In this week’s round up of all the latest legal IT wins, deals and industry developments we bring you news from Qlik, Phoenix Business Solutions and Exponential-e; BigHand; Handshake Software; RAVN Systems; Nuix; LegalShift; Capensys; Fitzalan Partners and TRU Staffing Partners as well as hires and appointments from Tikit; Prosperoware; nQueue; Encompass Corporation and Wilson Legal Solutions.
Wins and deals
International law firm CMS has selected Qlik as the business intelligence solution for all of its UK operations and some of its European offices, Informance has announced. Qlik will be used to manage CMS’s key performance indicators and help it meet its operational and business goals.
Informance has developed a number of interactive, Qlik dashboards that provide CMS’s users with powerful analytics and business intelligence via their browser. The financial performance management dashboard is used by CMS’s partners and finance team to streamline financial decisions and improve productivity, cash flow and lock-up. Users can use the Qlik dashboard to monitor and measure accurate information instantly for time-recording, billing, utilisation, lock-up, work-in-progress, outstanding debt, realisation and cash collected.
Andrew Richards, Finance Director for CMS says: “Qlik is another great example of how our investment in new technology for partners and staff is yielding results.”
British cloud and network provider Exponential-e has partnered with Phoenix Business Solutions. Through the collaboration, Exponential-e and Phoenix will provide managed IT services so that law firms can focus on strategic business initiatives.
“Despite law firms recognising the potential that technology holds, it’s currently estimated that they allocate 80% of spend and 85% of resources on operational activities,” explained Lee Wade, CEO at Exponential-e. “Our partnership with Phoenix will help resolve this challenge.”
“Since working with Exponential-e, we have been able to use the high-bandwidth, low-latency network to support our people and deliver services faster,” added Andrew Powell, IT Director, of joint customer Nabarro LLP. “In addition, we intend to explore the benefits that the relationship between Exponential-e and Phoenix can offer around single SLA ownership, which could mean that we don’t have to manage multiple service providers, reducing the strain placed on our internal IT resources and allowing us to focus on value-add services.”
Layzells Solicitors, a leading North London-based legal practice specialists in property and private client matters, has switched from a stand-alone digital dictation system to BigHand’s SaaS cloud-based solution to take advantage of their technical support team.
Eleni Prodromou, partner at Layzells Solicitors, said: “Previously we had a stand-alone system that really wasn’t that responsive. We seemed to encounter problems on a daily basis and ran into issues with the provider’s support team. We needed to find a solution that could keep up with our fast-paced work load and enable us to deliver legal solutions in a more timely manner. After reviewing the options for small to medium sized practices, BigHand was the obvious choice. They were able to offer us a solution with many Enterprise-level technology capabilities at a competitive price.”
Handshake Software has announced continued accelerated growth for various Handshake Software solutions including Microsoft SharePoint-based intranets, enterprise search and integrated expertise location. New law firm customers include Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz; BuckleySandler; Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn; Loeb & Loeb; Nossaman and Wiley Rein.
“Baker Donelson is developing a state of the art SharePoint 2016 practice management intranet, so when looking for a partner to help us create the right infrastructure we knew Handshake Software was the right fit both in experience and technology,” said Meredith Williams, Baker Donelson’s chief knowledge officer and current president of ILTA’s Board of Directors.
Capensys has announced an increase in the number of law firms who wish to improve the productivity of their users are choosing Capensys’ Learning in Action (LiA) tool as a non-intrusive way to evaluate technology skills and/or provide LTC4 certification.
Firms embracing this effective way of verifying skills levels include Butler Snow; Cole Schotz; Downs Rachlin; Epstein Becker & Green; Fladgate Gordon & Rees; Greenberg Traurig; Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell; McGuireWoods; McKenzie Lake; Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson; Sutherland Asbill & Brennan; and White & Case.
In 2016 global technology company Nuix will celebrate ten years of commercial availability of its products, eight years of profitability, and five straight years of more than 60% annual compound growth. This year the company expects greater demand for technologies based on the Nuix Engine, with a range of new solutions including the Nuix Insight line of security and intelligence products.
“We’re one of a very small group of companies—especially in the technology industry—to have funded its own growth from profits,” said Eddie Sheehy, CEO of Nuix. “Each year our customers come back for more—around 95% of our income is recurring and the average order for a repeat customer is 30% larger than the previous year.”
New products and launches
LegalShift is now offering consulting and business advisory services to help in-house legal teams and their law firms better manage legal portfolios, improve business operations, and reduce legal spend and costs.
LegalShift brings experienced, senior-level consultants and advisors and an alliance with Baker Donelson to drive predictability and transparency to current law department practices. Baker Donelson was one of the first law firms in the United States to develop its own unique approach to legal project management as well as Lean Six Sigma processes and tools and the alliance will make these solutions more readily available to a broader segment of the legal industry.
“Over the past several years we have invested significantly in the implementation and improvement of our BakerManage legal project management and Lean Six Sigma processes and technology,” said Baker Donelson’s chief executive officer, Ben Adams. “We have worked with numerous clients to advise and train them on how to use these solutions internally and across all of their outside counsel relationships and we are pleased to be so strongly aligned with LegalShift to expand the potential application of these solutions.”
