With Christmas now a distant memory, we bring you a mixed bag of the first deals and product updates of 2016, kickstarted by the news that Phoenix Business Solutions has launched its second site in Europe with the opening of an office in Frankfurt.
The office – Phoenix’ sixth office after London, Abu Dhabi, Chicago, New York and Sydney – will provide full iManage and Phoenix product sales, consultancy, support, development and managed service offerings.
The office will be headed by Christiane Müller-Haye, formerly Managing Director of R.O.W. Consulting, who will be joined by Marc Schneider, a former senior consultant of R.O.W., to build the Phoenix team and promote Phoenix within the region.
Jason Petrucci, Phoenix’ COO, said: “The Frankfurt office is a great logical next step for Phoenix and will significantly strengthen our established UK and Middle East presence. With the proven experience of both Christiane and Marc we are confident that their contribution will accelerate our growth within the EMEA region whilst providing clients with superior consultancy, support and product offerings.”
New Deals
Morae Legal, a Houston-headquartered end-to-end legal consulting and service provider, has announced that it has reached an agreement with Rockwater Energy Solutions to provide outsourced legal services to the company.
Morae Legal professionals will function as an extension of Rockwater’s law department, handling work that is ongoing and requires specialisation. “We were seeking a solution where we could engage with attorneys who have been in-house, bring relevant experience and could acclimate and remain an invaluable legal partner on a long-term basis,” said David Isaac, Rockwater’s General Counsel and Senior Vice President, Human Resources.
“We believe that Morae Legal’s model is the ideal model for us at this point in our history. It delivers a unique combination of experience, quality and price, allowing us to ‘rightsource’ our work and increase both operating and cost efficiencies.”
Full-service electronic data discovery provider Advanced Discovery last week acquired Millnet, the largest and longest established UK-headquartered eDiscovery and legal document services firm. In addition to greatly increasing the scale and reach of both organisations, the purchase further solidifies Advanced Discovery’s commitment to providing truly global services to its growing list of international clientele.
“The Millnet acquisition supports Advanced Discovery’s strategy to meet clients’ growing global eDiscovery needs,” said David Vandygriff, CEO of Advanced Discovery.
“Millnet is one of the most highly respected international eDiscovery service providers. We are thrilled to welcome the Millnet team to Advanced Discovery.”
The Millnet brand will be retained, with continuity of services to all clients, and will operate as ‘Millnet, an Advanced Discovery company.’
Product updates
Search Acumen has become the first to fully integrate with Land Registry’s newly-released National Polygon Dataset in a move that gives conveyancers unprecedented access to official property records.
Version 2.0 of Search Acumen’s Title Intelligence service now displays multiple titles at a given address on a single map, using clear colour-coding to distinguish between different types of tenure, enabling conveyancers to more easily visualise and validate property locations. The upgrade removes the need for conveyancers to log in separately to the Land Registry’s property boundary search and order copies of the register or plan.
Lynne Nicholson, Head of Data Products and Services at Land Registry, said: “Search Acumen certainly haven’t wasted any time in embracing our latest published dataset exactly as we hoped businesses would, and turned it into a service with a clear benefit for conveyancers. The new, improved Title Intelligence service is another example of forward-thinking innovation made possible by Land Registry’s commitment to facilitate the wider use of land and property information.”
QuisLex, a leading provider of legal process outsourcing services, has announced the issuance on December 29, 2015 of a new U.S patent covering a document review quality process.
U.S. Patent No. 9,223,858, entitled “System and Method to Determine Quality of a Document Screening Process” was issued in the names of Sirisha Gummaregula, Chief Operating Officer, and Sreekanth Dharmakari , Vice President, Business Process.
The process ensures the highest quality levels by defining and measuring errors and other metrics, performing related analyses, calibrating results, and analysing deviations and similarities. Gummaregula said: “Lawyers need to get comfortable using statistics, process discipline and technology to effectively manage large-scale litigation and corporate matters.”
Concluding with some lighter industry news in these dark January days, Norwich-based legal IT solutions firm Tiger Eye has announced a 12-month sponsorship of the tiger keepers at Banham Zoo in Norfolk, as part of celebrations to mark the company’s 10th anniversary.
Banham Zoo currently has two Siberian Tigers and Tiger Eye will provide support for the zoo’s team of cat keepers in their vital work with this endangered species.
Managing director of Tiger Eye, Dave Wilson (pictured), said “Our company name provides an obvious connection to the tigers, but there is far more depth to our reason for wanting to support these incredible creatures. We have long admired the impressive work that The Zoological Society of East Anglia (ZSEA) undertakes at Banham and Africa Alive in Suffolk. As a local business, we were very keen to pledge support for their important tiger conservation programme, which is part of an international effort to hopefully enable these amazing animals to survive long into the future.”