflow solutions, provide real-time information and services, allowing firms to manage the entire legal process from the one central desktop including matters, documents, time, billing, fees, client relationship management, search, conveyancing and financials.
+ GlobalX Legal Solutions has also signed an agreement with Property Exchange Australia Limited (PEXA) to deliver electronic property transactions to thousands of Australian lawyers and conveyancers in 2015. The company is the first organisation to sign on as a sponsor of PEXA with the deal now providing GlobalX’s customers and other practice management providers with a single interface for the new exchange, incorporating all existing product and software solutions. GlobalX said that along with delivering PEXA to the company’s existing online search, conveyancing and practice management software solutions users, it will also support an additional 8,000 practitioners via strategic partnerships with LexisNexis, Law Master and CATS.
• The LexisNexis and Microsoft joint drafting tool Lexis for Microsoft Office has been awarded Best New Product plus also won the Product Innovation category in The Australian Business Awards 2014.
Lexis for Microsoft Office allows lawyers to find, analyse, and act upon validated legal content without having to leave their email or Microsoft Word documents with international results showing legal practitioners can validate citations up to 32% and find background information up to 19% faster using this tool. “We believe Lexis for Microsoft Office will transform the way Australian lawyers work increasing efficiency, productivity and accuracy, thus enabling lawyers to focus on what is important – delivering sound legal guidance, representation and building a strong reputation”, said Dr Marc Peter,COO, LexisNexis Asia Pacific.
How it Works:
While reviewing a Word document or Microsoft Outlook® e-mail message, users can access content and resources from LexisNexis, the internet, or their corporate files. Just some of the key features are such as:
• Background – The analytics software detects case and legislation names and citations, legal terms and phrases, entities such as company names and presents results in a an easy to recognize format whilst integrating the power of the CaseBase Signal indicators along with the analysis. Simply click on a detected item to have the world of LexisNexis and the web present the related information, including full cases or Acts in a right hand pane whilst remaining in the document and keeping you in the drafting concentration zone.
• PDF Import – integrates a marketing leading pdf scanning software to enable complex documents delivered in PDF to be delivered to you in MS Word format for your review and editing activity.
• Search – A single useful search box delivering one-click access to the vast collection of legal content from LexisNexis, the internet and the user’s internal company information database.
• Check Cited Docs – With one click consolidate all cited references into one easy to review report enabling the ability to focus in on only those citations that need your attention.
To access and use these capabilities, users will require a current CaseBase subscription. For more information on Lexis for Microsoft Office, visit www.lexisnexis.com.au/lmo
This product looks interesting >> PaperSuit, a platform offering expedited document processes for law firms has had its public launch for the global market. The system is already available in Australia and is now being launched into the US, India, the UK and Western Europe.
PaperSuit is a web-based document sharing service that aims to disrupt specialized document sharing services like virtual datarooms and legal extranets. Skyhatch, the makers of PaperSuit, discovered the need for a solution for lawyers and bankers seeking ways to expedite their document-related efforts during deals, cases and negotiations. Most professional services firms have dealt with virtual dataroom or extranet providers in the past. These providers tend to offer a basic service covering mainly security and access control. Others offer a Swiss Army Knife of features: each adding only marginal benefits with a focus on compliance and reporting. PaperSuit offers exclusive features including document workflow management, document-integrated Q&A system, document access analytics and branded portals. Since it serves highly regulated and sensitive industries, PaperSuit wraps all these features in a blanket of high security, accountability and auditability.
“Our aim is to empower professional services firms to better handle their information management practices while amplifying their image in the process,” said Ash Patel, Director of Business Development for Skyhatch. “We found that many firms are getting short-changed in terms of the value they get for the exorbitant fees they currently pay for such services.”
The service is free for low-capacity and trial use where 1GB of documents can be stored and 5 collaborators can be invited. It’s priced competitively in relation to similar specialised solutions – virtual dataroom and legal extranet providers – rather than competing against fast-growing document sharing providers like Box, Google Drive and Dropbox.
Event News >> One of the most popular events on the APAC legal IT calendar is the annual Janders Dean Legal Knowledge & Innovation Conference (this year’s event takes place: 18 & 19 September 2014, Sydney) This year Janders Dean International and Phoenix Business Solutions invite you to participate in the first APAC Legal Technology Survey. It’s a flash survey; it should take less than 15 minutes and it focuses on what matters to you most! The Survey is now open to all law firms in the APAC region, and will close on Friday, 15 August 2014. The results will be delivered to attendees at this year’s conference. The survey contains 25 multiple choice questions and all information submitted will be anonymised. All those who participate will be placed into a unique prize draw for the chance to win an exclusive Janders Dean International and Phoenix Business Solutions Foosball Table for their IT department. To complete the survey, please click here. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BZLYKWY
And in more Janders Dean news: The 2014 Legal Innovation Index is now open, inviting law firms and in-house legal teams to showcase the cutting edge innovations that are enhancing the productivity and profitability of their organisation. The 2014 index will identify the top legal firms and in-house teams driving innovation across knowledge sharing, cost and time management, client service delivery and employee engagement, amongst other criteria. Last year’s Index identified the Top 10 trans-Tasman legal innovators as: AdventBalance, Emil Ford, Gilbert + Tobin, King & Wood Mallesons, Marque, Maurice Blackburn, Pod Legal, Watermark and Westpac from Australia and Chen Palmer from New Zealand.