Drawing from other comparison markets, Fitzalan Partners has launched The Solicitor Finder to compare services and generate leads within the legal industry.
With the first part of the launch branching out into the residential property sector, solicitors are invited to feature their site on The Solicitor Finder, for a chance to attract a new online audience.
Research last year revealed that many people find it difficult to acquire, let alone compare, conveyancing quotes from a range of different firms. Not only will The Solicitor Finder give internet users the chance to do just that, they can also search and filter by location, ratings and promotions.
Prosperoware has announced the release of Umbria Dashboard for iOS and Android. Umbria Dashboard leverages Umbria’s modern BI and financial metrics to give lawyers and other law firm decision-makers one-touch access to vital KPIs and actionable matter data on all of their clients, enabling them to monitor the financial performance of matters anywhere, anytime.
Learn more about Umbria Dashboard by watching this 2 minute video here.
Who’s in, who’s out?
Tikit has appointed Ryan Steadman as director of business development – Eastern region. With over 15 years’ experience servicing the legal sector, Ryan joins the team from Tikit London to help increase visibility of the company’s Next Generation technologies and at the same time spearhead the introduction to North America of key partners whose products already benefit their European clients.
Prior to Tikit, Ryan spent time with Thomson Reuters Elite and Tata Consulting Services delivering leading edge practice and matter management systems.
In order to deal with its continued expansion in the EMEA region, Tikit has also invested in its sales function with the hire of Colin McArdle as an account director.
McArdle spent almost nine years at LexisNexis, the latter half working in their Enterprise Solutions division. Colin then moved on to Kindleworth where he worked as a technology consultant working directly with law firms and new entrants to the legal market. More recently, Colin has spent two years with Williams Lea in a client services director role within the legal and professional services division.
nQueue has hired Danielle Page as business development manager. Page is resident in San Diego and will focus her efforts on helping law firms improve cost recovery and scanning and routing efficiency and profitability through use of nQueue’s products.
Page joins nQueue from MRC Smart Technology Solutions, a Xerox Company that specializes in workflow solutions and office systems. At MRC, she helped companies to streamline processes and reduce operating costs for copiers and desktop printers. Prior to that, she was an account executive on the Phoenix Suns’ membership sales team.
More from Prosperoware, which has hired former Litera director Rich Powers as sales manager, Americas, information governance. A legal technology veteran, Powers will helm sales in the U.S. for Prosperoware’s Milan family of products.
John Kenyon, vice president of sales at Prosperoware, said: “This is an exciting time for Prosperoware and Rich’s appointment is aligned with our heightened focus on enabling organizations to better manage client confidentiality and drive greater lawyer adoption of their document management systems. Rich makes a great addition to our team.”
Wilson Legal Solutions has announced the appointment of Jonathan Blair and Madjid Mouhous to the company’s EMEA consulting services team. Based in London, the team provides professional and technical services that support the entire life cycle of law firms’ practice management and financial systems software.
Blair joins Wilson as an application consultant with more than 13 years of experience in finance and billing within the legal and large enterprise environment. Most recently, Blair served as finance manager for Knoll International, overseeing the company’s finance team. Previously, he was a financial accountant with the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.
Madjid Mouhous joins as a senior technical consultant with more than 10 years’ experience in legal technology. Most recently, Mouhous served as a financial systems business analyst with the law firm Ashurst London, where he was responsible for support, development, and maintenance of the firm’s financial systems and application testing during software upgrades.
To support and accelerate their growth as a supplier of innovative visual analytics technology to the UK’s legal services sector, Encompass Corporation has appointed Chris Bull as an industry advisor. Chris’s executive career includes chief operating officer Europe & Americas at professional services outsourcing firm Integreon and executive and board member roles at law firm Osborne Clarke.
Wayne Johnson, founder and CEO at Encompass, said: “Chris’s knowledge and expertise of the UK’s legal services market sector will help us take Encompass Verify for law, a product already proven in Australia’s legal services market and tailor it for the UK. Our ambition is to become the product of choice and Chris will help us to achieve this.”
Other industry news
RAVN Systems has won the award for the “Best Enterprise Start-up 2016” category at the Techies Awards held on the 25th February 2016 at the ME Hotel in London.
RAVN won the award for their artificial intelligence robot, RAVN ACE, a solution which reads, interprets and extracts specific information from documents. It converts unstructured data into structured output, in a fraction of the time it takes a human – and with a higher degree of accuracy.
QuisLex has been selected for the 2016 Global Outsourcing 100 list by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals.
Judging is based on a rigorous scoring methodology that includes a review by an independent panel of IAOP customer members with extensive experience in selecting outsourcing service providers and advisors for their organizations. The 2016 panel is led by IAOP CEO Debi Hamill and Chairman Michael F. Corbett.
TRU Staffing Partners is offering an extension to job candidates looking to apply for training and education being offered through the 2016 Scholarship Program.
The program, which is designed to foster training and education for job candidates in the legal technology industry, is in its fifth year of operation and offers scholarships from Georgetown University; LitWorks, a DTI Company; and ACEDS. Over the past five years, the program has awarded over fifty scholarships, totalling over $80,000 in education.
Applications for the scholarships are being accepted at www.trustaffingpartners.com through March 17.