Thomson Reuters Elite today (10 March) announced that East Coast law firm Spilman Thomas & Battle will replace Elite Enterprise with TRE’s flagship practice management system 3E.
TRE in February announced that it is to sunset Enterprise over the next seven years, given that the platform is over 25-years old and it is no longer feasible to maintain its compatibility with new technology.
The 3E deployment at Spilman, which has seven offices across North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia, will see the full-service firm replace Enterprise and six other solutions it currently relies on to manage workflows, reports and collections.
“At Spilman, we make it a priority to maintain high-performing systems that allow us to provide excellent service at optimal value for our clients. After a thorough evaluation, we determined that the single 3E solution offers superior functionality for both financial and practice management,” said Spilman’s managing member Michael Basile. “We look forward to simplifying our technology infrastructure with a solution that can be tailored to meet our exact needs.”
Spilman has selected 3E to modernize operations with simplified data integrations and a centralized data repository. Comprehensive and secure reporting capabilities are designed to help the firm better measure performance and ultimately improve client service through enhanced efficiencies. The firm’s lawyers gain constant access to intuitive reporting functionality that incorporates real-time data and enables them to drill down to the details they value most.
“The highly configurable 3E platform provides a variety of built-in capabilities that are ideal to help firms like Spilman consolidate systems with a future-proof solution,” said Elisabet Hardy, vice president of Product Management at Elite. “By upgrading from its Enterprise system and consolidating other core technologies, Spilman gains a reliable, stable solution that significantly improves its ability to respond to client needs and adapt to evolving business requirements.”
Comment: Since the announcement by TRE in February confirming that the release of Enterprise 3.11 in Q2 2016 will be the last, there has been intense speculation as to which firms will make the switch to 3E.
So far, most of the news has been in TRE’s favour, albeit all of it has come out of the US. At Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis, the firm has been working closely with TRE on a progression plan and will now convert to 3E.
TRE has rolled out an Express Service Package (ESP) that enables firms to adopt a pre-configured version of 3E in nine-to-12 months. So far we know that a number of US firms including BuckleySandler and Cranfill Sumner & Hartzog are midway through transitioning to 3E via ESP and Tim Neary, executive director at BuckleySandler said: “This approach provided a fast predictable implementation experience, and we are impressed by the end result.”
Other US firms are going to market – SmithAmundsen is known to be looking at 3E, Aderant and Acumin. For medium-sized Minneapolis firm Gislason & Hunter, 3E is just too big a beast and the firm plans to go to market to evaluate technologies such as ProLaw and Acumin.