Judged by innovation and legal experts from Australia and around the world, the 2014 Legal Innovation Indexwill be released at the 7th Annual Janders Dean Legal Knowledge & Innovation Conference in Sydney on the 18th September 2014. “Innovation is the future of the legal profession in Australia and New Zealand. The reality is that in an increasingly competitive, commercially orientated profession, our ability to innovate will determine our success or otherwise”, explains TJ Viljoen, CEO of LexisNexis Asia Pacific.
“The index sets a benchmark for the profession, and highlights the pace at which the industry is changing. We want to inspire and encourage the great initiatives that are already taking place, and to demonstrate that law firms, in-house legal teams, individuals and emerging third party players are helping to positively disrupt the legal landscape. Innovation is already here, it is just that some are more innovative than others and their outstanding achievements deserve recognition”, says Justin North, Director, Janders Dean.
Firms and in-house legal teams will be assessed on their holistic approach to innovation based on the below criteria and will be asked to provide one or more projects, programs, initiatives and/or cultural evidence to support their innovation submission.
To enter companies and teams are asked to submit short proposals based on one or many of the criteria below:
· Knowledge Sharing & Collaboration
· Client Services & Delivery
· Employee Engagement
· Application of Technology and Process
· Cost Management
Entries close on 15 August, 2014. To enter go to http://lexisnexis.com.au/legal-innovation-index/
• Finally, two items of news from Red Rain Corporation…
Property & Development Law (PD Law) is a boutique North Queensland based law firm specialising in property and development legal services. The firm started in 2003 with just 2 people and now has grown to a team of 10 people that offers a comprehensive suite of business, property and consumer based legal solutions to the Whitsunday region. Melinda Cox, PD Law’s CEO, attributes the firm’s success and growth to its specialist focus and a passion for excellent client service. “Client service is how many clients distinguish one law firm from another. Consistent and outstanding service means that our clients are likely to use our services again. We provide an experience they can expect every time they call on us, and offer first class technical advice and excellent value for money.”
Key to the delivery of services has been the use of technology and the firm’s innovative attitude has seen with the recent roll out of the RedView Client Portal suite of software to allow their clients to access key information about the legal matters via the web and via their mobile devices. “Our clients today want to have access to their matters whenever they want. They use their mobile phone for their banking and finance and a myriad of other things and they want information about their legal matters as well. Red Rain’s RedView is a huge benefit to the business and for our clients, who now have access to their information at weekends, out of office hours, literally 24/7!” says Cox.
“With RedView, in just a couple of taps or clicks, our clients can immediately access information that they would normally have received in the post or via email, then much more”. Cox said “The opportunities for efficiencies are huge and the PD Law team are very keen to give clients immediate access to documents in one place”.
The highly customisable nature of the RedView product has allowed the firm build a secure environment that displays only the information and documents that they need the client to see so that there is no confusion for the parties. The first part of the RedView roll out is to the firm’s clients. The next stage is to provide the same facilities to the estate agents that firm works with on a day to day basis, albeit with a different view of the information. To see PD Law’s client portal in action click here http://pdlaw.com.au/pdl-portal
+ Red Rain Corporation this week released their most recent mobile app: RedView Mobile Timesheet. The app is designed to give lawyers the ability to capture time and manage their timesheet via their mobile phone or tablet.
“If lawyers and staff are recording time at the end of each day the firm is almost certainly missing out on revenue.” said Stephen Butler, Red Rain’s CEO. “RedView Mobile Timesheet uses intelligently simple technology to make recording time painless. Mobile Timesheet records every call and email your staff make through the app. It then automatically associates the billable time to the relevant matter – meaning those small, often-forgotten distractions will now increase your revenue” said Mr Butler. “If your staff meet clients face-to-face, they can record it on the spot. Or, if they forget to start the timer, they can easily allocate time once the meeting ends”.
RedView Mobile Lawyer features include:
● Rapid and simple creation of time using smartphones and tablets
● Select a matter from most recently accessed or a list of favorites
● Intelligent filtering of matter lists based on context
● Automatically record time for phone calls and emails
● With the tablet, a calendar overview of the week
RedView Mobile Lawyer is available for iOS devices with the Android version currently planned for the end of the year. For more information on RedView Mobile Timesheet visit www.redraincorp.com/redview-mobile-timesheet/