With a bumper Legal IT Insider issue about to hit desks, this week we bring you news of a law firm win from Formpipe while HotDocs has entered into new partnerships in Norway and Brazil. BigHand has signed a deal with 21-office high street firm McMillan Williams and SearchFlow has partnered with Decision First, creator of the Lender Exchange, a web portal designed to combat fraud. There are also noteworthy product launches from eLaw and CrowdStrike.
Wins and Deals
Full-service Rotterdam law firm Kneppelhout & Korthals has selected Contentworker by Formpipe Intelligo as its new document management system.
“In Contentworker we finally found a Sharepoint DMS and partner that fits both our needs as well as our vision on how the future of the legal profession will look like”, said Olaf van Haperen, managing partner at Kneppelhout & Korthals.
“This deal is also important to us as it launches our subscription based delivery model together with The Sourcing Company in the Netherlands. We see a growing number of small and mid-size law firms looking for this flexibility in their IT strategies, and with this launch we are now better positioned to meet these strategies as well,” said Jonas Abrahamsson, sales director of Formpipe.
HotDocs has entered into partnership with Norwegian systems integrator Contesto, which will now offer the document automation software to its clients.
Contesto was established in Stavanger, Norway in September 2001 and delivers complete solutions within enterprise content management. The company’s business ethos is to simplify handling of, and access to, all business-critical information.
HotDocs has also just established its second partnership in Brazil, with ATS Tecnologia. Gilberto de Denghy, enterprise information management consultant for ATS Tecnologia said: “Companies invest lots of time and sales resource closing business deals via contracts and what we find is that the same investment is not implemented in managing the lifecycle of contracts. Automating the production of documents doesn’t just save time and money, it also reduces risk, increases accuracy and enhances compliance. ATS aims to solve information sharing, compliance, audit and document archiving issues through ECM technologies.”
HotDoc’s first partnership in Brazil was with DocWise.
McMillan Williams has signed a deal to switch to BigHand Speech Recognition and BigHand Go as it looks to execute its ambitious growth plans.
At the large high street firm, which has 21 offices across London and the South of England, the ability for staff to be productive no matter where they are was key.
“We wanted to be in a position to rapidly expand fee earner numbers whilst keeping support staff numbers stable,” said chief information officer, David Fazakerley. “BigHand Speech Recognition helps us to achieve this. Fifty percent of the work that our support staff currently do is typing up notes. With BigHand Speech Recognition this process can be automated, productivity is increased and the amount of administrative work needing to be processed manually is greatly reduced, this frees up our support staff to assist Fee Earners on other matters.”
Property intelligence specialist SearchFlow has partnered with Decision First to offer a service to protect conveyancers and homebuyers from the risk of fraud.
Using Decision First’s law firm search via the Lender Exchange, users can now ensure it is safe to transfer their client’s money at no additional cost.
Working on behalf of lenders to verify the details of law firms on their panels, Lender Exchange offers access to the largest set of verified conveyancing firms in England and Wales, equating to over 95% of the market.
Greg Bryce, managing director of SearchFlow, said: “Mortgage fraud currently costs the industry approximately £1.4bn a year, and it is on the rise as criminals deploy ever more sophisticated methods to intercept large sums of money. Lender Exchange’s Law Firm Search offers the most comprehensive check on solicitor’s details in the market and will provide much needed protection against this area of risk. We are fully committed to offering a value-added service and believe our clients will find this an invaluable tool with the extra bonus that it is available at no additional cost.”
Product launches
eLaw, a U.S. web-based platform that provides up-to-date court-related case information, now offers a specialised judgment verification service for debt buyers attempting to collect on judgments.
Attempting to collect on an invalid judgment can result in expensive individual or class action complaints, or in actions brought by state attorneys general and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for alleged FDCPA or NYS law violations or a severe fine. Before attempting collection, firms send cases in which judgments have been purchased to eLaw. eLaw provides the exact information the court has on file for each case to confirm that the judgment is in the court records, its date, that the court records do not show it is satisfied and that there are no motions to vacate the judgment.
eLaw can also monitor cases for any newly filed motions or status changes, and can obtain judgment copies in the five New York boroughs and Nassau County. New York judgment verification through eLaw is available in Manhattan, Bronx, Kings, Queens and Richmond Civil Courts.
CrowdStrike, which provides cloud-delivered next-generation endpoint protection, threat intelligence and incident response services, is now offering a new cyber risk assessment program aimed at businesses that conduct mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
This program provides risk management specifically geared to identifying and minimising exposure to cybersecurity threats before and during the company integration process.
“The premise behind the CrowdStrike Services M&A Cyber Risk Assessment program is simple: You would never purchase a house without an inspection, so why would you invest millions of dollars in a business without properly assessing its cyber security posture?” said Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike Services and chief security officer.